6 Interesting Points from Jihan Wu Future of Bitcoin Speech

[Ucy]

Have heard Jihan Wu mentioned many times in Crypto Articles but I haven't really find time to research what he ACTUALLY stands for as they usually turn out to be the opposite of what they preach. .

So from the link below he delivered a speech at a Bitcoin conference in Netherlands, titled:
“Why Multiple Implementations are Quite Important for Bitcoin.”
https://news.bitcoin.com/jihan-wu-talks-about-obedience-to-authority-in-the-cryptocurrency-space/

Here are 6 points from his Speech I find very interesting:


1. crypto-project founders could potentially be tyrants or dictators.

2. Tyranny crops up partly as a result of human nature, and  human tendency to be obedient to authority. There is a readiness for human beings to obey others. (See Stanley Milgram ‘s Obedience to Authority Experiment. https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html )


3. Humans have inbuilt biases, such as the the Halo Effect. This means that if people have a certain quality or impression, then other contributors and people may be more likely to follow them: the Bandwagon effect. In this psychological effect, people are likely to follow the crowd or follow people merely because they are doing it.
All of these are social dynamic effects that everyone in the cryptocurrency ecosystem has to be wary of, lest we end up following a ruler in the form of a developer or programmer.

5. A Crypto Tyrant could wake up one day and decide to alter a code, no one questions the move and he does it multiple times. This is something that has to be watched, even if he/she is the creator.

5. In order to solve this problem of protocol tyranny and hijacked implementations, Wu suggested that for the future of bitcoin to remain beautiful and grow, the community will need multiple implementations.


6. FINALLY.  Bitcoin has missed many great innovations, including smart contracts and the creation of decentralized exchanges. a community bitcoin is a little late to the game in regards to innovation.
The reason why bitcoin has missed these innovations is because some bitcoiners, trash new innovations by always calling them scammy or leveling other judgmental critiques. Getting the community outside of the follower mentality and convincing them to accept the possibility of innovation through multiple implementations will provide the network and ecosystem with the room to grow and thrive.

[The One]

Have heard Jihan Wu mentioned many times in Crypto Articles but I haven't really find time to research what he ACTUALLY stands for as they usually turn out to be the opposite of what they preach. .

So from the link below he delivered a speech at a Bitcoin conference in Netherlands, titled:
“Why Multiple Implementations are Quite Important for Bitcoin.”
https://news.bitcoin.com/jihan-wu-talks-about-obedience-to-authority-in-the-cryptocurrency-space/

Here are 6 points from his Speech I find very interesting:


1. crypto-project founders could potentially be tyrants or dictators.

2. Tyranny crops up partly as a result of human nature, and  human tendency to be obedient to authority. There is a readiness for human beings to obey others. (See Stanley Milgram ‘s Obedience to Authority Experiment. https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html )


3. Humans have inbuilt biases, such as the the Halo Effect. This means that if people have a certain quality or impression, then other contributors and people may be more likely to follow them: the Bandwagon effect. In this psychological effect, people are likely to follow the crowd or follow people merely because they are doing it.
All of these are social dynamic effects that everyone in the cryptocurrency ecosystem has to be wary of, lest we end up following a ruler in the form of a developer or programmer.

5. A Crypto Tyrant could wake up one day and decide to alter a code, no one questions the move and he does it multiple times. This is something that has to be watched, even if he/she is the creator.

5. In order to solve this problem of protocol tyranny and hijacked implementations, Wu suggested that for the future of bitcoin to remain beautiful and grow, the community will need multiple implementations.


6. FINALLY.  Bitcoin has missed many great innovations, including smart contracts and the creation of decentralized exchanges. a community bitcoin is a little late to the game in regards to innovation.
The reason why bitcoin has missed these innovations is because some bitcoiners, trash new innovations by always calling them scammy or leveling other judgmental critiques. Getting the community outside of the follower mentality and convincing them to accept the possibility of innovation through multiple implementations will provide the network and ecosystem with the room to grow and thrive.

I agree with this. Too many, i suspect, are no experts in codings, I am not either, and quite simply just put blind faith and trust in Core. This blind faith means shitty fees system is now enabled without opposition, but now users see the shitty fees system in practise and started complaining. Segwit was a step too far from Core and a "civil war" erupted and brought many users to pay more attention to what Core is sneaking pass without their knowledge. Perhaps from now on many users will be paying more attention rather than blind faith.

[Iranus]

5. In order to solve this problem of protocol tyranny and hijacked implementations, Wu suggested that for the future of bitcoin to remain beautiful and grow, the community will need multiple implementations.

Satoshi was against multiple implementations.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195.msg1611#msg1611.

I don't believe that we should religiously follow everything that satoshi says, but I've seen a lot of people like jonald_fyookball talk about satoshi's support of larger blocks, so I thought I'd throw it right back.

If the second version screwed up, the user experience would reflect badly on both, although it would at least reinforce to users the importance of staying with the official version.

[satoshforever]

There's a huge difference between a dictatorship and a single implementation. Who is Bitcoin's dictator today? I'd argue that there is none

[pedrog]

The reason why bitcoin has missed these innovations is because some bitcoiners

Well, it's hard to innovate when miners are blocking upgrades...

When I read the title I imagine it was implementations like btcd, Bitcore, bitcoinfs and so on, but he is just bitching about some random shit.

Wanna know about bitcoin scaling and innovation check out this thread:

https://twitter.com/jfnewbery/status/883001356168167425

[hv_]

The reason why bitcoin has missed these innovations is because some bitcoiners

Well, it's hard to innovate when miners are blocking upgrades...

When I read the title I imagine it was implementations like btcd, Bitcore, bitcoinfs and so on, but he is just bitching about some random shit.

Wanna know about bitcoin scaling and innovation check out this thread:

https://twitter.com/jfnewbery/status/883001356168167425

Well, it is hard to innovate when you are blocking competition like BScore does...

Miners only reakt. Second movers choice.

[jekjekman]

The reason why bitcoin has missed these innovations is because some bitcoiners, trash new innovations by always calling them scammy or leveling other judgmental critiques. Getting the community outside of the follower mentality and convincing them to accept the possibility of innovation through multiple implementations will provide the network and ecosystem with the room to grow and thrive.

I am totally agreeing with this statement.

Many of Bitcoin enthusiast(pioneers), Miners, Developers, Users etc. are too afraid of changes even though it is for a common good(not all of course).

I know that many of us is skeptical about things that is new but other people tend to pretend to be concern just for the sake of their own, what I mean is the political side behind the Bitcoin's growth because many speakers or with positions make themselves or acting like they are in charge and they know what will happen if they implement this or that and at the end there is no better solutions that is being implemented.

I Think this is the downside of being decentralized.

[gentlemand]

I am totally agreeing with this statement.

Many of Bitcoin enthusiast(pioneers), Miners, Developers, Users etc. are too afraid of changes even though it is for a common good(not all of course).

I know that many of us is skeptical about things that is new but other people tend to pretend to be concern just for the sake of their own, what I mean is the political side behind the Bitcoin's growth because many speakers or with positions make themselves or acting like they are in charge and they know what will happen if they implement this or that and at the end there is no better solutions that is being implemented.

I Think this is the downside of being decentralized.

None of that matters for some alt. All it is is some alt. Many take the view that Bitcoin can't afford to mangle itself in the pursuit of bells and whistles.

Perhaps that's been taken too far now.

All I'm taking away from this speech are the words - pot, kettle and black.

I'll be getting rid if we end up with a Bitcoin controlled by this guy.

[andrei56]

About the sixth point, personally I think bitcoin should not try to become of all of that, let other cryptos  do that, in a way that reminds me of The Simpson's, the episode where Homer finds his lost brother and designs his own car, and he adds so many things to it that look ridiculous, that is something bitcoin must avoid.  

[pedrog]

The reason why bitcoin has missed these innovations is because some bitcoiners

Well, it's hard to innovate when miners are blocking upgrades...

When I read the title I imagine it was implementations like btcd, Bitcore, bitcoinfs and so on, but he is just bitching about some random shit.

Wanna know about bitcoin scaling and innovation check out this thread:

https://twitter.com/jfnewbery/status/883001356168167425

Well, it is hard to innovate when you are blocking competition like BScore does...

Miners only reakt. Second movers choice.

It's free open source software, anyone can submit their contribution, if the code is crap of course it won't be approved, there are standards and procedures in place, will it be Linux, Wordpress, GNU, everyone can submit code and everyone can fork the code.

[hv_]

The reason why bitcoin has missed these innovations is because some bitcoiners

Well, it's hard to innovate when miners are blocking upgrades...

When I read the title I imagine it was implementations like btcd, Bitcore, bitcoinfs and so on, but he is just bitching about some random shit.

Wanna know about bitcoin scaling and innovation check out this thread:

https://twitter.com/jfnewbery/status/883001356168167425

Well, it is hard to innovate when you are blocking competition like BScore does...

Miners only reakt. Second movers choice.

It's free open source software, anyone can submit their contribution, if the code is crap of course it won't be approved, there are standards and procedures in place, will it be Linux, Wordpress, GNU, everyone can submit code and everyone can fork the code.

Sure. But you are treated like the last idiot by some legends here if you do and openly support others than BScore.
It should be treated like using a different exchange or wallet. So we have still some work to do and open all  minds for more clients.

[BillyBobZorton]

6. FINALLY.  Bitcoin has missed many great innovations, including smart contracts and the creation of decentralized exchanges. a community bitcoin is a little late to the game in regards to innovation.
The reason why bitcoin has missed these innovations is because some bitcoiners, trash new innovations by always calling them scammy or leveling other judgmental critiques. Getting the community outside of the follower mentality and convincing them to accept the possibility of innovation through multiple implementations will provide the network and ecosystem with the room to grow and thrive.

Started reading the points backward because I felt like it, and I already find bullshit on Jihan's words. The only reason innovations have been blocked is because the miners (Jihan Wu mostly since he controls an insane amount of hashrate through different pools and mining gear monopoly) is due blockcing segwit activation. Had we activated BIP141 already months ago, we would be enjoying all the technical improvements of segwit, but instead the dumbasses are pushing for a hardfork that will kill the price, the community, and the best devs in the game will probably abandon the project because it's a waste of time at that point (who the fuck wants 2 bitcoins? have fun trying to explain people if they should buy bitcoin 1 or bitcoin 2)

This is so fucking stupid. Jihan Wu is a cancer for bitcoin, and the idiots that have let mining pools develop (something that satoshi never predicted) did a big mistake by alloying this. Now the longer we stay without changing PoW, the worse.

[Cuber Krypton]

5. In order to solve this problem of protocol tyranny and hijacked implementations, Wu suggested that for the future of bitcoin to remain beautiful and grow, the community will need multiple implementations.

Satoshi was against multiple implementations.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195.msg1611#msg1611.

I don't believe that we should religiously follow everything that satoshi says, but I've seen a lot of people like jonald_fyookball talk about satoshi's support of larger blocks, so I thought I'd throw it right back.

If the second version screwed up, the user experience would reflect badly on both, although it would at least reinforce to users the importance of staying with the official version.

He did say this before your quote:

"A second version would be a massive development and maintenance hassle for me.  It's hard enough maintaining backward compatibility while upgrading the network without a second version locking things in.  If the second version screwed up, the user experience would reflect badly on both, although it would at least reinforce to users the importance of staying with the official version.  If someone was getting ready to fork a second version, I would have to air a lot of disclaimers about the risks of using a minority version.  This is a design where the majority version wins if there's any disagreement, and that can be pretty ugly for the minority version and I'd rather not go into it, and I don't have to as long as there's only one version."

We are way past this phase and it is not uncommon for Protocols to have multiple implementations.

Although I think Satoshi laid out as many ground as he could, and very well at that, of course he couldn't predict everything.

That said, it is as sound an argument as saying 1 MB blocksize limit was Satoshi's vision and the true Bitcoin vision of one person one node.

This Satoshi arguments don't serve anyone.

 

[d5000]

Multiple implementations are OK for me, but one should be very careful to not create multiple incompatible protocols, a.k.a. chain splits.

Governance is an unsolved problem in Bitcoin as of now. In every project, there is a path to decide how to let evolve the protocol. This path can be chaotic - let everyone do/develop what he wants - or organized, like it is intended with BIPs.

For me, the current governance model is too intransparent. Game theory behind Bitcoin gives "the economy" the power to decide the path to follow - e.g. if most economic nodes do not like a development decision, they can choose to not adopt the code, and they can even fore miners to play fair. But there is no way to reliably know the current "state" of the approval of development decisions by "the economy". So the actors have to take decisions in the dust (with only some unreliable statistics like those on https://coin.dance to follow) : nobody knows if he is following the winning horse or the loser, and that is how "chain split" scenarios like in the actual scaling debate emerge: both groups are thinking "they're right" but they don't know if they really have support - if one side knew it had less support than expected, they would have an incentive to retire their proposal, before a split scenario can emerge.

That is why for me the ideal would be a kind of Proof of Stake vote mechanism, where "the economy" could vote for or against a protocol development decision, in case of a conflict. It would, however, need code changes - or rely on centralized third parties, so I don't know if it's a realistic scenario.

[cnmgfb]

best comments:

'Reading all the comments as well as listening to all those people on various conferences is convincing enough to understand what is going on in so called crypto currency world. And maybe it's time for so many of people following this new trend to become sceptic as it should be knowing couple of things:
Cryptocurrencies exist in ecosystem known as Internet. While many of you consider it as independent network for various type of communication(financial, real time communication tool-mobile phones, and other communicational tools, transport etc) it is absolutely very much centrally controlled network, looking from perspective of software and hardware, it does not mater. Claiming that there are mathematical algorithms which are totally independent and unbreakable in such ecosystem is a fairy tale. First of all lets imagine this thing in ecosystem which is using infrastructure build by governments(eventually you need real time cables and other equipment to be installed in order network to be able to function at all). If this is a fact, which undoubtedly it is(correct me if I'm wrong), it means that a most important tool, that enables existence of the network, is under CENTRAL AUTHORITY CONTROL. Do I need to remind you who is Edward Snowdan? Do I need to remind you who is Julian Assange? Did you read any of documents issued in Vault 7 revealed couple of months ago? If authority is able to control software and hardware where do you see decentralization in bitcoin? Oh you mean this romantic idea it will make humans free of control by the government, just by saying it is untraceable(and i is very traceable no need to show examples, you can find them by your self)? Do you believe that anyone in control of monetary system and all the wealth will allow some computer scientist and bunch haha developers to crush down the system, which they control anyway? And in the end Bitcoin as well as other cryptocurrencies are in all their core principles part of the monetary system. The minute you exchange bitcoin for any paper currency you are making it part of a system. If it wasn't part of system why would anyone in his right mind give you any paper currency in exchange for computer algorithm? Because it's unbreakable? Because the transaction is validated and written in a ledger? Bullshit! Every transaction that you make by using a credit card is validated as well otherwise you get shit on your account, or you transfer shit to another person account or business account. Oh transaction fees are less then in banking system. Well wake up today is 2,5 $ and in one year will come to at least 20$ and so on. Calculating this is not so hard. So even that is just a story which will not stand for long. It is valued because the major monetary players have taken their place in the ecosystem and now they are propelling it to sky. As they did with almost anything in monetary system. There is no decentralization in monetary system. The set up of monetary system does not recognise anything but centralised authority as that is the only way to control the system in whole. All this bullshit stories in connection to scalability of Bitcoin and network is just a game. First the mind of mathematician, which essentially you need to be good at in order to become good computer scientist, does not work in a way that it does not pay attention to details. Because accuracy of final result is IMPORTANT TO MATHEMATICIAN. In this regard the one who created bitcoin code and started all of this knew up in front that the system will either crash under same protocol used on large scale or will be upgraded in order to survive. He knew that scarcity is basics for the value. If tomorrow starts raining gold first couple of days you would see madness on streets. But if it would continue to rain for a month you would see people trying to get rid of the shit that is making their life difficult. He also knew that once the value start growing up and once it surpass a value that is standard for what humans are perceiving as ultimate value such as gold, it will become an asset for which will many strive to get to. And in order to get to it you need to engage a paper monetary value. This propels other industries as well. And if you do not see this then you undervalue the power of monetary system and people leading it. You see these days graphic cards are actual gold. As everyone knows they are LACKING in the market. People are PREPAYING FOR THEM EVEN MONTHS IN ADVANCE! What amaze me is that all of us are willingly participate in this game, in which we know who will be the winner. Bitcoin is just another monetary tool that has been used and it is still been tested in order to switch paper currency world in next couple of years. AND IT WILL BE CENTRALIZED AND CONTROLLED BY THE GOVERNMENT, otherwise it will disappear. Be very careful with what ever assets you have. Do not invest everything and on large scale except if you play with money you have earned after you return your invested assets.!!!

[hv_]

Thx. i was not even close grasping half of that ....

[BillyBobZorton]

5. In order to solve this problem of protocol tyranny and hijacked implementations, Wu suggested that for the future of bitcoin to remain beautiful and grow, the community will need multiple implementations.

Satoshi was against multiple implementations.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=195.msg1611#msg1611.

I don't believe that we should religiously follow everything that satoshi says, but I've seen a lot of people like jonald_fyookball talk about satoshi's support of larger blocks, so I thought I'd throw it right back.

If the second version screwed up, the user experience would reflect badly on both, although it would at least reinforce to users the importance of staying with the official version.

He did say this before your quote:

"A second version would be a massive development and maintenance hassle for me.  It's hard enough maintaining backward compatibility while upgrading the network without a second version locking things in.  If the second version screwed up, the user experience would reflect badly on both, although it would at least reinforce to users the importance of staying with the official version.  If someone was getting ready to fork a second version, I would have to air a lot of disclaimers about the risks of using a minority version.  This is a design where the majority version wins if there's any disagreement, and that can be pretty ugly for the minority version and I'd rather not go into it, and I don't have to as long as there's only one version."

We are way past this phase and it is not uncommon for Protocols to have multiple implementations.

Although I think Satoshi laid out as many ground as he could, and very well at that, of course he couldn't predict everything.

That said, it is as sound an argument as saying 1 MB blocksize limit was Satoshi's vision and the true Bitcoin vision of one person one node.

This Satoshi arguments don't serve anyone.

 

He also said he has reasons to not want his software forked which you omitted from the quote:

A second version would be a massive development and maintenance hassle for me.  It's hard enough maintaining backward compatibility while upgrading the network without a second version locking things in.  If the second version screwed up, the user experience would reflect badly on both, although it would at least reinforce to users the importance of staying with the official version.  If someone was getting ready to fork a second version, I would have to air a lot of disclaimers about the risks of using a minority version.  This is a design where the majority version wins if there's any disagreement, and that can be pretty ugly for the minority version and I'd rather not go into it, and I don't have to as long as there's only one version.

I know, most developers don't like their software forked, but I have real technical reasons in this case.

This basically means what's being said: Who cares if you create a new implementation, as long as it doesn't fork the network and follows the rules. But not following the rules is a de-facto attack on the network if you want to call that bitcoin, instead of creating your own altcoin. Which is what xt, classic, buglimited and frankensegwit all are: attacks of butthurt people that can't get their shitty code approved in the main branch because it sucks.

[Ucy]

best comments:

' Reading all the comments as well as listening to all those people on various conferences is convincing enough to understand what is going on in so called crypto currency world. And maybe it's time for so many of people following this new trend to become sceptic as it should be knowing couple of things:
Cryptocurrencies exist in ecosystem known as Internet. While ma...  .. pective of software and hardware, it does not mater. Claiming that there are mathematical algorithms which are totally independent and unbreakable in such ecosystem is a fairy tale. First of all lets image...
What amaze me is that all of us are willingly participate in this game, in which we know who will be the winner. Bitcoin is just another monetary tool that has been used and it is still been tested in order to switch paper currency world in next couple of years. AND IT WILL BE CENTRALIZED AND CONTROLLED BY THE GOVERNMENT, otherwise it will disappear. Be very careful with what ever assets you have. Do not invest everything and on large scale except if you play with money you have earned after you return your invested assets.!!!

  Bitcoin is just another monetary tool that has been used and it is still been tested in order to switch paper currency world in next couple of years.

Can you prove this?




AND IT WILL BE CENTRALIZED AND CONTROLLED BY THE GOVERNMENT

Controlled by who? US, Russia, China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Iran, North Korea, India..

China, a country with the most aggressive firewall couldn't even control the Internet 100%. People still access virtually all the banned websites in China. How then could the country control stuff as sophisticated as cryptocurrency.
I don't believe all this countries came to an agreement on the use of Bitcoin in their countries and decide to let it flourish. They simply couldn't control it!!





  otherwise it will disappear.

No.  I doubt this. Bitcoin isn't Blockchain.




You really underestimating people's capacity to resist tyranny

[pedrog]

The reason why bitcoin has missed these innovations is because some bitcoiners

Well, it's hard to innovate when miners are blocking upgrades...

When I read the title I imagine it was implementations like btcd, Bitcore, bitcoinfs and so on, but he is just bitching about some random shit.

Wanna know about bitcoin scaling and innovation check out this thread:

https://twitter.com/jfnewbery/status/883001356168167425

Well, it is hard to innovate when you are blocking competition like BScore does...

Miners only reakt. Second movers choice.

It's free open source software, anyone can submit their contribution, if the code is crap of course it won't be approved, there are standards and procedures in place, will it be Linux, Wordpress, GNU, everyone can submit code and everyone can fork the code.

Sure. But you are treated like the last idiot by some legends here if you do and openly support others than BScore.
It should be treated like using a different exchange or wallet. So we have still some work to do and open all  minds for more clients.

You are free to do whatever you want regardless of what other people say.