[2015-08-15] Medium: Why is Bitcoin forking?

[LiteCoinGuy]

Why is Bitcoin forking?

Satoshi’s plan brought us all together. It changed the lives of hundreds of thousands of us across the globe. Some of us quit our jobs, others devoted their spare time to the project, still others founded companies and even moved across the world. It’s the idea of ordinary people paying each other via a block chain that created and united this global community.

That’s the vision I signed up for. That’s the vision Gavin Andresen signed up for. That’s the vision so many developers and startup founders and evangelists and users around the world signed up for.

...

A long time ago, Satoshi put in place a temporary kludge: he limited the size of each block to one megabyte. He did this in order to keep the block chain small in the early days, until what we now call SPV wallets were built (‘client only mode’). As seen in the quote above, it was never meant to be permanent and he talked about phasing it out when the time came. In the end it wasn’t needed — I wrote the first SPV implementation in 2011 and with my esteemed colleague Andreas Schildbach, together we built the first and still most popular Android wallet. Since then SPV wallets have been made for every platform. So Satoshi’s reason for the temporary limit has been resolved a long time ago.

https://medium.com/@octskyward/why-is-bitcoin-forking-d647312d22c1



In Satoshis words i trust  

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[pedrog]

Bitcoin XT it is, just upgraded my node. 

[LiteCoinGuy]

[TraderTimm]

I refuse to upgrade just because Gavin says it should be so. Let the actual market decide, in terms of fees and such. I detest centralized decision making - and frankly have some suspicions about Gavin ever since he caved in to meet with the CIA.

[pedrog]

I refuse to upgrade just because Gavin says it should be so. Let the actual market decide, in terms of fees and such. I detest centralized decision making - and frankly have some suspicions about Gavin ever since he caved in to meet with the CIA.

I've seem Mike and Gavin making a serious effort to take network to the next level, with information and real solutions, I've always took special interest in Gavin's opinions, not only because he is highly skilled but above all he was selected by Satoshi himself.

I've not seem the same thing from the other side of the debate, nor rebuttals to Mike's and Gavin's proposals.

Running Core or XT is precisely the actual market deciding...

[LiteCoinGuy]

I refuse to upgrade just because Gavin says it should be so. Let the actual market decide, in terms of fees and such. I detest centralized decision making - and frankly have some suspicions about Gavin ever since he caved in to meet with the CIA.

read the code. no conspiracy theory.

yes, let the market decide if it wants mainstream adoption or not - i use XT  

[RocketSingh]

I refuse to upgrade just because Gavin says it should be so. Let the actual market decide, in terms of fees and such. I detest centralized decision making - and frankly have some suspicions about Gavin ever since he caved in to meet with the CIA.

I do kind of agree with you. I am in favor of the proposal Gavin & Hearn is pitching. But, Hearn's history, especially the claim to ignore the longest chain makes me suspicious about his future plan. It might be the case that he is winning the public support by backing a popular demand, but in future he might take the lead to kill the founding pillars of bitcoin, like ignoring the longest chain.

It'd have been way better if the core devs could agree at some point and raised the block size a little, because we need to know how decentralized the lightning.network is... as well.

[Denker]

I refuse to upgrade just because Gavin says it should be so. Let the actual market decide, in terms of fees and such. I detest centralized decision making - and frankly have some suspicions about Gavin ever since he caved in to meet with the CIA.

I do kind of agree with you. I am in favor of the proposal Gavin & Hearn is pitching. But, Hearn's history, especially the claim to ignore the longest chain makes me suspicious about his future plan. It might be the case that he is winning the public support by backing a popular demand, but in future he might take the lead to kill the founding pillars of bitcoin, like ignoring the longest chain.

It'd have been way better if the core devs could agree at some point and raised the block size a little, because we need to know how decentralized the lightning.network is... as well.

I hope you read that and maybe you have also seen Hearn at Epicenter where he said.If so you should know better what actually said.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1150481.msg12140304#msg12140304

It has nothing to do with "special treatment".  If a fork occurred without consensus, only then does it become an altcoin.  If it either achieves consensus or the fork doesn't happen, it's still Bitcoin.  The fork hasn't happened yet, so it is still Bitcoin.  XT sends and receives bitcoin transactions using the Bitcoin blockchain.  It is an alternative client, not an alternative coin.  Stop spreading misinformation.

It is not misinformation because those are Hearns intention. He stated that in the worst case scenario checkpoints will be implemented to ignore the longest chain. In other words, consensus is not necessary for the fork to happen according to him. I'd rather people be aware of his intentions on time.
That alternative client needs to die.

Dont twist words around to fit your agenda.

The key part Mike said that you intentionally left out from that video:

If the needs of the wider global bitcoin community start diverging from what miners in China want, the who wins .... the answer is the economic majority wins

The fundamental of bitcoin blockchain has always been economic incentive. Miners dont make rules they're rewarded for following rules. The moment they're stupid enough to disagree as in the worst case Mike mentioned, the network will have to ignore them and treat them as an attack ( ignoring the longest chain is a defense against attack)

[RocketSingh]

I refuse to upgrade just because Gavin says it should be so. Let the actual market decide, in terms of fees and such. I detest centralized decision making - and frankly have some suspicions about Gavin ever since he caved in to meet with the CIA.

I do kind of agree with you. I am in favor of the proposal Gavin & Hearn is pitching. But, Hearn's history, especially the claim to ignore the longest chain makes me suspicious about his future plan. It might be the case that he is winning the public support by backing a popular demand, but in future he might take the lead to kill the founding pillars of bitcoin, like ignoring the longest chain.

It'd have been way better if the core devs could agree at some point and raised the block size a little, because we need to know how decentralized the lightning.network is... as well.

I hope you read that and maybe you have also seen Hearn at Epicenter where he said.If so you should know better what actually said.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1150481.msg12140304#msg12140304

I checked that video again and again to my utter disbelief to what I'm listening. But, no. Hearn actually said that. He is no one to decide the economic majority. If economic majority is against that would naturally push the miners to change their side. Why would he checkpoint them ? That is out & out dictatorship.

[Tirapon]

I refuse to upgrade just because Gavin says it should be so. Let the actual market decide, in terms of fees and such. I detest centralized decision making - and frankly have some suspicions about Gavin ever since he caved in to meet with the CIA.

I completely agree that we should not make changes just because Gavin says so. I also think that even if Satoshi were to reappear just to say that he was in support of larger blocks (which I believe was his original intention), it should still not be decided by vote of authority. I do believe that gradually raising the block size limit to accommodate a much larger user base on-chain is the approach which will be most beneficial and fair to everyone in the long run.

However, that's just my opinion which is one of many.  Allowing the market to decide is really all that CAN be done.

[Carlton Banks]

What people actually want is higher transaction rates. Not bigger blocks necessarily, although that's the only credible way to achieve it at the moment. I'm in favour of whatever the best idea is to increase the transaction rate, and Bitcoin XT is far, far too much of a compromise for other reasons. Mike Hearn is just not a good choice for lead developer, he's not in bitcoin's best interests, and has demonstrated himself to be so on several occasions.

[meono]

What people actually want is higher transaction rates. Not bigger blocks necessarily, although that's the only credible way to achieve it at the moment. I'm in favour of whatever the best idea is to increase the transaction rate, and Bitcoin XT is far, far too much of a compromise for other reasons. Mike Hearn is just not a good choice for lead developer, he's not in bitcoin's best interests, and has demonstrated himself to be so on several occasions.

This is not president candidate voting. You vote based on the merits of idea , not who proposed it. Because unlike your president candidate, he cant change his word and does whatever he wants. XT users can discard the new version if its a controversial idea like white listing.

[meono]

I refuse to upgrade just because Gavin says it should be so. Let the actual market decide, in terms of fees and such. I detest centralized decision making - and frankly have some suspicions about Gavin ever since he caved in to meet with the CIA.

I do kind of agree with you. I am in favor of the proposal Gavin & Hearn is pitching. But, Hearn's history, especially the claim to ignore the longest chain makes me suspicious about his future plan. It might be the case that he is winning the public support by backing a popular demand, but in future he might take the lead to kill the founding pillars of bitcoin, like ignoring the longest chain.

It'd have been way better if the core devs could agree at some point and raised the block size a little, because we need to know how decentralized the lightning.network is... as well.

I hope you read that and maybe you have also seen Hearn at Epicenter where he said.If so you should know better what actually said.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1150481.msg12140304#msg12140304

I checked that video again and again to my utter disbelief to what I'm listening. But, no. Hearn actually said that. He is no one to decide the economic majority. If economic majority is against that would naturally push the miners to change their side. Why would he checkpoint them ? That is out & out dictatorship.

Are you implying Mike will force a gun to "economic majority" to enforce his new rules?

If you are, then you're as dumb as a door knob.

[Carlton Banks]

What people actually want is higher transaction rates. Not bigger blocks necessarily, although that's the only credible way to achieve it at the moment. I'm in favour of whatever the best idea is to increase the transaction rate, and Bitcoin XT is far, far too much of a compromise for other reasons. Mike Hearn is just not a good choice for lead developer, he's not in bitcoin's best interests, and has demonstrated himself to be so on several occasions.

This is not president candidate voting. You vote based on the merits of idea , not who proposed it. Because unlike your president candidate, he cant change his word and does whatever he wants. XT users can discard the new version if its a controversial idea like white listing.

I am.

Mike has subtly weakened important rules about block acceptance consensus in Bitcoin XT. He's also removed support for Bitcoin over TOR.

These aren't parts of his personality, they're parts of his software. Reject Bitcoin XT.

[LiteCoinGuy]

What people actually want is higher transaction rates. Not bigger blocks necessarily, although that's the only credible way to achieve it at the moment. I'm in favour of whatever the best idea is to increase the transaction rate, and Bitcoin XT is far, far too much of a compromise for other reasons. Mike Hearn is just not a good choice for lead developer, he's not in bitcoin's best interests, and has demonstrated himself to be so on several occasions.

This is not president candidate voting. You vote based on the merits of idea , not who proposed it. Because unlike your president candidate, he cant change his word and does whatever he wants. XT users can discard the new version if its a controversial idea like white listing.

exactly. read the code and dont vote because you like or dislike someone. sometimes he is wrong, sometimes he is right - that is all too human.