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Topic: Bitcoin Core developers along with Blockstream are destroying Bitcoin (Read 1362 times)

legendary
Activity: 2912
Merit: 1386

Not the ones I've met.

Not a one of them.

Some of them have opinions, even strong opinions that I have disagreed with.

What is wrong with that? That doesn't make them evil.
full member
Activity: 420
Merit: 102
Well, firstly, not going to give you Ste emit views, the article is pretty elementary to start with. Secondly, the is no destroying anything. The tech is too new to be destroyed, unfortunately, this appears to be the path that the world is taking it in, and that is how it is going to be, there is nothing that your article is going to do to change that, maybe someone else can re-write it with some solid points and make a change, but today, the path remains unchanged.
newbie
Activity: 63
Merit: 0
There are very good reasons for not increasing the size of blocks. Sure it's OK to scale up a little but larer blocks move Bitcoin ever closer towards centralisation which is the real incentive for mining companies.

If Bitcoin was to be truly successful and become as widely used as the Visa network then you would need to move up to 400TB of data between nodes whih would require 38 Gbps connections, hardly something for consumers. The only way to achieve that would be to centralise into a closed banking network. So either Bitcoin stays small and on the fringe of payment systems or it goes through the changes needed to allow it to scale.

Bitcoin is now pretty mature, its proven itself as a robust immutable data store or persistance layer. Technology does get layered, it always has done, that's how this stuff works. SQL is a great query language but you wouldn't want to write your website with it. Bitcoin is a very powerful and robust persistance layer for simple transactions but if you try to write everything to it and just keep putting the block sized up it does collapse under its own weight. Fortunately there are people running the numbers and with the foresight to see these major problems coming along and so far the best option that's come up is the Lightning Network. If Bitcoin can't scale to hold every transaction then move most transactions off-chain and go peer to peer with Bitcoin just storing the balances as needed. On paper its a great solution and it has been tested to death on test networks so it is the better option compared to just pumping th blocks up until they explode. It's fine to increase block sizes for a while but the argument is that it just allows the problem to be put off until the network is so big and so critical that no one will dare to do anything and just concede that it's safer to let it centralise into the hands of a couple of mining giants.
Ucy
sr. member
Activity: 2674
Merit: 403
Compare rates on different exchanges & swap.
So why would they want Core developers and Blockstream fired ? are we now in some kind of autocratic rule? And Isn't this a pure sign of desperation?  So they basically want to solve the Centralization problem by cutting in size ( sacking ) the number of developers? Interesting.
As regards to the 100GB per year increase , I think this estimation might fail at some point. A big change in BitcoinBlockchain structure or tech could cause a leap in adoption rate.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 3684
Join the world-leading crypto sportsbook NOW!

Anyways i believe this will be very bad for Bitcoin if the sides do not come together and we actually end up with 2 Bitcoins. Could cause confusion, problems, and huge drop in price. Could set us years back.

If you really believe that, then you should play your part to create the environment that would be conducive to such a coming together. Both sides have culprits, playing to hyberbole and sensationalism to push agendas that become too personal. I have a lot of respect for some of the "core" people and their supporters even here on this forum. If you took the time, you'd see the most sensible are from that cluster.

That doesn't mean I don't respect their critics too, or that I think they're all angels.

Want an example of what I mean? See the title of this thread, was that really necessary (inaccuracy and lack of proof notwithstanding)? And do you see the generally thoughtful, unantagonistic responses?
legendary
Activity: 2898
Merit: 1823

Anyways i believe this will be very bad for Bitcoin if the sides do not come together and we actually end up with 2 Bitcoins. Could cause confusion, problems, and huge drop in price. Could set us years back.

If you believe that is true then you should question the motives of the developers who want to fork Bitcoin. Why is Core suddenly the villain and why would you think they will "destroy" Bitcoin? Core has the best developers in the field, and they have been pushing the technology forward by coming up with good quality code and ingenious solutions like Segwit.

You are lost and stop listening to Roger Ver.
legendary
Activity: 4130
Merit: 1307

Well as far as i know only 2MB will be stored on the blockchain. And the x4 increase thanks to segwit will only impact the nodes, but not the blockchain size.

Anyways i believe this will be very bad for Bitcoin if the sides do not come together and we actually end up with 2 Bitcoins. Could cause confusion, problems, and huge drop in price. Could set us years back.

Nodes store the block chain which includes Segwit transactions.  It impacts the block chain size, hence the nodes.  Whomever told you otherwise didn't know what they were talking about.
sr. member
Activity: 810
Merit: 258
Anyways do you have any prediction over what is going to happen? Since those exchanges will list segwit2x as the Bitcoin, this will be the "legitimate" bitcoin /most used, most traded, priced the highest.
Not necessarily. A lot of exchanges have not said whether or not they are supporting Segwit2x and what they are going to do about it. I don't think many exchanges will list Segwit2x as Bitcoin as many people have threatened to sue them, and at the very least, it will be some very bad PR for them.

Why doesn't core just say okay and agree on the 2MB fork? Because i would say this could get ugly otherwise ruining both of the Bitcoins.. :/
First of all, it is not a 2 MB fork, it is an 8 MB fork. Calling it 2 MB is disingenuous.

Why should Core do something that we believe is harmful to the network? Sure, it might avoid a split now, but it can have huge negative consequences in the future that we want to avoid.

Also if the majority of the hash power goes to segwit2x, the old chain will be stuck and useless. So doesn'+t seem like there is much choice?
No. Miners do not control Bitcoin. Just because the hash rate moves does not mean that Bitcoin is redefined to whatever the hash rate wants. The hash rate will follow whatever makes them the most money (unless they are insane). If few users are using Segwit2x-coin and few exchanges list segwit2x-coin, then miners won't mine it for long as there is no money to be made there. Even if they did go to Segwit2x-coin and stuck with it, Bitcoin Core could do a counter hard fork which both implements a Proof of Work change and implements a lot of features on the Bitcoin hard fork wish list which Segwit2x has thus far refused to do.

Well as far as i know only 2MB will be stored on the blockchain. And the x4 increase thanks to segwit will only impact the nodes, but not the blockchain size.

Anyways i believe this will be very bad for Bitcoin if the sides do not come together and we actually end up with 2 Bitcoins. Could cause confusion, problems, and huge drop in price. Could set us years back.
copper member
Activity: 1330
Merit: 899
🖤😏
Bitcoin Core finishes a working product and provides you with a link to download and update, they should do the same as other devs, just promise to do everything in the future and then you all go and buy coins with no utility. THEY should try ICOing to raise money instead of fund raising 5BTC.
Why would they care if by the next 4 years with increased block size only corporations will have the ability to run full nodes and big companies could centralize the whole network if home users are not capable of hosting full nodes?(this is my sister's opinion, if it was up to me I'd ask first and then beg for some translations for the new Bitcoin, any bounty sirs? search your pockets you might find some change for me). 102 lolz.
staff
Activity: 3458
Merit: 6793
Just writing some code
Anyways do you have any prediction over what is going to happen? Since those exchanges will list segwit2x as the Bitcoin, this will be the "legitimate" bitcoin /most used, most traded, priced the highest.
Not necessarily. A lot of exchanges have not said whether or not they are supporting Segwit2x and what they are going to do about it. I don't think many exchanges will list Segwit2x as Bitcoin as many people have threatened to sue them, and at the very least, it will be some very bad PR for them.

Why doesn't core just say okay and agree on the 2MB fork? Because i would say this could get ugly otherwise ruining both of the Bitcoins.. :/
First of all, it is not a 2 MB fork, it is an 8 MB fork. Calling it 2 MB is disingenuous.

Why should Core do something that we believe is harmful to the network? Sure, it might avoid a split now, but it can have huge negative consequences in the future that we want to avoid.

Also if the majority of the hash power goes to segwit2x, the old chain will be stuck and useless. So doesn'+t seem like there is much choice?
No. Miners do not control Bitcoin. Just because the hash rate moves does not mean that Bitcoin is redefined to whatever the hash rate wants. The hash rate will follow whatever makes them the most money (unless they are insane). If few users are using Segwit2x-coin and few exchanges list segwit2x-coin, then miners won't mine it for long as there is no money to be made there. Even if they did go to Segwit2x-coin and stuck with it, Bitcoin Core could do a counter hard fork which both implements a Proof of Work change and implements a lot of features on the Bitcoin hard fork wish list which Segwit2x has thus far refused to do.
sr. member
Activity: 810
Merit: 258
ok well thanks for the clarification.

Anyways do you have any prediction over what is going to happen? Since those exchanges will list segwit2x as the Bitcoin, this will be the "legitimate" bitcoin /most used, most traded, priced the highest.

Why doesn't core just say okay and agree on the 2MB fork? Because i would say this could get ugly otherwise ruining both of the Bitcoins.. :/

Also if the majority of the hash power goes to segwit2x, the old chain will be stuck and useless. So doesn'+t seem like there is much choice?
staff
Activity: 3458
Merit: 6793
Just writing some code
This is just not true. Please stop spreading FUD.

Blockstream does not control Bitcoin Core; out of the five people who have commit access, only one person is a Blockstream employee (and founder). The others either work for their own companies that they founded or are part of the MIT DCI. In all contributions this year (since Jan 1 2017), there have been 41 contributors. Of those, I count 8 Blockstream employees or contractors related to Blockstream (of which at least 3 are founders of the company, and 2 don't really seem to work for Blockstream but are listed on their website), 2 that work for the MIT DCI, 6 Chaincode Labs employees (one person overlaps with Blockstream) and 22 people who work for other companies (only one or two per company), work for their own companies that they created, or are independent contributors contributing whenever they feel like. Many of the Blockstream contributors contribute rarely and also do so when they feel like; they are not paid to work exclusively on Bitcoin Core.

Blockstream does not need to influence or change Bitcoin in order to have products. They already have the Liquid sidechain which is a product for exchanges and it does not need Segwit or other changes to Bitcoin's consensus rules. This sidechain was already in use before Segwit activated.

Some days after hurricane Irma there was a fundraiser for one of the Core developers, whose house had been damaged by hurricane. The goal of the fundraiser was to raise 5 Bitcoins for the Luke Dash jr(Bitcoin Core developer) in order to fix his house and property.

Luke Dash has developed first Bitcoin mining pool in 2011. At that time Bitcoin was worth around 0.3$.
Someone who knew about Bitcoin in 2011 and devoted it's time to work on the project, did not invest anything?!?! That tells us, that Luke Dash is not a speculator, he does not know anything about economics, all he is - is a programmer and that's all he knows to do.
Do you not think that maybe he has spent those coins? Maybe he speculated in the early days and lost money in the number of scams and exchange collapses (e.g. MtGox) which leaves him with little to no Bitcoin today. Luke has a family (a rather large one too) which he has to support; do you not think that perhaps he has used many or all of his Bitcoin to help support his family and do other things which require money?

So Luke Dash obviously doesn't own (m)any Bitcoins considering he needed to raise funds for the repairs of his house and property, so he can only make money by getting paid from Blockstream for the development.
Luke is not a full time employee of Blockstream; he is an independent contractor. I don't think he is paid much for doing that considering that he has not done much for Blockstream and is not being paid by Blockstream to work on Core (according to some conversations I have had with Blockstream employees).

And i would guess most other core members are like this. They are programmers. They enjoy coding and improving Bitcoin as they did from the start. They did not buy Bitcoins hoping they would get rich, but they probably looked at it from a programming perspective.
Their salary now depends on Blockstream and they have to follow the rules.
As I said earlier, that is not true at all. Blockstream is not the only company paying people to work on Bitcoin Core and they do not control Bitcoin Core.

Core members have said it in the past that increase of the block size would be okay, even up to 8MB!!
Source? IIRC the only "okay" increase was up to 4 MB, which is what Segwit does.

So what is wrong with the segwit2x now that it is considered an attack?
The fact that it is being done by an agreement made by a bunch of corporate executives and miners in a backroom deal without consulting the community or the technical community (which includes much more than just Bitcoin Core developers).

Is there any good argument against Blocksize increase? And don't mention the blockchain getting too big. In one year the blockchain has grown from 85GB to 135GB, increasing by 50GB. With 2x block size increase, this would be 100GB per year. The cost for storage is rapidly decreasing as technology is progressing, and in 10 years the estimate block size(with segwit2x) would be 1,135TB. At current prices this would cost around 50$, and we all know in 10 years 1TB of storage could cost a few dollars.
And how many people actually run a full node? It seems all nonsense to me.
It is not the storage requirement that is the problem, it is the bandwidth and computing requirements. Clearly you do not understand the nuance and other consequences of a block size increase. It not only requires more disk space (which is trivial) but it also requires full nodes to consume even more bandwidth and data and may not be able to support larger blocks. So we would see a decrease in full nodes from a number that is already pretty low, less than 10000 full nodes. A full node consumes somewhere around 300-500 GB of data per month, and that is with 1 MB blocks. With segwit, that size will be even larger, and with 2X, potentially more than double. In the worst case, it would be 8 times that amount. In the US, some ISPs (like Comcast) are instituting data caps at ~1 TB of data per month. Bitcoin nodes are likely to be consuming nearly all of that data (thus restricting the amount of data that home node operators can use for other things) or even exceed the data cap if Segwit2x were to pass. This will cause the entire network to lose nodes as users turn them off so that they have enough data to do other things that consume a lot of data, but not as much (e.g. watch 4K Netflix).

Furthermore, larger blocks can require more computation to validate and thus a malicious block that takes several seconds (which is ages in computer time) to validate now would be even worse if the block size were to be increased even more.

Lastly, there are many other considerations that you need to look at when increasing the block size. Things like UTXO set growth, initial sync time, hardware requirements, etc.
sr. member
Activity: 810
Merit: 258
edit:moved the thread, but ic ouldn't delete this thread
sr. member
Activity: 810
Merit: 258
source: https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@satoshibakery/bitcoin-core-developers-along-with-blockstream-are-destroying-bitcoin

Quote
Bitcoin Core developers are evil

Right now the miners are using software they fork from github/bitcoin, which is in control of Bitcoin Core developers and Blockstream.
If Segwit2x happens, the miners will use different Github Repository to get the software, effectively "firing" the Core members, making Blockstream lose control and influence over Bitcoin.

And what is Blockstream? It's a company that employs and pays Bitcoin Core developers for their contribution.
Let's not forget to mention that they were funded with 76M$ of capital by the VC firms. With traditional funding, there are also traditional obligations. These were not donations, the investors ofcorse expect to get returns from their invested dollars.

With the 2x part of the fork, the Blockstream loses influence over Bitcoin development and they can
can no longer lead Bitcoin in the path that could provide them with revenue to repay the investors - somehow.

So Blockstream is defending their interests by paying Core developers to continue the propaganda that Segwit2x is an attack on Bitcoin .

And is it really important for Core developers that Bitcoin gets adapted as widely as possible meaning the Bitcoin would raise in value?

One would certainly think so, but i have found out otherwise.
Some days after hurricane Irma there was a fundraiser for one of the Core developers, whose house had been damaged by hurricane. The goal of the fundraiser was to raise 5 Bitcoins for the Luke Dash jr(Bitcoin Core developer) in order to fix his house and property.

Luke Dash has developed first Bitcoin mining pool in 2011. At that time Bitcoin was worth around 0.3$.
Someone who knew about Bitcoin in 2011 and devoted it's time to work on the project, did not invest anything?!?! That tells us, that Luke Dash is not a speculator, he does not know anything about economics, all he is - is a programmer and that's all he knows to do.
It's also important to mention that out of all the developers, he is the one who backs 1MB blocksize limit most of them all! Even worse, he proposed to decrease the blocksize limit to 0.3MB. One would think this is some kind of a joke?

So Luke Dash obviously doesn't own (m)any Bitcoins considering he needed to raise funds for the repairs of his house and property, so he can only make money by getting paid from Blockstream for the development. And i would guess most other core members are like this. They are programmers. They enjoy coding and improving Bitcoin as they did from the start. They did not buy Bitcoins hoping they would get rich, but they probably looked at it from a programming perspective.
Their salary now depends on Blockstream and they have to follow the rules.

Core members have said it in the past that increase of the block size would be okay, even up to 8MB!! So what is wrong with the segwit2x now that it is considered an attack?
The answer is simple. Segwit2x means firing Core developers and Blockstream losing impact, so they will ofcorse do all they can in order to prevent this.

So the conclusion is: segwit2x would only do good for Bitcoin, but Bitcoin Core members are trying to prevent it - only reason being they would lose the influence. If one team of developers gets to decide what happens - is that not centralisation?

Is there any good argument against Blocksize increase? And don't mention the blockchain getting too big. In one year the blockchain has grown from 85GB to 135GB, increasing by 50GB. With 2x block size increase, this would be 100GB per year. The cost for storage is rapidly decreasing as technology is progressing, and in 10 years the estimate block size(with segwit2x) would be 1,135TB. At current prices this would cost around 50$, and we all know in 10 years 1TB of storage could cost a few dollars.
And how many people actually run a full node? It seems all nonsense to me.

Anyways there are a lot of things that i do not understand, that i could be wrong on, so please DO correct me and DO comment, because i do not understand and i would like to know , whether is this theory completly wrong, could be right or something completely else?
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