Gavin Andresen: ‘Nobody Wants to be the High Priest of Bitcoin’

[OmegaStarScream]

Bitcoin never had a clear future, but it looks even cloudier in the midst of the unpleasant, yet weirdly magnetic, blocksize debate. The debate, which eats up /r/Bitcoin, has led to the meta question of Bitcoin “governance” - a buzzword that sums up the question: What happens when developers and stakeholders don't agree? What's the best process to address this?

Gavin Andresen, who has a unique perspective on the topic as Bitcoin's former lead developer, joined Epicenter Bitcoin for a conversation on just that.

Check the interview here : https://youtu.be/B8l11q9hsJM


The podcast took on the meta-meta-question of defining “governance” and zeroing in on which Bitcoin governance issues—exactly—need to be addressed. Andresen offered a broad definition. “When I say governance, I don't mean government. We're governed by all sorts of things,” he said. “We're governed by our government, we're governed by the laws of physics, we're governed by social norms. There are all sorts of things that affect our behavior.” He used the word “process” to describe how to reach these decisions.

Andresen and Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn recently announced Bitcoin XT, a variant of Bitcoin core with a larger blocksize. While the questions of when and how much to grow the blocksize is itself controversial, Bitcoin XT's decision-making process is also controversial. Hearn is to make the “final call” when the developers disagree.

Since then, developers that allegedly make up 90 percent of Bitcoin's commits in the last year released an open letter calling for support from the community to work together towards decentralization.

Bitcoin's decision-making process has evolved over time, according to Andresen, “If you go back in time, it was simple. It was whatever Satoshi decided.” He said that he decentralized that by extending commit access—developers that are authorized make permanent changes to Bitcoin—to five people. But Bitcoin has grown. Today, it interests many stakeholders, including miners, payment processors, and everyday users.

Andresen:

“I don't think any of us—especially those five people—want to be the high priests of Bitcoin. We need to find a new way of governing—a new way of coming to decisions and have everyone be happy with the process and the decisions that are reached.”

Full article : http://cointelegraph.com/news/115235/gavin-andresen-nobody-wants-to-be-the-high-priest-of-bitcoin

[manselr]

I don't understand who would like to see centralized nodes as a solution. We already got a way to address this which is by running nodes, so run Core or XT whatever you like. Sure I personally don't like blockstream solution but life's a bitch and I Don't see a better, realistic solution than that. Not every transaction ever can fit on the blockchain. Whatever coin can give us the same trust as Bitcoin that can scale worldwide with decentralized nodes that at the same time allows next to no fees and can do everything in-chain will be a potential Bitcoin killer I guess, but that's not going to happen anytime soon realistically.