Why Blockstream must stay honest

[Kakmakr]

I had this discussion in a recent Bitcoin meetup, and I just wanted to share this with you, to get your opinion.

Let's say for one moment Blockstream manage to implement SegWit and the Lightning Network, and this turns out to be a massive plot to take over Bitcoin or to manipulate things in their favor, then this can be stopped.

The members of the group, said that everything that are done, can be undone. If code changes become unacceptable or undesirable then this can be reversed with new code. < even a whole new fork >

Why would they go through all the trouble and time to create something that might turn out to be unacceptable and then reversed or undone by it's competition? People might even shift to another Alt coin, if Bitcoin with SegWit and LN sucks.

A technology like Bitcoin is only as valuable as the network supporting it. ^smile^

[pinkflower]

Does Blockstream have all the power to control everything? No the miners have a big say on the whole thing. So if Blockstream turned out to be a bad player another group will try to fork BTC away from core with the full support of the miners. What are you afraid of?

[Kakmakr]

Does Blockstream have all the power to control everything? No the miners have a big say on the whole thing. So if Blockstream turned out to be a bad player another group will try to fork BTC away from core with the full support of the miners. What are you afraid of?

Nobody on this side is scared of anything. ^smile^ We are saying quite the opposite, because nobody needs to be scared of Blockstream or any other developer doing any kind of changes to the protocol. We have Peer review and a strong incentive for developers to be honest.

If the network of users < miners > or node hosts, find out that a developer is hiding some obscure agenda, then they have the most to loose. We have Alt coin developers and developers working on private blockchains, that would like Bitcoin to fail, and if Blockstream or any other developer fails, one of these entities will take their place or replace their code with something that are more desirable.

I say again, consensus means nothing, when consensus can again be used to replace undesirable code. This code might not even come from Blockstream developers. ^hmmmm^

[Vaccinus]

Does Blockstream have all the power to control everything? No the miners have a big say on the whole thing. So if Blockstream turned out to be a bad player another group will try to fork BTC away from core with the full support of the miners. What are you afraid of?

Is blockstream centralized like LN if yes the miners will not go with it, everything that is centralized have no place in this pproject, bitcoin, and remember that also the merchants have a big say on the matter, they are important like miners

[Kprawn]

I think every developer have a reputation and a future to protect, and for them to risk everything on a dodgy project, would be crazy. Just image

finding a new job, when you are known to be involved with dodgy projects? How do you explain to a future employer that you were part of the

developers that caused Bitcoin to fail? A Billion dollar project like Bitcoin is every developers dream, or nightmare if it fails. 

They have their whole career on the line with this experiment, and if this fails, they fail too.