Gavin Threatens to Quit Bitcoin Development and Join Hearn's Fork

[Elwar]

And nobody actually read his post.

This is the biggest amount of FUD I have seen in a long time.

What do other people think?


If we can't come to an agreement soon, then I'll ask for help
reviewing/submitting patches to Mike's Bitcoin-Xt project that implement a
big increase now that grows over time so we may never have to go through
all this rancor and debate again.

I'll then ask for help lobbying the merchant services and exchanges and
hosted wallet companies and other bitcoind-using-infrastructure companies
(and anybody who agrees with me that we need bigger blocks sooner rather
than later) to run Bitcoin-Xt instead of Bitcoin Core, and state that they
are running it. We'll be able to see uptake on the network by monitoring
client versions.

Perhaps by the time that happens there will be consensus bigger blocks are
needed sooner rather than later; if so, great! The early deployment will
just serve as early testing, and all of the software already deployed will
ready for bigger blocks.

But if there is still no consensus among developers but the "bigger blocks
now" movement is successful, I'll ask for help getting big miners to do the
same, and use the soft-fork block version voting mechanism to (hopefully)
get a majority and then a super-majority willing to produce bigger blocks.
The purpose of that process is to prove to any doubters that they'd better
start supporting bigger blocks or they'll be left behind, and to give them
a chance to upgrade before that happens.


Because if we can't come to consensus here, the ultimate authority for
determining consensus is what code the majority of merchants and exchanges
and miners are running.


--
--
Gavin Andresen

Please point to the place where "Gavin Threatens to Quit Bitcoin Development and Join Hearn's Fork"

[acharias]

Bitcoin is King and no other altcoin will get that huge amount of adoptionrate within the next 20 years.

The first CRYPTOCOIN with Biggest comunity and market

And nobody actually read his post.

This is the biggest amount of FUD I have seen in a long time.

What do other people think?


If we can't come to an agreement soon, then I'll ask for help
reviewing/submitting patches to Mike's Bitcoin-Xt project that implement a
big increase now that grows over time so we may never have to go through
all this rancor and debate again.

I'll then ask for help lobbying the merchant services and exchanges and
hosted wallet companies and other bitcoind-using-infrastructure companies
(and anybody who agrees with me that we need bigger blocks sooner rather
than later) to run Bitcoin-Xt instead of Bitcoin Core, and state that they
are running it. We'll be able to see uptake on the network by monitoring
client versions.

Perhaps by the time that happens there will be consensus bigger blocks are
needed sooner rather than later; if so, great! The early deployment will
just serve as early testing, and all of the software already deployed will
ready for bigger blocks.

But if there is still no consensus among developers but the "bigger blocks
now" movement is successful, I'll ask for help getting big miners to do the
same, and use the soft-fork block version voting mechanism to (hopefully)
get a majority and then a super-majority willing to produce bigger blocks.
The purpose of that process is to prove to any doubters that they'd better
start supporting bigger blocks or they'll be left behind, and to give them
a chance to upgrade before that happens.


Because if we can't come to consensus here, the ultimate authority for
determining consensus is what code the majority of merchants and exchanges
and miners are running.


--
--
Gavin Andresen

Please point to the place where "Gavin Threatens to Quit Bitcoin Development and Join Hearn's Fork"

we must appreciate with her do

[Lauda]

And nobody actually read his post.

This is the biggest amount of FUD I have seen in a long time.

Please point to the place where "Gavin Threatens to Quit Bitcoin Development and Join Hearn's Fork"

The media exaggerated things as usually. However he did state that he will try to influence everyone to come on board of Mike's Bitcoin-Xt project.
That's pretty much the same as leaving Bitcoin Core development.

However Gavin also forgot to consider all possible outcomes; one being that the majority does not agree on bigger blocks (although I don't see this outcome being that likely).

[BTCat]

And nobody actually read his post.

This is the biggest amount of FUD I have seen in a long time.


Please point to the place where "Gavin Threatens to Quit Bitcoin Development and Join Hearn's Fork"

I wanted to add that too, the title is pure fud. Gavin is just describing what actions he is gonna take on development.  

[Fabrizio89]

This shit is really hitting the fan and falling into pieces everywhere

[Lethn]

As always this is what scientific experiment is for and what was always intended for competing currencies. I don't see why we necessarily have to do it with Bitcoin as it is incredibly stable right now, an altcoin would actually be the perfect sort of experiment for this kind of thing. I still think that months ago we should have tried deliberately executing a 51% attack on the Bitcoin network when CEX.IO made their announcement but now we'll never know whether or not a 51% attack is even possible.

Research, Experiment, Test, absolutely all options, even just as we are we already have achieved more than central banks and politicians together have tried for a century, we can do even more now if we just set up currencies to test these new ideas on, unlike them we are actually trying to find solutions to the problems in our current currencies.

[redsn0w]

Well done Gavin, this is why bitcoin is the best thing that I have never seen in the last 20 years in the 'internet world'... basically the decentralization as liberty to do whatever you want.

A sort of anarchy... and the Media do their work very well.

[dothebeats]

and the Media do their work very well.

By exaggerating news and spreading false information to gain some revenue and for their "news" to appeal more interesting. Gavin can do whatever he wants to do, however, any bad move will also affect bitcoin because we know that Gavin Andresen serves as the "face of bitcoin". The media exaggerates this bad news and as a result, affects bitcoin in a way how it affects Gavin. I agree to Gavin's point that there should be some changes in the code, but not to the point that if ever his demands aren't met and he'll choose another fork that is not yet thoroughly reviewed, I'll call it quits.

[SpanishSoldier]

And nobody actually read his post.

This is the biggest amount of FUD I have seen in a long time.
-snip-

Please point to the place where "Gavin Threatens to Quit Bitcoin Development and Join Hearn's Fork"

In an endless effort to promote a ShitCoin named GoldCoin, OP is doing all these. Check his post history. I blocked his 2 previous FUD right after his post. But, this time I missed it.

[redsn0w]

and the Media do their work very well.

By exaggerating news and spreading false information to gain some revenue and for their "news" to appeal more interesting. Gavin can do whatever he wants to do, however, any bad move will also affect bitcoin because we know that Gavin Andresen serves as the "face of bitcoin". The media exaggerates this bad news and as a result, affects bitcoin in a way how it affects Gavin. I agree to Gavin's point that there should be some changes in the code, but not to the point that if ever his demands aren't met and he'll choose another fork that is not yet thoroughly reviewed, I'll call it quits.

It is obvious that it's his personal choice, but I do not think the price will be affected if he will go 'away'.... This is the problem to have a 'face of bitcoin' we will come back to a centralization if we will be scared by this type of decision.

[Realpra]

And nobody actually read his post.

This is the biggest amount of FUD I have seen in a long time.

.....
Gavin Andresen

Please point to the place where "Gavin Threatens to Quit Bitcoin Development and Join Hearn's Fork"

Yes indeed what he says is entirely in line with what he has said before. That we should do a SOFT fork to see how ready the network is.

He is not even proposing a hard fork yet, only running a soft test on alternate software implementation of Core (still vanilla Bitcoin) if he can't convince core devs.

Even if he becomes frustrated enough to use Xt instead of Core, what he is saying is that there still will be NO hard fork until there is a super majority.

I don't think anyone serious in Bitcoin space would switch until there was a super majority.

Bitcoin-Xt readme/project description + code here:
https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt

[johnyj]

This has been a problem since the beginning, there is no decision making mechanism in the core developer team

During 2013 fork, core devs could convince the merchant (bitpay) and big mining pools (btcguild) and control the hashing power and majority of merchant thus decide on which chain they would like to grow

That was still in a time that a consensus could be reached quickly. But if a crisis hit and consensus can not be reached, there is no mechanism going forward except for forking into different directions

Thanks god Satoshi has said that block size can be increased use a phase-in method, so I don't think increasing the block size is a big conflict of interest right now, but a sudden increase to 20 MB is quite aggressive, even a 4x increase will have huge impact to many aspects of the network

From my point of view, huge amount of TPS is not necessary, since bitcoin anyway will not be used as a currency at mass scale: If it grows upon certain degree, it will start to affect the fiat money system, and today no sovereign government will allow foreign currency to circulate on domestic market at large scale, since that will make central bank's policy less effective. When you use bitcoin to save for the retirement, one transaction per month is quite enough

[Sitarow]

It is a bad thing that one person currently has so much influence on the bitcoin perception
 him leaving should not cause more than a small dip on the news, otherwise it has become to centralized around him.

It is not one person and if you think that then you are either highly selective of the facts or poorly informed.

[unamis76]

I think this is a good move. People had their heads underneath the sand for too much time and some are now realising that the limit needs to be raised, as we are very quickly approaching the limit for our blocks.

This move puts miners and users on the "voting seats"... We will now choose what we want: big or small blocks. Let's see who wins

[DooMAD]

I can't take any "news" at face value if Mircea Popescu or any of his obsequious cronies are even remotely connected to it.  If it isn't from a reputable source, don't believe the FUD.  This piece is clearly biased and inaccurate, so let's not start overreacting.  

A larger blocksize is still necessary for the network to grow and support more users.  If the other devs keep dragging their heels, we're going to run into difficulty at some point in the not-too-distant future.  It's simple economics.  The transaction fees currently generated by the network wouldn't be sufficient to give miners a decent income once the block rewards start to diminish.  So either, the transaction fees would need to go up to compensate, or we would need more users paying fees to make up the difference.  

[MicroGuy]

In an endless effort to promote a ShitCoin named GoldCoin, OP is doing all these. Check his post history. I blocked his 2 previous FUD right after his post. But, this time I missed it.

Sticking one's head in the sand and name calling won't resolve this problem. Pointing out the weaknesses of a model can help make it stronger.

The way I see this issue is there's "an illusion" (a lie basically) that Bitcoin is decentralized. In all seriousness, I think the best course of action would be to quit pretending and accept the fact that Gavin has complete control.

Then we can stop the endless debate and allow Gavin to concentrate on making the changes to the code which are going to happen anyway.

[qwk]

"Today on the Sourceforge hosted Bitcoin-development mailing list Gavin Andresen has threatened to leave his present group of Bitcoin software developers over their objections to his demands for a rapid hardfork of the Bitcoin network.[...]"
Original post: http://qntra.net/2015/05/gavin-threatens-to-quit-bitcoin-development-and-join-hearns-fork/

Total spin. Gavin proposed a "let-the-market-decide" solution to the question of whether to fork or not.

Such a move will only weaken Bitcoin's credibility in the eyes of the public.   

I doubt that. The public (whoever that is) probably wouldn't even notice.
Big Business might actually be attracted by the pragmatic solutions the Bitcoin community can come up with when it comes to real-life problems like scalability. After all, they couldn't care less about the whole crypto-anarchist decentralized idealism. They just want that "blockchain technology stuff" to work.

So be prepared to  get a lot of negative marketing from within the community itself, not just general public.

Possibly, but the community has already lost its power when it comes to whether Bitcoin will be a success or not.
VC is flowing, Big Business moving in.

it doesnt matter what fork gavin wants to manage.. all that counts is what fork mining pools work on..

Pools will want to make money. They're going to stick to whatever suits that goal best.

This is only minor centralization. Someone has to actually code things, it can't magically work and repair itself. The project is open source; anyone can contribute hence the decentralization.

Absolutely. Someone's got to take the less popular decisive steps at times. And I'd rather have that someone be Gavin than someone else.

After all, that whole idea of Gavin is still well within the limits of the traditional Bitcoin spirit, churn out some changes, let the network decide.

[IIOII]

Gavin's actions come as no surprise to me, because he's the founding father of The Bitcoin Foundation. He obviously likes to grab for power instead of reaching consensus on a sound solution.

There have been far better proposals to implement a sliding block size increase based on demand. Proposals which are much more likely to reach consensus among developers than a 20 MB step function, because they are more sound. Meanwhile, hitchhiking on Gavin/Hearn-BitcoinXT (marketed to public mainly as a "solution" for max_blocksize) come other changes which where previously rejected by other developers, because they weaken security.

I will not support this power grab. I will not support the GavinHearnCoin-fork.

And nobody actually read his post.

This is the biggest amount of FUD I have seen in a long time.

...

Please point to the place where "Gavin Threatens to Quit Bitcoin Development and Join Hearn's Fork"

You quoted it.

[Nexun]

I thought getting into Bitcoin at this price would be a good idea time to sell my coins again 

[pissedoff]

I'm interested in what gmaxwell and the other developers think about these words.