If you could hard fork Bitcoin right now, what changes would you make?

[thecodebear]

If you had consensus to make whatever changes you saw fit in Bitcoin right now with a hard fork and the community was 100% behind you, what changes would you make? What improvements do you think Bitcoin needs through a hard fork?

Would you update scaling, security, consensus protocol, programmability/smart contracts, other stuff? Give details.

[1714132418]

1714132418

[AB de Royse777]

I am not a technical guy but I would suggest to work on improving the speed of Tx and have a cap in fees. There are people out there who pays crazy fees and force others to follow them too if the tx is urgent to get at-least one confirmation.

[bitmover]

I think a solution  to make mining less centralized would be interesting. However,  I don't know if that could be technically possible.

I know that just changing to GPU mining it would be centralized again because people would create super GPU's and just a few companies dominate this market (and,nvidia erc)

[20kevin20]

Totally depends on what I'd want it to be: a heavily adopted crypto or just be the "off-grid man's coin". I'd rather choose the latter. Therefore, I wouldn't change much - probably just smaller denomination and the option to go off-grid as in an "incognito mode" (never studied it but I think it's possible). That'd instantly make it become the state's enemy tho.

The more convenient it is, the more people will use it => the heavier regulations are and the harder staying off the track is. I'm personally happy with BTC the way it is right now.

[fiulpro]

If you had consensus to make whatever changes you saw fit in Bitcoin right now with a hard fork and the community was 100% behind you, what changes would you make? What improvements do you think Bitcoin needs through a hard fork?

Would you update scaling, security, consensus protocol, programmability/smart contracts, other stuff? Give details.

1) I do think if something like that happened I would first of all try and solve the upcoming problem that we might have in the future.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5267497.msg54958221#msg54958221

I do think you can try and read this but I would quote some of the part here :

Projected to happen in the year 2106, Bitcoin will suddenly stop running based on the code its network of users is running today. Users won’t be able to send bitcoin to others; miners securing Bitcoin’s global network will no longer serve a purpose. Bitcoin will just stop.

Therefore I do think this would be the first thing that I would go on about.

2) Then I would try and integrate the smart contracts more fiercely in the network

_*_

[Kakmakr]

A hardfork would cause a lot of drama again and I do not think we need that right now. We saw all the drama that happened the last time we forked with Bitcoin Cash.  

If I could make any changes, I would want to somehow split the mining ...so that people with large amounts of hashing power... like mining farms could mine in one Pool with a high difficulty and the smaller guys with much less hashing power could mine with much less difficulty. (Giving the solo miners the opportunity to mine with CPU's and GPU's again.)

That would almost be impossible to implement and it will surely be exploited by the large mining giants... but one can dream... right.  

[OgNasty]

I would add a max blocksize adjustment method similar to how difficulty is adjusted.

[philipma1957]

I would add a max blocksize adjustment method similar to how difficulty is adjusted.

This would allow for a bigger block with more fees that are each lower.

4000 x 0.0001 =  .4 in tx fees

vs 2000 x 0.0002 = .4 in tx fees

  it could work.

Or do no changes at all and encourage 3 coins system to replace fiat

BTC for 10000+ value moves
LTC for 500-9999+ value moves
DOGE for 1-500 value moves

If I could do anything at all I would do the three coin cash system above.

But a flexible block size has merit

[coupable]

I am not a technical guy but i would suggest to focus on the anonymity, as bitcoin's scripting system presented limitations in terms of privacy. Some other cryptocurrencies afford a stronger privacy model than Bitcoin, like Grin and Monero..., so if there a possibility to improve the bitcoin network system by additional features to make it fully anonymous and surpass the fact that it is psydo-anonyme.
Devs working on MimbleWimple protocol discuss this possibility to improve the Bitcoin network as a sidechain solution. See here: https://academy.binance.com/blockchain/what-is-mimblewimble

[franky1]

now devs are happy with 4mb bloat
remove the dodgy math code that segregates and mishandles tx data by not counting certain portions.
this alone causes there to be less true utility for the 4mb space devs now deem as ok
it limits tx scaling. and also causes tx fee mismanagement


if the fear is having a single transaction with legacy signatures to cause linear sigops issue. then limit the amount of sigops per tx
this also solves the bloat block attack of a user making 5 tx to fill a block


also include a good fee formulae that can actually calculate a fair fee
base it on a few factors like awarding more points(discount) if someone puts a timelock of more than X confirm. thus they pay less by actually suggesting they can wait a few blocks.
this in itself can actually indicate who wants rapid confirmation(next block) and who doesnt care so much

its far better to have a block of 10,000 tx paying 0.0001($1) each than a block of 2500 paying 0.0004($4)
more people using it. less costly. miners get same fee reward

[mk4]

Controversial time!

Probably the total supply(including the block rewards of course). Instead of 21,000,000, I'd probably add 3 zeroes just so the price is lower due to the bigger supply. Pretty much just moving the decimal 3 places to the left.

I know this could be seen as unnecessary because we can buy fractions of a bitcoin, but one of the biggest selling points of altcoins like XRP and EOS to the less-knowledgeable people is their "cheap price".

[thecodebear]

Main thing I'd do is get some scaling done. The only reason this hasn't been done yet is because of fear over consensus, even though it must be done at some point for Bitcoin's longevity, otherwise most transactions are just gonna have to eventually move to being centralized and just passing numbers around in databases like banks do now with the legacy fiat system.

Probably something like an immediate 2x or 4x block size increase. And then I'd add in block size increases to occur at each halving, with the size of the increase halving itself. So like next halving would be a 4x increase, then the one after would be 2x, then 1.5x, 1.25x, 1.125x, and so on. This would allow the blockchain to scale transactions quite a bit while still leaving a number of years for network speeds to improve so as to not hurt decentralization in mining too much. Not to mention it would allow Bitcoin to continue operating in a 120 years when mining rewards stop altogether.

Beyond that I'm not really sure what major issues there are in the protocol itself that would need a hard fork. It doesn't need and shouldn't have smart contracts. It doesn't need to change PoW. Maybe something for quantum computing resistance, but I don't know anything about that.

[thecodebear]

Controversial time!

Probably the total supply(including the block rewards of course). Instead of 21,000,000, I'd probably add 3 zeroes just so the price is lower due to the bigger supply. Pretty much just moving the decimal 3 places to the left.

I know this could be seen as unnecessary because we can buy fractions of a bitcoin, but one of the biggest selling points of altcoins like XRP and EOS to the less-knowledgeable people is their "cheap price".

So then would all addresses get the Bitcoin they are holding multiplied by 1000x?

While I can see why you are saying that, because people who don't know anything about it just think about Bitcoin like stock shares, and so think it is too expensive to buy, you'd also then get the problem of anti-bitcoin people then all claiming that Bitcoin supply isn't set in stone and it just got inflated by 1000x, even though technically that wouldn't be true. So you're trading one good optics thing for one bad optics thing. I'd rather just have Bitcoin not make that change. It isn't hard to tell someone that they can buy the tiniest fractions of a bitcoin and don't have to buy an entire one, literally anyone can understand that in like 10 seconds.

[mk4]

So then would all addresses get the Bitcoin they are holding multiplied by 1000x?

While I can see why you are saying that, because people who don't know anything about it just think about Bitcoin like stock shares, and so think it is too expensive to buy, you'd also then get the problem of anti-bitcoin people then all claiming that Bitcoin supply isn't set in stone and it just got inflated by 1000x, even though technically that wouldn't be true. So you're trading one good optics thing for one bad optics thing. I'd rather just have Bitcoin not make that change. It isn't hard to tell someone that they can buy the tiniest fractions of a bitcoin and don't have to buy an entire one, literally anyone can understand that in like 10 seconds.

Oh it's definitely not a flawless "update". About the 1000x inflation, only the total knuckleheads will be arguing that, as I'm pretty sure pretty much every single finance person knows about stock splits.

But yea, it's just a random thought. Definitely not something I would implement(if I could) immediately.

[AB de Royse777]

I think a solution  to make mining less centralized would be interesting. However,  I don't know if that could be technically possible.

Oh this is something should be coming before anything else. Imagine the ecosystem without those big mining farms. It would be better if regular users would be able to mine from home.

I am not a technical guy but i would suggest to focus on the anonymity, as bitcoin's scripting system presented limitations in terms of privacy.

I in fact love this pseudo anonymity. This is one of the great reason for Bitcoin to be used by everyone.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, if everyone reached consensus, and there was a way to scale on-chain, increase on-chain privacy, but not increase the block size? It should be that in my opinion.

[7788bitcoin]

I think a solution  to make mining less centralized would be interesting. However,  I don't know if that could be technically possible.

I know that just changing to GPU mining it would be centralized again because people would create super GPU's and just a few companies dominate this market (and,nvidia erc)

It is impossible to see a decentralized mining space as you need huge capital to run these mining farms and not everyone will be willing to risk to spend the huge capital necessary to maintain these farms, GPU mining will not change anything.

one of the biggest selling points of altcoins like XRP and EOS to the less-knowledgeable people is their "cheap price".

It is a selling point for those coins but it cannot be implemented in bitcoin as it will destroy the market and billions of dollars are at stake and the developers will not mess with that knowing the consequences .

now devs are happy with 4mb bloat
remove the dodgy math code that segregates and mishandles tx data by not counting certain portions.
this alone causes there to be less true utility for the 4mb space devs now deem as ok
it limits tx scaling. and also causes tx fee mismanagement

If this proposal could remove the limits in scaling why not make a proposal to the developers.

[DoublerHunter]

I am not a technical guy but I would suggest to work on improving the speed of Tx and have a cap in fees. There are people out there who pays crazy fees and force others to follow them too if the tx is urgent to get at-least one confirmation.

^ This is similar to what I am thinking maybe the fees should be on minimum, for example, the fee that I would like to transfer is 0.1 BTC then the minimum tx fee that I will work with is 0.00001, a transaction between 0.001 to 0.1 BTC, no matter what could be the future value, and I will call it a "Minimum Eco-Friendly fee". But I think the fee will depend on the mempool condition, if it is congested, you need to pay high fees for faster transactions. Nevertheless, the problem of bitcoin is the speed of the transaction and the fee.

[coupable]

I am not a technical guy but i would suggest to focus on the anonymity, as bitcoin's scripting system presented limitations in terms of privacy.

I in fact love this pseudo anonymity. This is one of the great reason for Bitcoin to be used by everyone.

Psydo-anonymity means it can be tracked by linking the user identity to a btc address. I can't get your point about how this is a great reason for Bitcoin to be used by everyone.
Additional layer of anonymity can be optional, just like segwit fork, it's still possible to use legacy addresses.

[bitsurfer2014]

If I could hardfork Bitcoin right now and had the technical capability to further develop it, the change I would do is to make it unforkable!