Another NYA signatory bails: Bitso

[ELI85]

This is not a blockchain upgrade. This is a chain split and we are failing to address legitimate safety concerns for the users of this network.

We had ZERO users asking us to keep support for the now dead pre-Byzantium ETH chain. We have tons of users asking us to keep support for their "core" BTC.

Text in Full:

There are few things that are clear to me about this upcoming Fork. But the lack of consensus is definitely one of them. Sorry if I just made you puke Ben.

Given this is a technical mailing list, I would urge everyone to rethink the S2X code from a technical perspective. The code base was written as an upgrade to Bitcoin. I believe there is enough hard data out there to make it clear that S2X is no longer an upgrade.

F2Pool backed down
Slush Pool was never in
ViaBTC said none of their customers are requesting S2X
BTC.top said they will just mine whatever is more profitable

When do we stop and rethink? When we get to less than 50% hashing power?

I know most miners are still signaling NYA on their blocks. There is no cost for doing so and signaling is non-binding. One of the things that was agreed upon at the NYA was better signaling methods - I have seen none so far. Why is this? This makes me uncomfortable.

I am not aware of any BTC liquidity providers that signed the NYA which are abandoning the original chain, which is what happens with a blockchain upgrade (see last month's ETH fork).

Furthermore there are plenty of businesses that will not be supporting S2X.

This is not a blockchain upgrade. This is a chain split.

When we were invited to sign the NYA I saw an opportunity to come together as an industry. Although proud to have signed the NYA - it got segwit activated in a coordinated and safe way (no UASF hell!), I believe the NYA has failed in achieving it's original goal of keeping the community together and advancing the development of Bitcoin in a coordinated manner.

Whether this failure is the fault of some loudmouths in twitter, some trolls in Reddit, or very opinionated and principled engineers and scientists is irrelevant. What's relevant is that NYA has failed to bring the community together and provide a safe mechanism to upgrade Bitcoin as it had intended to do.

I might be stupidly naive or I might just be figuring how decentralized consensus mechanisms work (like many of you, I'd assume), but when asked about signing the NYA I definitely didn't agree to it in order to further divide and cause mayhem, which is what NYA has achieved.

I ultimately think this is about users. We had ZERO users asking us to keep support for the now dead pre-Byzantium ETH chain. We have tons of users asking us to keep support for their "core" BTC.

This is not a blockchain upgrade. This is a chain split and we are failing to address legitimate safety concerns for the users of this network.

Daniel Vogel vogel at bitso.com
Thu Nov 2 15:30:16 UTC 2017

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-segwit2x/2017-November/000632.html

[cellard]

This is not a blockchain upgrade. This is a chain split and we are failing to address legitimate safety concerns for the users of this network.

We had ZERO users asking us to keep support for the now dead pre-Byzantium ETH chain. We have tons of users asking us to keep support for their "core" BTC.

Text in Full:

There are few things that are clear to me about this upcoming Fork. But the lack of consensus is definitely one of them. Sorry if I just made you puke Ben.

Given this is a technical mailing list, I would urge everyone to rethink the S2X code from a technical perspective. The code base was written as an upgrade to Bitcoin. I believe there is enough hard data out there to make it clear that S2X is no longer an upgrade.

F2Pool backed down
Slush Pool was never in
ViaBTC said none of their customers are requesting S2X
BTC.top said they will just mine whatever is more profitable

When do we stop and rethink? When we get to less than 50% hashing power?

I know most miners are still signaling NYA on their blocks. There is no cost for doing so and signaling is non-binding. One of the things that was agreed upon at the NYA was better signaling methods - I have seen none so far. Why is this? This makes me uncomfortable.

I am not aware of any BTC liquidity providers that signed the NYA which are abandoning the original chain, which is what happens with a blockchain upgrade (see last month's ETH fork).

Furthermore there are plenty of businesses that will not be supporting S2X.

This is not a blockchain upgrade. This is a chain split.

When we were invited to sign the NYA I saw an opportunity to come together as an industry. Although proud to have signed the NYA - it got segwit activated in a coordinated and safe way (no UASF hell!), I believe the NYA has failed in achieving it's original goal of keeping the community together and advancing the development of Bitcoin in a coordinated manner.

Whether this failure is the fault of some loudmouths in twitter, some trolls in Reddit, or very opinionated and principled engineers and scientists is irrelevant. What's relevant is that NYA has failed to bring the community together and provide a safe mechanism to upgrade Bitcoin as it had intended to do.

I might be stupidly naive or I might just be figuring how decentralized consensus mechanisms work (like many of you, I'd assume), but when asked about signing the NYA I definitely didn't agree to it in order to further divide and cause mayhem, which is what NYA has achieved.

I ultimately think this is about users. We had ZERO users asking us to keep support for the now dead pre-Byzantium ETH chain. We have tons of users asking us to keep support for their "core" BTC.

This is not a blockchain upgrade. This is a chain split and we are failing to address legitimate safety concerns for the users of this network.

Daniel Vogel vogel at bitso.com
Thu Nov 2 15:30:16 UTC 2017

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-segwit2x/2017-November/000632.html

Indeed, just as I expected... chain reaction is happening. Smart actors are positioning themselves on the right side of history. We've see ViaBTC recently saying this:



Signaling means nothing, and they will not mine 2xcoin. With ViaBTC down, supposed hashrate support for 2x is down to 70%, which will be actually lower in practice as the rest of the idiots still on the 2x clown train realize they will be mining at a loss, but even 70% alone is already a totally insanely low amount of hashrate to pretend to hardfork bitcoin without being responsible of a total mess.

[ELI85]

Today the CEO also penned the following official company blog post
(google trans)

Daniel Vogel
Building Bitcoin in Mexico with @bitso. @stanford CSE & Economics, @quantcast, @harvardhbs MBA
Nov 2   https://blog.bitso.com/planes-para-el-segwit2x-bitcoin-hard-fork-e347117298e8



Plans for the SegWit2x Bitcoin Hard Fork


Users of the Bitso platform do not have to take any action since their BTC funds will be safe.

In this blog post we present detailed information on the current situation of Bitcoin for the benefit and safety of our users.

If you still do not know what a "Fork" is, we recommend you read our blog about Bitcoin Forks.

In Block 494,784 of the Bitcoin block chain will occur a Hard Fork. This will be approximately during the dawn of November 16, 2017. This is a contentious bifurcation (there is no consensus among the players of the network) and the expectation is that two chains will survive. One of the chains will be governed by the code maintained by the Bitcoin Core team and the other will be governed by the code generated by the segwit2x (or btc1) team.

For us it is important to serve our customers and therefore we will support both chains.

Nomenclature

The chain governed by the current Bitcoin rules (and governed by the Bitcoin Core team) will continue to be called Bitcoin (BTC).

The chain governed by the new rules (and governed by the segwit2x team) will be called Bitcoin2x (B2X).

Given the uncertainty of this Hard Fork and the probable unviability of any of the chains, we may decide to change this nomenclature in the future.

Balances

Any user of the Bitso platform that has a balance of BTC will be credited with an equal amount of B2X using as reference the moment of publication of block 494,783 (the last common block of the two chains). The accreditation of these funds may take several hours or days.

Announcements and Retreats of Bitcoin

From the block 494,700 the funding and withdrawals of Bitcoin will be suspended in the Bitso platform. Any funding that is confirmed after block 494,700 will be credited when funding operations resume. The Hard Fork is technically complex due to the lack of "replay protection". This will cause the funds and withdrawals of Bitcoin and Bitcoin2x to remain closed indefinitely until we can summarize them safely.

Markets

Bitso's markets will continue to operate normally. Two new markets will be added after the fork: MXN / B2X and BTC / B2X.


Frequent questions

How do you plan to protect bitcoins if there is no replay protection?

     “There are different ways to ensure that transactions on one side of the fork are invalid on the other side of the fork. At the moment we are planning to use a method called "tainting" to prevent transactions from being valid in both chains, but we are still exploring options.”

I heard there was a fork called Bitcoin Gold, why were not those funds credited?

     “At the time of writing this blog, the Bitcoin Gold code is still not functional. There is no bifurcated blockchain for Bitcoin Gold. For this reason there is no support within Bitso for Bitcoin Gold.”

When will they enable BCH funding and withdrawals?

     “We are working on solving this as soon as possible and we hope to achieve it in the coming days. We will announce in our social networks when these are enabled.”

Thanks to Luis César, Marisol Vargas, Ben Peters, Belen Scaglia, Santiago Creixell, and Ernesto Contreras Escalona.

[Xavofat]

We've see ViaBTC recently saying this:

Note that ViaBTC are coming from a very different angle to most of these other groups that are making choices about SegWit2x.  For most of these groups, it's either BTC or SegWit2x, but in ViaBTC's case BCH is what they primarily support.

With ViaBTC down, supposed hashrate support for 2x is down to 70%

Their original intention was to have a much higher amount of hashrate than that.  I suppose they've got almost nowhere to go but down from here if people keep losing faith.

That said, it looks like the amount of support SegWit2x is losing is still not quite as dramatic as it's being presented.  It's going to require most of the major players, including BITMAIN, to back down for it to become less relevant.  For now, it's still a very significant event and there's not long left to go.

[ELI85]

Their original intention was to have a much higher amount of hashrate than that.  I suppose they've got almost nowhere to go but down from here if people keep losing faith.

That said, it looks like the amount of support SegWit2x is losing is still not quite as dramatic as it's being presented.  It's going to require most of the major players, including BITMAIN, to back down for it to become less relevant.  For now, it's still a very significant event and there's not long left to go.

It is indeed a very significant event.
I'm more interested how significant a threat 2x currently poses.

I find it curious that btc1 node numbers have lately risen considerably, and in a fashion that seems indicative of corporate gaming, not groundswell demand or grassroots preference[I would note J. Lopp's observation that ~800/900 btc1 nodes are running on AWS]. After spending so much time and effort asserting that only hash-rate matters, and full nodes are to be wholly discounted, it seems the prime movers behind 2x are themselves not wholly convinced of their own arguments.

This is something I see as one of the surest signs this thing is DOA.
Perhaps it's all over but the crying?

[squatter]

That said, it looks like the amount of support SegWit2x is losing is still not quite as dramatic as it's being presented.  It's going to require most of the major players, including BITMAIN, to back down for it to become less relevant.  For now, it's still a very significant event and there's not long left to go.

People who are adamantly against 2X jump at every chance to say NYA companies are dropping out, but every time they mention one, it's a company I've never heard of. What the hell is Bitso? Or Wayniloans? Someone page me when BitFlyer, BitPay, Bitmain, Bitfury, Bixin, Blockchain, BTC.com, BTCC, BTC.TOP, Coinbase, ShapeShift, etc. drop out of the agreement.

I find it curious that btc1 node numbers have lately risen considerably, and in a fashion that seems indicative of corporate gaming, not groundswell demand or grassroots preference ...

This is something I see as one of the surest signs this thing is DOA.
Perhaps it's all over but the crying?

Yeah, it's the standard Bitcoin Unlimited or Bitcoin Classic move. Can't make the argument that people are using the network if nodes don't exist, right? That said, I think that people are overly confident that no one will care if a majority of the hash rate leaves the network. They didn't care with BCH -- but in that case, no one was calling BCH "Bitcoin" or giving it the BTC ticker. Bitpay and Shapeshift weren't leaving the network, etc...

[ELI85]

I think you are right here:

...I think that people are overly confident that no one will care if a majority of the hash rate leaves the network.

But I think what matters most is people's anticipation of future value/price of both chains. If their view is that slowed transactions on 1x is just temporary it may have little effect on price. OTOH, as btc1 is already one or two software versions behind Core, and prospects for competent maintenance going forward seem increasingly dubious, it seems reasonable to expect it to trade at a discount to the legacy chain.

Given that hash rate does not directly affect trading on exchanges it seems reasonable to me people may sell whichever chain they don't favor sooner than hash rate can affect the price via people's perception that the legacy chain's tx throughput is a problem that will make it worthless, or worth less than btc1.

I hope my reasoning doesn't seem to muddled.
Anyway, just my 2c.