7 ms·

Just by reading the top two points: 1. Some of them show very poor communication skills or a lack of maturity — this has hurt bitcoin’s ability to bring new pr

Just by reading the top two points: 1. Some of them show very poor communication skills or a lack of maturity — this has hurt bitcoin’s ability to bring new protocol developers into the space. 2. They prefer ‘perfect’ solutions to ‘good enough’. And if no perfect solution exists they seem ok with inaction, even if that puts bitcoin at risk. I get this bad feeling that someone (author of the article) is planning a takeover and for all the wrong reasons. I've seen this "yeah they are smart guys, but they are introverts and our business needs to be extravert and agile and adaptive and fast moving and all other buzz words", then you introduce some of thous extrovert super agile people who just want to "bang out a solution, since any change is better than no change". Next thing you notice is that the old core team members are leaving after their protests about future of the product fell on deaf ears and these new guys are just pushing their own agenda/vision. Fast forward few years and just 1-2 or most likely none of the original team members are there anymore and cracks start to appear and these cracks are because the "better than nothing" solutions back in the day are found after all flawed, but now you have a lot of work build on top of rotten foundation and since your team now consists only of short sighted: "just fix it" people they are going to try to fix the problem at the top instead of at it's core "because we can't hold bringing in new features".

smitherfield 11y ago
Your comment is perhaps true in a general sense. However, in the case of the Bitcoin core team, we're talking about a group of people who richly deserve to be unseated.
- frankenmint 11y ago
  this is open source software - you act as if the seat can't be earned with enough commits.
  - smitherfield 11y ago
    That's the thing; the core maintainers won't allow anyone new in. At least nobody who disagrees with their pretty much objectively harmful inaction on raising the transaction limit, a stance they've adopted out of extreme stubbornness combined with glaring financial conflicts of interest.
    - derefr 11y ago
      I think the parent meant "unseated" as in LibreOffice unseating OpenOffice: the proper way to attempt a coup of a FOSS project is to fork it and outcompete it.
      - riffraff 11y ago
        but that has already happened, TFA is advocating moving to LibreOffice (BitcoinClassic).
        0x006A 11y ago
        BitcoinClassic has to do what LibreOffice has done first. Write more code, have more active developers, fix more bugs - be the better community for new developers etc. So far none of this happened.
        CookieMon 11y ago
        Yeah, but that's a chicken and egg problem because unless/until BitcoinClassic outcompetes the other one, none of your code will ever get executed, so any developer wanting to scratch an itch must contribute to the existing bitcoin rather than BitcoinClassic. The dynamics don't work the same way as a traditonal FOSS fork. Perhaps getting mindshare first is the way.
        bhaak 11y ago
        That has been tried before with XT and it failed. Bitcoin Classic is the attempt to change the reference implementation from the Core code to their code, by only changing as little as possible (that is, raising the 1 MB blocksize to 2 MB). The current problem is not being more open to other developers but to get a different reference implementation installed on full nodes and miners.
      - smitherfield 11y ago
        I know; and obviously Bitcoin Core aren't going to fire themselves. I'm just addressing the why they should be unseated, not the how. (It's worth noting that Bitcoin Core supporters have been DDOSing people running the various attempts at a "LibreOffice" that've been tried).
- Sevrene 11y ago
  As someone who hasn't been following bitcoin development very closely, can you please give me some examples or sources as to why they deserve to be unseated?
  - smitherfield 11y ago
    It's been posted elsewhere in this thread, but: https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7 https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905118
  - notlukejr 11y ago
    Do you trust these people? Austin Hill, CEO of Blockstream, admits to committing fraud to scam people: http://betakit.com/montreal-angel-austin-hill-failed-spectacularly-before-later-success/ http://betakit.com/montreal-angel-austin-hill-failed-spectac... Greg Maxwell, CTO of Blockstream, vandalizes pages on Wikipedia for fun: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&oldid=36639732#User:Gmaxwell https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Adminis... Patrick Strateman, co-founder of Blockstream, has been accused of fraud/theft: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159071.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159071.0 Luke-Jr, consultant to Blockstream claims the sun orbits the earth, slavery is okay, sodomy should be punished by death and that gay marriage is a logical impossibility. http://forums3.armagetronad.net/viewtopic.php?p=203850#p203850 http://forums3.armagetronad.net/viewtopic.php?p=203850#p2038... https://np.reddit.com/r/bitcoin_uncensored/comments/492ztl/lukejr_the_only_religion_people_have_a_right_to/ https://np.reddit.com/r/bitcoin_uncensored/comments/492ztl/l... https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/48avz0/informational_poll_tell_us_your_theology/d0noawh https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/48avz0/inform...
    - oska 11y ago
      Unfortunately this comment and this account (created only to criticise the bitcoin core team) is a good representation of the calibre of most of the criticism and attacks they have been copping over the last year or so.
riffraff 11y ago
I believe the author has been very careful in saying "if no perfect solution exists they seem ok with inaction", highlighting a different problem from "let's bang out code that sorta works and move on. Also, poor communication skills and "immaturity" have also been a "traditional" problems in FLOSS too. Being unwelcoming to new devs is especially a big problem for a project that _is already_ losing the old trusted devs.
- kang 11y ago
  Unwelcoming to new devs is not true. Who wrote code & wasn't let in? Also, go to the bitcoin irc and try asking technical questions and observe how everyone is so willing to help new devs looking to get in.
  - microcolonel 11y ago
    I feel like people are generally comfortable making the assertion that the community is unwelcoming; but those making the assertion generally don't seem to be able to back it up. A welcoming community doesn't need to coddle everyone who might send a patch, because that's a lot of people. If they want to succeed, they should document enough to get started, and review unfinished patches.
  - riffraff 11y ago
    sorry if I was unclear but I am not backing the assertions, I am just saying that the critique to what is written is invalid. The comment I replied to does not challenge the assumptions, but the conclusions. Whether the assumptions are true or not, I do not know.
- makomk 11y ago
  For context, here's the Bitcoin Core developers' position on why they're not simply raising the block size right now: https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases-faq#size-bump https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases-faq#s...
  - Angostura 11y ago
yk 11y ago
I stopped reading after >2. They prefer ‘perfect’ solutions to ‘good enough’. And if no perfect solution exists they seem ok with inaction, even if that puts bitcoin at risk. I mean the kind of 'good enough' thinking got us into the router mess we are currently in.
- choosername 11y ago
  this ain't no imageboard
- mike_hearn 11y ago
  You should not have stopped reading. Brian is entirely correct about the whole situation, the only shame being that he didn't say these things publicly (and take corresponding action) 18 months ago. The key thing to realise is this. Whilst the remaining Bitcoin Core developers (really: Blockstream) like to present their alternative plans like Lightning as tradeoff-free "solutions", the reality is that their proposed alternatives to the Bitcoin block chain are not launched or even close to launching, are developing extremely slowly, are missing huge chunks from their basic design and even if we assume they find answers to those problems and do actually launch something - the design itself is in no way "perfection" and has very serious unanswered critiques. It is very likely, in my view and the views of others, that their new system would actually be worse than Bitcoin, not better. Thus driving Bitcoin into a brick wall at high speed because they prefer to believe in vapourware is not perfectionism, it's just idiocy. You don't need to be a businessman to understand that. In short, they're in the grip of the nirvana fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
  - yk 11y ago
    So the core of the argument is > The number of lines of code that need to be written for this across the entire industry will be several orders of magnitude more than a scaling solution of changing 1MB blocks to 2MB blocks. This was explained to core developers at the conference and it didn’t seem to change their opinion of what the best short term solution was to scaling. Aka, the author knows the day to day challenges of writing core better than the core developers. I believe reading the piece only validated my original heuristic.
bhouston 11y ago
Yeah, I guess the issue is everyone is very self-interest and there is a lot of money at stake. Imagine if a private company can take over bitcoin core.
Animats 11y ago
"I get this bad feeling that someone (author of the article) is planning a takeover and for all the wrong reasons." The author of the article is the CEO of Coinbase. They want Bitcoin retail-sized transactions to clear fast, so their exposure to Bitcoin price variations is low. Coinbase guarantees the price of Bitcoin for several minutes when merchants use their service. The longer they have to hold those Bitcoins, the more risk they take.
- 746F7475 11y ago
  Yeah, so they want to make more money. Is that necessarily best thing for the bitcoin as a whole? Just for full disclosure I have my bitcoins over at Coinbase.
  - sillysaurus3 11y ago
    I have my bitcoins over at Coinbase. Please transfer your money back under your control. That's the whole point of bitcoin. You won't be able to do this when problems happen. I mean, if it's only a few hundred dollars in BTC, it doesn't matter much. But it's a terrible feeling to lose way more than that. Here's a recap of Coinbase's problems over the years, in case it matters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8947926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8947926

smitherfield 11y ago

Your comment is perhaps true in a general sense. However, in the case of the Bitcoin core team, we're talking about a group of people who richly deserve to be unseated.

frankenmint 11y ago
this is open source software - you act as if the seat can't be earned with enough commits.
- smitherfield 11y ago
  That's the thing; the core maintainers won't allow anyone new in. At least nobody who disagrees with their pretty much objectively harmful inaction on raising the transaction limit, a stance they've adopted out of extreme stubbornness combined with glaring financial conflicts of interest.
  - derefr 11y ago
    I think the parent meant "unseated" as in LibreOffice unseating OpenOffice: the proper way to attempt a coup of a FOSS project is to fork it and outcompete it.
    - riffraff 11y ago
      but that has already happened, TFA is advocating moving to LibreOffice (BitcoinClassic).
      - 0x006A 11y ago
        BitcoinClassic has to do what LibreOffice has done first. Write more code, have more active developers, fix more bugs - be the better community for new developers etc. So far none of this happened.
        CookieMon 11y ago
        Yeah, but that's a chicken and egg problem because unless/until BitcoinClassic outcompetes the other one, none of your code will ever get executed, so any developer wanting to scratch an itch must contribute to the existing bitcoin rather than BitcoinClassic. The dynamics don't work the same way as a traditonal FOSS fork. Perhaps getting mindshare first is the way.
        bhaak 11y ago
        That has been tried before with XT and it failed. Bitcoin Classic is the attempt to change the reference implementation from the Core code to their code, by only changing as little as possible (that is, raising the 1 MB blocksize to 2 MB). The current problem is not being more open to other developers but to get a different reference implementation installed on full nodes and miners.
    - smitherfield 11y ago
      I know; and obviously Bitcoin Core aren't going to fire themselves. I'm just addressing the why they should be unseated, not the how. (It's worth noting that Bitcoin Core supporters have been DDOSing people running the various attempts at a "LibreOffice" that've been tried).
Sevrene 11y ago
As someone who hasn't been following bitcoin development very closely, can you please give me some examples or sources as to why they deserve to be unseated?
- smitherfield 11y ago
  It's been posted elsewhere in this thread, but: https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7 https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin... HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905118 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10905118
- notlukejr 11y ago
  Do you trust these people? Austin Hill, CEO of Blockstream, admits to committing fraud to scam people: http://betakit.com/montreal-angel-austin-hill-failed-spectacularly-before-later-success/ http://betakit.com/montreal-angel-austin-hill-failed-spectac... Greg Maxwell, CTO of Blockstream, vandalizes pages on Wikipedia for fun: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Incidents&oldid=36639732#User:Gmaxwell https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Adminis... Patrick Strateman, co-founder of Blockstream, has been accused of fraud/theft: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159071.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=159071.0 Luke-Jr, consultant to Blockstream claims the sun orbits the earth, slavery is okay, sodomy should be punished by death and that gay marriage is a logical impossibility. http://forums3.armagetronad.net/viewtopic.php?p=203850#p203850 http://forums3.armagetronad.net/viewtopic.php?p=203850#p2038... https://np.reddit.com/r/bitcoin_uncensored/comments/492ztl/lukejr_the_only_religion_people_have_a_right_to/ https://np.reddit.com/r/bitcoin_uncensored/comments/492ztl/l... https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/48avz0/informational_poll_tell_us_your_theology/d0noawh https://www.reddit.com/r/Christianity/comments/48avz0/inform...
  - oska 11y ago
    Unfortunately this comment and this account (created only to criticise the bitcoin core team) is a good representation of the calibre of most of the criticism and attacks they have been copping over the last year or so.

riffraff 11y ago

I believe the author has been very careful in saying "if no perfect solution exists they seem ok with inaction", highlighting a different problem from "let's bang out code that sorta works and move on. Also, poor communication skills and "immaturity" have also been a "traditional" problems in FLOSS too. Being unwelcoming to new devs is especially a big problem for a project that _is already_ losing the old trusted devs.

kang 11y ago
Unwelcoming to new devs is not true. Who wrote code & wasn't let in? Also, go to the bitcoin irc and try asking technical questions and observe how everyone is so willing to help new devs looking to get in.
- microcolonel 11y ago
  I feel like people are generally comfortable making the assertion that the community is unwelcoming; but those making the assertion generally don't seem to be able to back it up. A welcoming community doesn't need to coddle everyone who might send a patch, because that's a lot of people. If they want to succeed, they should document enough to get started, and review unfinished patches.
- riffraff 11y ago
  sorry if I was unclear but I am not backing the assertions, I am just saying that the critique to what is written is invalid. The comment I replied to does not challenge the assumptions, but the conclusions. Whether the assumptions are true or not, I do not know.
makomk 11y ago
For context, here's the Bitcoin Core developers' position on why they're not simply raising the block size right now: https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases-faq#size-bump https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases-faq#s...
- Angostura 11y ago

yk 11y ago

I stopped reading after >2. They prefer ‘perfect’ solutions to ‘good enough’. And if no perfect solution exists they seem ok with inaction, even if that puts bitcoin at risk. I mean the kind of 'good enough' thinking got us into the router mess we are currently in.

choosername 11y ago
this ain't no imageboard
mike_hearn 11y ago
You should not have stopped reading. Brian is entirely correct about the whole situation, the only shame being that he didn't say these things publicly (and take corresponding action) 18 months ago. The key thing to realise is this. Whilst the remaining Bitcoin Core developers (really: Blockstream) like to present their alternative plans like Lightning as tradeoff-free "solutions", the reality is that their proposed alternatives to the Bitcoin block chain are not launched or even close to launching, are developing extremely slowly, are missing huge chunks from their basic design and even if we assume they find answers to those problems and do actually launch something - the design itself is in no way "perfection" and has very serious unanswered critiques. It is very likely, in my view and the views of others, that their new system would actually be worse than Bitcoin, not better. Thus driving Bitcoin into a brick wall at high speed because they prefer to believe in vapourware is not perfectionism, it's just idiocy. You don't need to be a businessman to understand that. In short, they're in the grip of the nirvana fallacy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy
- yk 11y ago
  So the core of the argument is > The number of lines of code that need to be written for this across the entire industry will be several orders of magnitude more than a scaling solution of changing 1MB blocks to 2MB blocks. This was explained to core developers at the conference and it didn’t seem to change their opinion of what the best short term solution was to scaling. Aka, the author knows the day to day challenges of writing core better than the core developers. I believe reading the piece only validated my original heuristic.

bhouston 11y ago

Yeah, I guess the issue is everyone is very self-interest and there is a lot of money at stake. Imagine if a private company can take over bitcoin core.

Animats 11y ago

"I get this bad feeling that someone (author of the article) is planning a takeover and for all the wrong reasons." The author of the article is the CEO of Coinbase. They want Bitcoin retail-sized transactions to clear fast, so their exposure to Bitcoin price variations is low. Coinbase guarantees the price of Bitcoin for several minutes when merchants use their service. The longer they have to hold those Bitcoins, the more risk they take.

746F7475 11y ago
Yeah, so they want to make more money. Is that necessarily best thing for the bitcoin as a whole? Just for full disclosure I have my bitcoins over at Coinbase.
- sillysaurus3 11y ago
  I have my bitcoins over at Coinbase. Please transfer your money back under your control. That's the whole point of bitcoin. You won't be able to do this when problems happen. I mean, if it's only a few hundred dollars in BTC, it doesn't matter much. But it's a terrible feeling to lose way more than that. Here's a recap of Coinbase's problems over the years, in case it matters: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8947926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8947926