[bitcoin-dev] Annoucing Not-BitcoinXT

Levin Keller post at levinkeller.de
Mon Aug 17 15:03:25 UTC 2015


Dear Eric,

thank you for sharing your thoughts.

It obviously boils down to political beliefs, not so much technical
arguments. I understand that you are in favor of a "guided
decentralization" and you are most happily invited to follow this path. I
don't want to be on it. I want total decentralisation of bitcoin and many
other parts of the current system.

So in the end the hard fork might be perfect, because people like you will
not waste so much more energy and time fighting people like me (and others)
who are following different dogmata because we are using different coins
and talking about different code. Interestingly enough in the end we will
probably have a winner - determined by the price - so I am looking forward
to the outcome. It is just the time so make some bets, which I embrace.

Another interesting thing is, that you actually fear problems arising from
this. What do you have to loose? Just stick with the old bitcoin version
and weather this storm. Bitcoin is not going to vanish or break from this.
It is just forking. One fork will come stronger out of this. You just have
to choose a side and live with it, if you loose it all. But that is the
story of bitcoin since the beginning. If you ask me, you fear the choice,
not the change.

Cheers

Levin

Adam Back via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> schrieb
am Mo., 17. Aug. 2015 um 16:37 Uhr:

> Thank you Eric for saying what needs to be said.
>
> Starting a fork war is just not constructive and there are multiple
> proposals being evaluated here.
>
> I think that one thing that is not being so much focussed on is
> Bitcoin-XT is both a hard-fork and a soft-fork.  It's a hard-fork on
> Bitcoin full-nodes, but it is also a soft-fork attack on Bitcoin core
> SPV nodes that did not opt-in.  It exposes those SPV nodes to loss in
> the likely event that Bitcoin-XT results in a network-split.
>
> The recent proposal here to run noXT (patch to falsely claim to mine
> on XT while actually rejecting it's blocks) could add enough
> uncertainty about the activation that Bitcoin-XT would probably have
> to be aborted.
>
> Adam
>
> On 17 August 2015 at 15:03, Eric Lombrozo via bitcoin-dev
> <bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > NxtChg,
> >
> > In the entire history of Bitcoin we’ve never attempted anything even
> closely resembling a hard fork like what’s being proposed here.
> >
> > Many of us have wanted to push our own hard-forking changes to the
> protocol…and have been frustrated because of the inability to do so.
> >
> > This inability is not due to any malice on anyone’s part…it is a feature
> of Satoshi’s protocol. For better or worse, it is *very hard* to change the
> rules…and this is exactly what imbues Bitcoin with one of its most powerful
> attributes: very well-defined settlement guarantees that cannot be suddenly
> altered nor reversed by anyone.
> >
> > We’ve managed to have a few soft forks in the past…and for the most part
> these changes have been pretty uncontroversial…or at least, they have not
> had nearly the level of political divisiveness that this block size issue
> is having. And even then, we’ve encountered a number of problems with these
> deployments that have at times required goodwill cooperation between
> developers and mining pool operators to fix.
> >
> > Again, we have NEVER attempted anything even remotely like what’s being
> proposed - we’ve never done any sort of hard fork before like this. If even
> fairly uncontroversial soft forks have caused problems, can you imagine the
> kinds of potential problems that a hard fork over some highly polarizing
> issue might raise? Do you really think people are going to want to
> cooperate?!?
> >
> > I can understand that some people would like bigger blocks. Other people
> might want feature X, others feature Y…and we can argue the merits of this
> or that to death…but the fact remains that we have NEVER attempted any hard
> forking change…not even with a simple, totally uncontroversial no-brainer
> improvement that would not risk any sort of ill-will that could hamper
> remedies were it not to go as smoothly as we like. *THIS* is the
> fundamental problem - the whole bigger block thing is a minor issue by
> comparison…it could be any controversial change, really.
> >
> > Would you want to send your test pilots on their first flight…the first
> time an aircraft is ever flown…directly into combat without having tested
> the plane? This is what attempting a hard fork mechanism that’s NEVER been
> done before in such a politically divisive environment basically amounts
> to…but it’s even worse. We’re basically risking the entire air force (not
> just one plane) over an argument regarding how many seats a plane should
> have that we’ve never flown before.
> >
> > We’re talking billlions of dollars’ worth of other people’s money that
> is on the line here. Don’t we owe it to them to at least test out the
> system on a far less controversial, far less divisive change first to make
> sure we can even deploy it without things breaking? I don’t even care about
> the merits regarding bigger blocks vs. smaller blocks at this point, to be
> quite honest - that’s such a petty thing compared to what I’m talking about
> here. If we attempt a novel hard-forking mechanism that’s NEVER been
> attempted before (and which as many have pointed out is potentially fraught
> with serious problems) on such a politically divisive, polarizing issue,
> the result is each side will refuse to cooperate with the other out of
> spite…and can easily lead to a war, tanking the value of everyone’s assets
> on both chains. All so we can process 8 times the number of transactions we
> currently do? Even if it were 100 times, we wouldn’t even come close to
> touching big payment processors like Visa. It’s hard to imagine a protocol
> improvement that’s worth the risk.
> >
> > I urge you to at least try to see the bigger picture here…and to
> understand that nobody is trying to stop anyone from doing anything out of
> some desire for maintaining control - NONE of us are able to deploy hard
> forks right now without facing these problems. And different people
> obviously have different priorities and preferences as to which of these
> changes would be best to do first. This whole XT thing is essentially
> giving *one* proposal special treatment above those that others have
> proposed. Many of us have only held back from doing this out of our belief
> that goodwill amongst network participants is more important than trying to
> push some pet feature some of us want.
> >
> > Please stop this negativity - we ALL want the best for Bitcoin and are
> doing our best, given what we understand and know, to do what’s right.
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