Topic: Post your SegWit questions here - open discussion - big week for Bitcoin! - page 14. (Read 84845 times)

STAHP with the drama Carlton, you're not going anywhere. You'll make the last post on this forum before it shuts down 10+ years from now, mark my words.

Besides, last time I checked, you were blacklisting non-Segwit nodes with your own little CarltonBanksCoin fork, what happened to that epic thread? LOL

As will I.

The developers arguing against it are contemptible. It's supposed to be a readiness formality, not a vote. If you think that the disruption will be too much for your delicate little nerves to handle, you clearly don't understand the political significance of Bitcoin to begin with. We're being forced into taking drastic steps by the miners, and now "Core" wants to stonewall too?

I'd like to know exactly which Core contributors are taking this non-productive, obstructive stance, those that lack courage are not suited for this type of project. The users would certainly have sufficient fortitude to back this move, they're interested in the growing success of the project not to mention their own success.

achow101, which Core developers lack the fortitude to support the users making their own decision on activating Segwit, BIP148 or otherwise?

I'm waiting for an implementation. Once we have a reviewed and tested implementation, I will upgrade my node to activate UASF at whatever date has most support from the community. Miners had a lot of time to upgrade. Alts are advancing. I'd prefer to activate UASF sooner rather than later.

So it's now stalemate from 2 directions at once?

Wouldn't it make more sense for the devs against BIP148 to quit Bitcoin altogether given that attitude? Once a different cryptocoin implements a successful 2nd layer, Bitcoin will lose a significant competitive edge. There's nothing magic about contributing to the Bitcoin codebase, another team could implement Segwit and other future technologies without them.

Why continue to be a part of a project that's being prevented from progressing? The devs are going to run out of non-fork improvements and maintenance coding (for the most part). I'm seriously considering looking at why I'm still involved at all.

BIP 148 (aka UASF) is not accepted by pretty much all developers. It has not been accepted by Core nor is it likely to be accepted and implemented by Core. As of now, the segwit implementation in Core is as is specified in the segwit BIPs, which do not include BIP 148.

Will SegWit be mandatory deployed since Aug. 1?

I've read from a post from a Chinese forum that in BIP 148: https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0148.mediawiki

the "mandatory" start time of originally suggested Oct. 1 was predated to Aug. 1.

Although the proposal is written "soft fork", when no concensus is made till Aug. 1, will a hard fork suddenly occur at that time?

So my questions: What is actually written in this code, and is this BIP accepted and will be released in the new Core version?

Yeah. Lessons needs to be learned and we are in the middle of a big social economical experiment where main goal is about disruption.

Learned: try to control this by any means is gonna be disrupted. -> let it flow by its greed by design and it will be self healing

Alts are literally taking over in terms of market cap as we speak. Thx @gmaxwell, thx luke-jr, thx adam back. Thx for destroying Bitcoin.

(this was going to be a bump on a plan b, but we all know the moral and ethereal angel-beings in Core don't do a plan b)

Can Craig Wright please creep out of his hole soon and set things straight?!?! FFS!!!

UASF isn't as safe as when you you have a coperative miner upgrade. However we don't have coperative miners (or at lest don't have a majorty or coperative miners).  UASF becomes very reasonable in this unfortunalte state; as it removes controll from the miners hands.

Of course it is better to do a miner-based upgrade, however this option, in this politcal enviroment, is not reasonable.

Thanks will look into UASF, that's what I thought for the rest... sigh.  

There's UASF, but most of the developers and miners don't think that UASF is safe. As of now, there are no other plans to get segwit activated. I think that it is possible for the timeout date to be pushed back once we get close to it, but so far no proposal for that has been made yet. I highly doubt that the activation threshold will be lowered.

SegWit doesn't look like is going to get activated any time soon, some Chinese miners have gone the BU way and possibly more will switch, but I hope not.

What other options are there for SegWit to be activated? Can the way to activate it be changed at this stage? Or what other possible way is there?

Again, I have to point out that there are bigger companies involved with Bitcoin - and nothing stopping a number of smaller competitors from teaming up either.  So why Blockstream?  Even if Blockstream was 'in the right place at the right time', wouldn't a bigger dog just run them off the block - I mean, assuming your thesis that money is what controls bitcoin core development is true?


Well, first off, lets try to dispel a myth.  Lightning is not a Blockstream product.  They do not stand to make any money in any way, as far as I can tell, from LN.  They have supported it, and even have one dev working on a version of LN, but I think the only way they can benefit from it will be the same way you and I will benefit from it - it will add utility to Bitcoin, spurring more use, thus driving Bitcoin value higher.

Blockstream's financial niche, I think (and I am not really a Blockstream expert btw), is side-chain-based products.  These will benefit from segwit, but certainly don't require it.  Lightning does not require segwit either.

I seriously doubt any VC group or investor would invest $75M on the vagaries of what may or not be adopted by an open-source software project.  I imagine they invested in vision and development talent that could make them money regardless of what comes out of Bitcoin politics.


All I can suggest is that you subscribe to the mailing list, or log into the IRC and watch it happen in real-time.

Thanks for the reasoned discussion.


Well if Blockstream was in the right place at the right time, they hired Maxwell and Back, and $75 million fell from the sky because of that, wouldn't that make sense? Do you believe that abandoning Segwit and LN would ever be allowed by Blockstream investors? No, because that's the vision they were sold. Their $75 mil, Segwit and LN will go to the grave together.

Of course the devs can argue the merits of technical changes - they're devs! But, as we've seen, they have no clue when it comes to economics, politics, and Wall Street vs. China business dealings... and that's why we're here.



That's quite an "unseen hand"! I propose that it's Maxwell/Back with 80% certainty.


We might be in a Nash Equilibrium here. In some ways that thought is comforting - no more drama!

There's nothing egalitarian about it.  I think meritocratic is a better description.


I thought your whole thesis was that Blockstream was able to control core dev because $75B VC investment???  I pointed out that there are other companies in the Bitcoin space with more money, and ask why they are not in charge instead.  Now you change to "Blockstream was just in the right place at the right time"?  Doesn't sound like a successful formula for seizing and keeping control of a $20B dollar enterprise to me...  Is it not possible that core development is a meritocratic process where the best ideas vie for support among the developers?


I would agree that core does not now and never has had 'absolute control' over Bitcoin development.  Anyone can git-clone the code and make any changes they want, as several other developer groups have done recently.  I think that your pronouncement of the death of segwit is definitely a little premature though



"Other players" just means other "interest groups" (either within or outside of Bitcoin Core) who may or may not have different ideas about how Bitcoin development should proceed.  Could be other companies, or just other developers with different ideas.



I don't think anyone 'wears that hat' - my observation about how documents like that come to be is that someone who cares about the subject will write something preliminary up, and discussion will ensue on the bitcoin-dev mailing list, IRC, etc., changes will be made, then the group will ack/nack the final document.



Maybe.  You can actually make a good argument for why an 'immutable' Bitcoin might be a good idea.  Personally, I am not against that idea, but I think it might be premature at this point.  It would be nice to see at least a fix for malleability like segwit or something else get in before we lose the ability to agree on changes forever.

Your response makes sense, but I still think it's naive to believe that this "egalitarian" OSS model is actually running the show...



Probably Blockstream was in the right place at the right time? When you get a team of people together, they stick together.  While we're on the subject, I don't think Core has absolute control over bitcoin development anymore, now that Segwit is bombing and they have no contingency plan. And who are these "other players"? If you mean the BU team, they're obviously technically a bit below par. Where is it written that the bitcoin network has to constantly change and upgrade?

I asked you before, and you didn't answer: Who prepares the bitcoin core roadmap?


...and perhaps that's why there won't be anymore changes to the bitcoin network.

Segwit was a radical departure from the original bitcoin protocol. And now it's in the dustbin. If BU really tries to hard fork, they'll end up there too.

AFAIK there are only two organizations that pay people full time to work on Bitcoin Core, MIT DCI and Chain Code Labs. MIT DCI funds Wladimir van Der Laan and Cory Fields to work on Core full time, and Chain Code Labs funds Alex Morcos, Suhas Daftuar, Matt Corallo, John Newberry, and Russell Yanofsky to work on Bitcoin Core. Everyone else works on it on their free time.

AFAIK, there is no succession plan. If the 3 maintainers somehow just dropped off of the face of the Earth, Pieter Wuille could still merge things and add people to have commit access (I think). Really though, there are still many people experienced with Bitcoin Core and contributing to it that they can continue working on it and improving it pretty much at the same pace as before.

Thanks, as always, for taking the time to say it simply. It really is interesting to realise that a lot of what bitcoin is is done voluntarily - though of course one has to think it is paying dividends to the maintainers at least, as it sounds almost like a full-time job.

So I've more or less established the de facto "who are in charge", but do they have a succession plan? What happens if these three very important maintainers suddenly disappear or stop their work (let's not say death but disappearance, maybe like Nakamoto). Is there enough information and resource for someone else to pick things up? And must the devs achieve group consensus on succession?

     I asked you before, and I will ask now again:  What makes Blockstream so special that they were able to take over core development, and able to maintain absolute control over it, as you claim?  There are lots of big money players in the Bitcoin space, some considerably bigger than Blockstream, why are they not in control instead?  Why don't competing players team up and kick Blockstream's collective butt?  What is the mechanism by which Blockstream maintains this chokehold on core development, and is able to resist all other players?

     The answer is that what you have chosen to see purely as 'The Blockstream Agenda' is really the development agenda that is favored (or in any case. least objected to) by the majority of current core developers,  many (if not most) users, and a great number of the most respected and technically-knowledgeable individuals in the Bitcoin space.  Do you really think Andreas Antonopolous is controlled by Blockstream?  Nick Szabo is one of the fathers of the technology that became Bitcoin, and he also supports Segwit.  Do you think these guys are 'controlled' by Blockstream?  I'm not dropping names as an argument-from-authority here - just pointing out the obvious facts that Blockstream is not forcing segwit down the throats of Core - it is a very widely supported technology.

     There IS control over that $20B financial network.  It is controlled by the consensus of all current core developers, whatever company or interest they may represent.  ALL of them, I assure you, have their own agendas, and all of them work to support that agenda.  The end result is whatever political solution they can work out amongst each other, end of story.

     If the majority of core developers had instead decided that the best technical solution to increase TPS was 20G blocks, there would be a chorus of trolls on this forum claiming that Bitcoin Core was completely controlled by multimillionaire Roger Ver.  ANY PATH FORWARD AT ALL serves the interests of some players, and there will always be politicing by all sides.

OK then if you're really that naive, you can choose to believe that... I see here a $20 billion market cap cryptocurrency financial network. You really think that NO ONE is controlling how this network's software is coded?  This is not some Richard Stallman GNU Hurd project. You don't see that Blockstream's agenda is served by Segwit?  You don't understand that Blockstream is positioned to profit handsomely if they can sell Lightning and second layer solutions?

And by the way, I'm sure there are people behind the scenes that exert more control than Maxwell and Back. Barry Silbert or somebody like that...  somebody who is making money and wants to continue doing so.