What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?
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Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?
#2Some context would help here.
Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?
#3Some context would help here.
For the past two years, the Bitcoin community has been embroiled in a debate about how to scale the network to handle more transactions. The debate has at times become less technical, rhetoric about "centralization" and the values of the community has become introduced, etc. Recently the debates have come to a head, and some have referred to it as a "Civil War"[0].
For technical background, I recommend these two posts by Mike Hearn, who has since left the Bitcoin community [1] [2]
Now, what the original article is talking about is the "Core" development team--the people who have commit access on the Bitcoin Github repo. The whole debate has essentially become Core vs. some other factions, mainly miners. You'll see the arguments in [1] and [2].
(Keep in mind, Mike Hearn is strongly on the anti-Core side of the argument. But those articles should give you an idea of what to search for, if you want to hear arguments on the other side.)
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-10/bitcoin-r...
[1] https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-consensus-and-forks-c6a050...
[2] https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experi...
Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?
#4Some context would help here.
There's a schism occurring within the bitcoin community (it's not new, just coming to a critical point right now). The title is a paraphrase of Monty Python's "What have the Romans ever done for us?"
For the rest of the context, check out most of the Bitcoin posts that have made it to HN over the past month. They're almost all about the current issues in the system and community.
Edit: typo
Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?
#5Some context would help here.
A meme has developed among some in Bitcoin - "Fire Core", aka fire the core dev team who have contributed most of the code to the canonical Bitcoin repo (http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin) and stewarded Bitcoin for the last few years (https://bitcoincore.org).
The argument is that they've moved too slow on important things like scalability, blocked a simple blocksize increase hard fork that would have added capacity, and that as a result Ethereum is catching up and on the verge of overtaking Bitcoin (http://duckduckgo.com?q=flippening).
The counterargument is that there's no other technically credible team in Bitcoin, despite all the prior attempts to "fire" and replace Core - Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Unlimited, etc. - and that "firing" Core is akin to killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?
#6"What did X ever do for us?" is the standard catch phrase of this guy in any pirate movie wanting to take command of the ship.
It's not the words of somebody who wants to help anybody, just somebody wanting the power.
Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?
#7Why do people seem to assume that those most capable of implementing the cryptography, networking, or other code are also those most capable of understanding the economics of cryptocurrencies or determining their future?
Most of the arguments against the core team revolve around the economics and future of the coin, but the tech team seems to think that somehow their coding experience gives them insight into that.
Bitcoin seems like technically great but it fails on many of the economic aspects (e.g. making a currency with a fixed amount basically ensures it can never be used to write long term counteracts in).
Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?
#8Why do people seem to assume that those most capable of implementing the cryptography, networking, or other code are also those most capable of understanding the economics of cryptocurrencies or determining their future? Most of the arguments against the core team revolve around the economics and future of the coin, but the tech team seems to think that somehow their coding experience gives them insight into that. Bi…
Well, Alex Morcos (one of the Bitcoin Core developers), is a founder of Hudson River Trading - a HFT firm responsible for 5% of US equities volume [0]. So... I'd say Bitcoin Core has some economic expertise available if they need it.
[0] - https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/10/15/inside-hudson-riv...
Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?
#9"What did X ever do for us?" is the standard catch phrase of this guy in any pirate movie wanting to take command of the ship. It's not the words of somebody who wants to help anybody, just somebody wanting the power.
It's a Monty Python reference[0], not a power grab. The article lists out all the great things core has done.
Re: What did Bitcoin Core contributors ever do for us?
#10The whole point of open source software is that you can fork a project away from the original developers.