<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><author_name>npub14jegtpz2t9nfnefqqr0q4te9353e4k4x5y2528qf235ruluzsaes8vk3rk</author_name><author_url>https://nostr.ae/npub14jegtpz2t9nfnefqqr0q4te9353e4k4x5y2528qf235ruluzsaes8vk3rk</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://nostr.ae</provider_url><html>📅 Original date posted:2015-06-16&#xA;📝 Original message:&gt; Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen do not own Bitcoin and, emphatically,&#xA;you cannot have it.&#xA;&#xA;Neither do you or anyone else.&#xA;&#xA;&gt; There is protocol for how change is effected in a FOSS project.&#xA;&#xA;And it allows the minority to hold the majority hostage.&#xA;&#xA;&gt; If you take the risks with Mike&amp;GavCoin, that would be fine, but you are&#xA;about to take them with community-owned Bitcoin and Other People&#39;s Money!&#xA;&#xA;The same can be said about the other camp.&#xA;&#xA;BitcoinXT is not going to fork the chain on a specific date no matter what.&#xA;People will be able to vote via block versions and once a sufficient&#xA;majority supports the extensions, everyone else will have a grace period to&#xA;upgrade. Only after that is a very small minority at risk of losing money.&#xA;&#xA;That being said, I&#39;d rather see a solution that everyone agrees on. My&#xA;personal opinion/hope is that Mike and Gavin are just applying pressure&#xA;where it&#39;s needed. But in the end, they can do whatever they want if they&#xA;have the necessary support. Permissionless innovation is one of bitcoins&#xA;virtues. In the end, only adoption will decide what bitcoin is and isn&#39;t.&#xA;&#xA;2015-06-16 7:18 GMT+02:00 Venzen &lt;venzen at mail.bihthai.net&gt;:&#xA;&#xA;&gt; Mike Hearn,&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; In the light of your responses to Adam Back&#39;s questions, below, I feel&#xA;&gt; it is time to speak up because what I now understand, and is implied,&#xA;&gt; is that Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen have planned and deployed the&#xA;&gt; infrastructure for a Bitcoin hard-fork and intend to action it despite&#xA;&gt; majority opposition.  http://xtnodes.com/&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; I&#39;ll try to keep it brief:&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; Mike Hearn, you should cease your activity of a unilateral hard-fork&#xA;&gt; immediately. You are doing untold damage by breaking FOSS governance&#xA;&gt; protocol requiring methodical collaborative work and due process of&#xA;&gt; change implementation by consensus. Your actions are bad for the&#xA;&gt; Bitcoin project and its ideals, disrespectful of your peers and years&#xA;&gt; of their passionate hard work, and dangerous for Bitcoin in the&#xA;&gt; marketplace and bitcoin in peoples&#39; wallets.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen do not own Bitcoin and, emphatically,&#xA;&gt; you cannot have it. Your hard-fork is tantamount to theft and you and&#xA;&gt; your collaborators will effectively ex-communicate yourselves from&#xA;&gt; this project and community. It appears that you are consciously trying&#xA;&gt; to usurp ownership and maintenance of Bitcoin. As if it is that easy!&#xA;&gt; You clearly do not comprehend the array of risks - especially the&#xA;&gt; unanticipated ones. As the market saying goes: &#34;If you think&#xA;&gt; speculation is easy, it is because you are ignorant about the risks&#34;.&#xA;&gt; If you take the risks with Mike&amp;GavCoin, that would be fine, but you&#xA;&gt; are about to take them with community-owned Bitcoin and Other People&#39;s&#xA;&gt; Money!&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; You are causing a lot of stress, unnecessarily, and grave concern&#xA;&gt; surrounds your proposed renegade action. You can dissolve the threat:&#xA;&gt; those players to whom you have made promises can be appeased and&#xA;&gt; eventually get most of what they need from this FOSS project. The&#xA;&gt; developers whom you are railroading to get your way, and the way in&#xA;&gt; which you are doing it, is about to cause a schism that will expand&#xA;&gt; outward from this community.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; You may accuse the community for being antagonistic to you, and&#xA;&gt; therefore uncooperative, but it is plain to see that your bullheaded&#xA;&gt; manner eventually generates antagonism wherever you go. Taking Bitcoin&#xA;&gt; away from this community, in anger, won&#39;t solve the problem and will&#xA;&gt; be like killing the goose that lays the golden eggs.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; If an individual in an objectively agreed-to FOSS-modelled&#xA;&gt; collaborative project has the audacity to threaten his peers and the&#xA;&gt; world with a unilateral hard-fork despite majority objection and a&#xA;&gt; probability distribution that includes terminal risks and unintended&#xA;&gt; consequences, then what would an impartial outsider think? Some of&#xA;&gt; their thoughts would include that the antagonist could be acting in&#xA;&gt; self-interest, or may be a paid actor, or worse, a saboteur. What&#xA;&gt; would they advise? Stop that individual, at once!&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; Bitcoin is a Free and Open Source Software project that serves as&#xA;&gt; flagship for the blockchain. It has a payment network but the key&#xA;&gt; benefits are censorship resistance and trustless decentralization.&#xA;&gt; There is protocol for how change is effected in a FOSS project. For&#xA;&gt; the sake of everything that is good and useful in Bitcoin, reconsider&#xA;&gt; your dangerous plan and its intended and unintended consequences. Put&#xA;&gt; your feet back on the ground, return to the fold and let the&#xA;&gt; collaborative FOSS model, and the skills available here, gradually&#xA;&gt; scale Bitcoin to your (and all our) grand vision.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; Venzen Khaosan&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; On 06/15/2015 04:56 PM, Mike Hearn wrote:&#xA;&gt; &gt; Hi Adam,&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Provisional answers below!&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; - Are you releasing a BIP for that proposal for review?&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; The work splits like this:&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * Gavin is writing the code and I think a BIP as well&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * I will review both and mostly delegate to Gavin&#39;s good taste&#xA;&gt; &gt; around the details, unless there is some very strong disagreement.&#xA;&gt; &gt; But that seems unlikely.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; * I have been handling gitian and the patch rebases, the code&#xA;&gt; &gt; signing and so on, so far. I&#39;ve also been doing some work to setup&#xA;&gt; &gt; the basic infrastructure of the project (website etc).&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; - If the reviewers all say NACK will you take on board their&#xA;&gt; &gt; suggestions?&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Feedback will be read. There are no NACKS in Bitcoin XT. Patch&#xA;&gt; &gt; requests aren&#39;t scored in any way. The final decision rests with&#xA;&gt; &gt; the maintainer as in ~all open source projects.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; - On the idea of a non-consensus hard-fork at all, I think we can&#xA;&gt; &gt; assume you will get a row of NACKs.  Can you explain your&#xA;&gt; &gt; rationale for going ahead anyway?  The risks are well understood&#xA;&gt; &gt; and enormous.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Yes, I have been working on an article that explains how we got to&#xA;&gt; &gt; this point from my perspective. It is quite long, but only because&#xA;&gt; &gt; I want it to be readable for people who weren&#39;t following the&#xA;&gt; &gt; debate.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Anyway, I think I&#39;ve laid out the gist of it over and over again,&#xA;&gt; &gt; but to summarise:&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; If Bitcoin runs out of capacity *it will break and many of our&#xA;&gt; &gt; users will leave*. That is not an acceptable outcome for myself or&#xA;&gt; &gt; the many other wallet, service and merchant developers who have&#xA;&gt; &gt; worked for years to build an ecosystem around this protocol.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; - How do you propose to deal with the extra risks that come from&#xA;&gt; &gt; non-consensus hard-forks?  Hard-forks themselves are quite risky,&#xA;&gt; &gt; but non-consensus ones are extremely dangerous for consensus.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; The approach is the same for other forks. Voting via block versions&#xA;&gt; &gt; and then when there&#39;s been &gt;X% for Y time units the 1mb limit is&#xA;&gt; &gt; lifted/replaced.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; - If you&#39;re going it alone as it were, are you proposing that you&#xA;&gt; &gt; will personally maintain bitcoin-XT?  Or do you have a plan to&#xA;&gt; &gt; later hand over maintenance to the bitcoin developers?&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Good question!  I have various thoughts on this, but let&#39;s wait and&#xA;&gt; &gt; see what happens first. Perhaps the new chain won&#39;t get the&#xA;&gt; &gt; majority on it.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; In the event that the &gt;1mb chain does eventually win, I would&#xA;&gt; &gt; expect Core to apply the patch and rejoin the consensus rather than&#xA;&gt; &gt; lose all its users. That would take XT back to being a fairly small&#xA;&gt; &gt; patchset to improve the network protocol.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; - Do you have contingency plans for what to do if the&#xA;&gt; &gt; non-consensus hard-fork goes wrong and $3B is lost as a result?&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Where did you get the $3B figure from? The fork either doesn&#39;t&#xA;&gt; &gt; happen, or it happens after quite a long period of people knowing&#xA;&gt; &gt; it&#39;s going to happen - for example because their full node is&#xA;&gt; &gt; printing &#34;You need to upgrade&#34; messages due to seeing the larger&#xA;&gt; &gt; block version, or because they read the news, or because they heard&#xA;&gt; &gt; about it via some other mechanisms.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Let me flip the question around. Do you have a contingency plan if&#xA;&gt; &gt; Bitcoin runs out of capacity and significant user disruption occurs&#xA;&gt; &gt; that results in exodus, followed by fall in BTC price? The only one&#xA;&gt; &gt; I&#39;ve seen is &#34;we can perform an emergency hard fork in a few&#xA;&gt; &gt; weeks&#34;!&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; As you can probably tell I think a unilateral fork without&#xA;&gt; &gt; wide-scale consensus from the technical and business communities is&#xA;&gt; &gt; a deeply inadvisable.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Gavin and I have been polling many key players in the ecosystem.&#xA;&gt; &gt; The consensus you seek does exist. All wallet developers (except&#xA;&gt; &gt; Lawrence), all the major exchanges, all the major payment&#xA;&gt; &gt; processors and many of the major mining pools want to see the limit&#xA;&gt; &gt; lifted (I haven&#39;t been talking to pools, Gavin has).&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; This notion that the change has no consensus is based on you&#xA;&gt; &gt; polling the people directly around you and people who like to spend&#xA;&gt; &gt; all day on this mailing list. It&#39;s not an accurate reflection of&#xA;&gt; &gt; the wider Bitcoin community and that is one of the leading reasons&#xA;&gt; &gt; there is going to be a fork. A small number of people have been&#xA;&gt; &gt; flatly ignoring LOTS of highly technical and passionate developers&#xA;&gt; &gt; who have written vast amounts of code, built up the Bitcoin user&#xA;&gt; &gt; base, designed hardware and software, and yes built companies.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; How do you think that makes Bitcoin Core look to the rest of the&#xA;&gt; &gt; Bitcoin world? How much confidence does that give people?&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Of the overall process, I think you can agree we should not be&#xA;&gt; &gt; making technical decisions with this level of complexity and&#xA;&gt; &gt; consensus risk with financial implications of this magnitude under&#xA;&gt; &gt; duress of haste?&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; This debate will never end until a fork makes it irrelevant. There&#xA;&gt; &gt; is no process for ending it, despite me begging Wladimir to make&#xA;&gt; &gt; one.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; And there is no haste. We have been debating the block size limit&#xA;&gt; &gt; for _years_. We have known it must be lifted for _years_. I kicked&#xA;&gt; &gt; off this current round of debates after realising that Wladimir&#39;s&#xA;&gt; &gt; release timeline wouldn&#39;t allow a block size limit to be released&#xA;&gt; &gt; before the end of the year. The reason we&#39;re talking about it now&#xA;&gt; &gt; and not next year is exactly to ensure there is plenty of time.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; I can sincerely assure you everyone does want to scale bitcoin and&#xA;&gt; &gt; shares your long term objective on that&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; I really wish you were right, and I definitely feel you are one of&#xA;&gt; &gt; the more reasonable ones Adam. But the overwhelming impression I&#xA;&gt; &gt; get from a few others here is that no, they don&#39;t want to scale&#xA;&gt; &gt; Bitcoin. They already decided it&#39;s a technological dead end. They&#xA;&gt; &gt; want to kick end users out in order to &#34;incentivise&#34; (force) the&#xA;&gt; &gt; creation of some other alternative, claiming that it&#39;s still&#xA;&gt; &gt; Bitcoin whilst ignoring basic details ... like the fact that no&#xA;&gt; &gt; existing wallets or services would work.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; Scaling Bitcoin can only be achieved by letting it grow, and&#xA;&gt; &gt; letting people tackle each bottleneck as it arises at the right&#xA;&gt; &gt; times. Not by convincing ourselves that success is failure.&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; ------------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt; &gt; _______________________________________________ Bitcoin-development&#xA;&gt; &gt; mailing list Bitcoin-development at lists.sourceforge.net&#xA;&gt; &gt; https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development&#xA;&gt; &gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; ------------------------------------------------------------------------------&#xA;&gt; _______________________________________________&#xA;&gt; Bitcoin-development mailing list&#xA;&gt; Bitcoin-development at lists.sourceforge.net&#xA;&gt; https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development&#xA;&gt;&#xA;-------------- next part --------------&#xA;An HTML attachment was scrubbed...&#xA;URL: &lt;http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150616/5f789e97/attachment.html&gt;</html></oembed>