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Why is Bitcoin forking?

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Re: Why is Bitcoin forking?

#51

Post by zekevermillion »

There is no law against publishing software that would introduce a blockchain hard fork if run. Yes, XT infuriates those who hope to make money based on the appreciation of their pre-fork bitcoins. Publishing XT introduces economic uncertainty in the short term, and long-term undermines confidence that we can rely on the mathematical promises of bitcoin at all. If XT is successful, why wouldn't Hearn (or Coinbase, or another person with interests divergent from large bitcoin holders) publish XT 2.0 removing the coin max? Or introduce any number of other inflationary changes?

If it can be done, eventually it will be done. It's inevitable that people will eventually propose all manner of changes to bitcoin, some good, some stupid. Real bitcoin (or original bitcoin) could still continue to run as its own fork, in the background, waiting for the market to decide on a winner. Just as it is inevitable that developers will propose a small infinity of bitcoin-derived altcoins, trying to capture the windfall of a self-published bootstrapped currency. But very few altcoins will become successful networks in the long term, a smaller and smaller percentage of new coins as time goes on.

Either Hearn and Andresen are correct, in which case their success will speak for itself -- even if they totally screw over the large bitcoin bag-holders in the process. Or, XT will become an insecure, centralized network and will die off on its own. No need for politics, in this case mathematically dictated incentive structures will decide who wins.

Re: Why is Bitcoin forking?

#52

Post by zzkt »

paulhauggis wrote: post #30

This is common with many things now. The people in the know are treated like gods that cant be wrong. The global warming debate comes to mind.

I'm certain everyone with an opinion on AGW has read AR5 from cover to cover.

Re: Why is Bitcoin forking?

#53

Post by zzalpha »

3pt14159 wrote: post #50
zzalpha wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have absolutely no horse in this race (I'm here for the schadenfreude), but to be honest, when it comes to deeply technical decisions, I think this is entirely fair. I wouldn't expect Linus to listen to my opinions about the Linux task scheduler. Why should the Bitcoin community listen to some random guy's unsupported opinions about block size? This isn't about politics or being nice and listening to everyone. This…

The difference is that the opinion has political and economic outcomes, and not everyone involved has a year to devote to learning about Bitcoin, so it essentially amounts to "just trust us, we won't enrich ourselves by fucking you". Which has been said by people involved in banks and currencies for centuries. If you want to say something like that, better follow it up with links to a list of the academic papers that…

If you want to say something like that, better follow it up with links to a list of the academic papers that one would need to get up to speed, otherwise I have no way of verifying that the problem is more difficult than my current understanding says it is.

Totally agreed. Just because you're an expert, that doesn't absolve you from having to make your case.

But the same is true of anyone else, and that necessarily excludes non-experts who will not be able to make their case effectively.

Re: Why is Bitcoin forking?

#56

Post by michaelt »

troymc wrote: post #36
Taek wrote: post #15

For people who have not been following along, the Bitcoin block size debate has been very intense and pulled out a lot of interesting psychology from the Bitcoin community. Most of the core devs of Bitcoin are strongly opposed to increasing the blocksize to 8mb. 2 people in particular, Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen, have been making very strong political pushes to get the majority of Bitcoin users to favor their bloc…

"Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan." - Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle The argument that "I understand this and you don't, so you don't get a vote" seems like a lazy way to suppress democratic process. A better alternative is, "This might seem complicated, but really it's not; here's a simple but complete explanation to help you make a…

When all you have to do is explain to a child (or indeed a layman adult) you can use things like analogies that aren't perfectly accurate, and you only need go a little way beyond the person's existing knowledge - it's a waste of time to deliver more information than they can absorb in the time you've got to explain.

If you're a high energy experimental physicist you can say you work on a particle accelerator. That's a machine that makes particles hit into each other really fast, a bit like a super-high-speed game of conkers! When the particles hit together and break apart for a really short time you can see the parts that make them up, and you can learn things about them!

You've now explained what you're doing to an 8 year old! But if you ask the 8 year old whether they think it's a good idea to use Fox-Wolfram moments to partition phase space and suppress the continuum background, like B-factories do, or whether you'll have difficulty determining the centre-of-mass frame due to missing energy? Probably the 8 year old won't have an informed opinion either way.

Re: Why is Bitcoin forking?

#58

Post by facepalm »

datashovel wrote: post #2

It's somewhat ironic that one of the big selling points of Bitcoin was decentralization. The thing that they failed to realize is the team also needs to be decentralized. For something like this to take off it needs to be a specification for a federated network with zero single points of failure, and not an actual codebase with a dedicated team.

There are several different implementations of the protocol, nobody controls "THE" codebase.

Re: Why is Bitcoin forking?

#60

Post by compcoin »

Bitcoin is Forking on it’s principals

There is great debate and concern about Bitcoin trying to change its core software. Network tests have found the credit card processor can process many more transaction per second than Bitcoin can. Some influential leaders want to make changes that will make the protocol more competitive with VISA/MASTERCARD. They want to change increase amount of transaction processed in each block (the block in blockchain technology). The important issue is not about changing Blockchain size it is about changing the hard coded rules that are the foundations for trust in Blockchain based systems. What is there to stop future forks that change other rules that users relied upon in their choice to participate in this financial system. Lets say some economic interests in the future lobby the influential core developers and miners to change the amount of coins mined in the future to let say 100 million. If the users rely on the software to enforce it rules any important changes to the rules that are significant can effect the end users in unpredictable ways. The users of Bitcoin have no say. Once again a small group is making choices and if they are wrong they can destroy the entire system. A system that relies on influential few promoting there own economic interest is no better than a public company issuing out more shares when they see the need or the government printing more currency. Those who want to take Bitcoin into direct competition with VISA/MasterCard should simply create a new coin designed to do this. There is so much more to the potential of the protocol than just a cheaper way to spend money. The principal of hard coded rules they can not be changed and are enforced by the software is one of the true revolutionary idea’s of Bitcoin. There is more at stake than creating competition for banks. Its about staying true to a financial system rules that users chose to participate in.

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