Stop fuckin' around, fork the son-of-a-bitch already.

[X7]

Has everyone been casually sitting by ignoring what happened to Ethereums (Mass majority agreed) fork?

It seems as though people see what they want to see... Incredible really, either they're 100's of shill accounts which want to see Bitcoin fall into a pool of confusion and miss direction.

Or people genuinely don't know how to study facts

[illyiller]

But the market seems generally opposed to a hard fork---that's the overall sentiment on social media, the forum, slacks and mailing lists....backed by nodes and miners.

The only way the "market" can truly express itself right now is by moving away from Bitcoin, that is exactly what is happening right now, Bitcoin is losing market share. Splitting the blockchain actually gives the market a much clearer choice, when that happens we will see where the value will flow.

So what happened to that Bitcoin fork that was slated to activate in April? Much excitement on bitco.in if I recall. Funny, no one seems to be talking about it.

Why don't you fork? Is it because that fork failed, and now you must try to lobby miners to leverage their hash power to force a split?

Perhaps it's more important to note that the market can't change the rules of the Bitcoin network---it can only switch to a new network with new tokens. In the process, you'll probably split the community into multiple blockchains.

The market can change the rules of the Bitcoin network, that is one of its fundamental and most important principles, I have already explained why I think that is the case in this thread.

The market can't change the rules of the network. This is a matter of fact. The market could migrate to a different network with different rules. Could you point me to the protocol documentation that suggests changing the consensus rules is "one of its fundamental and most important principles?" Perhaps something from the whitepaper? The whitepaper only talks about the possible need to enforce new rules (and incentives) if needed. That suggests soft forks, not consensus break.

A lot of people (like me) oppose hard forks on principle in the context of a consensus ledger. You're not going to convince us.

We do not need to convince you, you can not stop the hard fork from happening regardless of what you think. You are correct in saying that because of people like you a hard fork by a non Core client would guarantee that the chain will split, I entirely agree, and since nobody can stop a minority from initiating a hard fork the split has become inevitable.

Nobody is trying to stop you. Why are you trying to convince people? If the market is interested, you can fork and the network will follow.

but you will split the network and people like me will make sure you won't have a clean hard fork.

Which is exactly why I think a split has become inevitable, I can respect your position, how come you can not respect mine? We can just go our separate ways, in peace and tolerance.

I have said repeatedly that you should just fork. You were quoting my response to someone else.

There is nothing you can do to stop the split from happening except for compromise. You keep asking how come we have waited this long to initiate the hard fork? It is out of courtesy and respect, and it is in the hope that we can find compromise and agreement so that we can move forward together as one, splitting the chain is a measure of last resort. But it has come to this, we have radically different ideologies on what we think Bitcoin is and what it should become. Therefore it does make sense for these different groups of people to go their separate ways.

Yes, just fork already. I'm tired of hearing about it---you're not going to convince the people who have not budged for the last year. Splitting the network could have disastrous consequences for users and custodians, but the blood will be on the hands of those that initiated the split.

[VeritasSapere]

The price is besides the point here. Thing thing to learn from the Ethereum hard fork is that there were factors that they did not anticipate that would happen. Instead of doing only the hard fork, the original chain lived on and became a competing chain. The effect of it on Ethereum may be minimal because the network is quite young. So yes they have that luxury to make drastic measures. My question is how will this affect a more established blockchain like Bitcoin?

It's called freedom, friendo. A fork, it's the open source way.

It's why little Johnny is better off if Mommy and Daddy (who hate and abuse each other, in front of the investors kids), find separate houses.

Then why don't you fork? Why do people like you just constantly talk about forking, rather than following through? Is it because most of the technical community isn't interested? Is it because you are waiting for miners to pressure opposing users with their hash rate?

I don't see why you guys can't just fork, if not for fear that no one would support your chain. Go ahead and fork; it's the open source way. I'm guessing you won't get very far.

controversial forks (intentional splits) are not good.

that is why THE COMMUNITY wants a CONSENSUAL FORK meaning the majority continue on a single path, but have the upgraded features, higher capacity buffer, where the orphaning mechanism built into bitcoin take care of the minority.

I think me and franky1 differ in opinion about this point, I have come to realize that we are past the point where a non controversial hard fork by a client that is not Core is no longer possible without causing a split in the network because of the particular beliefs of certain participants within the network.

You should look up the meaning of "consensual"....it relates to "consent". The "majority" as you say cannot "consent" for the minority. Consensual means every user agrees, not tyranny of the majority.

I actually agree with you here, which is why splitting the chain is such a graceful solution to this age old problem. It solves the problem of the tyranny of the majority and the tyranny of the minority.

Orphaning is irrelevant here---why would you even mention it? If a hard fork gains the majority of hash rate, the minority just stays on the weaker chain. They can't even see the "longer chain" because it's invalid according to their consensus rules. They just ignore it. Two separate blockchains. This is why there is no such thing as a "majority rule consensual hard fork".

I actually agree with you that there is no such thing as "majority rule consensual hard fork", that is a practical impossibility, unless it can never change, but that can only be achievable by ignoring the splits and attempting to maintain social consensus, that is no guarantee, and in my opinion not a good approach.

However there is such a thing as a non controversial hard fork, where the chain is not split because of there not being any major opposition to the change. I think this is what franky1 is referring to. This is how Ethereum, Monero and Dash have been able to hard fork many times without splitting the chain, Ethereum Classic is the first major split we have seen in cryptocurrency history and Ethereum is doing just fine, it proves to me that this solution is viable. Whether the chain splits or not at least it does give people the freedom of choice over important issues.

It's called freedom, friendo. A fork, it's the open source way.

It's why little Johnny is better off if Mommy and Daddy (who hate and abuse each other, in front of the investors kids), find separate houses.

But you're not advocating finding separate houses, you're casually arguing for the right to evict the legitimate owners and burn the house down.

You have twisted this analogy into something horribly inaccurate.

It would be more accurate to say that in this breakup the house gets copied and mommy and daddy both got a copy of the same house, the kids (investors) then get to choose where they want to live, they can even spend time in both houses, the value of the house is determined by the proportion of kids (investors) that want to stay in each house.

But the market seems generally opposed to a hard fork---that's the overall sentiment on social media, the forum, slacks and mailing lists....backed by nodes and miners.

The only way the "market" can truly express itself right now is by moving away from Bitcoin, that is exactly what is happening right now, Bitcoin is losing market share. Splitting the blockchain actually gives the market a much clearer choice, when that happens we will see where the value will flow.

So what happened to that Bitcoin fork that was slated to activate in April? Much excitement on bitco.in if I recall. Funny, no one seems to be talking about it.

Why don't you fork? Is it because that fork failed, and now you must try to lobby miners to leverage their hash power to force a split?

You do not know what you are talking about, that fork has not even been launched. We did test it on the Bitcoin network, splitting the chain and most people did not even notice, the sky did not fall from the heavens.

Perhaps it's more important to note that the market can't change the rules of the Bitcoin network---it can only switch to a new network with new tokens. In the process, you'll probably split the community into multiple blockchains.

The market can change the rules of the Bitcoin network, that is one of its fundamental and most important principles, I have already explained why I think that is the case in this thread.

The market can't change the rules of the network. This is a matter of fact. The market could migrate to a different network with different rules. Could you point me to the protocol documentation that suggests changing the consensus rules is "one of its fundamental and most important principles?" Perhaps something from the whitepaper? The whitepaper only talks about the possible need to enforce new rules (and incentives) if needed. That suggests soft forks, not consensus break.

That passage in the whitepaper also refers to hard forks, Satoshi even left behind instructions on how to increase the blocksize using a hard fork:

It can be phased in, like:

if (blocknumber > 115000)
    maxblocksize = largerlimit

It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.

When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.

There is nothing you can do to stop the split from happening except for compromise. You keep asking how come we have waited this long to initiate the hard fork? It is out of courtesy and respect, and it is in the hope that we can find compromise and agreement so that we can move forward together as one, splitting the chain is a measure of last resort. But it has come to this, we have radically different ideologies on what we think Bitcoin is and what it should become. Therefore it does make sense for these different groups of people to go their separate ways.

Yes, just fork already. I'm tired of hearing about it---you're not going to convince the people who have not budged for the last year. Splitting the network could have disastrous consequences for users and custodians, but the blood will be on the hands of those that initiated the split.

You claim that it will be a "disaster" yet Ethereum has proven not to be a disaster at all.

If it is possible now for any small minority to split the chain now over any reason and you think this would have disastrous consequences for users. I hope you are not invested in Bitcoin. That would seem like a very fragile network if that was true, I do not think it is, I think that this process of splitting the chain should be considered as part of Bitcoins design, a mechanism to resolve disputes within the network by splitting the network, freedom of choice for all of the participants involved, this is the only way to achieve such a real consensus.

[zimmah]

I have a hypothetical question. Let us pretend that a hard fork indeed happened. For this example let us use BitcoinXT as the new version to be used in the fork. If the hard fork ended up like the one that happened to Ethereum, who is to blame and what should be done? Now we have two Bitcoin chains and both have die hard supporters unwilling to let go for each.

If there is anyone to blame it is the proponents of the hard fork, because they initiated a network split. There is nothing to be done about it. Miners will mine any chain which it is rational to mine on; there's no way to stop miners from securing either chain. And whether it's rational for miners depends on users; there is no way to force users to use one client or the other.

So if users remain on the original chain, the network will likely split and we will permanently have multiple incompatible networks/blockchains. It doesn't matter which chain has more work (POW) because the two networks cannot communicate with one another.

There would not have been a need for a split if people weren't so stubborn as to religiously hold on to an obsolete 1MB blocksize limit.

Other than a mindless fearr of a hard fork, give me 1 solid reason based on logic against a block size increase.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg15366

[Lauda]

Other than a mindless fearr of a hard fork, give me 1 solid reason based on logic against a block size increase.

1) Security risk of a DOS due to quadratic validation problem.
2) No hard fork experience.
3) High risk of damaging merchants and businesses that do not manage to update in time (if the activation parameters are improper such as with Bitcoin Classic).
4) Higher storage cost.
5) Higher bandwidth cost.
Even if we disregard the 4 latter, the primary issue is still the security risk.

[arcanaaerobics]

I really don't think a hard fork is a good move.
Maybe a side-chain or something like that.

And well, we have a lot of good alts over there, bitcoin is not unanimous anymore.

^ this here is the mindset of why bitcoin could lose utility.
yes thats right im talking about function, im talking about using actual bitcoin to buy actual products

in short they dont want to expand bitcoin, instead use an altcoin that has the desired capacity and make bitcoin no longer a functional currency and just an investment

we all know gmaxwell and lauda+chums want monero to rule supreme

and its funnier that they say its us wanting capacity growth purely for the value increase
while they are trying to get monero value to increase by baiting people over to it and turn bitcoin into just an pump and dump reserve.

(every doomsday and argument they can shout out about others is usually exactly what they want themselves)
EG
"big blockers" has been proven to now be the term for the core team, 4mb bigger then 2mb afterall

we are just in the beginning of the blockchain era, there's a lot of things to change, a lot of alts to come in and out.
at the moment bitcoin lovers are on their own bubble just holding and holding for speculation, I don't think it's healthy

the sad history is: some bank(or union of banks) will create a alt and this alt will rule the world, people are slaves of banks right now and always will be

[franky1]

Other than a mindless fearr of a hard fork, give me 1 solid reason based on logic against a block size increase.

1) Security risk of a DOS due to quadratic validation problem.
2) No hard fork experience.
3) High risk of damaging merchants and businesses that do not manage to update in time (if the activation parameters are improper such as with Bitcoin Classic).
4) Higher storage cost.
5) Higher bandwidth cost.
Even if we disregard the 4 latter, the primary issue is still the security risk.

core releasing a 2mb+segwit CONSENSUS version =
1) no quadratics because its 2mb base 4mb weight + all the segwit features including linear validation
2) core make it, so they have experience (unless you now deny their capability(lets see you back track))
3) consensus has long enough time to attain 95% meaning merchants are probably first to vote and be in that 95%. then a grace period, so no problems. merchants care more then anyone about ensuring they have upto date code. they wont be stuck running version 0.10(they already at 0.12 and moving to 0.13)
4)2TB hard drive is not a billion dollars. wake up.
5)hang on.. core proposes 4mb for all their features.. refer to my point 1.. 4mb is still 4mb which we both know is acceptable

wake up lauda stop with the twisted mindset to scare people

[Lauda]

core releasing a 2mb+segwit CONSENSUS version =
-snip-

This is another straw-man attempt again. Nobody was even arguing for this, nor does this refute any of the points that I've made.

wake up lauda stop with the twisted mindset to scare people

You're the one who's in deep sleep around

[franky1]

the sad history is: some bank(or union of banks) will create a alt and this alt will rule the world, people are slaves of banks right now and always will be

thanks(sarcasm) to blythe masters. the banks already are.. RTGS is going to be using crypto currency technology (not quite blockchain more so 'liquids' multisign using cryptography system)

[franky1]

core releasing a 2mb+segwit CONSENSUS version =
-snip-

This is another straw-man attempt again. Nobody was even arguing for this, nor does this refute any of the points that I've made.

no, you, carlton, gmaxwell are not advocating it.. so you pretend its not an option.
but you forget the roundtables, the miners, the merchants and many users not in your fanclub that are wanting it..
mayb i was strong by saying you were asleep. more like u got your fingers in your ears pretending you did not say something or know something u previously said and known

even the roadmap said that segwit would release this summer and the mainblock capacity activated by summer 2017.. you had many discussions about that since 2015 (when it finally got to a general agreement by all those involved at the many roundtables.)

remember you even said segwit first then mainblock increase later.. meaning even you have said it will be a thing in the future..
(though more recently adamback went to a few meetings to deny such.. but luckily luke will hopefully stick to his word)

if your now talking about some doomsday split, then your straw-manning something merchants and miners and users are not advocating since late 2015

[illyiller]

I have a hypothetical question. Let us pretend that a hard fork indeed happened. For this example let us use BitcoinXT as the new version to be used in the fork. If the hard fork ended up like the one that happened to Ethereum, who is to blame and what should be done? Now we have two Bitcoin chains and both have die hard supporters unwilling to let go for each.

If there is anyone to blame it is the proponents of the hard fork, because they initiated a network split. There is nothing to be done about it. Miners will mine any chain which it is rational to mine on; there's no way to stop miners from securing either chain. And whether it's rational for miners depends on users; there is no way to force users to use one client or the other.

So if users remain on the original chain, the network will likely split and we will permanently have multiple incompatible networks/blockchains. It doesn't matter which chain has more work (POW) because the two networks cannot communicate with one another.

There would not have been a need for a split if people weren't so stubborn as to religiously hold on to an obsolete 1MB blocksize limit.

That you refer to us as "religious" shows how biased you are. I could say the very same of you---so obsessed with the idea of hard forking when there are far less risky and more ethical options.

Other than a mindless fearr of a hard fork, give me 1 solid reason based on logic against a block size increase.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg15366

If a fork is miner-activated, this is economic coercion to thwart user consent. Consensus (and breaking consensus, i.e. hard forking) concern ethical issues like this:

When you opt in to the network, you and all participants enforce the consensus rules. This entails rejecting invalid blocks – not abandoning the consensus rules anytime 51% (or 75%) of miners tell you to. Such attempts to break consensus are an attack on the very idea of participating in a consensus network. If a majority of miners can coerce the network into abandoning the rules every user has agreed to, only by virtue of its hash power, then Nick Szabo is correct to call this “technologically equivalent to a 51% attack.”

This is why the idea of economic coercion is so relevant here. Fundamentally threatening the value of a holders’ money is the rational basis for forcing a network migration. “No one wants to be left on the minority chain” means specifically that miners have ultimately decided, not users. This is why I want to stress to readers that there is no such thing as “majority/minority chains” in a hard fork. There are merely multiple networks.

http://cointimes.tech/2016/08/hard-forks-and-consensus-networks-meta-questions-and-limitations/#comments

I don't think it is "mindless fear" to point to Ethereum's failed hard fork and point out that it permanently split the network. This caused significant losses for custodians---Coinbase lost ETC and still hasn't repaid their customers. BTC-E was replay attacked and lost all of their customers' ETC; they won't be repaying it. The results would have been disastrous if Kraken and Poloniex didn't have the foresight to ignore the Ethereum Foundation's advice to ignore ETC and not repay their customers their money. Replay attacks were commonplace, and many users lost money in trying to spend on only one chain or the other. Bitcoin is actually in a far worse position for this than Ethereum---no one uses Ethereum for virtually anything. It's a bloatchain full of "hello, world." It's hardly used for merchant payments, cross-border payments, and there is hardly an economy to speak of. The losses incurred by users and custodians in a failed Bitcoin hard fork could be far worse than in Ethereum. Further, Ethereum doesn't even have a finite supply limit (and is widely viewed not as a store of value). The effects of splitting the Bitcoin network and increasing the supply of "bitcoins" across multiple blockchains could be far worse for Bitcoin's value proposition than a network split in Ethereum.

The sigops issue is a DOS attack vector. For example, a malicious miner can essentially force the network to get collectively stuck validating a single block for many minutes. Here's the worst at 1MB: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3cgft7/largest_transaction_ever_mined_999657_kb_consumes/csvahzn

Forcing increased throughput on nodes without backward compatibility is a node centralization issue: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1344522.msg13915026#msg13915026

Forcing increased throughput on miners without effective latency mitigation is a miner centralization issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin_devlist/comments/3bsvm9/mining_centralization_pressure_from_nonuniform/

More generally, I support demand for block space outpacing capacity, to prevent the worst-case scenarios concerning ineffective fee markets: https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/2015-08-25/?msg=48126773&page=3

Storage costs are a concern as well in the context of unlimited block size, but a lesser one. But the general point is that increasing resource usage without scaling mechanisms makes nodes and miners drop off the network. So if we are dead set on increasing capacity, we should do it in a backward compatible way. This has the added benefit of not splitting the network.....

[VeritasSapere]

I don't think it is "mindless fear" to point to Ethereum's failed hard fork and point out that it permanently split the network. This caused significant losses for custodians---Coinbase lost ETC and still hasn't repaid their customers. BTC-E was replay attacked and lost all of their customers' ETC; they won't be repaying it. The results would have been disastrous if Kraken and Poloniex didn't have the foresight to ignore the Ethereum Foundation's advice to ignore ETC and not repay their customers their money. Replay attacks were commonplace, and many users lost money in trying to spend on only one chain or the other.

Seems like mindless fear to me, the replay attack has been fixed on all of the proposed Bitcoin forks, it is rather trivial to fix actually. The ethereum foundation purposely decided not to fix this particular issue, I thought that was a mistake. Splitting Bitcoin as a minority would not cause such problems at all, custodians also need to be more responsible in such a situation and take it into account. Some of those custodians simply just did not believe ETC would survive, now we know better.

The effects of splitting the Bitcoin network and increasing the supply of "bitcoins" across multiple blockchains could be far worse for Bitcoin's value proposition than a network split in Ethereum.

Splitting the network does not worsen Bitcoins value proposition, since the share of total Bitcoins remains the same across all chains for investors, which means it does not create any type of monetary inflation, it protects the value of investors. Furthermore because it is already relatively easy to do this with a small minority it should already be a part of Bitcoins value proposition, if you are not taking this feature into account you are not truly evaluating the value of Bitcoin, for me it actually improves the value proposition of Bitcoin since I perceive this feature as being a crucial part of the governance mechanism.

[illyiller]

I don't think it is "mindless fear" to point to Ethereum's failed hard fork and point out that it permanently split the network. This caused significant losses for custodians---Coinbase lost ETC and still hasn't repaid their customers. BTC-E was replay attacked and lost all of their customers' ETC; they won't be repaying it. The results would have been disastrous if Kraken and Poloniex didn't have the foresight to ignore the Ethereum Foundation's advice to ignore ETC and not repay their customers their money. Replay attacks were commonplace, and many users lost money in trying to spend on only one chain or the other.

Seems like mindless fear to me, the replay attack has been fixed on all of the proposed Bitcoin forks, it is rather trivial to fix actually. The ethereum foundation purposely decided not to fix this particular issue, I thought that was a mistake. Splitting Bitcoin as a minority would not cause such problems at all, custodians also need to be more responsible in such a situation and take it into account. Some of those custodians simply just did not believe ETC would survive, now we know better.

That's not true. If Classic merges an update to change transaction format (not just add a new transaction format), it will be true for Classic. XT and Unlimited offer no replay protection. This is actually not just a technical issue---many that believe that a clean hard fork (one network) is possible don't want explicit replay protection because it promotes the idea that multiple blockchains will emerge. This was partially why Ethereum did not include replay protection in their fork; they simply assumed the original chain would die. The very idea of including replay protection in a fork is to make both networks viable (i.e. to enforce a network split). In the past, Gavin became quite upset at the suggestion that a hard fork could split the network---I'm curious about his thoughts on this.

Part of the problem in Ethereum is the heavily centralized development under the Ethereum Foundation, which has no public review/consensus mechanism. Vitalik said "let's fork" so mining pool admins ignored their miners, client developers forked their clients by default (no user choice whatsoever) and the fork came from the top-down. This makes user consent very difficult to gauge. Even in this context, Ethereum could not successfully hard fork.

The effects of splitting the Bitcoin network and increasing the supply of "bitcoins" across multiple blockchains could be far worse for Bitcoin's value proposition than a network split in Ethereum.

Splitting the network does not worsen Bitcoins value proposition, since the share of total Bitcoins remains the same across all chains for investors, which means it does not create any type of monetary inflation, it protects the value of investors. Furthermore because it is already relatively easy to do this with a small minority it should already be a part of Bitcoins value proposition, if you are not taking this feature into account you are not truly evaluating the value of Bitcoin, for me it actually improves the value proposition of Bitcoin since I perceive this feature as being a crucial part of the governance mechanism.

Within a particular network, there has not been inflation, but you need to consider public perception and a confused userbase deciding among multiple networks, each with a supply of 21 million BTC. Again, I wonder if you could point to the protocol documentation or description from the whitepaper that suggests that breaking the consensus rules are "a crucial part of the governance mechanism"? Like I said, go ahead and fork....just don't be surprised when no one refers to your fork as Bitcoin.

[Powerbunny]

I think ultimately, decentralising bitcoin has made it difficult to reach consensus. Bit ironic don't you think?

[illyiller]

I think ultimately, decentralising bitcoin has made it difficult to reach consensus. Bit ironic don't you think?

On the contrary, I think that's the whole point. A highly centralized community (perhaps a small community with a "benevolent dictator") could likely pull off a hard fork very easily. A highly decentralized network agrees on only one thing---the consensus rules that every node enforces. They demonstrate consent to those rules by joining the network and running nodes.

The idea that every user in a highly decentralized system is going to agree to change those rules---that's a long shot. The only context I see that working in is where there is a protocol flaw/failure.

[VeritasSapere]

I don't think it is "mindless fear" to point to Ethereum's failed hard fork and point out that it permanently split the network. This caused significant losses for custodians---Coinbase lost ETC and still hasn't repaid their customers. BTC-E was replay attacked and lost all of their customers' ETC; they won't be repaying it. The results would have been disastrous if Kraken and Poloniex didn't have the foresight to ignore the Ethereum Foundation's advice to ignore ETC and not repay their customers their money. Replay attacks were commonplace, and many users lost money in trying to spend on only one chain or the other.

Seems like mindless fear to me, the replay attack has been fixed on all of the proposed Bitcoin forks, it is rather trivial to fix actually. The ethereum foundation purposely decided not to fix this particular issue, I thought that was a mistake. Splitting Bitcoin as a minority would not cause such problems at all, custodians also need to be more responsible in such a situation and take it into account. Some of those custodians simply just did not believe ETC would survive, now we know better.

That's not true. If Classic merges an update to change transaction format (not just add a new transaction format), it will be true for Classic. XT and Unlimited offer no replay protection. This is actually not just a technical issue---many that believe that a clean hard fork (one network) is possible don't want explicit replay protection because it promotes the idea that multiple blockchains will emerge. This was partially why Ethereum did not include replay protection in their fork; they simply assumed the original chain would die. The very idea of including replay protection in a fork is to make both networks viable (i.e. to enforce a network split). In the past, Gavin became quite upset at the suggestion that a hard fork could split the network---I'm curious about his thoughts on this.

I suppose that is why I now support splitting the chain, the alternative chain would simply have alternative clients that support it, solving the replay attack on both networks. I think that you are correct in thinking that a non controversial hard fork is no longer possible unless it is done through Core, who seem unlikely to increase the blocksize limit anytime soon. Therefore the only solution for people like myself who prefer that Bitcoin stays true to the original vision of Satoshi, is splitting the chain, after all Satoshi was a big blockist as well.

While I don't think Bitcoin is practical for smaller micropayments right now, it will eventually be as storage and bandwidth costs continue to fall.  If Bitcoin catches on on a big scale, it may already be the case by that time.  Another way they can become more practical is if I implement client-only mode and the number of network nodes consolidates into a smaller number of professional server farms.  Whatever size micropayments you need will eventually be practical.  I think in 5 or 10 years, the bandwidth and storage will seem trivial.

Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe for users to use Simplified Payment Verification (section Cool to check for double spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or about 12KB per day.  Only people trying to create new coins would need to run network nodes.  At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware.

The eventual solution will be to not care how big it gets.

But for now, while it’s still small, it’s nice to keep it small so new users can get going faster. When I eventually implement client-only mode, that won’t matter much anymore.

The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale. That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server. The design supports letting users just be users.

The threshold can easily be changed in the future.  We can decide to increase it when the time comes.  It's a good idea to keep it lower as a circuit breaker and increase it as needed.  If we hit the threshold now, it would almost certainly be some kind of flood and not actual use.  Keeping the threshold lower would help limit the amount of wasted disk space in that event.

Part of the problem in Ethereum is the heavily centralized development under the Ethereum Foundation, which has no public review/consensus mechanism. Vitalik said "let's fork" so mining pool admins ignored their miners, client developers forked their clients by default (no user choice whatsoever) and the fork came from the top-down. This makes user consent very difficult to gauge. Even in this context, Ethereum could not successfully hard fork.

Ethereum presently has the same consensus mechanism as Bitcoin, users can choose to use Ethereum Classic instead, this is what gives people the freedom of choice, that is part of the consensus mechanism of Bitcoin as well and soon this will happen to the Bitcoin network as well.

The effects of splitting the Bitcoin network and increasing the supply of "bitcoins" across multiple blockchains could be far worse for Bitcoin's value proposition than a network split in Ethereum.

Splitting the network does not worsen Bitcoins value proposition, since the share of total Bitcoins remains the same across all chains for investors, which means it does not create any type of monetary inflation, it protects the value of investors. Furthermore because it is already relatively easy to do this with a small minority it should already be a part of Bitcoins value proposition, if you are not taking this feature into account you are not truly evaluating the value of Bitcoin, for me it actually improves the value proposition of Bitcoin since I perceive this feature as being a crucial part of the governance mechanism.

Within a particular network, there has not been inflation, but you need to consider public perception and a confused userbase deciding among multiple networks, each with a supply of 21 million BTC. Again, I wonder if you could point to the protocol documentation or description from the whitepaper that suggests that breaking the consensus rules are "a crucial part of the governance mechanism"? Like I said, go ahead and fork....just don't be surprised when no one refers to your fork as Bitcoin.

Exactly, a confused user base does not change the fact that investors are still protected under such a mechanism. Not everything is in the whitepaper, but the consequences and reality of the rules that exists are within the code and the world for all to see. Because this is possible, it should be considered as part of the design of Bitcoin itself and considered inevitable from happening, especially considering the nature of human behavior.

[franky1]

seems like people are still confused and use ethereum as a domsday for bitcoin.

a consensual vote for changes to bitcoin can happen, it wont cause a second coin because orphans will take care of the minority that didnt upgrade.
things like a 1000 block voting period to get 95% of nodes ready.. and a 2-6month grace also helps the remaining 5% get ready
thus affecting well under 5% when finally activated

as for ethereums controversial split. this was not simply changing the rules.. because as i said orphans would sort out the minority after activation
ethereum INTENTIONALLY chose to make an altcoin
reference:

Code:

 --oppose-dao-fork

meaning orphans wouldnt ever have settled a winning chain and killing off the other.

this is because the reference literally blacklisted nodes apart depending on which chain they wanted and ensured they didnt orphan each other out by ensuring they didnt talk to each other.

in short: changing the rules creates orphans, blacklisting nodes creates alts.

remember in a consensual upgrade, it requires 95% to upgrade BEFORE the grace period rolls.
if it doesnt get 95% the grace period doesnt start meaning nothing changes.

changes only happen if the majority want it and then even at 95% vote extra time is given for those reluctant few to realise they will be left orphaning blocks. thus that 5% will upgrade too(eventually)

if you want to create a intentional bitcoin fork you need a blacklisting feature to ensure the two opposing rules dont orphan the minority, because they are not communicating to be able to

[Lauda]

no, you, carlton, gmaxwell are not advocating it.. so you pretend its not an option.

No. The 3 people that you've listed have no connection to each other whatsoever.

but you forget the roundtables, the miners, the merchants and many users not in your fanclub that are wanting it..

Pretty much everyone reasonable, and non delusional is currently supporting Core.

mayb i was strong by saying you were asleep. more like u got your fingers in your ears pretending you did not say something or know something u previously said and known

Not an argument, but rather ad hominem.

even the roadmap said that segwit would release this summer and the mainblock capacity activated by summer 2017.. you had many discussions about that since 2015 (when it finally got to a general agreement by all those involved at the many roundtables.)

Irrelevant.

if your now talking about some doomsday split, then your straw-manning something merchants and miners and users are not advocating since late 2015

That's because someone like you, who's knowledge is obviously limited, does not understand the deployment of new software on large scale businesses. You'd probably be fine with a 28d grace period.

[franky1]

That's because someone like you, who's knowledge is obviously limited, does not understand the deployment of new software on large scale businesses. You'd probably be fine with a 28d grace period.

grand scale?
theres only 6000 nodes..not 600k, not 6mill, not 6 billion... just 6000 (which only ~ 5500 are active at any one time)

and by the way, you yourself dont even know C++* and a few other languages, you have been proven to lack understanding of programming on many occasions. and now you pretend to think you are an expert about the ability of just 300 people upgrading in 6 months

here is some lessons about the 6000 nodes
1. 5700 nodes would be upgraded just to trigger the 95% benchmark
this trigger wont occur tomorrow. it would occur AFTER 95% of the community get a chance to review the code, run the code, see its ok, and then be part of the consensus process.
which would require all 5700 to be running the vetted and checked software at the same point for a certain period.

2. 300 nodes (5%) then have 2-6months to move across, to give them a little more time to vet and check the software.
again its not some BIG billion different computers that need to be upgraded.. essentially the grace period is just waiting for 300 nodes..

but here is the funny part.
all 6000 full nodes are running as full nodes instead lite nodes for a reason. so its not like they dont care about bitcoin. they will want to stay relevant and part of the validation process, otherwise they would have stopped running their full node and just done something like setup a blockchain.info account. or downloaded multibit instead. and not be part of the network.

but because they are obviously a full node, they will obviously be more alert to things going on in bitcoin and so be a little bit more proactive then you presume people running nodes are.

*i refrained from embarrassing you by quoting your admissions of lack of programming knowledge. im sure you remember me quoting them before

[Lauda]

grand scale?
theres only 6000 nodes..not 600k, not 6mill, not 6 billion... just 6000 (which only ~ 5500 are active at any one time)

The number of nodes has nothing to do with the size of the infrastructure of a singular business. They can be fine running 1 node, or even running none. In addition to that, just because Core has updated to 0.xx.xx that does not mean that a business, running a custom implementation can update within a particular time frame.

and by the way, you yourself dont even know C++* and a few other languages, you have been proven to lack understanding of programming on many occasions

Pure ad hominem. While the first statement is correct, as I don't do "C++", the secondary is false. In addition to that, not knowing a programming language has nothing to do with the argument that I'm creating.

here is some lessons about the 6000 nodes
1. 5700 nodes would be upgraded just to trigger the 95% benchmark
2. 300 nodes (5%) then have 2-6months to move across, to give them a little more time to vet and check the software.

This is all completely false, and useless to read. The number of nodes updating has nothing to do with HF activation parameters.

i refrained from embarrassing you by quoting your admissions of lack of programming knowledge.

Said the person attempting to undermine someone's argument with pure ad hominem, in addition to lacking the same knowledge yourself.