Trying to tie everything to that one blockchain *is* in fact centralising as it puts all them all at risk if there is a failure (such as its crypto being broken).

Having multiple blockchains that work in different ways is just a "sensible" approach or do you keep all of your assets in one single bank account?

Also Bitcoin is simply not suited to many, many things mostly because confirmations take too long.

Absolutely agreed.

I have never agreed with the use of polls in the forum full stop (and my own forum software does not even have them).

The very idea of putting polls into a forum that "encourages" sockpuppets is ridiculous.

(but let's not go off topic)

So - they could be all sockpuppet accounts (as this forum supports that).

Any poll on this forum is worth *zero* so posting the result of any such poll has *zero credibility*.

The main thing is that Bitcoin constantly promotes itself as "decentralised" yet wants to be the "one and only block chain" of the world.

If people can't see a slight problem with that then I sincerely wonder about their thinking.

That is a good question and I won't know I guess until we publish - but my point is not that I think my system will be *better* but that it will be an alternative (even if it turns out to be less secure).

So Bitcoin would retain its "gold value" by being the "most secure" if my proof ends up being viewed as less secure.

But even so it is better to have more than one type of blockchain just in case someone finds a horrible attack that "destroys" a blockchain (i.e. being "superior" to Bitcoin is not the point at all).

He didn't as he used a "straw-man" argument that people would use centralised authorities when they could just as easily not (again I am not against raising the 1MB limit but using the wrong arguments for that is simply not persuasive).

A statement with nothing to back it up (the reason Bitcoin is designed that way is because it was designed that way).

Without modification to the code you'd need different ports but my point is not that we want two "identical" blockchain systems as any major problem would presumably hit both of them (i.e. it would be better to have different blockchains that work on different consensus mechanisms).

In regards to the "strength" of PoW I have actually developed a new proof concept which will be published (with a white paper) in the next few months (and it doesn't require massive computing).

Also I am not going to be launching it as a "coin" but instead as a "create your own blockchain for whatever purpose it suits" approach (aimed mostly at business).

Oh - and it will be open source (so I am not going to make money from the concept - only perhaps for consulting).

The point is not about making Bitcoin worth more or less (I am perfectly happy for it to be considered "the gold standard").

The point is that blockchain technology can do a lot of other useful things (such as tallying votes) and there is no good reason that every possible use of a blockchain should be added to the Bitcoin blockchain.

A big part of the problem is being able to transfer funds "trustlessly" between blockchains - and this is why I created AT: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=822100.0

Here:

https://github.com/BurstProject/ATAssembler/blob/master/src/scala/ATAssembler.scala

(you will like that much better than typing in hex code)

Again - a "sidechain" would be dependent upon Bitcoin - so if a major flaw happens with Bitcoin then all sidechains are killed.

Not a very wise "insurance policy" IMO.

An "assembler tool" has been written but yes currently they need to be hand-written.

The plan is to create simple UI forms for using well known AT "templates" (rather than having to write code at all).

I don't see why it needs to "devalue" Bitcoin at all actually - some of the use cases for Blockchains are simply "bloat" that would be far better off separated.

Although I am not against the 1MB block size limit being raised it seems to me that the entire point of "decentralisation" seems to have escaped the Bitcoin project (the core devs at least mostly seem to be completely against having other blockchains).

I certainly understand that the Bitcoin Foundation is going to have that opinion (for financial reasons) and I can understand a lot of people heavily invested in Bitcoin (such as the Winklevoss twins) also having that opinion.

But any "rational" person would surely think that having other blockchains (with different code and proofs) cannot be a *bad* thing as it alleviates the "one point of failure" that we will otherwise always have.

I don't see how "one blockchain" is ever going to service the needs of everyone (without requiring a ridiculous amount of space and without having near instant confirmations) so IMO it is simply inevitable that we are going to need many.

They just haven't designed it right (so the Bitcoin limits are not really an issue).

Although let's not go off-topic my AT project will be launching "crowdfund" very soon and that could actually work on Bitcoin if Bitcoin were to adopt AT (with no limits for the number of pledges).

No problem but perhaps it would make more sense if you could expand on what you posted a bit.

Sorry - but that makes *zero* sense (especially as I stated that I am not against raising the 1 MB limit in the first place).