An Open Letter to the Bitcoin Community from the Developers

[Denker]

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/21809/open-letter-bitcoin-community-developers/

As active contributors to Bitcoin, we share this letter to communicate our plan of action related to technical consensus and Bitcoin scalability.

Bitcoin is many things to many people. However, the development and maintenance of Bitcoin is a human endeavor. Satoshi sought review and cooperation, and the subsequent work by Bitcoin’s developers has made the system more secure and orders of magnitude faster. The Bitcoin developer community is dedicated to the future of Bitcoin, looks after the health of the network, strives for the highest standards of performance, and works to keep Bitcoin secure on behalf of everyone.

We’re committed to Bitcoin and responsive to the needs of the community. For the past five years, we’ve written code and managed over 50 Bitcoin releases and reviewed more than 45 formal proposals to improve Bitcoin’s performance, security, and scalability. Technical discussions, while heated at times, are always focused on improving Bitcoin.

Much work has already been done in this area, from substantial improvements in CPU bottlenecks, memory usage, network efficiency, and initial block download times, to algorithmic scaling in general. However, a number of key challenges still remain, each with many significant considerations and tradeoffs to evaluate. We have worked on Bitcoin scaling for years while safeguarding the network’s core features of decentralization, security, and permissionless innovation. We’re committed to ensuring the largest possible number of users benefit from Bitcoin, without eroding these fundamental values.

There will be controversy from time to time, but Bitcoin is a security-critical system with billions of dollars of users’ assets that a mistake could compromise. To mitigate potential existential risks, it behooves us all to take the time to evaluate proposals that have been put forward and agree on the best solutions via the consensus-building process.

In the upcoming months, two open workshops will bring the community together to explore these issues. The first Scaling Bitcoin workshop will be in Montreal on September 12-13. The second workshop is planned for December 6-7 and will be hosted in Hong Kong to be more inclusive of Bitcoin’s global user base.

We ask the community to not prejudge and instead work collaboratively to reach the best outcome through the existing process and the supporting workshops. It’s great to already see broad excitement for the event and the high concentration of technical participants attending.

We’re confident that by working together we can agree on the best course of action. We believe this is the way forward and reinforces the existing review process that has served the Bitcoin development community (and Bitcoin in general) well to date.

We welcome your participation as we continue our efforts to bring Bitcoin into the future.

Signed,

Wladimir J. van der Laan

Pieter Wuille

Cory Fields

Luke Dashjr

Jonas Schnelli

Jorge Timón

Greg Maxwell

Eric Voskuil

Amir Taaki

Dave Collins

Michael Ford

Peter Todd

Phillip Mienk

Suhas Daftuar

R E Broadley

Eric Lombrozo

Daniel Kraft

Chris Moore

Alex Morcos

dexX7

Warren Togami

Mark Friedenbach

Ross Nicoll

Pavel Janík

Josh Lehan

Andrew Poelstra

Christian Decker

Bryan Bishop

Benedict Chan

฿tcDrak

Charlie Lee

Jeremy Rubin

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[Carlton Banks]

Sounds constructive. Is anyone here going?

[knight22]

"Trust us"

No.

[DGulari]

"Trust us"

No.

I thought bitcoin was to be a trustless system?

[GermanGiant]

Amir Taaki

Is this real ? I'd like to hear from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1931.

[jonald_fyookball]

I am TRYING to keep an open mind.

The thing is, 5 core guys couldn't agree on how and when to raise
the block size, but now we're going to have a couple of workshops
where the global user base is invited, and somehow the best solutions are going
to emerge and we are all going to agree on the best course of action?

Again, trying to be optimistic and I like the transparency
but I don't understand how this is going to work.

Also, since people like Gavin have been ranting on how
we are running out time, it is troubling we are told
to wait till December.  This should have been done already
if they wanted to do it.  I still say a moderate dose of healthy skepticism
is appropriate.

[meono]

"Trust us"

No.

while we use dirty tactics to fight against any proposal we dont like......cough DDoS cough

[meono]

I am TRYING to keep an open mind.

The thing is, 5 core guys couldn't agree on how and when to raise
the block size, but now we're going to have a couple of workshops
where the global user base is invited, and somehow the best solutions are going
to emerge and we are all going to agree on the best course of action?

Again, trying to be optimistic and I like the transparency
but I don't understand how this is going to work.

Seriously, they must think bitcoin industry leaders are children. They stonewall any blocksize increase proposal, and held us hostage. Now they gave us 2 fcking workshops, like we would magically come to an agreement by meeting in person.

Whats the point of communication online then.

I guess they dont give a shit about those signatures from all the largest bitcoin service providers.....

[hdbuck]

lol at the angry bichtes up above. (besides carlton)



plz feel free to fork off if you dont like it.

ripple waitin for yaaa 

[jonald_fyookball]

the good thing is that the first workshop is in less than two weeks so we can see what unfolds.

[smoothie]

Seriously this is super disappointing that the developers can't come to some sort of agreement on a simple code change/removal of a number in the code.

Imagine adding any more changes to the code that could or would help bitcoin become a better digital cash that Satoshi meant Bitcoin to be.

Mind boggling.

[BCwinning]

Also, since people like Gavin have been ranting on how
we are running out time, it is troubling we are told
to wait till December.  This should have been done already
if they wanted to do it.  I still say a moderate dose of healthy skepticism
is appropriate.

excellent indicator that someone is pushing their own agenda when they start screaming the sky is falling.
Follow me!!!
My mind is closed to anything that person proposes unless it's going back to the original code and allow blocks to be organic again.

[meono]

Seriously this is super disappointing that the developers can't come to some sort of agreement on a simple code change/removal of a number in the code.

Imagine adding any more changes to the code that could or would help bitcoin become a better digital cash that Satoshi meant Bitcoin to be.

Mind boggling.

Even with the long list of developers, it only comes down to decision of 5 people.

............

[smoothie]

Seriously this is super disappointing that the developers can't come to some sort of agreement on a simple code change/removal of a number in the code.

Imagine adding any more changes to the code that could or would help bitcoin become a better digital cash that Satoshi meant Bitcoin to be.

Mind boggling.

Even with the long list of developers, it only comes down to decision of 5 people.

............

So much for decentralization

[jonald_fyookball]

Also, since people like Gavin have been ranting on how
we are running out time, it is troubling we are told
to wait till December.  This should have been done already
if they wanted to do it.  I still say a moderate dose of healthy skepticism
is appropriate.

excellent indicator that someone is pushing their own agenda when they start screaming the sky is falling.
Follow me!!!
My mind is closed to anything that person proposes unless it's going back to the original code and allow blocks to be organic again.

if you listen to Gavin, he is far from alarmist.  If you actually look at the fact that the blocksize is roughly doubling annually and consider the fact that there are network spikes, and could be unforeseen factors that could accelerate this further, and factor in the considerable time required for consensus change and rollout, you will also conclude that time is not in abundance.

[Lauda]

So much for decentralization

I don't see a benefit in going from 5 people to 2 (as "centralization" was often used as a argument). However, this is not the topic here.

if you listen to Gavin, he is far from alarmist.  If you actually look at the fact that the blocksize is roughly doubling annually and consider the fact that there are network spikes, and could be unforeseen factors that could accelerate this further, and factor in the considerable time required for consensus change and rollout, you will also conclude that time is not in abundance.

We may be short on time, however nobody can exactly define how much time we have. You can not just take the pattern from the past and expect it to continue forever. We might have a 0.5MB average next year, or we might have 5MB average (assuming the limit is raised to some degree). One can't really know.
Actually what they have planned is very good. The first workshop will contain a lot of ideas, and a final resolution will probably be found in the second one. There will be enough time to implement it before the halving, even though the second one is in December.

[Zarathustra]

I am TRYING to keep an open mind.

The thing is, 5 core guys couldn't agree on how and when to raise
the block size, but now we're going to have a couple of workshops
where the global user base is invited, and somehow the best solutions are going
to emerge and we are all going to agree on the best course of action?

Again, trying to be optimistic and I like the transparency
but I don't understand how this is going to work.

Seriously, they must think bitcoin industry leaders are children. They stonewall any blocksize increase proposal, and held us hostage. Now they gave us 2 fcking workshops, like we would magically come to an agreement by meeting in person.

Whats the point of communication online then.

I guess they dont give a shit about those signatures from all the largest bitcoin service providers.....

The delaying tactics prevent txs increase prolongs delaying tactics prevent txs increase prolongs delaying tactics ...
Awesome strategy by the small blockers.

[Carlton Banks]

So no-one from the BIP101 camp wants to attend the workshops then? Interesting.

I thought you guys were against stifling debate? 

[ashour]

Amir Taaki

Is this real ? I'd like to hear from https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1931.

Since when is Amit Taaki a bitcoin core developer ? Did I  miss something ?

[Mickeyb]

I don't understand this. So is the solution suppose to emerge from these two workshops or is this just a try to "get community involved so they fell important and they see that we do care about their voice" and then on the other side we will do as we imagined.

My mind really doesn't know what to think about this. When I saw a title, An open letter to the community from developers, I told to myself thanks God we have a solution and consensus will be reached, but now I am even more confused!