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What's really interesting for me about the Blocksize Debate is what it reveals about Bitcoin's governance. Most of the people involved agree that the blocksize

What's really interesting for me about the Blocksize Debate is what it reveals about Bitcoin's governance. Most of the people involved agree that the blocksize limit should be increased (with the notable exception of Peter Todd) and the main disagreement seems to be about how (and how quickly) and the increase should happen. There also seems to be a hint of power struggle in the backlash against Gavin's push to increase the limit to 8MB. I personally believe that Bitcoin will need to evolve if it has any hope of surviving and maintaining its value. The fact that the core community appears to be having a tough time reaching consensus on this particular issue doesn't bode particularly well for the sort of changes that may be required in the future (e.g. changing the proof-of-work mechanism).

Bae8anoh 11y ago
Read up on the history of Mike Hearn, he has wanted to fork Bitcoin into his own governance for years, this is just an excuse. In 2011 he was proposing to Satoshi that he should take over the project[0], in 2013 he was trying to pitch the concept that development was stagnant and that a fork was needing to fix it[1][2], and now in 2015 it's again come about that he has found an excuse to attempt it (this time with some mild enthusiasm from part of the community). In the past Mike Hearn has pitched censorship features in Tor[3], attempting to subvert the inclusion of privacy fixes in Tor[4], proposed "redlists" of supposedly undesirable transactions in Bitcoin[5]. The current branch of Bitcoin XT already includes an alarmingly ill advised hardcoded blacklist of supposedly Tor exit nodes which are de-prioritized[6]. The measure of "consensus" has already slipped down to 75% when it become clear that 95% of the hashrate was never going to happen. The solution from Mike Hearn is that if miners don't want to get to 75%, he will simply hardcode his own centralized markers into Bitcoin wallets[7] to make sure it happens regardless. This is unbelievably toxic stuff, and spells certain death of Bitcoin if it goes ahead. [0]: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=3kt5Reeh http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=3kt5Reeh [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/29qafs/circle_ceo_issues_thinly_veiled_threat_of_hard/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/29qafs/circle_ceo_... [2]: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-core-development-falling-behind-warns-mike-hearn/ http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-core-development-falling-beh... [3]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-July/007167.html https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-July/007... [4]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-July/007173.html https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-July/007... [5]: https://bitcoinfoundation.org/forum/index.php?/topic/505-coin-tracking/ https://bitcoinfoundation.org/forum/index.php?/topic/505-coi... [6]: https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/blob/73c9efe74c5cc8faea9c2b2c785a2f5b68aa4c23/src/torips.h https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/blob/73c9efe74c5cc8fa... [7]: http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34162353/ http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34162353/
- givengfffr 11y ago
  The fact you're being down votted speaks volumes of the HN community lack of knowledge and the fandom around Mike and Gavin, both of which are trying to strong arm Bitcoin, Gavin even stopped contributing for a while so he could galavant around and call himself chief scientist. Meanwhile he and Mike threaten other developers on the dev mailing list instead of good faith discission.
  - freework 11y ago
    You are getting downvoted (you and the other green username) because hacker news is not a community that values posts that are purely personal insults. Try posting some ideas next time.
    - Bae8anoh 11y ago
      There's no insults in my comment, just statements of fact and links to supporting evidence.
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
    - jojbjinjin 11y ago
      Dude, you're cliqueish attitude and HN Mod bullshit is why I no longer bother with accounts. Try reading the substance of the post, don't waste time attacking 'green accounts', or is that your only thing you have to contribute? Go read the dev mailing list, go look at pull requests, Gavin's become a marketer who appeals to reddit and private contacts with business instead of the technical community. He even got the basic math wrong when he originally proposed 20.
- earlz 11y ago
  Anyone can "fork" bitcoin.. No one will accept their fork, but they can go right on and do it. This is my first hearing of Mike Hearn, but I don't understand your attacks on him. For one, I'd be ok with Tor traffic being de-prioritized in an attack since that is commonly where an attack is coming from anyway. The centralized list is concerning, but de-prioritization rarely matters anyway (ie, outside of when the network is attacked) All of his other proposals are just that, proposals and "lets talk about this and the problem". I hate to think if I proposed/discussed a bad solution to a problem and suddenly I'm part of some conspiracy theory.

Bae8anoh 11y ago

Read up on the history of Mike Hearn, he has wanted to fork Bitcoin into his own governance for years, this is just an excuse. In 2011 he was proposing to Satoshi that he should take over the project[0], in 2013 he was trying to pitch the concept that development was stagnant and that a fork was needing to fix it[1][2], and now in 2015 it's again come about that he has found an excuse to attempt it (this time with some mild enthusiasm from part of the community). In the past Mike Hearn has pitched censorship features in Tor[3], attempting to subvert the inclusion of privacy fixes in Tor[4], proposed "redlists" of supposedly undesirable transactions in Bitcoin[5]. The current branch of Bitcoin XT already includes an alarmingly ill advised hardcoded blacklist of supposedly Tor exit nodes which are de-prioritized[6]. The measure of "consensus" has already slipped down to 75% when it become clear that 95% of the hashrate was never going to happen. The solution from Mike Hearn is that if miners don't want to get to 75%, he will simply hardcode his own centralized markers into Bitcoin wallets[7] to make sure it happens regardless. This is unbelievably toxic stuff, and spells certain death of Bitcoin if it goes ahead. [0]: http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=3kt5Reeh http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=3kt5Reeh [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/29qafs/circle_ceo_issues_thinly_veiled_threat_of_hard/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/29qafs/circle_ceo_... [2]: http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-core-development-falling-behind-warns-mike-hearn/ http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-core-development-falling-beh... [3]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-July/007167.html https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-July/007... [4]: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-July/007173.html https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-dev/2014-July/007... [5]: https://bitcoinfoundation.org/forum/index.php?/topic/505-coin-tracking/ https://bitcoinfoundation.org/forum/index.php?/topic/505-coi... [6]: https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/blob/73c9efe74c5cc8faea9c2b2c785a2f5b68aa4c23/src/torips.h https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/blob/73c9efe74c5cc8fa... [7]: http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34162353/ http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34162353/

givengfffr 11y ago
The fact you're being down votted speaks volumes of the HN community lack of knowledge and the fandom around Mike and Gavin, both of which are trying to strong arm Bitcoin, Gavin even stopped contributing for a while so he could galavant around and call himself chief scientist. Meanwhile he and Mike threaten other developers on the dev mailing list instead of good faith discission.
- freework 11y ago
  You are getting downvoted (you and the other green username) because hacker news is not a community that values posts that are purely personal insults. Try posting some ideas next time.
  - Bae8anoh 11y ago
    There's no insults in my comment, just statements of fact and links to supporting evidence.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
  - jojbjinjin 11y ago
    Dude, you're cliqueish attitude and HN Mod bullshit is why I no longer bother with accounts. Try reading the substance of the post, don't waste time attacking 'green accounts', or is that your only thing you have to contribute? Go read the dev mailing list, go look at pull requests, Gavin's become a marketer who appeals to reddit and private contacts with business instead of the technical community. He even got the basic math wrong when he originally proposed 20.
earlz 11y ago
Anyone can "fork" bitcoin.. No one will accept their fork, but they can go right on and do it. This is my first hearing of Mike Hearn, but I don't understand your attacks on him. For one, I'd be ok with Tor traffic being de-prioritized in an attack since that is commonly where an attack is coming from anyway. The centralized list is concerning, but de-prioritization rarely matters anyway (ie, outside of when the network is attacked) All of his other proposals are just that, proposals and "lets talk about this and the problem". I hate to think if I proposed/discussed a bad solution to a problem and suddenly I'm part of some conspiracy theory.