Topic: How I learned to stop worrying and love the fork (Read 2357 times)

That's actually an interesting and valuable observation.  IMHO.

Exactly this! I kind of believe that if we do end up with 2 Blockchain's, Bitcoin will never again be the same and we would lose a lot of our future potential. People would lose confidence, precedent would be set and Bitcoin would just never be the same.

Now is this possible? Absolutely. As Meni said it nicely, people have already used to throughout their history on destroying much of the great things because of their human characters, egos etc..

Lets hope we will never end up with 2 Bitcoins.

There can't be 2 chains. if that happens everyone will be leaping off of Bitcoin in a real hurry. This situation is doing no good for bitcoin. I'm a bitcoin believer, but even soI believe that another coin will overcome Bitcoin before we know it.

why i stopped worrying and began loving the fork is that this whole circus means that people give a damn.

I think that's more due to cultural differences than impatience. Finns give relatively little value to social etiquette. I guess Linus just thinks it's more important to be clear in ones message and get the job done. It might not always motivate to do the job well (some egos will get bruised), but certainly makes it easier as others don't have to be second guessing his intentions.

Re. bitcoin. laanwj is respected and trusted and could potentially steer bitcoin clear of this XT fork. Solutions might not be the most efficient ones, but sometimes it's more important to move things forward.

The same thing was said many times about Bitcoin itself by most of the people who had even heard of it.  Ultimately they mis-judged and it was their loss.  Shrugs.

The most damaging aspect is how the rest of the people not within the circle of community, on what they would think and will view bitcoin. They will see it as something not reliable and with uncertainty surrounding it, nobody is going to put in more money. Surely they are not going to take that kind of risk on investment.

How is this even possible? The miners that are at a loss will drop out resulting in a difficulty adjustment. Those who aren't at a loss due to their competitive environment will just continue mining, like it is the case actually. Difficulty will simply adjust to the marginal cost of the sum of the transaction fees.

Yeah I could see there being wallets that incorporate both bitcoin versions. A dual wallet that determines the best way to store/spend your funds.

What you actually mean is that BIP101 has support from a handful of large incumbent businesses. And I'm not referring to you when talking about dishonest tactics, you've been straightforward in what you've said.


Whitepaper was the blueprint, not the final spec. Your idea is a bad one. With no limit, the whole dynamic eventually collapses. Or the miners continue at a loss.

I think probably you are not right, but at the end of the day there is a lot of hand-waving and speculation involved in a lot of this stuff.

For values, I believe it very unlikely that reality would prove a split to be a zero-sum game.  In other words, that the value would 'half'.  I personally feel that the future of Bitcoin is most bright as a backing store (or reserve currency or source-of-truth or whatever one wants to call it) providing a foundation for subordinate chains.  A split would cause me to consider my own stash more dear because I believe that the other group is a detriment at this point and we could move forward more easily without them.

On the flip side, as has been stated, the investor class wants a more nimble management team among other things.  They might value the solution more if it could move more quickly to the roles that they envision.

So, a split might result in a significant increase in total net value.  Conversely, people might think that such a split could be repeated time and time again and it makes blockchain technology as expressed by Bitcoin families of crypto-currency less valuable.

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To your question about 'two wallets', I would say no.  What you would need is a wallet which could evaluate each UTXO that you control and decide how to optimally structure spends so you don't get burnt.  I would anticipate such things being commonplace by the time they are needed...which, unfortunately, doesn't necessarily mean that everyone will use them so some people who are not paying attention or who choose to trust the wrong people will probably get burnt.

BIP 101 has had a lot of support from businesses in bitcoin ecosystem and when it comes to dishonest tactics neither side is clean. If you're asking me if I'm everyday user, then yes, I've been using bitcoin since early 2013. Like with most bitcoin users, until this debate I've had no interest in writing to BCT so that's why my account is new.


It's basically just to kick the can forward to some point where it doesn't matter so that better solutions can be made (if even needed). 8 MB is just something which miners and businesses have already given some support so easiest point to find quick consensus.

If you ask me I'd be happy in lifting the limit completely as it's not even mentioned in the whitepaper.

Sorry for pointing out some facts you dislike

The irony is delicious, more replies to statements that are subtly but importantly different to the statement I actually made.

You're not fooling anyone, it's totally disgusting and you should be ashamed of yourself.

There is some value to the comparison IMO.


Somewhat agree. The hierarchy is definitely important, there cannot be deadlocks to progress, even if that means progress goes in the "wrong" direction. It also demonstrates how a less patient character can also be effective, although whether Torvald's demeanour is what actually motivates people to do the job well is debatable.

The Bitcoin dev team does have a hierarchy, but it's not enforced by a strong character. The strong characters are amongst the immediate lieutenants, not the people with commit access (who I believe are currently Wladimir, Pieter Wuille and Jeff Garzik). When contemplating the alternatives, there is no-one that I think has the right temperament for a role that requires more trust than Torvalds'. We'd possibly already have a solution, but possibly a host of new problems too.

You must be kidding right? http://blog.blockchain.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Industry-Block-Size-letter-All-Signed.pdf

I wonder who's being dishonest with his arguments 

At least, let's expect that coin value is not lost if there is a fork. If the fork comes, old coins will be in the two chains, and likely halve their value, forcing people to have the two wallets to maintain their coin value.

Am I right?

From his writings it doesn't sound like he'd take the job.

I also remember Maxwell mentioning that he thought it would be unwise for any American (or USian I guess) to have formal leading role in Bitcoin.  It was either stated or implied that this nationality status could result in unhealthy and unwelcome political pressure.

Bitcoin development is quite unlike any other open source software.

You are not the first one to bring up the Linux parallel. Unfortunately it doesn't apply.

I think Linux has managed quite well with huge number of contributors (thousands?). Linus has been it's benevolent dictator from the day one (although he has been delegating his work to trusted "leutenants" more and more). It seems that large software projects need to have clear hierarchy in order to move things forward (someone has to have the final say on what patches get accepted).

Obiviously some people will sometimes disagree in direction taken and it will result in a fork. But the impression I get from Core is that it has no direction (no one has the final say in what should be done), just bunch of devs with different ideas on what should be done.