Hello, I've been in bitcoin for 3+ years now and I would like to share my intellectual opinion about big blocks for bitcoin (2mb ,8mb ,etc) , the Bitcoin Hardfork, and about bitcoin in general and what are the concerns we need to watch out for.
Now there have been many shills, from both sides, so to just clear that out, so I want rational arguments pro/contra big blocks and hardforking bitcoin. I am personally anti-hardfork and therefore anti-big blocks, and I will demonstrate here why it is the best choice in my opinion. So stop shilling, and let's start debating this like civilized adults. I`ll present here my arguments and then you guys can respond to it. The thread will not be moderated so that I should not be accused as a shill. But I hope troll posts or low intellect posts (usually 1 liners) will be removed by forum moderators. Aso remember these are only my opinions from the knowledge I have so if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me, I`m open to criticism!
1) The sacred Bitcoin Protocol
The bitcoin protocol is like a constitution, once you start making changes in it, you will pretty much find yourself in financial tyranny, abuse of power and corruption pretty soon. Whenever things can be changed easily, they will. If there is no resistance to change, they will always happen. Therefore if the bitcoin protocol gets changed only by a small amount, some people will abuse that opportunity, and gradually add more changes, until bitcoin goes off it's original mission, and becomes centralized. Weather that be some sort of filter/blacklist/censoring system, or some sort of other oppressive patch installed into bitcoin. And then bitcoin will fail.
Of course like any constitution, changes have to happen eventually. You can't have the barbarian constitutions of the middle ages rule modern society, even if in the middle ages that was the sacred norm. Changes have to happen eventually, it is inevitable, but it has to be natural, well thought of, and based on real evidence and many many testing.
So in my opinion any change should be at least 1 generational. You don't want to change bitcoin too fast, when it's not even adopted yet by many people. Industry and tech changes too fast nowadays, but you have to slow down so that the clients can catch up. Hard fork is definitely not necessary right now (nor I think it will be in the foreseeable future), because I fear the community is still too young and prone to manipulation, therefore using this 'ring of power' is not an option.
2) Segwit
Segwit is good and necessary to fix fungibility and malleability. As a side-effect, it grows the block capacity as well. It is a temporary solution in terms of scaling the block capacity, because that is not it's goal. It's goal was only to fix malleability, which it probably will to some degree.
3) Sidechains + Lightning Network
This is the path of scaling the Core team choose. And I think it's a very elegant, decentralized approach to scaling. It is one way of doing it, and it's the most easy, immediate and fair way of doing it. Not to mention it's the most secure.
It's not a giant blob of code like ETH+ smart contracts, it's actually isolated from the bitcoin protocol. Security is only good if 1 sector is isolated from another. Think of it as a submarine, if the compartments are not isolated, then if it's breached, the water will sink the entire sub.
From transaction perspective, it can scale bitcoin really bigtime, while adding little or no centralization to the approach. Other 'classical' way would be to add an intermediary to issue IOU bitcoins that could be traded offchain. Well we know that is not an option for decentralization, so the LN is really cutting edge innovation, with little nor no centralization costs to the community.
The transactions will be instant, decentralized or semi-decentralized if you don't host the node, and would be the optimal choice given the current circumstances.
Therefore it is good to have this elegant, secure, and innovative approach to scaling. It also enables new features to bitcoin, that can be used to expand business, economy and other functions.
It is truly a piece of software art, truly crafted by the smartest people on the planet.
4) Urgent Hardfork
Well if the hardfork is really a 100% urgency like if ECDSA gets broken, then it's an urgency, and unfortunately it will have to be implemented. People will not like it, but it will be a true emergency so they will have no choice. However the probability of this is very low.
The more worrysome would be, once the devs have tasted the power of hardfork, then what? What classifies as an urgency? Can they just roll out hardfork every week when an 'urgency' becomes available? We go back to point 1), and how if things get too crazy, it can end bitcoin.
These have to be answered, and the community should always be skeptical.
5) Quantum Computers
I hear this argument many times, and it's mostly fearmongering. What if quantum computers become reality they can break bitcoin...?
Well I personally don't believe in large scale quantum computers, I think they won't ever exist, and there is plenty of evidence that supports this. Yes some laboratory theoretical computers might exist, but there are hard limits of thermodynamics that prevent the existence of large ones.
It's the same nonsense like the free energy advocates that think there is some hidden energy source, when 7th grade physics demonstrates you otherwise.
However classic computers might become one day powerful enough to find some exploit in the crypto algorithms (because brute forcing is obviously nearly-impossible).
And for that we shall react as in point 4). But not sooner than that. Bitcoin doesn't need 'what will happen if' type of patches. Bitcoin doesn't need insurance against alien invasion, we can deal with it, when the threat becomes sizeable.
6) Corruptible miners
What if the miners become untrustworthy? Low probability again, or it will be temporary. Game theory proves us that people working for incentives won't do things that will undermine the incentives. Or in other words people don't bit the hand that feeds them. If miners become shady then either they will run out of money before they can do too much evil, or they will become replaced by the honest ones, that would gain more money from mining honestly. Not to mention if they really piss off the community, everyone will just sell their coins and the mining business, as well as bitcoin will be over. If they implement capital controls to slow down the dumping, then the price will crash to 0 because nobody can buy, just as nobody can sell. Etc.. with many more theoretical attacks, but all end in disaster for the attacker. So a miner betrayal would only be temporary at best.
7) Corruptible devs
So far we have had very honest reputable developers. What if that changes and we get replaced by corrupt ones?
Well it's like the saying goes, what you reap is what you sow. If the bitcoin community is comprised of programmers , IT experts and PC experts, then you will always find the best ones amongst them that can work on the code. If the bitcoin community will be comprised of morons, then bitcoin will end long before that.
So it's more important to keep the community healthy, because the community will supply the developers and bitcoin experts.
Also the bitcoin developers are decentralized, even if the Core team has control over the github depository, everyone can host bitcoin's source code on his server and work on the code.
The enforcing mechanism in bitcoin is the miners ,and I've explained in point 6) why miners are not prone to betrayal. So the devs incentive is to show his talent, get fame, get donations, and get careers. The miners enforce the rules, while the community decides weather they like it or not.
So if a dev becomes corrupt, he will achieve little, but will lose everything , especially his reputation.
8﴿ Corruptible community
Devs might be corrupt, miners might be, but all of them would be temporary issues. What if the community becomes corrupt?
Yes this is one of the most concerning factors, if the old guard leaves or gets bored of bitcoin, and we get replaced by 80 IQ morons , illiterate people, or just simply opportunists that dont care about bitcoin only want quick profit, then what?
Well this is one of the biggest and most realistic threats to bitcoin. If the community is dumb, it can be manipulated, and divided to be controlled. Everyone will just control the community by their own incentives and whoever can fool the most people will have control over bitcoin. It is a scary possibility.
My opinion would be a moderate adoption, with many tutorials for newbies, as teaching newbies about bitcoin and it's values. People need to feel home in bitcoin and appreciate it's qualities.
Also the old guard should never leave, if they do they are pussies, and whatever happens to bitcoin will be partially their fault. So people should educate newbies and teach them why bitcoin is the way to go.
9) Hardfork not fair for long term savers
Most bitcoin old guard, as well as new investors, want to save bitcoin for long term, usually in a secure wallet. If you roll out hard fork every year, then they will always have to uppgrade their wallets and work with sensitive information, that would expose them to unnecessary risk.
If they don't they can lose their money. What if they are not announced? What if they don't keep up with bitcoin news? You can't just push changes so fast because people will lose confidence in bitcoin's long term future.
If a person wants to put away for his kid's 18th birthday, and forget about that wallet for many years (but keep the private keys backed up and secure), he doesn't want to always be updated with all fixes and patches.
Even other softwares usually have support for 1 version of their software for many years, so why can't bitcoin be the same? It is, and that is how should it be!
So the SET & FORGET approach that most people feel comfortable with, will be violated, and it will upset many bitcoin whales.
10) Hardfork risks the entire network
Currently only 37% of the network runs the latest software, which is good, because if a bug gets discovered the other 67% will act as a backbone.
If you want to force a hardfork then everyone has to uppgrade before the grace period runs out, therefore all the network will have the same version. If a bug or malware gets discovered in the hardforked client, then the entire bitcoin network will be destroyed.
Therefore hardforks are ultra vulnerable to 0 day bugs (or undiscovered bugs). Decentralization should mean that you cannot be 100% confident of the developers, because we are all humans and we make mistakes, so even if the devs have checked the code many many times, you can still not risk the network, because 0 day bugs are very frequent, even in huge projects ( *cought* Ethereum *cought*)
I am not really familiar with your post and the topics but there is one thing that I have alittle knowledge and I want to share it, its about quantum computers. Quantum computers are to build by NSA, this type of computers can crack into most types of encryption. A quantum computer could (in theory) perform millions of calculations all at once. If tis being used for the benefit of bitcoins then it will give blockchain more power for faster transfer and transactions. Hope it has positive impact on bitcoins since we do not know what is the reason behind why NSA are trying to build such computer.