Bitcoin Forum

If you had consensus to make whatever changes you saw fit in Bitcoin right now with a hard fork and the community was 100% behind you, what changes would you make? What improvements do you think Bitcoin needs through a hard fork?

Would you update scaling, security, consensus protocol, programmability/smart contracts, other stuff? Give details.

I am not a technical guy but I would suggest to work on improving the speed of Tx and have a cap in fees. There are people out there who pays crazy fees and force others to follow them too if the tx is urgent to get at-least one confirmation.

I think a solution  to make mining less centralized would be interesting. However,  I don't know if that could be technically possible.

I know that just changing to GPU mining it would be centralized again because people would create super GPU's and just a few companies dominate this market (and,nvidia erc)

Totally depends on what I'd want it to be: a heavily adopted crypto or just be the "off-grid man's coin". I'd rather choose the latter. Therefore, I wouldn't change much - probably just smaller denomination and the option to go off-grid as in an "incognito mode" (never studied it but I think it's possible). That'd instantly make it become the state's enemy tho.

The more convenient it is, the more people will use it => the heavier regulations are and the harder staying off the track is. I'm personally happy with BTC the way it is right now.

1) I do think if something like that happened I would first of all try and solve the upcoming problem that we might have in the future.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5267497.msg54958221#msg54958221 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5267497.msg54958221#msg54958221)

I do think you can try and read this but I would quote some of the part here :


Therefore I do think this would be the first thing that I would go on about.

2) Then I would try and integrate the smart contracts more fiercely in the network

_*_

A hardfork would cause a lot of drama again and I do not think we need that right now. We saw all the drama that happened the last time we forked with Bitcoin Cash.  ::)

If I could make any changes, I would want to somehow split the mining ...so that people with large amounts of hashing power... like mining farms could mine in one Pool with a high difficulty and the smaller guys with much less hashing power could mine with much less difficulty. (Giving the solo miners the opportunity to mine with CPU's and GPU's again.)

That would almost be impossible to implement and it will surely be exploited by the large mining giants... but one can dream... right.  :D

I would add a max blocksize adjustment method similar to how difficulty is adjusted.

This would allow for a bigger block with more fees that are each lower.

4000 x 0.0001 =  .4 in tx fees

vs 2000 x 0.0002 = .4 in tx fees

  it could work.

Or do no changes at all and encourage 3 coins system to replace fiat

BTC for 10000+ value moves
LTC for 500-9999+ value moves
DOGE for 1-500 value moves

If I could do anything at all I would do the three coin cash system above.

But a flexible block size has merit

I am not a technical guy but i would suggest to focus on the anonymity, as bitcoin's scripting system presented limitations in terms of privacy. Some other cryptocurrencies afford a stronger privacy model than Bitcoin, like Grin and Monero..., so if there a possibility to improve the bitcoin network system by additional features to make it fully anonymous and surpass the fact that it is psydo-anonyme.
Devs working on MimbleWimple protocol discuss this possibility to improve the Bitcoin network as a sidechain solution. See here: https://academy.binance.com/blockchain/what-is-mimblewimble

now devs are happy with 4mb bloat
remove the dodgy math code that segregates and mishandles tx data by not counting certain portions.
this alone causes there to be less true utility for the 4mb space devs now deem as ok
it limits tx scaling. and also causes tx fee mismanagement


if the fear is having a single transaction with legacy signatures to cause linear sigops issue. then limit the amount of sigops per tx
this also solves the bloat block attack of a user making 5 tx to fill a block


also include a good fee formulae that can actually calculate a fair fee
base it on a few factors like awarding more points(discount) if someone puts a timelock of more than X confirm. thus they pay less by actually suggesting they can wait a few blocks.
this in itself can actually indicate who wants rapid confirmation(next block) and who doesnt care so much

its far better to have a block of 10,000 tx paying 0.0001($1) each than a block of 2500 paying 0.0004($4)
more people using it. less costly. miners get same fee reward

Controversial time!

Probably the total supply(including the block rewards of course). Instead of 21,000,000, I'd probably add 3 zeroes just so the price is lower due to the bigger supply. Pretty much just moving the decimal 3 places to the left.

I know this could be seen as unnecessary because we can buy fractions of a bitcoin, but one of the biggest selling points of altcoins like XRP and EOS to the less-knowledgeable people is their "cheap price".

Main thing I'd do is get some scaling done. The only reason this hasn't been done yet is because of fear over consensus, even though it must be done at some point for Bitcoin's longevity, otherwise most transactions are just gonna have to eventually move to being centralized and just passing numbers around in databases like banks do now with the legacy fiat system.

Probably something like an immediate 2x or 4x block size increase. And then I'd add in block size increases to occur at each halving, with the size of the increase halving itself. So like next halving would be a 4x increase, then the one after would be 2x, then 1.5x, 1.25x, 1.125x, and so on. This would allow the blockchain to scale transactions quite a bit while still leaving a number of years for network speeds to improve so as to not hurt decentralization in mining too much. Not to mention it would allow Bitcoin to continue operating in a 120 years when mining rewards stop altogether.

Beyond that I'm not really sure what major issues there are in the protocol itself that would need a hard fork. It doesn't need and shouldn't have smart contracts. It doesn't need to change PoW. Maybe something for quantum computing resistance, but I don't know anything about that.

So then would all addresses get the Bitcoin they are holding multiplied by 1000x?

While I can see why you are saying that, because people who don't know anything about it just think about Bitcoin like stock shares, and so think it is too expensive to buy, you'd also then get the problem of anti-bitcoin people then all claiming that Bitcoin supply isn't set in stone and it just got inflated by 1000x, even though technically that wouldn't be true. So you're trading one good optics thing for one bad optics thing. I'd rather just have Bitcoin not make that change. It isn't hard to tell someone that they can buy the tiniest fractions of a bitcoin and don't have to buy an entire one, literally anyone can understand that in like 10 seconds.

Oh it's definitely not a flawless "update". About the 1000x inflation, only the total knuckleheads will be arguing that, as I'm pretty sure pretty much every single finance person knows about stock splits.

But yea, it's just a random thought. Definitely not something I would implement(if I could) immediately.

Oh this is something should be coming before anything else. Imagine the ecosystem without those big mining farms. It would be better if regular users would be able to mine from home.

I in fact love this pseudo anonymity. This is one of the great reason for Bitcoin to be used by everyone.

OP, if everyone reached consensus, and there was a way to scale on-chain, increase on-chain privacy, but not increase the block size? It should be that in my opinion.

It is impossible to see a decentralized mining space as you need huge capital to run these mining farms and not everyone will be willing to risk to spend the huge capital necessary to maintain these farms, GPU mining will not change anything.

It is a selling point for those coins but it cannot be implemented in bitcoin as it will destroy the market and billions of dollars are at stake and the developers will not mess with that knowing the consequences ;).

If this proposal could remove the limits in scaling why not make a proposal to the developers.

^ This is similar to what I am thinking maybe the fees should be on minimum, for example, the fee that I would like to transfer is 0.1 BTC then the minimum tx fee that I will work with is 0.00001, a transaction between 0.001 to 0.1 BTC, no matter what could be the future value, and I will call it a "Minimum Eco-Friendly fee". But I think the fee will depend on the mempool condition, if it is congested, you need to pay high fees for faster transactions. Nevertheless, the problem of bitcoin is the speed of the transaction and the fee.

Psydo-anonymity means it can be tracked by linking the user identity to a btc address. I can't get your point about how this is a great reason for Bitcoin to be used by everyone.
Additional layer of anonymity can be optional, just like segwit fork, it's still possible to use legacy addresses.

If I could hardfork Bitcoin right now and had the technical capability to further develop it, the change I would do is to make it unforkable! ;D

I would only improve it's fungibility which would make it an even better form of money than it currently is.

I like your suggestion! We no longer need to create more hardforks because couple of it are already existing and it is enough. Besides, it might become a strong competitor of btc in the future. We don't want to see the pioneer not lying on the top, right?

Don't get me wrong, tx fees and other lack of features of bitcoin s*cks. But at the end of the day, it's mother of all crypto which I get used to :D. Among the coins in the market, my biggest respect is into it.

Bitcoin bought here in my country can be interchange with the bitcoin bought there in yours because they are identical and both part of the whole 21 million supply. Hmm, what do you mean exactly of the word "fungibility"?

I'm curious, how will that actually "destroy the market"? It's pretty much like a stock split, which is in no way damaging at all, it just makes it more "price friendly" in the perspective of the masses. In fact, this doesn't even need to be changed through a soft fork. This can easily be changed on the client-side without touching the actual blockchain's codebase.

We cannot expect zero changes or updates to be made in the software.
We cannot expect everyone involved in the network to agree all the time.

Anyone can also copy the codes because it's open source.

Yup! Too many BTC clones would eventually dilute the crypto market and at the same time fraudsters are using its popularity in creating would be BTC alter egos that are eventually used to commit illicit schemes as evident by most BTC clones that offers no real feature compared to its original.

This in turn contributes to the negative perception of some people towards BTC and other cryptocurrencies that is why they are hesitant to join the crypto bandwagon. Imho.

How? Why? What about upgrades, and improvements like Schnorr and Taproot?

I believe everyone can agree that Bitcoin will need to hard fork, as a final option, if it went to a choice of life or death for the network.

If I'm not mistaken, those upgrades and improvements you've mentioned could often be implemented by core developers with a soft fork except for some upgrades that really need hard forking.

With this, I was implying that Bitcoin could not be hard forked with any other entities/developers like what happened to Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, etc... other than Bitcoin's core developers since they can do a hard fork should there will be a need to do so. Imho.

Yeah! this is one of the major problems some are facing when they don't have their own BTC wallet. When they only using exchanges wallet, they force to go with the flow about the exchange's transaction fees and it varies from time to time especially when the BTC price is rising. I have encountered this kind of problem when I don't have enough transaction fees to move my BTC and wait for the price to subside to successfully execute my transaction with enough transaction fees.

Same here. If there's something that can be done to solve the scalability issue via hard fork, I would go for it. I would also go for fixing what will inevitably have to be fixed eventually (the bug is widely discussed in this thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5267497.0)). Moreover, I would think of implementing procedures required to block the addresses that are known to belong to scammers (blocking the address and not accepting any transactions from it onto the network would be a decision requiring some sort of consensus apart from strong evidence in order to limit the possibility of abuse). I would also divide satoshis into smaller units just in case there comes a time when it will come in handy.

I dunno... that one feels like it needs a "slippery slope" argument in response. 

The total inability to freeze payments is considered a fundamental tenet by some.  Fungibility is also an important consideration we need to be careful not to screw with.  Not to mention that creating a method in which to determine "guilt" in a decentralised fashion, that couldn't be tampered with, corrupted or gamed, and that didn't involve elevating a person or group to a position of authority to act as judge or jury seems an unfathomable conundrum to solve first.

But Bitcoin might need to hard fork in the future, WHEN there comes a life or death situation for the network. If it's life or death, I believe the upgrade will get consensus, and won't split the network in two.


They're shitcoins forever, never Bitcoin. Litecoin has as much claim as Bitcoin Cash/SV/Gold to be Bitcoin, zero.

I'm not a tech savvy person,but I would change two things in my hardforked version of Bitcoin.
All the complex mathematical tasks that are executed during BTC mining should be used for something useful.
I don't know what exactly.Maybe there is a way for scientists to use the enormous power of the Bitcoin miners.
Another thing is to somewhat reduce the electricity costs of BTC mining.I don't know how this can be achieved,but that such innovation would be great.

This is a really good questions and I guess it really all depends on what the coins is going to be used for/ main purpose.  For one I would make sure that there are no full privacy aspects associated with the coin, do something to try and speed up tx's.  Somehow I would also like to make bitcoin more centralized.  I think with the Dev team, there is absolutely an aspect of centralization.  I'm not sure how to change that, if even possible, however.

i bet you that most of those that sponsored hardfork in the past are regretting it. Everything they plan to add to bitcoin might have succeeded but they are no more bitcoin again, are not not relevent. I dont think anonymity holds any big importance in the coin and reactions by government and organisation reduces any support. A lot had been done to make transaction faster and safe but I want bitcoin to be more engaged in daily exchange for goods everywhere.

I think the major challenge rocking the space now is the challenges with scalability in Bitcoin. If i had the priviledge of hard forking bitcoin i wil change the transactions per second of bitcoin as it is the major concern for users transacting via the bitcoin framework.

there are some nonsense in bitcoin consensus rules that aren't really important but they are still nonsense and need fixing.

for example the way sigops are being counted is horrible and any hard fork must address this, they should stop counting sigops of coinbase signature scripts, they should start counting sigops of multi-sig OPs correctly instead of jumping to 20 each time it doesn't match the expectation or if it is in a pubkey script instead of redeem scripts,...

there are also some restrictions that should be placed on scripts specifically pubkey scripts such as their length which can be anything since they are not evaluated.
there are also some restrictions that i would place for OP codes like checksig ones that should fail if they get an invalid public key.

there are also a bunch of standard rules enforced by bitcoin core that in my opinion must become consensus rules instead and they can happen in a hard fork. eg. minimal push (for numbers), push only (for signature scripts), clean stack (after execution of the script), minimal if (use OP_TRUE/False only),...

P.S. note that unlike most suggestions here all of these changes are both possible and easy to implement and nobody can really oppose them either, like sigop counting mechanism.

I think the only thing I'd want to consider really changing is the mining. I really miss the days of CPU/GPU mining bitcoin. It would be nice to see more coins come back with CPU/GPU PoW algorithms, avoiding presales, premines, and the centralisation that comes with them. I don't hate ASIC mining, I just find that their prices are utterly insane and the noise in addition is just too much for any regular folk to have sitting around.

It seems like this is a very good idea, I would also do the same as you if it happened to me, it looks very real for the current transaction fees are very high, this should really be resolved in a very good way so that everyone who wants Doing less transactions does not suffer losses at such high costs today.

That is the problem with exchanges and I think, not really with bitcoin even though the fees in bitcoin is really high, exchanges should not put more burden for small traders, those that haven't really have a huge amount of funds to trade.

Perhaps, fixing this problem will just make it easier for small traders to withdraw funds because instead of trading their funds to cryptos that have a small transaction fees, they can already withdraw their funds in BTC.

Outside of an exchange, I don't think Bitcoin tx fee's aren't too bad, since I could adjust the sats/byte to the amount that I want. The only problem is the time it takes for my transaction to be confirmed in the blockchain.

The more you understand "why" Proof of Work is, in Bitcoin, I believe the more you would understand why the "waste of energy", in Bitcoin, is a "something useful" in itself.

Bitcoin Proof of Work solved the Byzantine General's Problem. Proof of Work is Bitcoin's true foundation, not blockchain.

I don't have any technical information regarding Bitcoin project on github, but as a normal person who use and invest on bitcoin, I would focus on transactions and I would try to make the transactions to be real fast with a very low amount of fee. Also, I would try to implant some sort of smart contracts on the network, it will allow make to create own tokens under the bitcoin's network.

I don't have any technical knowledge about what I can change with bitcoin if I do the hardfork now. But I would like to change the transaction time and Tx fee. Now If I want to do any transaction it cost me around 5-6$ to do that in normal speed. If I do with lower fees it takes too much time to confirm the transaction. So, I would definitely make it faster and easier and cheaper for users.

I don't think it is possible, but I want to add a payment revert option in the transaction before it confirmed 10 blocks. The transaction fee may not be returnable and everyone needed to wait for 10 blocks for the transaction confirmation though.
Lots of time people send BTC to the wrong address, a revert option will give them a few minutes though if they had done some mistake.

Incentivize full nodes by allotting 1% of a single block reward to the nodes that has the most uptime in a 2-week cycle. Might not be the best change to do but will certainly be an appreciated one, especially to those running nodes round-the-clock. 1% won’t hurt much on the miners really, and that 1% would be taken off of all the blocks on that two-week period, so if there are a thousand blocks more or less, each of those we would take 0.0001% to add to the pot for the nodes that stayed up non stop during that period. Not a great implementation, I know, but it’s something for the nodes.

EDIT: Pretty sure my math is off, but you get the point.

security is what I will prioritize. with this hard fork, many people will struggle to get bitcoin because the profit now is very tempting. criminals against bitcoin will also increase, this security is useful to avoid negative actions that will surge during the hard fork

Then I believe Roger Ver and Jihan Wu could bribe the full nodes with an increased 5% of the block reward if they support, and run Bitcoin Unlimited. Craig Wright 10% if you run, and support his shitcoin.

If the full node gets 1%, then Roger Ver will give 5% and poach.

Now full node  has 0%. What prevents Roger Ver from giving 5% and getting his way? :)

I think every blockchain is aiming for faster transaction speed with low fees, If I have given the opportunity I will not do it, we have a lot of forks in the market right now like litecoin and those Bitcoincash tweens lol. Instead I will just support one of them or find another coin with almost no transaction fee which already exists there is no point in creating a redundant coin, I don't plan to add another sh*tcoin on the market. But I won't leave bitcoin it is the backbone of all altcoins.

The only thing I would have love to do with bitcoin network is to increase transaction time per-second. After this, many alt coins will die off BTC can just do

I think Bitcoin is good enough now, Bitcoin hard fork is not really needed. Too many hard forks already happened anyway,
better to focus on something else. But if there really has to be a change from Bitcoin, it might be about Bitcoin transaction
speed. Which is still an obstacle until now.

As seeing that the market continues to spread and additional crypto users, speed should be more prioritize this time. Fees are just a giveaway for miners and help them to grow and earn a profit. It only worsens the situation if we also cut the fees for miners and pay their services, I don't have to change it.

I can picture it out that there is a bottleneck to happen once we fully engage in Bitcoin and could be in a hassled if we keep the TX speed the same. Things we need to look at how this could be changed or we need higher specs for mining equipment but it also increases the fees.

None.
Current state of Bitcoin is perfect because its stable and that is most important.
We need more privacy but i wouldn't push it now, because privacy solution is not ready to be included in Bitcoin code.
If it will be, and will be tested to pain treshold, we will have it.
Bitcoin development way is slow, but it needs to be slow to hold value.

Yeah, it is enough that have nothing to change. And I used to keep the feature the same as we have known and trusted upon. Speed is not resistible, anytime it changes depending on the blockchain traffic and not sure if there is a way to change it, in fact, it never been recognized as a big problem in Bitcoin but just normal issue, and I don't think there is a need to change it.

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What we need now and in the future is the consistency of its security. With the increase of hacking events, it seriously affects the market trust and people will be afraid of the situation will get worse, and hacking/scamming complaints wildly spread around.

I'll make an implementation of an standalone blockchain network just like in Polkadot, where you can make your own Blockchain by hosting it. That connects into a mainnet. So basically its like the Ethereum network rinkeby, ropsten network concept. But corporations or individual could create it themselves add liquidity to it. Just think of it as an offchain like Lightning Network but with more user friendly interface.