Things ignored by this post:
Conservationism about coersively overriding the rules of the network is a widely held view, including almost the entire technical community (which blockstream engineers are only a small part of).
Concerns about hardforks and removal of blocksize limits stem back many years, long before the creation of blockstream. I was posting in 2011, for example.
Soft-forks were a mechanism put into place by Bitcoin's creator-- and used by him several times, never hardforks--, and he also also described the initial rules as largely set in stone when the system was launched.
At the end of the day, _no one_ has the authority to push a hardfork onto other people-- to do so would require overriding their wishes and changing the software on computers they personally own and control. Bitcoin is specifically designed to not have that kind of authority. People who think hardforks are easy, simple, or desirable have lost the plot.
Conservationism about coersively overriding the rules of the network is a widely held view, including almost the entire technical community (which blockstream engineers are only a small part of).
Concerns about hardforks and removal of blocksize limits stem back many years, long before the creation of blockstream. I was posting in 2011, for example.
Soft-forks were a mechanism put into place by Bitcoin's creator-- and used by him several times, never hardforks--, and he also also described the initial rules as largely set in stone when the system was launched.
At the end of the day, _no one_ has the authority to push a hardfork onto other people-- to do so would require overriding their wishes and changing the software on computers they personally own and control. Bitcoin is specifically designed to not have that kind of authority. People who think hardforks are easy, simple, or desirable have lost the plot.
^^ said by someone paid by blockstream ^^
softforks were not "put in place" by the bitcoins creator.. softforks are utilising a tweak that can be used to make them happen.
its like saying
gmaxwell: apple trees were put inplace to make applepie and cider..
everyone: no apple trees make apples.. its only afterwards that people realised they could tweak an apple to make cider.. but cider is no longer an apple
as for talking about the bitcoin creators intentions, satoshi actually envisioned increasing the blocksize limit
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.15366
Quote
It can be phased in, like:
if (blocknumber > 115000)
maxblocksize = largerlimit
It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.
When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.
if (blocknumber > 115000)
maxblocksize = largerlimit
It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.
When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.
its just a shame satoshi disappeared a couple months later before actually coding it in. because based on the blockheight. he envisioned the code to be included before that blockheight and activated as of about march 2011 as an example
at the end of the day, _no one_ (yes i used gmaxwells failed attempt to underline) should be allowed to prevent a hardfork and make it contentious.
its only contentious because blockstream/core say no.
