Coinbase CEO: Core Team is a "Systemic Threat"

[EvanFaggart]

Brian Armstrong went pretty hard on the Core developers and their opinions on the block size. While I'm not so sure turning to a whole new set of developers is the most reasonable solution, I think some more healthy competition against Core would be welcome; keep the developers honest and the protocol dynamic. What do you guys think?

Article link: http://bitcoinist.net/coinbase-ceo-core-team-systematic-threat-to-bitcoin/

[Cconvert2G36]

It's open source code. Nobody is getting hired or fired. The founder outlined the only relevant consensus mechanism:



If there's a group telling you that you need to keep them in power (administered by an unimpeachable priesthood, 'cause contentious), for your safety... best to watch what they do, and not swallow what they say.

[EvanFaggart]

It's open source code. Nobody is getting hired or fired. The founder outlined the only relevant consensus mechanism:

https://i.imgur.com/UxrfOqo.png

If there's a group telling you that you need to keep them in power (administered by an unimpeachable priesthood, 'cause contentious), for your safety... best to watch what they do, and not swallow what they say.

I think this rings true for both sides of the debate. No one should be arguing for the right to control Bitcoin's future, their code should do the talking.

[iCEBREAKER]

I think some more healthy competition against Core would be welcome

You are confusing "healthy" (ie positive-sum) competition among consensus-critical blockchains with unhealthy zero/negative-sum contention within a single consensus-critical blockchain.

Altcoins are Bitcoin's healthy competition.  If Bitcoin isn't competitive we'll use Litecoin, Primecoin, and Monero instead.

Classic and other XT-like governance coup attempts are declarations of a war that only one side can win.

[EvanFaggart]

I think some more healthy competition against Core would be welcome

You are confusing "healthy" (ie positive-sum) competition among consensus-critical blockchains with unhealthy zero/negative-sum contention within a single consensus-critical blockchain.

Altcoins are Bitcoin's healthy competition.  If Bitcoin isn't competitive we'll use Litecoin, Primecoin, and Monero instead.

Classic and other XT-like governance coup attempts are declarations of a war that only one side can win.

I think "healthy" competition can come from both inside and outside of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Internal competition becomes problematic when productive discussion and collaboration devolves into mudslinging, which it too often does.

[Cconvert2G36]

Altcoins are Bitcoin's healthy competition.  If Bitcoin isn't competitive we'll use Litecoin, Primecoin, and Monero instead.

How right you are! See Bitcoiner, your blood, making iCE (kinda) rich, is all part of the grand plan. Contention is a sin, satoshi was wrong, any needed rules and incentives cannot be enforced with this consensus mechanism.

[iCEBREAKER]

I think some more healthy competition against Core would be welcome

You are confusing "healthy" (ie positive-sum) competition among consensus-critical blockchains with unhealthy zero/negative-sum contention within a single consensus-critical blockchain.

Altcoins are Bitcoin's healthy competition.  If Bitcoin isn't competitive we'll use Litecoin, Primecoin, and Monero instead.

Classic and other XT-like governance coup attempts are declarations of a war that only one side can win.

I think "healthy" competition can come from both inside and outside of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Internal competition becomes problematic when productive discussion and collaboration devolves into mudslinging, which it too often does.

You've got it all wrong.  "Mudslinging" is good.  Vigorous debate is the crucible from which truth emerges.  And Bitcoin runs on drama!   

Healthy (ie positive sum) internal competition comes from implementations competing to best preserve/protect/promulgate the critical consensus.  Unhealthy (ie zero-at-best but-probably-negative sum) competition comes from contention-generating hard forks that risk catastrophic consensus failure.

Gmax mapped it out here:

competing implementations are healthy; but the ones that threaten to break protocol are dangerous.

Competing implementations of Bitcoin, such as Litecoin and Primecoin, are called altcoins because they establish their own independent alternative socioeconomic consensuses/majorities.

Hostile implementations of Bitcoin, such as XT and Classic, are declarations of war because they attempt to threaten Bitcoin's existing consensus-critical distributed ledger.

But there are other implementations, like libbitcoin I believe, that aren't altcoins, and are net positives for the Bitcoin ecosystem. Isn't that right?

It gets confusing and idiomatic (esp for non-native speakers) if we have to distinguish between the friendly positive-sum competition of btcd vs the cutthroat zero-sum competition of GavinCoin.

I'd classify other implementations like libbitcoin and bctd as complementary, not competing, in that they all share the same goal of maintaining the One True Holy Ledger.

But let's defer to the core dev, if gmax has a better suggestion for the taxonomy/nomenclature.

Open source software generally both cooperates and competes. Handled well the benefits of the former offset the costs of the latter and the result is a gain for everyone. --- but software differentiating in consensus rules is the worst kind of competition: competition here can deprive users of the practical freedom to use their preferred software, and the fight risks leaving a salted earth in its wake.

This is not completely unheard of outside of consensus systems: A less powerful version of it exists in the form of file format compatibility. Microsoft was a pioneer of business strategy based on making incompatible extensions to formats, first leveraging their network effect and then-- after introducing incompatible changes-- using it against them, an approach they themselves called embrace, extend, extinguish. Worse than zero sum, these kinds of moves can be tremendously damaging overall.

Bitcoin's creator described alternative implementations as a likely "menace to the network"-- words which I think were spoken with an early insight into the incredible difficulty in making distinct software actually consensus compatible even when that is your highest goal, an art our industry is still just learning.  I wish we'd built mechanisms earlier on for better ways to enable diversity in the non-consensus parts without ending up with unintended diversity in the consensus parts.  But we play the hand we're dealt. The potential harms from consensus disagreements from mistakes in re-implementation are tiny in comparison to those from adversarial implementations which intentionally push incompatible rules.

[Cconvert2G36]

I think some more healthy competition against Core would be welcome

You are confusing "healthy" (ie positive-sum) competition among consensus-critical blockchains with unhealthy zero/negative-sum contention within a single consensus-critical blockchain.

Altcoins are Bitcoin's healthy competition.  If Bitcoin isn't competitive we'll use Litecoin, Primecoin, and Monero instead.

Classic and other XT-like governance coup attempts are declarations of a war that only one side can win.

I think "healthy" competition can come from both inside and outside of the Bitcoin ecosystem. Internal competition becomes problematic when productive discussion and collaboration devolves into mudslinging, which it too often does.

You've got it all wrong.  "Mudslinging" is good.  Vigorous debate is the crucible from which truth emerges.  And Bitcoin runs on drama!   

Healthy (ie positive sum) internal competition comes from implementations competing to best preserve/protect/promulgate the critical consensus.  Unhealthy (ie zero-at-best but-probably-negative sum) competition comes from contention-generating hard forks that risk catastrophic consensus failure.

Gmax mapped it out here:

competing implementations are healthy; but the ones that threaten to break protocol are dangerous.

Competing implementations of Bitcoin, such as Litecoin and Primecoin, are called altcoins because they establish their own independent alternative socioeconomic consensuses/majorities.

Hostile implementations of Bitcoin, such as XT and Classic, are declarations of war because they attempt to threaten Bitcoin's existing consensus-critical distributed ledger.

But there are other implementations, like libbitcoin I believe, that aren't altcoins, and are net positives for the Bitcoin ecosystem. Isn't that right?

It gets confusing and idiomatic (esp for non-native speakers) if we have to distinguish between the friendly positive-sum competition of btcd vs the cutthroat zero-sum competition of GavinCoin.

I'd classify other implementations like libbitcoin and bctd as complementary, not competing, in that they all share the same goal of maintaining the One True Holy Ledger.

But let's defer to the core dev, if gmax has a better suggestion for the taxonomy/nomenclature.

Open source software generally both cooperates and competes. Handled well the benefits of the former offset the costs of the latter and the result is a gain for everyone. --- but software differentiating in consensus rules is the worst kind of competition: competition here can deprive users of the practical freedom to use their preferred software, and the fight risks leaving a salted earth in its wake.

This is not completely unheard of outside of consensus systems: A less powerful version of it exists in the form of file format compatibility. Microsoft was a pioneer of business strategy based on making incompatible extensions to formats, first leveraging their network effect and then-- after introducing incompatible changes-- using it against them, an approach they themselves called embrace, extend, extinguish. Worse than zero sum, these kinds of moves can be tremendously damaging overall.

Bitcoin's creator described alternative implementations as a likely "menace to the network"-- words which I think were spoken with an early insight into the incredible difficulty in making distinct software actually consensus compatible even when that is your highest goal, an art our industry is still just learning.  I wish we'd built mechanisms earlier on for better ways to enable diversity in the non-consensus parts without ending up with unintended diversity in the consensus parts.  But we play the hand we're dealt. The potential harms from consensus disagreements from mistakes in re-implementation are tiny in comparison to those from adversarial implementations which intentionally push incompatible rules.

Str8 from the wizard's treehouse... you heard it here folks

[Kprawn]

Brian should stfu and concentrate on his business and leave the development to the people who actually knows something about the subject. He has shown on several previous occasions, that he has

little technical knowledge and he is making a fool of himself. He has been a Gavin supporter from the start, and will keep supporting whatever Gavin does with vigor. His whole business is built on

dictating what people can do and what they cannot do with their money and reporting to the government... Exactly the goals XT and Gavin/Hearn wanted. The Core team is cautious for a reason, and

that is the Billion dollar network they are responsible for. People with little technical knowledge can easily judge, if they do not have that big responsibility.   

[Jet Cash]

I'm starting to get the impression that coinbase is the main threat.

[oltobit]

I'm starting to get the impression that coinbase is the main threat.

It's the core team that is the main threat.

[zmhaha]

Sad to see how Bitcoin is shooting itself in the foot with all of this nonsense.

[Kprawn]

I'm starting to get the impression that coinbase is the main threat.

It's the core team that is the main threat.

Coming from a newbie troll account with 5 posts and no solution or real opinion on the problem.   I would much rather put my faith into a bunch of developers, who have proven that they can put

real solutions on the table and clearly map out the way forward. We have not seen one solution, but several different options from these people. The opposition on the other hand, place one solution on

the table and that solution only address the block size problem. {Let's do a little research, before we post @$!% on the forum} Everyone is so focussed on the Block size that they missing the more

important goal. {securing the network} Scale responsibly...  

[lumeire]

Sad to see how Bitcoin is shooting itself in the foot with all of this nonsense.

It's not entirely non-sense, because providing an alternative and letting the miners do the voting is in a way the most adherent to the libertarian ideologies. Unlike having a single body that solely implements all updates. It's just the manner he's doing it, ecause IMO it's his fault to not have defended what his ideas were to a round table discussion with developers.

[Gleb Gamow]

First the devs were coding for free.

Then they were paid via The Bitcoin Foundation.

Then they left TBF.

Then the devs were getting paid at MIT.

Are they no longer getting paid at MIT?

Color me purple with pink strips.

[Bitcoinpro]

core or classic

[sofu]

Brian Armstrong is the Martin Shkreli of Bitcoin 

[J4mie]

[DimensionZ]

I doubt it the bitcoin devs are working for free. And a healthy competition is always a good thing even though the Core team has been a little bit too self-absorbed.

[Nextgen]

I'm starting to get the impression that coinbase is the main threat.

It's the core team that is the main threat.

Consensus is the main threat to bitcoin and which will never leave it alone.It is just not realistic and there could be no decentralization ever.However, it depends on the intentions of the people who are willing to take control over it.The inventors would obviously never want to lose the control but on the other hand they will always work for the betterment of bitcoin cause its their creation.