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Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

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Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#91

Post by jerguismi »

ChrisClark wrote: post #72
jerguismi wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No major bitcoin company has stated that they will run segwit2x client. If you have conflicting information, please link announcement/blog post about that. As for the hashpower, it doesn't matter what clients miners run. You can't force the nodes to run specific client with hashpower.

I'm not picking a side, just delivering info: You can see the signalling process here: https://coin.dance/blocks 90% are signalling the NYA intent to support Segwit2x. Since the software release 20% have signalled with segwit2x blocks. You can see business support here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support#Businesses I'm not sure if you consider Coinbase a major bitcoin company yourself, but I think they qualify…

> You can see business support here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support#Businesses > I'm not sure if you consider Coinbase a major bitcoin company yourself, but I think they qualify.

That doesn't look like a very good proof. If coinbase plans to adopt segwit2x, why haven't they released an announcement? I wouldn't trust that wiki list very much.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#92

Post by buttershakes »

gknoy wrote: post #88
buttershakes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only support it needs is hash power support. That's it. If enough of the hash power can be pulled into it, then it's game over for a minority chain. Running nodes costs almost nothing which means the network can be flooded with segwit2x supporting nodes, and companies will be motivated to switch over.

I apologize for asking what is probably a bitcoin-noob question, but can you explain (or elaborate on) why hash power has that effect? What does a "minority chain" mean? If you have two groups using different hashing algorithms, why would that have any effect on either group?

They are using the same hashing algorithm with different consensus rules. That's exactly the issue. They are fighting over the same pie because proof-of-work is what defines Bitcoin.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#93

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #63
statoshi wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Core developers never had control in the first place. No one has control; it's weird to see so many people applying authoritarian concepts to an anti-authoritarian system.

Yes. There is no Bitcoin to control. Bitcoin is an idea, and there can be as many variations as people have ideas. There will be a main trunk, centered around the middle of the market, but the whole point of cryptocurrencies is they can be forked and survive. In the new world, everyone has their own universe. The sooner one believes, the stronger their position in the 2030 economy.

Name one that has forked and survived. Ethereum Classic is not "surviving".

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#94

Post by fpgaminer »

shp0ngle wrote: post #66

The basic question is how to scale; off-chain or on-chain. The rest is just theatrics and typical nerdy hyperbole. One side of the fight (Core / blockstream) wants to scale off-chain, pushing transactions to side-chains and/or lighting networks, and want to profit from off-chain solutions. The other side of the fight (segwit2x / miners) wants to scale on-chain, making the blocks bigger, and profit from block fees. Bo…

> One side of the fight (Core / blockstream) wants to scale off-chain, pushing transactions to side-chains and/or lighting networks, and want to profit from off-chain solutions.

I think that gives the wrong impression. First off, Core != Blockstream.

Secondly, the consensus amongst Core developers, as I read it, is they want as much on-chain as possible. Their definition of possible is what can a Bitcoin client handle on the average user's PC. The problem is that, today, the answer is not much. Increasing the blocksize to allow more transactions requires an exponential increase in the computational requirements of the Bitcoin client. So it's not really feasible to just "scale on-chain", as of today.

SegWit accomplishes two things. 1) It's a stopgap. It's an effective blocksize increase to 2MB, and it enables lightning network which should hopefully reduce congestion on the Bitcoin network. 2) It's an optimization; SegWit transactions are cheaper than traditional transactions.

SegWit is just a stopgap while developers implement a series of optimizations to the Bitcoin network that allow it to handle more capacity, without increasing the computational resources to the point where average users can't run the software.

But those optimizations are going to take a long time.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#95

Post by buttershakes »

jerguismi wrote: post #87
buttershakes wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only support it needs is hash power support. That's it. If enough of the hash power can be pulled into it, then it's game over for a minority chain. Running nodes costs almost nothing which means the network can be flooded with segwit2x supporting nodes, and companies will be motivated to switch over.

Miners can mine segwit2x blocks all they wish, but since services/exchanges are running core client, they are just mining invalid blocks from their viewpoint, and those blocks are ignored. That means miners can't sell their mined segwit2x bitcoins on exchanges. Mining blocks that services don't accept would be very, very stupid, essentially throwing good money to trash.

So if a huge number of nodes are Segwit2x capable, and the miners are mining Segwit2x blocks with the majority of the hash power, companies are going to stay on a less secure chain that can be attacked by the majority so that they can have a smaller block size and keep the core dev team because they love them? This isn't how that works. Proof-of-work will force those companies onto the dominant chain. Exchanges will probably keep trading the smaller coins also.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#96

Post by ascendantlogic »

jerguismi wrote: post #41
buttershakes wrote: post #26

This is a fight for control of Bitcoin. It is business interests on both sides fighting for a position of authority. SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team, which while technically strong is full of zealots with questionable motives and terrible management skills. Bitcoin ABC and Unlimited have their own parts to play as factions. It's getting tense, but it's been years in the making. Groups…

"I suspect that SegWit2x will end up taking over the network" What? They had first release like yesterday, the project has released one tarball, no packaging, no very good marketing etc. The biggest marketers seem to be the tinfoil hat opponents who fear the fork so much that they speak about it everywhere. I don't think it is at all likely that segwit2x client will gain support. Or if it will gain support, it will t…

90% of the hashing power has signaled their intention to adopt segwit2x as of late June. I assume it will become the dominant chain once it locks in right before August 1st.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#97

Post by erikpukinskis »

kinghajj wrote: post #76
shp0ngle wrote: post #66

The basic question is how to scale; off-chain or on-chain. The rest is just theatrics and typical nerdy hyperbole. One side of the fight (Core / blockstream) wants to scale off-chain, pushing transactions to side-chains and/or lighting networks, and want to profit from off-chain solutions. The other side of the fight (segwit2x / miners) wants to scale on-chain, making the blocks bigger, and profit from block fees. Bo…

> Also cannot scale this way infinitely (you need to keep all the transactions on a disk forever). The whitepaper itself mentions that the Merkle tree can be pruned so that doesn't need to be the case. Do you know why there hasn't been more effort towards implementing that yet?

The leaves still grow with the square root of the tree size, which is certainly better than linear, but doesn't really solve the problem. It buys you one less order of magnitude you have to scale to, but only one.

If you're growing by an order of magnitude every few years, it's just buying you an extra few years lead time.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#98

Post by sandralopz565 »

DINKDINK wrote: post #79
buttershakes wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false. Bitcoin is a consensus system, and the default client for better or for worse has a stickiness that doesn't exist in normal open source software because of this group consensus. So there is definitely a measure of control. Yes, it's not total or complete, but it is there.

Bitcoin Core does not have control over the software users run on their machine. If you believe differently, you don't understand how Bitcoin works. You might be confusing network effect with control.

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Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#99

Post by ascendantlogic »

tertius wrote: post #15
pteredactyl wrote: post #14

Bitcoin continues to evolve. With that comes growing pains. And internal struggles as it is mostly an open source project. But for Bloomberg to use a 'civil war' hyperbole signals fear from the establishment. Established capital more specifically. And really, that is bitcoin's biggest threat. Disclosure: I own bitcoin.

I think you're reading too much into it. It's clickbait.

No the factions in the world of BTC have been very contentious for a long time now. It may be hyperbole but not by much.

Re: Bitcoin Is Having a Civil War as It Enters a Critical Month

#100

Post by ethbro »

kkleindev wrote: post #84
buttershakes wrote: post #26

This is a fight for control of Bitcoin. It is business interests on both sides fighting for a position of authority. SegWit2x is an attempt to remove control from the core dev team, which while technically strong is full of zealots with questionable motives and terrible management skills. Bitcoin ABC and Unlimited have their own parts to play as factions. It's getting tense, but it's been years in the making. Groups…

I always wonder how people external to an organisation can judge the work of an executive. Are you maybe solely looking at outcomes, that may only slightly be influenced by his decisions and dominated by randomness and other factors anyway?

Yahoo was sold. We need a new dead horse.
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