Bitcoin Forum

https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg08276.html

Mike & Gavin are desperate to get the full control of the source code by XT fork, so that they can implement address blacklisting to make the regulatory bodies happy.

Blacklisting coins/addresses subverts Satoshi's original intention.

Do you have proof or statements made, that point toward that being their ultimate intention?

I have already given the proof in my updated post. Moreover Hearn has absolutely no intention to keep bitcoin close to Satoshi's original intention. That is why he is openly claiming to ignore the longest chain.

Check this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB9goUDBAR0

Hearn simply wants bitcoin to compete with Mastercard/Visa where he will be at the helm. He has absolutely no belief in the concept of de-centralization and is behaving more of a dictator. Just let him get the control of the code through XT and see what comes along...

Mike & Gavin are desperate to get the full control of the source code by XT fork, so that they can implement address blacklisting to make the regulatory bodies happy. They will most likely be financially benefited to do that. In fact, it is a long term agenda of Hearn & company...

Ref: Freezing BitCoin addresses by regulating miners (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5979.0)

Blacklisting coins/addresses subverts Satoshi's original intention.

Do you have proof or statements made, that point toward that being their ultimate intention?

Despite the over reach in the facts if blacklisting happens then xt will be in jeopardy of being just that a fork with unwanted side effects..

They are not gonna do it tomorrow. They'll do it when there will be no more competing chain to XT. You will have only two options left. Either accept what they'll tell you or sell out and walk off. This is how dictators rise to the power. That is why they have chosen this petty issue of 20 MB fork where most will agree with them. The hidden agenda is clear to all who knows Hearn. Otherwise, tell me, when almost everyone agrees upon the 8MB upgrade, which will immediately buy 2-3 years, why Hearn is still arguing for 20MB fork. Because, he wants to fork. Control.

They are not gonna do it tomorrow. They'll do it when there will be no more competing chain to XT. You will have only two options left. Either accept what they'll tell you or sell out and walk off. This is how dictators rise to the power. That is why they have chosen this petty issue of 20 MB fork where most will agree with them. The hidden agenda is clear to all who knows Hearn. Otherwise, tell me, when almost everyone agrees upon the 8MB upgrade, which will immediately buy 2-3 years, why Hearn is still arguing for 20MB fork. Because, he wants to fork. Control.

Anyone who is pro-blacklisting pretty much in my mind doesn't really care about bitcoin.
Blacklisting coins or "working" with governments to "freeze" certain addresses or coins, pretty much renders bitcoin useless.
I thought Satoshi created this "experiment" so that governing bodies can not regulate or control our money?
What happened to all that? What about being your own bank?

Blacklisting coins opens a pandora's box that I think is unimaginable and quite sad for bitcoin's future.

I believe Gavin and Hearn have the best intentions in mind. I don't think it's as sinister as many are making it seem. This is clearly a major issue that needs to be addressed, and the blocksize must be raised regardless of your politics. Now we need to find a consensus of how to do it the "right" way.

Yes maybe, but as you say the box is open.  If bitcoins are regulated and fail, then litecoins will take over.  If those fail then maybe monero, dash, or (cough) doge will take over.  It is a tidal wave and it cant be stopped no matter how many fingers you poke into the holes in the dam.

Good point, even if they make bitcoin into the regulated, blacklisted, paypal of crypto it would be suicide considering all the alternatives that people could use to circumvent the "law".

maybe the dreaded AOL era is near bitcoin and the next coin will become everything bitcoin wasn't. Unfuckwithable

I didn't realize Adam Back was so entrenched in Bitcoin. I thought his involvement stopped at HashCash. Satoshi, Hal and Ray developed and tested Bitcoin then Gavin took it over. It's fascinating that he doesn't approve and believes Gavin is forcing the change through regardless. Now that the Chinese mining cartel has approved the change to 8 I guess that's what will happen. I'm completely baffled as to why Gavin feels the need to unilaterally control the direction of Bitcoin. Is there a hidden paycheck in it for him that I don't see?

I didn't realize Adam Back was so entrenched in Bitcoin. I thought his involvement stopped at HashCash. Satoshi, Hal and Ray developed and tested Bitcoin then Gavin took it over. It's fascinating that he doesn't approve and believes Gavin is forcing the change through regardless. Now that the Chinese mining cartel has approved the change to 8 I guess that's what will happen. I'm completely baffled as to why Gavin feels the need to unilaterally control the direction of Bitcoin. Is there a hidden paycheck in it for him that I don't see?

For a letter intended to be publicly disclosed, that was extremely poorly written and laxly proofed.  It's rambling, repetitive, hyperbolic and (IMO) unnecessarily incendiary.  None of these aspects help the author's case.

XT is an altcoin,

Somewhere I read that Back was aware of Bitcoin but busy with other stuff and didn't get significantly involved until relatively later.  Perhaps this was from the time maybe half a year ago when he was active on cypherdoc's gold thread but I don't remember for sure.

As for Gavin, it still seems like the strongest hypothesis (barely) that he simply sees Bitcoin's future being most bright, or at least (Western?) humanity best served if the government and their chosen regulators have more-or-less the same degree of control over Bitcoin as they do over other monetary solutions.

Relateldy, perhaps he sees that a realistic path to 'reasonable' control by TPTB will bring in a rush of VC money and hodlers can get rich.  To say the truth I've never really sensed that Gavin is all that interested in getting rich (except in one minor incident perhaps) but such perceptions are hard to be very confident about.  I'm quite certain that just this hope animates a great many of the participants in the ecosystem however.

XT is an altcoin, do NOT use it.

"So...

... maybe there's a misunderstanding on what I'm actually working on. I'm coding a hard-fork that will only fork:

    -After March 1, 2016
    -If 75% of hashing power is producing up-version blocks
    -AND after some brave miner decides to actually produce a >1MB block.

It will be very difficult for anybody to lose money. Even if we assume that some stubborn minority of miners decides not to upgrade (in spite of Bitcoin Core warning them first that the chain consists mostly of blocks with up-version version number, and then warning them that there is an alternative invalid higher-work chain), those miners will be the only people who will lose money. Ordinary, SVP-using users will follow the longest chain, and since at least 75% of hashing power will be on the bigger-block chain, there is no chance of them losing money. The big-block-rejecting-chain will very, very quickly be left behind and ignored.

There will NOT be two active chains, that is just FUD. Anybody running old code will have to willfully ignore the warnings to upgrade to stay on the old chain, and the incentives are so strong to follow the majority I can't imagine the 1MB chain persisting for any significant length of time.

--------

I'm happy to tweak the parameters. The code I'm writing regression tests for right now is:

    -8MB max block size (chinese miners were unhappy with 20 for not-entirely-clear reasons)
    -Earliest fork date 11 Jan 2016 (miners and others want sooner rather than later)
    -Activation when 750 of last 1,000 blocks are up-version (version 0x20000004 to be compatible with sipa's new versioning bits scheme)
    -2 week 'grace period' after 75% threshold reached before first >1MB block allowed to be mined
    -8MB cap doubles every two years (so 16MB in 2018, etc: unless there is a soft fork before then because 16MB is too much)

The code for all that is starting to get right on the edge of "too complicated for consensus," but the individual pieces are all straightforward. I'll write a BIP when I'm done with the code, and, as I've said repeatedly, I'm not stuck to any particular set of parameters."


https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/39ziy6/eli5_what_will_happen_if_there_is_a_hard_fork/cs7xe9o

Here's how to arbitrate on the correct decision in this debate:

============================
If payment channels and sidechains didn't exist and if no prospect of them ever existed, how easy would it be to find a consensus over the blocksize revision ?
============================

...that is the question.

People are making a VERY BIG MISTAKE (IMHO) if they bring the wider ecosystem into the equation when weighing up the merits of a blockchain capacity increase. At a systems analysis level, by doing that you're creating a coupling and a dependency on a meta infrastructure that was never part of the original design objectives of a cryptocurrency.

Sure, you could create quite a nicely layered financial system (and no doubt, such a meta infrastructure will emerge eventually), but you then no longer have a blockchain for all. We'll be back to needing Visa and the banks to use it because they'll be the owners of said 'meta infrastructure' which will in no way, shape or form be decentralised.

So if you think the blockchain can stand on its own 2 feet for the next 10 years at a 1 Mb blocksize - sure, defend the status quo. If you don't then support the capacity change, but don't support the status quo because you think that other systems can "front-the load". That logic amounts to:

 • bad systems analysis in de-prioritising the original design objectives (single-tier financial network) in favour of new ones (multi-tier)

 • bad engineering (compromising functional redundancy in favour of strategic commercial priorities)

 • bad politics (re-centralising at a meta-infrastructure level what was decentralised at the blockchain level)

Mike & Gavin are desperate to get the full control of the source code by XT fork, so that they can implement address blacklisting to make the regulatory bodies happy. They will most likely be financially benefited to do that. In fact, it is a long term agenda of Hearn & company...

Ref: Freezing BitCoin addresses by regulating miners (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5979.0)

Yes I agree 100%.  If there was not the blockstream conflict of interest (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1075323.0) then I don't even think there would be a conversation about increased block size, people would just do it because it makes sense, it is needed, and it is stupid not to do it.

From watching Mike Hearn's interview I believe he is grossly oversimplifying the other developers objections. It is also a bit insulting to suggest that there is a conflict of interest with the blockstream group as sidechains don't address the scalability problems and these same devs were discussing some of the same objections way before blockstream was created.

It may be interesting to hear some of Nick Szabo's concerns with the blocksize increase as well as he is well versed in economics and game theory and is one of the top candidates for being Satoshi:

https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/611259452402987008

It is also a bit insulting to suggest that there is a conflict of interest with the blockstream group as sidechains don't address the scalability problems

How can you say "sidechains don't address the scalability problems" when you don't even know what sidechain technologies are on the drawing board ?

And what is the point of sidechains anyway if they don't address the scaleability problems amongst others ?

The whole idea of them is to experiment with variations and innovations that would otherwise go into bitcoin but which are potentially too radical to hardfork without maturing for a period outside the native blockchain.

It surely follows - conversely - therefore, that if a blocksize change can help bitcoin scale, it can do the same for a sidechain.

maybe the dreaded AOL era is near bitcoin and the next coin will become everything bitcoin wasn't. Unfuckwithable

How can you say "sidechains don't address the scalability problems" when you don't even know what sidechain technologies are on the drawing board ?

And what is the point of sidechains anyway if they don't address the scaleability problems amongst others ?

The whole idea of them is to experiment with variations and innovations that would otherwise go into bitcoin but which are potentially too radical to hardfork without maturing for a period outside the native blockchain.

It surely follows - conversely - therefore, that if a blocksize change can help bitcoin scale, it can do the same for a sidechain.

The purpose of sidechains is mainly to allow for unique testing of controversial code and possibly unique tokens that still have the strength and security of all or most of the main Bitcoin network.

The reasons sidechains don't address scalability problems is that they could add extra transactions to the bitcoin blockchain due to many new sidechains being introduced to facilitate everyones' projects. I understand your point that there could be a sidechain introduced to alleviate some of the Tx on the mainchain(I.E... microtransaction sidechain)  , but what you also have to account for is the flurry of new transactions that will now occur when individuals jump on and off the sidechain and between the hundreads of sidechains thus using the main chain. This is traffic that is normally being handled off the chain or by alts right now. If you are a new alt creator you may very well want to create a sidechain instead of your independent blockchain to get all the benefits from being a sidechain.