Will Bitcoin 'Hard Fork' in any useful features.. ?

[spartacusrex]

This is IMHO Bitcoin's greatest strength and greatest weakness..

I, and many others I'm sure, feel that a stable protocol, immutable and set in stone, would be a very positive thing. v1.0 if you will. But being flexible also has it's upside.

Imagine if the structure of Gold, at an atomic level, kept changing ? This would not be cool.

But Bitcoin is not Gold, it is something quite different. (with obvious similarities though)

So when a new Coin comes along that does X, and everyone says - Ohhh, that's really cool, Bitcoin 'can' be changed, and soft/hard-fork in the features.

Some things will not be possible (I contend, but you may disagree) but most things.. absolutely. There is certainly no lack of technical expertise working on BTC.

So is this the future of Bitcoin, to absorb the abilities of the newcomers ? (Like that guy in Heroes.. who cuts heads open..)

 

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[helloeverybody]

It would be nice to fork in some fancy features but at this point i just want to get this block debate out of the way and onto bigger blocks or whatever it is thats decided. From their on in maybe we could start worrying about better features.

[spartacusrex]

yep - this block size debate/war/issue sure is getting ugly..

And if it has taken a war of this magnitude to change one number, I can see why people are cautious about thinking that anything even remotely more complicated will ever be introduced..

But - I think we are learning a lot, about the nature of the btc beast, and this may pave the way for smoother less fractious transitions in the future.

One would hope, at least.

[helloeverybody]

yep - this block size debate/war/issue sure is getting ugly..

And if it has taken a war of this magnitude to change one number, I can see why people are cautious about thinking that anything even remotely more complicated will ever be introduced..

But - I think we are learning a lot, about the nature of the btc beast, and this may pave the way for smoother less fractious transitions in the future.

One would hope, at least.

I suppose in theory bitcoin could steal a lot of what other altcoins offer so that it remains ther master coin but with all the dramas involved around "simply increasing" the block size you can imagine how much more there would be for adding fancy features. It would be good though.

[Denker]

yep - this block size debate/war/issue sure is getting ugly..

And if it has taken a war of this magnitude to change one number, I can see why people are cautious about thinking that anything even remotely more complicated will ever be introduced..

But - I think we are learning a lot, about the nature of the btc beast, and this may pave the way for smoother less fractious transitions in the future.

One would hope, at least.

I suppose in theory bitcoin could steal a lot of what other altcoins offer so that it remains ther master coin but with all the dramas involved around "simply increasing" the block size you can imagine how much more there would be for adding fancy features. It would be good though.

And this is the problem what many people don't seem to understand.
It's not about just increasing the block size. It is about scaling!
And scaling is much more than just an increase of the block size.Things should be done properly and not in a rush.
And beside all that it also became a political thing. Tough times.

[simon66]

Yes, I think that once great blockchain technologies are developed and proven that they will be added onto Bitcoin. I think in the future there will be many more technologies added to bitcoin.

I think that one of the biggest reasons that there is so much blocksize debate is that many of the proposals have other things added in with it that many do not agree with.

In time though I think bitcoin will get passed this and continue back on the right path of advancing the technology.

[BitUsher]

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hardfork_Wishlist
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Softfork_wishlist

[mirana12345]

There's no doubt imho, that bitcoin will take some new features in the future , and make a hard fork, and i don't really see any reason
why it should not do that. Any change for the better, and optimizations, are most certainly welcome.

The problem is that you need majority of the network to make it so, and judging by the recent debates, that is not as easy as you would think.
The only parts where i would draw the line is cap. limit and fee and block reward structure as those are the core elements that should not be changed, ever.

[pawel7777]

yep - this block size debate/war/issue sure is getting ugly..

And if it has taken a war of this magnitude to change one number, I can see why people are cautious about thinking that anything even remotely more complicated will ever be introduced..

But - I think we are learning a lot, about the nature of the btc beast, and this may pave the way for smoother less fractious transitions in the future.

One would hope, at least.

I suppose in theory bitcoin could steal a lot of what other altcoins offer so that it remains ther master coin but with all the dramas involved around "simply increasing" the block size you can imagine how much more there would be for adding fancy features. It would be good though.

And this is the problem what many people don't seem to understand.
It's not about just increasing the block size. It is about scaling!
And scaling is much more than just an increase of the block size.Things should be done properly and not in a rush.
And beside all that it also became a political thing. Tough times.

That's not an argument, core devs also see the need of scaling, proposing segwit in near future and LN later on. This debate is bit more complex than simple "to scale or not to scale?"

[franky1]

if core (blockstR3am) just added in the 2mb buffer with their april update there would be no debate and everyone would be happy, and there would be extra features too

[alani123]

Unlikely, bitcoin classic is looking to actually take away useful features. Like sidechains, segwit and RBF. All those projects with great potential, bitcoin classic is one fork with vested interest into making them fail.

[pawel7777]

Unlikely, bitcoin classic is looking to actually take away useful features. Like sidechains, segwit and RBF. All those projects with great potential, bitcoin classic is one fork with vested interest into making them fail.

How exactly are they taking the segwit and sidechains away?

[BitUsher]

if core (blockstR3am) just added in the 2mb buffer with their april update there would be no debate and everyone would be happy, and there would be extra features too

I was under the impression they are already adding a 1.75-2MB "buffer" in April. Are you now advocating for the need of 4MB instead? Should we fork Classic and increase maxBlockSize to 4MB now?

[RustyNoman]

It would be nice to fork in some fancy features but at this point i just want to get this block debate out of the way and onto bigger blocks or whatever it is thats decided. From their on in maybe we could start worrying about better features.

We can do a very simple hard fork. No other new features apart from the 2MB block size. We can plan the hardfork date three month in advance to give people enough warning.

[alani123]

Unlikely, bitcoin classic is looking to actually take away useful features. Like sidechains, segwit and RBF. All those projects with great potential, bitcoin classic is one fork with vested interest into making them fail.

How exactly are they taking the segwit and sidechains away?

Would invest in building a multi billion dollar venture on a distributed ledger that would go through schisms every time there was a debate and some propaganda?

[franky1]

if core (blockstR3am) just added in the 2mb buffer with their april update there would be no debate and everyone would be happy, and there would be extra features too

I was under the impression they are already adding a 1.75-2MB "buffer" in April. Are you now advocating for the need of 4MB instead? Should we fork Classic and increase maxBlockSize to 4MB now?

no.. thats a misdirect.. they are switchin data around into 2 blocks. the main block and the witness block.. but.. here is the kicker.. all the other features of blockstream will add more data to the main block that the moving of signatures meant to have saved.

for instance a signature is less data saved than the 250bytes of data that a payment code would have in the main blockchain.
so the average transactions size of a 2009-2015 tx would be less data. than a 2016 segwit confidential transaction.

take for instance a very laymans tx (dont knit pick. its for simple demo purposes and not real data lengths or real data)

{TXID:0123456790ABCDEF
IN[TXID:ABCDEF0123456790,sig:a0b1c2d345e67f89]
OUT[address:1Ar4nd0m4ddr3ss,value:100000000]
}
lets say this very layman tx is 116 characters

with segwit it would be
mainblock
{TXID:0123456790ABCDEF
IN[TXID:ABCDEF0123456790]
OUT[address:1Ar4nd0m4ddr3ss,value:100000000]
}
now 95 characters(blockstreamers utopian promise of less data.. but).. PLUS
witness
{TXID:0123456790ABCDEF
0:a0b1c2d345e67f89
}
44 characters. (totalling 139)as the witness merkle needs the TXID and an index to be able to refer back to the mainblock tx and the mainblock tx needs to refer to the witness merkle

then ontop.. lets start thinking about the new features, eg confidential transactions would turn a segwit FULL ARCHIVAL DATA transaction into
{TXID:0123456790ABCDEF
IN[TXID:ABCDEF0123456790]
OUT[address:1Ar4nd0m4ddr3ss,value:PC1234567890987654321abcdeffedcba]
}
{TXID:0123456790ABCDEF
0:a0b1c2d345e67f89
}

which in total would be a laymans 119 in the mainblock vs the old 116 in the main block (segwit+confidential fulldata combined=163)

so thats why core needs to set the mainblock limit to 2000000 ASWELL as all their little features.. so that its true capacity increase aswell as features increase.

[pawel7777]

Unlikely, bitcoin classic is looking to actually take away useful features. Like sidechains, segwit and RBF. All those projects with great potential, bitcoin classic is one fork with vested interest into making them fail.

How exactly are they taking the segwit and sidechains away?

Would invest in building a multi billion dollar venture on a distributed ledger that would go through schisms every time there was a debate and some propaganda?

Is that suppose to be an answer to my question, or are you replying to something else?

[BitUsher]

no.. thats a misdirect.. they are switchin data around into 2 blocks. the main block and the witness block.. but.. here is the kicker.. all the other features of blockstream will add more data to the main block that the moving of signatures meant to have saved.

for instance a signature is less data saved than the 250bytes of data that a payment code would have in the main blockchain.
so the average transactions size of a 2009-2015 tx would be less data. than a 2016 segwit confidential transaction.

so thats why core needs to set the mainblock limit to 2000000 ASWELL as all their little features.. so that its true capacity increase aswell as features increase

Are you sure you have done the math correctly ? Core's new "features" requires an additional 2,000,000 bytes of data , or will you be happy if they simply match an effective 2MB of capacity? What about the fact that Segwit allows for signature pruning?

[alani123]

Unlikely, bitcoin classic is looking to actually take away useful features. Like sidechains, segwit and RBF. All those projects with great potential, bitcoin classic is one fork with vested interest into making them fail.

How exactly are they taking the segwit and sidechains away?

Would invest in building a multi billion dollar venture on a distributed ledger that would go through schisms every time there was a debate and some propaganda?

Is that suppose to be an answer to my question, or are you replying to something else?

Rhetorical question but here's a more on-point answer. Gavin included pretty heavy anti-sidecdhain propaganda in promotion of XT. Bashing blockstream was one of the main points in the promotional campaign and still is popular among supporters of bitcoin classic. Handing him control over bitcoin updates would likely make large investors and ventures uninterested in building on bitcoin all together. As of segwit, here's a detailed answer.

[richardsNY]

We already have all the features in Bitcoin that we need. I really can't think of something useful that I want to see gets included in Bitcoin. Maybe faster confirmation times, but this will most likely never be implemented into Bitcoin.