Topic: Bitcoin Development Is Beyond Slow! IMHO! Yell at me! Prove Me Wrong! :) (Read 345 times)

Again, this has also something to do with size, no matter how often you claim it doesn't: With a small market cap, there is nothing at stake, and even if the community somehow managed to reach some degree of decentralization, miners still don't have much to lose if they adopt some random change and possibly risk a blockchain split. Since there is much at stake for Bitcoin, people do actually care about avoiding a blockchain split. This leads to being conservative about changes that are adopted.

You have to observe these systems as a whole in order to understand them. There is no such thing as an Altcoin that is just decentralized, with no other characteristics being relevant.

Again this has little to do with size and mostly it is about decentralization.
In a centralized altcoin a change is "pushed" however in a decentralized bitcoin the changes are "proposed" and that's just the start. After that the proposal is discussed and usually get improved or changed then implemented and then starts being tested to find weaknesses and improve some more or maybe even reject at this point.
After all of this is done, it is put forth for users to accept (nodes upgrade to the new version and miners signal for the new change). If an incompetent developer proposes any bad change it would be rejected at the very beginning. This process has been in bitcoin from the beginning when bitcoin wasn't worth anything. Even Satoshi didn't just "push" changes, they were discussed and reviewed in that small community back then with Hal Finney et al.
BTW this is why OP is calling this process "beyond slow".

I'm not talking about what developers should do, but about a plausible causal connection:

Because Bitcoin is big enough, there is something at stake for the miners. Suppose an incompetent developer would push an arbitrary change, miners will think twice before adopting it. This is not necessarily the case for your random altcoin where the miner might not have any more lucrative plan than taking whatever code gets pushed and hoping the whole thing will fly at some point. So we have already one argument for a connection between the economic size of a blockchain and conservativeness with respect to changes.

For another one, just think how big the chance is for an altcoin with incompetent developers to get big...

I disagree with this too. It has very little to do with the size of bitcoin. Even a smaller altcoin should not just push changes recklessly without long periods of testing and review by as many developers as possible. The fact that altcoins don't do this is simply because of their developers' incompetence and in most cases because of the fact that they are trying to hype up their altcoin and pump it temporarily by pretending they have "updated" the protocol and made it "better" by pushing some arbitrary change.

Due to its mere size (measured by market cap), there is quite some incentive for Bitcoin to stay conservative with respect to changes in order to keep everyone in the boat. This is not the case for small blockchain with a smaller user base that might just accept whatever protocol changes the developers push into the code.

That's not true at all. In fact the pioneer, bitcoin is changing every couple of years. We have added new things to the protocol such as new OP codes, have changed some consensus rules, fixed or improved some issues, added new script semantics, and a lot more.
The reason why "fork coins" (better said copycats) have been dumping ever since they were created is because they don't have anything new to offer, they simply copy everything from bitcoin and basically only change the name to "bitcoin-something".

The current development of bitcoin core has way more problems than time.

This might already happen implicitly. The forks so far showed that there is a large market for a cryptocurrency that stays mostly as it is. None of them comes even close to the market value of the cryptocurrency on the original chain.

Yes, this is generally the case. For example, if you take game development companies they usually hire a tonne more people once they begin development on the game, and then offload them once its been completed. Although, this is usually done via external contractors, you get the idea.

Bitcoin, is being constantly changed though, its just at a much more smaller scale compared to other projects. Although, as I mentioned even small projects can involve a lot of people at once. Local businesses I know of have hired hundreds of people to get their project off the ground whether thats full time employees or contractors. Bitcoin, by nature is largely volunteer based, and therefore its almost self explanatory why Bitcoin might feel "slow" at times, although as mentioned above, not even sure I agree with that statement.

Maybe I'm talking out of my ass, but could slow development just be a natural progression, a natural slowing down when a certain project enters the later stages of its existence? So what I am talking about is that every project at first has an exponential progression that, whit time turns into a linear progression, not because of the developers themselves, but because the project has exhausted all of its potential and is pacing its self, so to speak. In the end, growth is still growth, and if there is any will to keep Bitcoin here for a long time then this is minor in the grand scheme of things.

This isn't revolutionary though, and certainly isn't specific to Bitcoin. If you've worked closely to software development or even overseen the process even small changes can take a very long time. First of all, you have to go through the idea process, then you need to get support for them, and then you have to finally come up with a sort of example, prototype or proof of concept. Only after these initial stages, and overwhelming support is the idea actually put into works.

Bitcoin is no different except for the fact its exaggerated since its completely open source, which isn't paying a full time wage for motivation, therefore the volunteers can be seen as hobbyists that propose changes, and those changes are either adopted by majority support or they are rejected.  To be honest, I would prefer a well thought out project, that is carefully, and articulately planned than a rushed one with major flaws, and less than intuitive design.

This is especially true when considering how important adoption is to Bitcoin. Adoption is vitally important, and each change to the code has to reflect that. To be honest, 300 or whatever the number of developers working on Bitcoin is tiny. When you consider that several small ish companies employ over thousand people when counting freelancers, and contract work to work on small scale websites, 300 people working on Bitcoin mostly on a part time basis, or the odd contribution is tiny for such a large project.

All the comments prior to this one say "It's slow but that's a good thing".  I agree.  Maybe it's time to leave the protocol frozen forever but there are ideas that would work on the protocol as is.

Bitcoin's value comes to a great extent from the policy to let other blockchains try out all the short-lived ideas. Those who want a blockchain that is expected to fundamentally change every week have already went for other projects to invest in.

That's right, bitcoin development is so sluggish and we know what are the reasons cause it.
Bitcoin is open-source, everyone can contribute to the project and provide good quality codes but any other core developers have to agree for that to be implemented which takes a short time but mostly take forever. Nonetheless, there are many contributors who have contributed to bitcoin code, more than 300 people, you can count it yourself at https://bitcoin.org/en/development#spec

It is totally understandable that developers would not mess with a "boom" market. Any rumors of a hard fork war, would once again cause uncertainty in the community and also a buzz on social media. (This will push down the price)

In any way, why do you want to mess with something that are working. (During the last ATH, there were lots of problems with transactions that took forever to confirm and Alt coins like Ethereum claiming to be the next Bitcoin) 

What changes are you looking for exactly?

Bitcoin core as available in the phblic repository is more like the base protocol or "Standard" like the ones that IEC, IEEE make for systems. The development has to be on top of this protocol. Development within the protocol itself needs wide consultations between all stakeholders.

If you look at this link, you would find a lot of stuff you can call devevlopment. https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2020/12/23/.

I think there is enough development but not enough discussion amongst the wider community (non-dev community).

It is not about development, but rather about adopting and accepting that development.
You can take the code, add whatever you want, and modify the protocol, but you will find it difficult for the whole community to adopt your idea. Let's take, for example, the soft fork that occurred in 2017.

Adoption can happen quickly if there is a loophole that needs to be done, but in normal circumstances, we need some years before everyone accepts the addition.

It might take a while to implement new improvements but the development is going at the right pace. Security is what is more important when you have the market cap and popularity of Bitcoin. We've seen countless examples of projects prioritizing hype and price pumping over functionality and users ended up losing money.

Slow development isn't necessarily a bad thing. Don't you think applying a low time preference to releasing features to ensure they are as robust and well thought as possible seem the right way to go? Especially when working on a peer to peer electronic payment system of a global scale that has so many enemies waiting to attack the network.

Besides, Taproot may not be out yet, but a lot of other improvements related to Lightning Network, privacy and security have been done this year. Check out https://bitcoinops.org/en/newsletters/2020/12/23/ for a full report.

Well, I did find it interesting ...a few years past ...when the Bitcoin Developers said they had a plan for IF they ever had to emergency 'hard fork' again due to some

unforeseen problems with the Bitcoin Blockchain Network. In other words, not only would they do the fix for whatever emergency that needed a hard fork of Bitcoin to

resolve..they had some 'tweaks' and 'improvements' in place to add with the opportunity if a hard fork happening. I am 'unsure' if block size would have been in

this batch of options on an emergency Bitcoin hard fork..but would not be surprised if it was so.

But again, is there not just enough devs? or development $$$...because the bigger the project the more you need both. From what I understand the last ATH

bitcoin had 1 million users/adopters and now it has 100x that....so, something has to play catch up at the development end in either more people as devs

more money tossed at the problem..or both. Also to the 'price' of Bitcoin...leads to the 'status quo' bias:

https://www.behavioraleconomics.com/resources/mini-encyclopedia-of-be/status-quo-bias/

I mean it, change is hard, but the ratio of developers to the adoption of Bitcoin and movement on fixes/additions is still, IMHO, way, way too slow.

Brad

That is one of the characteristics of a decentralized system that is worth nearly half a trillion dollar with even higher value businesses built on top of it.
Any change/upgrade has to be thoroughly reviewed and tested before it is published. So it's actually a good thing that proposals take a very long time to even become an "official proposal".
Not to mention that the change won't happen if everyone doesn't accept it. And that's just for soft-forks, hard-forks have an extra requirement which is needing everyone to upgrade their clients. That includes dozens of mining pools, thousands of services/businesses, 100k full nodes and possibly even millions of SPV node users.

Like all things Bitcoin the 'god-like' (in their minds anyway) Bitcoin Devs will fix such if that is the case...they have stuff ready to go that they may not want

to implement at yet or at all but will do so if they have to, IMH0. I remember posts by Bitcoin Developers that they had some 'hard fork' fixes ready to go if they

ever had a 'hard fork' like the last time (or one time) they had an 'unexpected one' ..that would be quite the wrench in the Bitcoin Universe. but people would adapt.

They will, however, continue to be, IMHO, way to conservative on fixes/additions/etc to Bitcoin Development, and the higher the Bitcoin prices ..the more hesitant they

will become, again IMHO. But again, they have yet to impress me and get Taproot out promptly. So we will see.

Brad