Hearn's Worst Case Scenario: Checkpoints in XT to "ignore the longest chain"

[tvbcof]

The thing is no matter what we do, we will never satisfy everyone.... if that is the case, we would have had consensus already. Why any of the parties thought they could get

away with promoting the BIP, bearing in mind that their change would benefit their own projects... is really mind baffling. You will always have opposing sides with different

hidden interest... The 3rd party payment processors have their agenda and the miners have their own agenda. Which of these sides do we need the most? The miners fuel the

network... The payment processors and the exchanges fuel the market for Bitcoin. Should we not support the side with no personal interest? Where is the 3rd alternative?

An amicable fork of the code AND of the blockchain.  Just let both (or all) sides move into the future and riding on their own 'longest valid chain' and the strength of their ideas, participants, and philosophies.

Yes, people who already had a footprint in the pre-fork chain 'win second prize in the beauty contest', but it's not like early-birds never catch a break.  No harm done to those who come later...they simply have more choices in the market and can choose a philosophy which is succeeding at giving them what they want.

[Westin Landon Cox]

The thing is no matter what we do, we will never satisfy everyone.... if that is the case, we would have had consensus already. Why any of the parties thought they could get

away with promoting the BIP, bearing in mind that their change would benefit their own projects... is really mind baffling. You will always have opposing sides with different

hidden interest... The 3rd party payment processors have their agenda and the miners have their own agenda. Which of these sides do we need the most? The miners fuel the

network... The payment processors and the exchanges fuel the market for Bitcoin. Should we not support the side with no personal interest? Where is the 3rd alternative?

An amicable fork of the code AND of the blockchain.  Just let both (or all) sides move into the future and riding on their own 'longest valid chain' and the strength of their ideas, participants, and philosophies.

Yes, people who already had a footprint in the pre-fork chain 'win second prize in the beauty contest', but it's not like early-birds never catch a break.  No harm done to those who come later...they simply have more choices in the market and can choose a philosophy which is succeeding at giving them what they want.

Yep. I second this. I think it's the best alternative at this point.

[MarketNeutral]

Give me control over a coin's checkpoints and I care not who mines its blocks. 

Sig worthy.

[knight22]

The thing is no matter what we do, we will never satisfy everyone.... if that is the case, we would have had consensus already. Why any of the parties thought they could get

away with promoting the BIP, bearing in mind that their change would benefit their own projects... is really mind baffling. You will always have opposing sides with different

hidden interest... The 3rd party payment processors have their agenda and the miners have their own agenda. Which of these sides do we need the most? The miners fuel the

network... The payment processors and the exchanges fuel the market for Bitcoin. Should we not support the side with no personal interest? Where is the 3rd alternative?

An amicable fork of the code AND of the blockchain.  Just let both (or all) sides move into the future and riding on their own 'longest valid chain' and the strength of their ideas, participants, and philosophies.

Yes, people who already had a footprint in the pre-fork chain 'win second prize in the beauty contest', but it's not like early-birds never catch a break.  No harm done to those who come later...they simply have more choices in the market and can choose a philosophy which is succeeding at giving them what they want.

IMO this is the most probable end game scenario. I would be curious of your definition of an "amicable" fork though.

[keepdoing]

IMO this is the most probable end game scenario. I would be curious of your definition of an "amicable" fork though.

Simple agreement not to have Miners on one chain attack the other.  A set of parameters that will allow the less "powered" chain to reach a correct level of difficulty.  Then let basic free market forces play out.

Obvious problem with this scenario is that one one side will be Fiat.  And on the Fiat side is the power to regulate.  Go ask the American Indian how well those treaties held up

[tvbcof]

...
network... The payment processors and the exchanges fuel the market for Bitcoin. Should we not support the side with no personal interest? Where is the 3rd alternative?

An amicable fork of the code AND of the blockchain.  Just let both (or all) sides move into the future and riding on their own 'longest valid chain' and the strength of their ideas, participants, and philosophies.

Yes, people who already had a footprint in the pre-fork chain 'win second prize in the beauty contest', but it's not like early-birds never catch a break.  No harm done to those who come later...they simply have more choices in the market and can choose a philosophy which is succeeding at giving them what they want.

IMO this is the most probable end game scenario. I would be curious of your definition of an "amicable" fork though.

I just mean agreed to and transparently communicated to the userbase.

 - Mike and Gavin state their case and their vision and their plans.

 - Other players (esp, so-called 'core') do likewise.

 - All sides agree not to attack one another, at least during a choreographed disengagement.

This would allow a framework upon which tertiary players (on-line wallets, miners, vendors, etc) could formulate and communicate their own strategies with minimal harm done to the userbases.  It would also lesson the problem we will certainly be having with scammers and others trying to exploit a messy situation.  Such attacks will target innocent end-users since they are the least able to defend themselves.

[Westin Landon Cox]

...
network... The payment processors and the exchanges fuel the market for Bitcoin. Should we not support the side with no personal interest? Where is the 3rd alternative?

An amicable fork of the code AND of the blockchain.  Just let both (or all) sides move into the future and riding on their own 'longest valid chain' and the strength of their ideas, participants, and philosophies.

Yes, people who already had a footprint in the pre-fork chain 'win second prize in the beauty contest', but it's not like early-birds never catch a break.  No harm done to those who come later...they simply have more choices in the market and can choose a philosophy which is succeeding at giving them what they want.

IMO this is the most probable end game scenario. I would be curious of your definition of an "amicable" fork though.

I just mean agreed to and transparently communicated to the userbase.

 - Mike and Gavin state their case and their vision and their plans.

 - Other players (esp, so-called 'core') do likewise.

 - All sides agree not to attack one another, at least during a choreographed disengagement.

This would allow a framework upon which tertiary players (on-line wallets, miners, vendors, etc) could formulate and communicate their own strategies with minimal harm done to the userbases.  It would also lesson the problem we will certainly be having with scammers and others trying to exploit a messy situation.  Such attacks will target innocent end-users since they are the least able to defend themselves.

Maybe someone should write a BSP (Bitcoin Separation Proposal) for this.

[MarketNeutral]

...
network... The payment processors and the exchanges fuel the market for Bitcoin. Should we not support the side with no personal interest? Where is the 3rd alternative?

An amicable fork of the code AND of the blockchain.  Just let both (or all) sides move into the future and riding on their own 'longest valid chain' and the strength of their ideas, participants, and philosophies.

Yes, people who already had a footprint in the pre-fork chain 'win second prize in the beauty contest', but it's not like early-birds never catch a break.  No harm done to those who come later...they simply have more choices in the market and can choose a philosophy which is succeeding at giving them what they want.

IMO this is the most probable end game scenario. I would be curious of your definition of an "amicable" fork though.

I just mean agreed to and transparently communicated to the userbase.

 - Mike and Gavin state their case and their vision and their plans.

 - Other players (esp, so-called 'core') do likewise.

 - All sides agree not to attack one another, at least during a choreographed disengagement.

This would allow a framework upon which tertiary players (on-line wallets, miners, vendors, etc) could formulate and communicate their own strategies with minimal harm done to the userbases.  It would also lesson the problem we will certainly be having with scammers and others trying to exploit a messy situation.  Such attacks will target innocent end-users since they are the least able to defend themselves.

I like the direction you're going with this.
Would you mind clarifying what it would mean "not to attack one another" or at least how you see it? It seems self-explanatory, but I'm trying to envision what it would mean in practice, for terms of an armistice are sometimes rather thorny.

It may be naïve to hope for a truce, however most everyone would prefer a truce of some kind than further coercion, sophistry, and divisiveness culminating in a Bitcoin Pyrrhic victory.

[tvbcof]

I just mean agreed to and transparently communicated to the userbase.

 - Mike and Gavin state their case and their vision and their plans.

 - Other players (esp, so-called 'core') do likewise.

 - All sides agree not to attack one another, at least during a choreographed disengagement.

This would allow a framework upon which tertiary players (on-line wallets, miners, vendors, etc) could formulate and communicate their own strategies with minimal harm done to the userbases.  It would also lesson the problem we will certainly be having with scammers and others trying to exploit a messy situation.  Such attacks will target innocent end-users since they are the least able to defend themselves.

I like the direction you're going with this.
Would you mind clarifying what it would mean "not to attack one another" or at least how you see it? It seems self-explanatory, but I'm trying to envision what it would mean in practice, for terms of an armistice are sometimes rather thorny.

Ach!  You're making me have to think a little.

Basically the same thing as agreeing not to punch on the break during a boxing match.  I'm thinking mostly of deferring from egregious attempts to mess up the other party like the NoBitcoinXT mock-nodes (which is an idea that I take some (potentially undeserved) credit for, BTW)

It is to be expected that there would be plenty of independent operators who would throw various sticks into the works for one reason or another.  If the primary movers and shakers at least did not advocate and promote such behavior, that would go some distance toward muting such attacks I would suppose.  To re-visit the boxing analogy, the basic rule would be to protect yourself at all times.

It may be naïve to hope for a truce, however most everyone would prefer a truce of some kind than further coercion, sophistry, and divisiveness culminating in a Bitcoin Pyrrhic victory.

The BSD split after 386BSD went dark was slightly before my time but from what I know of it it was extraordinarily acrimonious.  Ultimately three main forks emerged.  FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.  The currently all live on working on their areas of focus.  They all borrow code from one another when they can.  Many users choose some combination of them depending on the needs of the day.  Probably the world is better off for this split at the time it happened.

[MarketNeutral]

The BSD split after 386BSD went dark was slightly before my time but from what I know of it it was extraordinarily acrimonious.  Ultimately three main forks emerged.  FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD.  The currently all live on working on their areas of focus.  They all borrow code from one another when they can.  Many users choose some combination of them depending on the needs of the day.  Probably the world is better off for this split at the time it happened.

Ah. Interesting to bring up the BSDs. There are many strong personalities that have emerged in OS development over the decades. Linus, Theo de Raadt, Stallman, Gates, etc. Perhaps we are seeing something similar in cryptocurrencies. Often there is cooperation and mutual respect (Posix standards, BSD ports), sometimes enmity or crankiness (many things GNU and Windows, proprietary drivers), and sometimes internecine conflict (systemd vs. anti-systemd). And sometimes surprises (GNU emacs running on Windows10)! The various factions and their respective design and development philosophies are based as much on personality differences and financial interests as they are on specific technical ideals.

[Linuld]

"The worst case scenario is the majority ... the economic majority ... is in favor but the hash power, the mining majority is not. That would be a very messy situation for bitcoin."

You do realised that even by this utopic view, the logic behind this is very flawed. It's completely ignoring miners, refusing to acknowledge that they are a significant chunk of 'the economic majority'. And aside of that, Mike Hearn has numerous times proven that he simply doesn't care about the neutrality of bitcoin as a developer. He's implied that getting rid of the Chinese miners is a reasonable plan to enforce if they disagree with him.

He did not say that he would get rid of the Chinese miners if they disagreed with him. He was instead referring to a situation where the majority of users and financial powers mainly in the west came to a disagreement about a fundamental issue with the miners in the east. Remember this is a hypothetical worst case scenario. What if the majority of the miners decided to increase the block limit? However the majority of the users and financial powers are against the change, that might be a situation where us Bitcoiners would go against the majority of the mining power and cause a fork. Under this worst case scenario what Mike Hearn is suggesting is actually reasonable. I do not believe this could ever happen as described since miners would never be incentivized to do such a thing. Keep in mind that Hearn even said that this would wreck Bitcoin so it is not like he takes this lightly. He would also require the consent of the economic majority anyway in order to even do such a thing. It is however a very controversial thing to say, I will not deny that.

Thank you for explaining. That sounds in fact way more reasonable than the Checkpoints accusation. I can follow him here though i guess it is a very theoretical thing only. I mean it already starts with "who is the majority of users"? He can't determine that i think.