Bitcoin Forum

Could someone explain to me how the 2X drama is likely to play out in November?
I know core are against it and some who signed up to the NYA have pulled out but there is still 94% support (signaling) of miners.
Ver and Wu are in the bcash camp or do they want 2x also ?
Whats likly to happen in the weeks/days leading up to the split and wont core need a significant percentage of miners on their side?

Since we are speculating. I think 2X is in the rite of passage stage and everyone will adopt it. Eventually. The people who wanted bigger blocks in the Bitcoin Network should rethink their childish fantasies.

In the end I doubt miners will go through with it. I think the businesses who signed on were seriously mislead and/or ignorant of what the reality of this proposal actually was. Moving away from Bitcoin Core as the reference implementation just for something as silly as 2x is pretty risky. I highly doubt that's how the agreement was originally presented. Even though it should have been obvious since people who work on Core were either intentionally not invited or just not involved.

I do not see that core's has any tenable objection to 2X.

[1] Tech has moved on, 2mb is not that big, HD space and bandwidth are much cheaper
[2] BCH has proved you can go bigger blocks and have significant value network, and BCH network has not collapsed.
[3] It provides choice as to on chain or of chain transactions
[4] there is no such thing as spam in the network, but I will use the word "spam" as shorthand for transactions person A does not like.
[5] If you say go 8 times the blocksize and 1/2 the price for fees it will be 4 times more costly to "spam" a block while providing much lower fees. Given there are limited bitcoins, the spammer will run out of BTC to spam.

I welcome any discussion as why I am in error, but as it stand to not 2x then a few years later 4x and so on, seem in bad faith by core. It forces the question cui bono?

According to Coindance, almost all nodes still support Core. btc1 nodes (Segwit2x) have almost no one using it.

https://coin.dance/nodes#allNodes

I was neutral on it until I talked to one of the Core devs about it. I don't understand all the technical explanation, but I'm now firmly against it. I hope Segwit2x fails.

2x is a "physical" blocksize increase to 4-6MB, not just 2MB. Regular SegWit already leads to 2-3MB blocks.



BCH has barely any blocks that are larger than 50k because there are hardly any transactions being made, so it hasn't proven anything so far.



Regular SegWit does as well.



Spam is defined as transactions that are made explicitely for the purpose of clogging up the network, akin to DDoS requests. While to my knowledge there's little "hard" proof that spam transaction exists, they are not simply "transactions person A does not like."



Agreed.



Problem being, that this approach would require a hardfork any time a block size increase takes place. While it went fairly OK with BCH, a hardfork is always a risky endeavour.

There's a difference between running a node with X software, and supporting the positions of the related development team.

Talking as if running software = support is something that needs to stop. It's not correct.

I run a bitcoin core node but I often do not agree with the decisions made by the core team. There aren't millions of clients to cater to everyone's minute differences of opinion, so it's not exactly easy to 'show' your support in this manner.

Its not the merits of core vs 2x thread. As i said in OP, I am curious as to how this might play out. When will we know how many are "locked in" to either side? Will the fork happen regardless and we wont know until after how many miners support each or is it possible that the fork will not happen due to overwhelming support for either side?

TBH I don't know and this really requires clarification.

The miners are in opposition to the running nodes at the moment, and the user community is utterly impossible to gauge accurately. Business doesn't seem to care, it will go to whatever is successful.

I believe that ultimate control comes down to miners in the end. If miners mine 2X and nobody mines the legacy, then that's all she wrote.

Thanks just to clarify, when I say 2x, I know segwit gives effective size, but I mean the commitment to make base blocks bigger so we can really make the "spammers" run ou of money and keep on chain fees lower, and give consumer choice.





ok....I guess as far as it goes the network has no catastrophically died....I think there have be a few 8mb blocks or something mined, but your right not a real stress test





your right....I should rephrase that that the price for on chain would be less. Also on point what then isentivices miners as block reward drops if they don't have enough transactions on chain?




I don't quite buy that definition. I see a transaction as away to signal to the market. Just because someone wants to send a different signal does not make it less valid, then your transaction. But as I said I will use the moniker "spam" for ease of conversation



Yeah I see this as a way of quickly running spammers out of funds, by allowing more people to signal and so get information to the market.




Your right hardforks have risks, I "feel" though that not hard forking can have risks of stultification. I wonder if some sort of dynamic scaling would allay your hard for concerns.

Thanks for your considered opinions by the way. I like it when you address point by point.

 

As long as there are miners supporting either side a hardfork is inevitable and will occur as soon as the first SegWit block will be mined that is to large for core. Which side will see more long-term support and thus have more mining power is anyone's guess.



To be honest, after the BCH split of I see hardforks as having merits of their own. Given that there is a proper 2-way replay protection. Dynamic scaling leads to yet a different set of challenges, but I didn't follow that discourse too deeply.

I realize that not everyone is going to support every decision Core makes, but I would assume if someone supports Segwit2x they would at least be running the btc1 client. What is the rationale for not running a btc1 node if they have the intention of hardforking off the Core chain in November?

What is important to me is what software will be used by the companies that I do business with.  If they use Bitcoin Core, then I must continue to use Bitcoin Core.  If they switch to BTC1, then I'll need to switch as well.  The worst case would be they are split between the two chains.

BitcoinABC included replay protection so you could use either chain (although you still needed to install software for both chains).  But BTC1 has said they will not include replay protection, so this leads to transactions being accepted on both chains.  I understand why BTC1 does not want replay protection: it would require new wallets for everybody to use the BTC1 chain.

With 2x, the worst case size is ~8 MB. We don't know how such large blocks will effect the network. It could increase orphan rates, it could cause many nodes to drop off of the network because they can't handle the additional load. We don't know if the network can handle such larger blocks. Just because your internet connection can and your machine can handle the load does not mean that everyone around the world who is running the node can. They may be restricted by things like the Great Firewall of China which may find larger blocks easier to spot and thus make Bitcoin easier for them to block entirely.

Furthermore larger blocks can lead to miner behavior that is detrimental to the network. If the mempool is constantly cleared by a new block, then miners may be more incentivized to perform fee sniping instead of moving the blockchain forward. That is not good for the network.

Why does the "base block size" need to be bigger to stop spammers? You don't think they aren't going to also use segwit? Spammers can use segwit and pay less in fees than they would with a non-segwit transactions, and make more spam that fits in a block. If you double the maximum block weight, you depress fees even more and let spammers pay even less to spam transactions.

Having more transactions on chain does not necessarily correspond to having more transaction fees in a block. If the general idea is that larger blocks will decrease fees, then that means that more transactions need to be made at a lower fee rate in order for total transaction fees to match the fees for when blocks were smaller. Currently transaction fees are pretty low anyways except the times when people are spamming transactions (and it is very noticeable when that happens because the number of transactions in the mempool at a certain fee rate inorganically shoots up).

https://coin.dance/blocks

Here is the ultimate proof that the current 94% signaling is nonsense. Look at the current miners signaling for segwit2x and you will find F2pool. Well here is the actual stance of FP2pool with segwit2x:

https://twitter.com/f2pool_wangchun/status/906022864389681153

So basically he hasn't stopped signaling because he is too lazy to do the whole reset thing, but once the time arrives, he will not send hashrate to scam2x even if it currently shows up on that list.

So stop thinking 94% of hashrate will signal for it.

I guess that the increase in block size in not that necessary right now compared to the associated risks. Bitcoin Core probably sees Bitcoin as a stable network, that doesn't compete with altcoins in the speed of technological development as much as in stability and security in which Bitcoin can and is winning.

Fees sometimes still rise, but neither Lightning Networks nor even segwit has reached high adoption. Bitcoin network is ready for it, but the technology is still in the development/testing stage. We can't know at this point if an increase in block size is needed and is it needed right now, while the S2X has no replay protection and appears to be rushing this fork as a consequence. LN nor Segwit can't be considered a failure at the time of the fork, as it is too early and we don't have as much of a need for it to rush it.

We do in terms of _real_ technological development, but not fake marketing crap... and not at the expense of stability and security.

Compare, Bitcoin moving to innovative second generation error protected addresses w/ BIP173  vs  ethereum still behind bitcoin 0.1 without a strong safe to use (https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/72el8i/have_i_lost_41_ether) address system.

Or ethereum validation being so slow that its impractical to sync-up a full node (https://anduck.net/bitcoincore_vs_geth_full_node_stats.png) anymore, pushing almost all eth users onto SPV-like security for their initial sync, while Bitcoin sync tx/s speed is orders of magnitude faster and keeps getting faster (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6x17t1/bitcoin_core_0150_performance_is_impressive/).

Omg, the famous Gregory Maxwell responded to my post :D What an honor!

I agree. They don't even have a good multisig, if you search for an ethereum multisig all you get is bunch of news about lost coins due to the vulnerability in the commonly used multisig contract.

The inability to sync an ethereum node is exactly why I never used it in the first place. I tried, but it got so slow that it would never sync at that rate, perhaps due to some buggy code.

I appreciate your work mr. Maxwell. Thank you for all the good work you have done!

99% of devs oppose segwit2x and will never work on btc1



2MB is the average capacity alloted with segwit alone with 90+% segwit txs and 4MB peak. segwit2x doubles this with 4MB average and 8MB peak.
Yes this is far to much and reckless to HF to since we have yet to study the effects of segwit alone which is a massive blocksize limit increase.


Most of BCH blocks are completely empty , and that chain is highly centralized.


I could care less if 100% core devs supported segwit2x . The only thing that would happen if they pulled a 180 is I would lose respect for them and not follow them with their alt.

In a word: Inertia.

It's very easy for node operators to be lazy, myself included. You set and forget, and you don't care that much. It's on a server you don't use or log into very often, or it may be a remote server that you rarely look at, etc.

IMO this is a huge roadblock to progress with the bitcoin protocal, but it may be a benefit to network security...

So some good, some bad.

I dislike this inertia effect because it consolidates control and encourages extremely conservative behaviour. The conservative base further increases control as time goes on, regardless of whether that's the best course of action or not.

The more decisions that I disagree with, the more I feel pressured to act. Previously, I've been lazy and not bothered, but I think I might do a client changeover tonight.

well ok, fair enough, but your reply does not seem to answer why you would not 2x, excepting as to a reference to "stability" without more. Even for the sake of showing commitment by precedent to some block size increase, which appears to be reasonable given the size of HD vs cost decrease and bandwidth cost decrease. To not do this offers less choice to the market, and also gives BCH arguments more credence.

Also (while I don't really agree with the word spam) it would allow 1/2 the fees and make twice the space say at 8MB (or approx 2MB and segwit, but I think you can see what I am getting at) and down that path it would become much more costly for spammers to spam the blockchain. Or another way of putting it, you allow a better economic signal by allowing more actors to signal at less cost and in fact increases miner reward.

To address the point of stability, does 2MB really threaten stability? if so how.

It's brilliant  ;D "I don't understand principles of bitcoin but i believe someone" "and now i firmly against any other opinions" True bitcoin user  ;D


Very funny. I have an idea: lets decrease block size to 300kb because someone can't handle 1mb load.

Oh man I remember when I tried to set a full Ethereum node last year. It was an absolute mess. Apparently there is a part of the blockchain that got spammed into oblivion with some sort of attack and now that part is pretty much impossible to download. My computer was going into overdrive trying to process that part. It would have taken ages, so now they recommend that you skip that part.

So I gave up and used Parity instead, only to find out later on that it got some massive security bugs.

Trying to use Ethereum as a store of value is indeed an act of insanity.

I oppose it mostly on philisophical grounds that I do understand. I suppose you understand all the technical aspects. So tell us please, why should we all believe 2x is going to be the best road forword? Make sure you address all the reasons why Core is opposed to it, they're the ones who really know what they're doing.

First point: I don't understand ALL technical aspects
Second point: I don't think that is the best way, but it wouldn't do any real harm. Also, in future (especially for Lightning) we will be needed in bigger blocks.

From my another post :

Sorry, but i can't agree with this. Who tell you that they really know what they do? For example, Luke in his twitter wrote that high fees for btc is normal. (https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6ereib/these_fees_are_unacceptable/dicq95v/ (https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6ereib/these_fees_are_unacceptable/dicq95v/))
Do you think it is good answer for Bitcoin developer, BITCOIN, who tries to become new financial system? For example, i don't think so.
Also, here is interesting article. Author shows very interesting opinion: http://hackingdistributed.com/2017/08/26/whos-your-crypto-buddy/  (http://hackingdistributed.com/2017/08/26/whos-your-crypto-buddy/)

In fiat system with 3d party you must to believe and trust someone. Bitcoin is network without trust (between peers) so you must verificate and check any kind of information and it doesn't matter who tells it to you: me, or core dev, or someone else.

I heard that remark a while ago. Luke may not be on the same level as many of the other Core devs. At the very least, that remark was made when people should have been finding cheaper transactions due to scaling limitations. That being said, scaling solutions are being undertaken, and if lightning network with Segwit isn't enough, then 2X can be considered. Several of the Core devs have made it very clear that there is much more to 2X than just a change in the block size. A change in the block size has much larger dynamic implications which can not be predicted. Once 7 billion people are using BTC, trying to transact and close lightning network channels, 2X or 3X or nX can be considered, but why take chances on something that were not ready for? Eric Lombrozo has made comments on 2X that you might want to consider here:

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-core-developer-eric-lombrozo-on-misunderstandings-in-block-size-debate-1455817458/

Other people already had. I was clarifying the innovation point and nothing else.


What "decrease"?.... on state of the art hardware at both times the initial sync of Bitcoin increased by 50% in the last 6 months.  This has a material impact on people's willingness to run nodes-- an uncompensated act which is essential for Bitcoin's survival as a secure decentralized system.

Twice the space doesn't mean one half fees, it means almost zero fees against the same demand. Half the fees would generally be achieved by a few percent more capacity.


A spammer must pay the fee of each transaction they displace for every block they displace it. Increases in blocksize in excess of demand just radically reduce their costs by resulting in very low fees.  A lager block never lowers the price to displace a transaction for a spammer.

The best prior research we had showed that 2 to 4MB was the largest arguably safe amount even while ignoring safty margins, state attacks, initial synchronization, etc.   2X is _NOT_ 2MB, it is 4 to 8MB.

Yeah, but 104 million transactions it's enough only for 52 million of users. Also, i didn't counted another types of transactions like transaction with big amount of btc (Lighnting network is desined for small payment), multioutputs and others. So real number of users is much less than 52 millions



Thanks, it was interesting to read. Yeah, i agreed with author - hard forks it is very dangerous way.

Are you that sure about that number that you will have all the dangers of a hard fork with no replay protection when it is years, maybe even decades from potential necessity?

I can very well imagine that everyone might use one big Lightning Network in the future and that there will be no need of ever closing it. There is also a cost to closing a channel, so there is an incentive of not paying mining fees that people might not want to ever close it. And people might not worry about the benefits of closing a channel as much as you think, since the only benefit is that there is no risk of your funds being lost. It makes sense to assume that people will not open a channel with a friend, but with a big well known node that has open channels with many other users. That way if that well known node betrays the well established trust starts closing channels, everyone would know about it, since it would be a big deal and maybe even be in the news and that could cost that node a great deal. This node won't be able to close all the channels at one either, since it will be literally impossible to put so many transactions in blocks. Here a bigger block size is actually a problem. You see, it isn't all that simple.

But I can tell you this, the benefits of S2X are none for many years to come and costs and dangers are huge and there is no cost in postponing the fork and there are certainly benefits to do so. This is obvious to anyone who thought about it for a reasonable amount of time, which tells you something about that NYC agreement, whatever you think that something is.

I am a bit surprised to see such low activity in the BTC1 (https://github.com/btc1/bitcoin) repository.

We could now draw the conclusion "Segwit2x is dead", like WhalePanda already did in a blog post (https://medium.com/@WhalePanda/segwit2x-the-broken-agreement-e9035a453c05),  and party because the (tremendously dangerous - at least compared to the kindergarten BCH fork) November fork won't happen. To da moon!

But perhaps is there another reason for that low activity - maybe the client is "ready" and won't see major updates until the fork, to not over-complicate things? If someone has insights there, I'm interested.

(I have advocated for Segwit+2MB proposals in the past, but now I'm pretty neutral regarding Segwit2x, sympathizing perhaps now a bit more with the "no fork" scenario, because big blockers already have their play money now, we have Segwit, and the hard fork date is - in my opinion - way too early. In short, I wouldn't cry if Segwit2x was dead.)

Why? It's not as if anyone involved with BTC1 is a prolific Bitcoin developer. I have doubts that they are capable of even merging Core's updates. I think they expect(ed) that the NYA and existence of BTC1 would be enough to force Core to merge the 8x consensus change. I'm glad to see they were wrong.


I think this will be the explanation provided. There will be no more major changes, just final testing of the consensus changes. And politicking. I actually won't lie: the No2x crowd and their obnoxious hats sort of piss me off, and the whole BIP148 thing really pissed me off -- particularly Luke's role. But I've always been against hard forks and contentious forks in general.

Well, gmaxwell noted that Bitcoin Cash have now implemented Segwit and Segwit native addresses (i.e. the BIP173 Bech32 format), hilariously calling them alternative names, despite heavily promoting a supposedly superior tech to solve quadractic sighash DoS attacks and signature malleation.

So what's the actual difference between S2x and Bitcoin Cash in technical specification? While not identical, increasingly less (possibly Bitcoin Cash has the technical edge right now with their BIP173 deployment). And in market terms, Bitcoin Cash has a network, software running that network, a price, and a track record. S2x apparently has a promise of hashrate. I wonder how S2x futures prices are doing? :D

Yeah, this is real problem. Here i agree with you.

Lightning network was created mostly for small payments. For example you open channel with some product shop. Or with your friend. Of course, you're able to use others channels but in that case you must pay fee as you know (and also it is risky idea. hackers don't sleep). So someone will close 10 channels per year, another - noone. So i took average number. 

Lol, this is some kind of exisiting bank system. Trusted nodes == banks.

Ok thanks I will have to go and research this some more.




I address this more appropriately infra. (my error for using 2X by the way).



If my simple math's holds.
If block size 1 = x, and
fee = y, and
number for transaction to fill block = T

then fee = yT

if your block = 8x and your fee = y/2 then it would cost you

8yT/2 = 4yT, and 4yT/yT = 4. So in this case at half the fees, it would cost 4x the cost to fill the block and so on.

It seems this model really costs the "spammers" more to get their market signal in,  

BUT I was wrong not to consider demand as you rightly pointed out.

I must accept your zero fee argument insofar as demand does not drop of linearly with block size increase, probably more like a some sort of auction curve for the last unit (s)of space, so perhaps quasi Multiunit auction? Intuitively the curve seems to be perhaps sigmoidal in shape ~ S= 1/(1+e-t)?

Does this exclude some break point where the you can get better market signal at a lower final price point in the blocks, and this may mean a 1.1MB or some small percentage and you use some sort of function as you also seem to suggest (more on that infra).



Yes, I accept you point in relation to the demand side of things, but can we more closely match demand as stated above?


My error, I should say 2MB or as the case may be 1.1MB or whatever.

More on point, Do you consider there would be an appropriate increase in the face of increasing demand, or more specifically

Is there perhaps a  function or family of functions that could say give a optimal or near optimal blocksize given a demand and fee cost curves? You seem suggest a few percent, which in light of the above seems right.

It seems reasonable to say that demand has risen and there may be and appropriate blocksize increase at some point. Of course the functions may show that the blocksize is too large already, as I do not know the functions. However it seems some size increase should be mooted in the face of a level of demand.

This may allow 2 advantages

[1] Some certainty on scaleing
[2] Trying to get the best market signal

Thanks in advance.

I don't know what it was created for and I would say it doesn't really matter. All I am saying is that it is completely possible to use it for that and there are costs if you don't use it. But we will see. no one can know an average number when the thing doesn't even exist yet.


There us a reason I called them well known nodes and not trusted nodes, because trust isn't necessary in a Lightning Network, that is the whole point of it. If trust was needed, we would just use banks instead.

Who wants 2x? Seems like the compromise that no one wants.

While most users talking here seem to be against SegWit2x, especially because for now it doesn't bring anything new and helpful, the miners are all for it.
If you look at coin.dance or xbt.eu websites, SegWit2x (or NYA) has well over 90% support.

this is correct, and I think the way to look at it is this: who can benefit from the Bitcoin system?
The community - aka the vast majority (e.g. running core nodes) definetly did not express their wish to use SegWit2x.

The miners would like to have SegWit2x. By this they are willing to take the vast majority of users as "hostage", to follow "their" will. This prevented already in the last 2 years the bring-in of SegWit, and with it the further development of the Bitcoin. Wether this was intentionally or accidentially, I don't want to judge.

The work of the miners is to stabilize the network, and get the incentive for it. As mining is more and more centralized, this is a super-vast minority, which from my point of view should not be in a position, to decide, what the super-super vast majority wants. I see, that many companies also signed the NYA. So what? This still doesn't make a majority.
There are more developpers listed on the bitcoin.org webpage (aka "core developpers"), then people/groups/companies in NYA.

I understand the community does not accept a minority giving direction against the way, the core developpers take.
And also I can see, that majority of SegWit2x people tend to think, that core devs are two or three names (Luke Jr, Greg Maxwell and Adam Beck). This is not the case, as I just showed with a look at bitcoin.org (there are hundreds of names). Looks like the SegWit2x group does not (want to) understand, that the concept of Bitcoin is a non-centralized system, where a single group or person is prevented from changing direction. There is no "king" or "government" in Bitcoin. With the current situation miners and NYA teams play the role of a government, and this contradicts the main principles of Bitcoin. 

Well, there is a possible advantage I can see: The blockchain capacity achieved with Segwit2x could be the ideal "final" size necessary for Bitcoin to become "massively used as a currency". Obviously the whole concept would include second and third layers like Lightning Network and sidechains, but a blockchain with 2-4MB Segwit blocks alone may be a little bit too small to serve as a settlement layer for all these second-layer solutions.

If that assumption is true (it may be not!), then it would be not a bad idea to do the hardfork in the current stage of Bitcoin's evolution, when the network is still young, there is not too much at stake (at least, no critical services like healthcare etc. are depending on it) and so it would not be the end of the world if something goes wrong. In a later stage, such an hard fork may be more difficult and painful.

However, if this argumentation is used, there would have been research been done if 2MB+Segwit (realistically 4-7 MB blocks, 8MB max.) are really the ideal size for a "final stage Bitcoin main chain". This research has not happened, as far as I know.

So, Bitcoin reached it's "final" ideal userbase numbers, when was it, yesterday?


Forget it d5000, you're still talking technical issues (which are not in S2x's favour) when the fork is still a political move dressed in technical clothing. It always was, and this is the 4th such attempt to make this false assertion about blocksize. And how many times exactly have you personally been involved in blocksize conversations while ignoring the political elephant in the room? It's very tedious, and does your credibility in these matters no good.

There's just no credible empirical evidence that the blocksize needs increasing now, even to the current 4MB maximum, and you do nothing but drone on about future ideal maximums being desirable next month. You do nothing but talk constantly about positive aspects of blocksize increases from as many different perspectives as you are able to summon up. C'mon.

I would not be so conservative ;) You can assume that your desired "final" userbase is the entire world population, and that they would do most of their transactions via LN and sidechains. And even then you would need a certain minimum block size if you take into account that for security LN needs a generous space for settlement transactions, to avoid nodes being able to "rollback" channels. I haven't done that research (at least not using scientific standards), and nobody did as far as I know, so I don't want to dig deeper into that. But with a quick calculation I did some months ago, I came to the conclusion that if we want a user base into the billions, the 2-3 MB offered by the current "Segwit1x" configuration would not be enough.

About your never-ending personal attacks: We have Segwit now. I don't think I personally contributed to it with my "Segwit2x shilling" (as you would call it), but the Segwit2x initiative definitively did. The UASF move you supported may have worked, too, but would have been much more risky. Politically, the "direction" I supported was successful for the good of Bitcoin, so what's your problem?

I supported segwit activation, including BIP91, what's your problem?   :)

(and BIP91 was about maintaining compatibility between S2x and Segwit, nothing to do with the NYA as you seem to believe)



So, explain to us again why a blocksize to support billions of users is needed next month, and why we need to hard fork to a different development team to deliver it

Sometimes it is good to change development team, especially if it has people like Luke Jr ;)

Can you give me the source where I said this, even indirectly? (Hint: Never - not even the first part. ;D)

Timing was always my biggest concern when talking about the concrete Segwit2x proposal. IF there was a need for a 2MB fork, I would have proposed it for mid-to-late-2018 or 2019, with one year for preparations. This would be still in an "early" stage of Bitcoin evolution, like I wrote two posts ago.
(My favourite to achieve the "2x" part would have been a soft fork with a bigger discount for witness data, like proposed by the user mezzomix. However I don't know the technical feasibility of that proposal, possible disadvantages, etc.)

To be honest, it is pools that are controlled by the minority, I am not so sure about the mining itself. Miners can always switch pools if they disagree with the voting of their pool. These pools still hold more power then they should, that is for certain, but it might not be that catastrophic. Ultimately the responsibility for decentralization goes to the miners and not necessarily the pools.

Everything is primed for success right now. We got economical-political turmoil where a neutral gobal asset like BTC, being the most liquid crypto, could benefit from.
We got big Wall St pockets interesting in getting in.
We got a pretty empty mempool right now.

This hardfork is so dumb and im going to be pissed if it kills the obvious recovery towards ATH. It is literally the only threat and it has to come from big blockers as usual.

You were faintly suggesting that, while failing to mention any of the negatives of the S2x fork. I can imagine someone reading your post, but without knowing all the other relevant information saying: "well, if S2x will be the final ideal blocksize, i guess we should just accept it and kill the argument forever"

Strange how every post you make on S2x or Bitcoin Unlimited or Extension Blocks or whatever other external hardfork is just gently laid propaganda for leading people toward that hardfork. Very strange, and very consistent too. Isn't it.



For what reason? You have no clue what transaction demand is going to be like then, and you seem to be suggesting that Bitcoin is going to hit your postulated final userbase of billions of users sometime between mid 2018 and 2019. What's wrong with you, is it only hubris!?

Here's a sensible way to look at it: wait. Wait until capacity is truly unanimously judged to be required, then expand capacity. You can't possibly expect anyone to take you seriously when your long-term engineering decisions are based on clairvoyance, or maybe you were talking to Satoshi through a spiritual medium, tell us lol :D

1. Will we survive with BTC if the largest miners will leave for 2X?
Will we have enough hashpower to maintain the network?

2. There is no even manual how to install the BTC1 wallet for the ordinary people.
How do they want to win???
Or will they MINERS (BITMAIN and Co) be satisfied if just crypto exchange markets follow them?

I agree with this line of thinking.

Global worldwide adoption by 2019 is an unreasonable expectation.  Even the EU's switch to the Euro, which was well publicized and meticulously well planned (despite the obvious problems with their currency model), took some time for "the switch".  Shadow EU was tracking/trading for at least a year prior to the switch and there were periods of overlap with the national currencies.  Also, of course, that was for a subset of Europe, a decent sized population but not all of the planet.

I honestly don't believe that any current/proposed solutions would truly be able to scale in this period of time without a lot of disruptive "growing pains".  Progress on scale and the best approaches to achievement of it should be incremental.  Hopefully in advance of the need, based on reasonable projections, not pipe dreams of global domination virtually overnight.

A few years back, maybe 5-10 years, Visa or Mastercard (forget which) suffered an outage on Black Friday (which for those that are not familiar with the U.S. consumer market, is the day after Thanksgiving when virtually all retail businesses have begun big sales for Christmas -- it is the largest day of year for transaction volumes on payment cards here).  That outage was a BIG DEAL and cost retailers many, many sales.  Since then the card acquiring (merchant transaction) system has undergone significant upgrades including multiple global command centers that are highly secured and fortified installations.  (Which, incidentally, highlights the advantages of distributed ledger blockchains over those centralized legacy payment systems.)

Incremental, careful, well-planned, and highly tested progress is the best way, in my view, to develop a payment system that can truly be resilient for global adoption as that occurs over time.  Problems will happen, approaches that seem like good ideas will end up having blocking problems or unforeseen X-factors.  Going too fast and getting it wrong will damage the reputation of Bitcoin and potentially cryptocurrencies in general, given that BTC is the dominant and incumbent.

Outages that ground our air traffic system, such as one last week, are damaging to commerce but do not grind it to a halt.  They are manageable though perhaps alarming from a human safety perspective.  Outages that affect commerce as a whole, due to either bugs or limitations that did not seem apparent on the drawing board, would kill Bitcoin or any other technology that was deemed to be the cause of such outage.

Slow and steady wins the race.  Resilience requires deliberation and careful execution.  Progress may be slower than many would like, but there's a very good reason to be careful when you are dealing with a store of value.  There is little more in our societies that have to be trusted more than a means of exchange.  Bitcoin enables "trustless" commerce, but only if Bitcoin itself is highly trusted, with the track record to truly earn and keep that trust.

That I don't mention "negatives" of Segwit2x is because I consider Segwit2x not harmful and the block size increase to 2MB+SW in my opinion is manageable. In my opinion it is much less harmful than all the split fantasies by maximalists on the "small" and "big blocker" side.

But above all, I supported Segwit2x because it would have been an opportunity to keep the Bitcoin community united. Now I think this approach unfortunately failed, because small blockers and big blockers are stubbornly pursuing their own agenda and are not interested in a "compromise". It is possible that this will weaken Bitcoin's leadership in the cryptocurrency sphere, although I have hopes that in November a clear leader will emerge, and I believe it will be the Core+SW chain. (And I wouldn't be sad because of that.)

You really should re-consider your "maximalist" position. Not everybody that has a divergent opinion is necessarily an enemy.


Again, I've not said that the userbase of billions will be reached in 2018/19. Read my post again! I said that in 2018/19 we will have still an "infant" chain with no ultra-massive value added and a failed hard fork would then do much less harm than in - let's say - 2025 when Bitcoin could have become a much more important means of payment. But until 2018/19 we have enough time to plan what to include in a hard fork and how to roll it out.

We can wait, like you suggest - but if Bitcoin wants to be really a usable currency one day, then it should not operate at the limit of its capacity. In 2019, we probably again will have congestion problems, even without spam attacks. (My "predictions" are based on the past growth of 30-40% per year in transaction capacity.)

PS: Yes, I love extension blocks, but they are a second layer technology - so I don't know why you're mentioning them here.

Just ignore it and do your thing, there might be a mild delay one day but that is the worst of it. These are just a bunch of drama queens and the fact that they whine about it makes it more visible. It will be fine and another new ass coin will pop out with overwhelming people behind it for no reason other than talk. Rumor built coins never last forever.

I'm guessing it will fail, but there is a slight chance that the Bitcoin chain could become "stuck" with extremely slow confirmation times and prohibitive fees due to long block times. In that case, there will have to be a POW change or at least a difficulty algorithm change that will require a hard fork.

Unfortunately, this isn't like 2013 where the community was quite unified. Now, the community is fractured and I'm not sure there would be widespread agreement on a POW hard fork. I fear that a lot of users would opt for the 2X chain in such a situation.

Its the "stuck" bit that worries me too and also the replay protection or lack of. Will it be the case though that we wont have any idea how much hash rate is on either side until after the fork. I am still confused how Ver is supporting 2x when he now claims that Bcash is the true bitcoin?

It truly is sickening as btc hits new All time highs that they may shoot the golden goose

It's a power struggle between miners, developers and whales (Ver ...). All of them want to test their influence on Bitcoin's development.


The all time highs are probably - at least partly - related to the forks that are occurring. People want to get "free money".

So there is no "golden goose" that is shoot - the golden goose would (probably) not exist otherwise ;)

Indeed, signalling is just that. It supposedly shows intent, but miners have no skin in the game until the fork has occurred. If the futures markets are accurate and B2X is only worth 0.15BTC a piece, then they will be losing a lot of money by mining it. Then again, it's hard to say if the market is properly pricing in the possibility of the "stuck" BTC blockchain, and if people truly believe the NYA signalling is accurate. I think the market believes that the fork is unlikely to happen since there is such lack of consensus. But the market is often wrong. I'll have my popcorn ready and my coins on ice when the fork happens next month.

I'm also confused about the position of Ver, Wright and Jihan Wu. Supposedly Bitcoin.com and Bitmain are backing B2X, but they seem to be gung ho on Bitcoin Cash. Wright doesn't seem to support Segwit2x at all, or if he does, only to strengthen the position of BCH.

Who wants 2x? Seems like the compromise that no one wants  :o :o :o ;) ;) ;)

What good could come from New York?

Im not worried about what the market wants, but what they can do with enough hashrate to the legacy chain in order to avoid the market showing what it wants.

In other words, they could launch an attack, given enough hashrate, that could render pretty much impossible to let the market dump the 2x shitcoin. This is why they don't want exchanges to support both coins, and let the legacy chain process these transactions.

This is one of the biggest attacks on bitcoin we've ever seen. Im just hoping we aren't forced to change PoW, because that would be defeat in a way.

Make sure you address all the reasons why Core is opposed to it, they're the ones who really know what they're doing.

Percentage of miners drama is a fraud. BCASH is dead. Why would anyone support that. 2x is good for short term but the scaling is not sustainable so back to core. The drama is just creating doubts. And speculators love it. That is what it is all about.

I don't believe Segwit2x is an "attack". It was, at first, an intent of a compromise. And the NYA folks most are businesses that very probably want to move Bitcoin forward - payment processors, wallet services etc. - and I think the reason they signed the NYA is that most of them (except miners/pools) would benefit from low transaction fees.

But I think that regarding the latest news, the most pragmatic stance is to support the Core/1MB chain (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2326398.0) while being careful with the private keys and treating the 2X chain as an altcoin.

Only if the Core chain really is attacked (double spending/51%) it is likely to succeed, and that would harm the whole ecosystem (and you should get out for a whole while of all the cryptocurrency stuff if you aren't a die-hard fan/hodler). According to the latest news a Segwit2x victory has a very low probability if even Coinbase doesn't use the BTC symbol for it.

Garzik's ICO may be another indication that he's not full-time dedicated to 2x and a loss of the Core manpower would be very problematic.

I do not know if it would be better have 8mb blocks or not. What I do know is that all forks until now has failed because they didn't have tried consensus.

From the point of view of a Segwit2x supporter, it isn't an attack, because it is meant as an upgrade - holdings on the Segwit2x chain are safe. And if an user doesn't choose to upgrade, he is leaving the "majority chain" and thus must take security measures - according to that point of view.

I already wrote that I don't support the Segwit2x fork anymore. But personal accusations of the SW2x supporters like Garzik do not help. That will make the miners that support SW2x - and the whole group of "big blockers"  - even angrier, and it would be more likely that they start a real 51% attack on the original chain if they have the power to do it. So it's better to use rational argumentation against the fork and try to convince the "moderate" and "unpolitical" folks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=30&v=kCAWqbD9EBo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fn5ZNwPWhEc
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/bitcoin-beginners-guide-surviving-bgold-and-segwit2x-forks/
more context
https://blog.bitmex.com/the-segwit2x-hardfork-part-1-the-supporters-and-opponents/