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I thought this article was interesting because it highlights the problem when there is a lack of strong governance in an open source project. After talking to

I thought this article was interesting because it highlights the problem when there is a lack of strong governance in an open source project. After talking to a bunch of financial firms about bitcoin I've got the sense that the strong consensus is that they don't believe the core bitcoin team "has their act together" in terms of a coherent road map, or possibly more charitably, that the core team isn't at all interested in having the transaction limit increased. This means that that if bitcoin, or other related technologies like the block chain are going to be adopted by companies to run real businesses on then either the companies themselves will own the technology roadmap or some other entity with a fair bit of credibility will have to step in.

roymurdock 11y ago
It's fascinating to me that someone paid the Russian hacker to develop such a comprehensive and powerful solution to kill XT. That couldn't have been cheap. But it also wouldn't make sense for a large GPU/ASIC miner to block the move to XT, as it would have favored their hardware over those mining on regular CPUs. So it must have been an ideologically-driven attack? But it defeats the main ideological purpose of the protocol - democratic consensus as nodes decide to accept or reject changes to the client. Weird and paradoxical.
- droffel 11y ago
  ASICs are basically it these days, GPUs and CPUs are only used by hobbyists at this point. The reduced energy requirements of ASICs over GPUs has made it basically a requirement to use ASICs, as energy costs can't be amortized over the lifetime of the miner (while the fixed cost to buy the miner can).
- CyberDildonics 11y ago
  The moderator of the now heavily censored (they've blocked many original developers along with the biggest bitcoin companies) reddit/r/bitcoin took donations a long time ago to build a forum and when the value shot through the roof he ignored anyone's pleas to give back the money - valued around $3 million at some point (I think). He is also one of the primary people threatened by an increase in blocksize as it will threaten the company he is involved in - blockstream. So there are some very plausible theories as to who would do something like that.
- brazzledazzle 11y ago
  My first thought was someone with a financial interest in a company like Blockstream since they seem to have a vested interest in the status quo.
TD-Linux 11y ago
The Bitcoin Core team does have a roadmap: https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases-faq https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases-faq
- HappyTypist 11y ago
  But it's arguable if it's a good one. It's main proposal, "soft fork segwit" isn't really a soft fork. It reduces the security of every single existing node to "Accept every transaction miner says, don't do valifation". That's because existing nodes don't know SegWit, and would by default reject these transactions as designed. So the core devs are proposing to reuse "Anyone can spend" op codes to "SegWit", just so old nodes won't complain. That means a malicious miner can spend Bitcoin they don't own and nodes will happily accept it. Why do they want soft fork SegWit? Because if they hard fork, they might as well as simply increase the block size. And some "core developers", with a strong correlation to those employed by a company named Blockstream Inc, absolutely oppose it. What does Blockstream do? They're making a "layer 3" transaction network called "Lightning" that bypasses the Bitcoin network and charges it's own set of fees.
  - TD-Linux 11y ago
    Well, I was mostly arguing the point that there wasn't strong leadership or roadmap. Disagreeing with the leadership doesn't mean it isn't strong :) FWIW what you describe is pretty much the definition of a soft fork though - disallowing previously allowed transactions. Old nodes can't fully validate the new transaction types, but they can't spend them either, so they aren't really at risk. Also, the discussion was about Bitcoin Core, not Blockstream, and the Lightning Network is not on the Core roadmap page. Though from reading the lightning network whitepaper at https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/ I don't see anything inherently wrong with it.
    - HappyTypist 11y ago
      That's a misnomer. Old clients cannot validate the new transaction types at all and will blindly think they're valid. This is the equivalent of your browser accepting any single SSL certificate that says "X.999" irregaddless of if it's signed. Instead of your browser saying "I don't know how to validate this certificate, please upgrade me so I can". -- Bitcoin core has for better or worse grown synonymous with Blockstream. A majority of commit access holders are employed by them, and unsurprisingly they tend to all vote in a bloc. The roadmap does mention the lightning network, just as a reference to "off chain solutions". The two main issues with lightning are: 1) centralisation pressure among hubs: The number of jobs will eventually converge to a small number of central nodes. 2) Lightning is being developed by a single company in essentially-private, in contradiction to how Bitcoin development has been done since its inception. They refuse to accept outside contributions and only pay lip service.
maxmax 11y ago
"This means that that if bitcoin, or other related technologies like the block chain are going to be adopted by companies to run real businesses on then either the companies themselves will own the technology roadmap or some other entity with a fair bit of credibility will have to step in." Like banks and the Fed?
- profeta 11y ago
  well, it fits. the blockchain is already too big to fail.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  Yes, there is no such thing as a purely decentralized, trustless protocol. The major innovation here is that the miners have the option to vote with their feet by either accepting or rejecting new monetary policy from the developers. Banks can't just dump all of their USD and US bonds if the Fed makes a decision they don't agree with. So there's a different power dynamic built into the network.

roymurdock 11y ago

It's fascinating to me that someone paid the Russian hacker to develop such a comprehensive and powerful solution to kill XT. That couldn't have been cheap. But it also wouldn't make sense for a large GPU/ASIC miner to block the move to XT, as it would have favored their hardware over those mining on regular CPUs. So it must have been an ideologically-driven attack? But it defeats the main ideological purpose of the protocol - democratic consensus as nodes decide to accept or reject changes to the client. Weird and paradoxical.

droffel 11y ago
ASICs are basically it these days, GPUs and CPUs are only used by hobbyists at this point. The reduced energy requirements of ASICs over GPUs has made it basically a requirement to use ASICs, as energy costs can't be amortized over the lifetime of the miner (while the fixed cost to buy the miner can).
CyberDildonics 11y ago
The moderator of the now heavily censored (they've blocked many original developers along with the biggest bitcoin companies) reddit/r/bitcoin took donations a long time ago to build a forum and when the value shot through the roof he ignored anyone's pleas to give back the money - valued around $3 million at some point (I think). He is also one of the primary people threatened by an increase in blocksize as it will threaten the company he is involved in - blockstream. So there are some very plausible theories as to who would do something like that.
brazzledazzle 11y ago
My first thought was someone with a financial interest in a company like Blockstream since they seem to have a vested interest in the status quo.

TD-Linux 11y ago

The Bitcoin Core team does have a roadmap: https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases-faq https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases-faq

HappyTypist 11y ago
But it's arguable if it's a good one. It's main proposal, "soft fork segwit" isn't really a soft fork. It reduces the security of every single existing node to "Accept every transaction miner says, don't do valifation". That's because existing nodes don't know SegWit, and would by default reject these transactions as designed. So the core devs are proposing to reuse "Anyone can spend" op codes to "SegWit", just so old nodes won't complain. That means a malicious miner can spend Bitcoin they don't own and nodes will happily accept it. Why do they want soft fork SegWit? Because if they hard fork, they might as well as simply increase the block size. And some "core developers", with a strong correlation to those employed by a company named Blockstream Inc, absolutely oppose it. What does Blockstream do? They're making a "layer 3" transaction network called "Lightning" that bypasses the Bitcoin network and charges it's own set of fees.
- TD-Linux 11y ago
  Well, I was mostly arguing the point that there wasn't strong leadership or roadmap. Disagreeing with the leadership doesn't mean it isn't strong :) FWIW what you describe is pretty much the definition of a soft fork though - disallowing previously allowed transactions. Old nodes can't fully validate the new transaction types, but they can't spend them either, so they aren't really at risk. Also, the discussion was about Bitcoin Core, not Blockstream, and the Lightning Network is not on the Core roadmap page. Though from reading the lightning network whitepaper at https://lightning.network/ https://lightning.network/ I don't see anything inherently wrong with it.
  - HappyTypist 11y ago
    That's a misnomer. Old clients cannot validate the new transaction types at all and will blindly think they're valid. This is the equivalent of your browser accepting any single SSL certificate that says "X.999" irregaddless of if it's signed. Instead of your browser saying "I don't know how to validate this certificate, please upgrade me so I can". -- Bitcoin core has for better or worse grown synonymous with Blockstream. A majority of commit access holders are employed by them, and unsurprisingly they tend to all vote in a bloc. The roadmap does mention the lightning network, just as a reference to "off chain solutions". The two main issues with lightning are: 1) centralisation pressure among hubs: The number of jobs will eventually converge to a small number of central nodes. 2) Lightning is being developed by a single company in essentially-private, in contradiction to how Bitcoin development has been done since its inception. They refuse to accept outside contributions and only pay lip service.

maxmax 11y ago

"This means that that if bitcoin, or other related technologies like the block chain are going to be adopted by companies to run real businesses on then either the companies themselves will own the technology roadmap or some other entity with a fair bit of credibility will have to step in." Like banks and the Fed?

profeta 11y ago
well, it fits. the blockchain is already too big to fail.
roymurdock 11y ago
Yes, there is no such thing as a purely decentralized, trustless protocol. The major innovation here is that the miners have the option to vote with their feet by either accepting or rejecting new monetary policy from the developers. Banks can't just dump all of their USD and US bonds if the Fed makes a decision they don't agree with. So there's a different power dynamic built into the network.