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The problem Bitcoin is facing is not so much the technical question of what blocksize would be best. It's a war about who is in the drivers seat. The current de

by Vozze 11y ago

The problem Bitcoin is facing is not so much the technical question of what blocksize would be best. It's a war about who is in the drivers seat. The current developers of Core want to turn Bitcoin into what they call a "settlement layer" and end its original function as a payment system. Then they want to build new services on top of this "settlement layer". Most (all?) of them are organized in a company called "Blockstream" that received $73 millions in funding to build these new layers. This turns away the original crowd of hackers who liked Bitcoin in the early days. The hackers and users want to keep the original vision of a "Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" as outlined in the original Bitcoin Paper: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf Also check the discussion about this on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/48zggz/a_behind_the_scenes_look_at_how_bitcoin_core/ https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/48zggz/a_behind...

nadaviv 11y ago
The Bitcoin development community acknowledges that bitcoin cannot get to VISA-level scale using on-chain transactions, because that would destroy the decentralized nature of the currency. It's not a matter of opinion, its a matter of the technical limitations of the system as being understood by ~all technical experts. Building second-layer solutions such as LN is the only sensible way to grow Bitcoin in the long-term. It'll allow tx capacity to grow by several orders of magnitude with minimal load on the Bitcoin network. > Most (all?) of them are organized in a company called "Blockstream" That's simply not true. Out of tens of developers who contribute on an ongoing basis and hundreds who contributed during the lifetime of the project, there are about 6-7 developers associated with Blockstream. Out of the 6 maintainers with commit access on GitHub, only a single developer is associated with Blockstream. It's also worth mentioning that Blockstream was founded by several prominent Bitcoin developers that have been around for years and have a very strong track record. It's not some company that popped out of nowhere and started hiring Core devs. One of Blockstream's primary goals was to fund development on low-level Bitcoin infrastructure code, which is blessed in my view. Here's what one of their investors, Reid Hoffman (co-founder at LinkedIn), has to say about that: > And that’s why I’m participating in this first-round financing as an individual investor, and why Blockstream itself will function similarly to the Mozilla Corporation. Here, our first interest is maintaining and enhancing Bitcoin’s strong open ecosystem. And the structure we’ve chosen will give us the freedom and flexibility to prioritize public good over returns to investors. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141117154558-1213-the-future-of-the-bitcoin-ecosystem-and-trustless-trust-why-i-invested-in-blockstream https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141117154558-1213-the-futur...
- Natanael_L 11y ago
  The question is one of how the layers should look like. While I don't have anything against LN as such, it would make most custom uses of the scripting language unusable. You can't enforce arbitary year chosen scripts within LN channels the way you can with regular transactions. A layer for transaction merging built using Zero-knowledge proofs which can preserve the full capabilities of individual scripts would be the ideal solution, and could become fully server independent.
- robk 11y ago
  I have a hard time taking them seriously when one of the Blockstream founders is an avowed scammer and fraudster http://betakit.com/montreal-angel-austin-hill-failed-spectacularly-before-later-success/ http://betakit.com/montreal-angel-austin-hill-failed-spectac...
- notlukejr 11y ago
  > Out of the 6 maintainers with commit access on GitHub, only a single developer is associated with Blockstream. Please don't be so naive. Greg Maxwell gave up his commit access for "optics" - to make BlockStream look better. Meanwhile, Wladimir van der Laan, the project maintainer, says he won't accept any code contributions which are "controversial". That is, he wants 100% consensus for larger blocks. Yet he blindly accepts anything from Blockstream employees such as RBF and segregated witness fee discounts which are controversial. Also, Blockstream burnt through $10m+ in 12 months, how much of that went into paying consultants and "supporters" such as Peter Todd, Luke-Jr, and even Bram Cohen who laughed at Bitcoin until suddenly in 2015 he loved everything Blockstream was doing? Finally, investors? Investors will say and do anything if it helps them make money!
  - bachback 11y ago
    Interesting. Do you have details on the 10M$ spend? Unfortunately I have to agree - Blockstream is a mess. Adam Back and Austin Hill have 0 commits to the project and established them as power brokers.
  - nullc 11y ago

by Vozze 11y ago

nadaviv 11y ago

The Bitcoin development community acknowledges that bitcoin cannot get to VISA-level scale using on-chain transactions, because that would destroy the decentralized nature of the currency. It's not a matter of opinion, its a matter of the technical limitations of the system as being understood by ~all technical experts. Building second-layer solutions such as LN is the only sensible way to grow Bitcoin in the long-term. It'll allow tx capacity to grow by several orders of magnitude with minimal load on the Bitcoin network. > Most (all?) of them are organized in a company called "Blockstream" That's simply not true. Out of tens of developers who contribute on an ongoing basis and hundreds who contributed during the lifetime of the project, there are about 6-7 developers associated with Blockstream. Out of the 6 maintainers with commit access on GitHub, only a single developer is associated with Blockstream. It's also worth mentioning that Blockstream was founded by several prominent Bitcoin developers that have been around for years and have a very strong track record. It's not some company that popped out of nowhere and started hiring Core devs. One of Blockstream's primary goals was to fund development on low-level Bitcoin infrastructure code, which is blessed in my view. Here's what one of their investors, Reid Hoffman (co-founder at LinkedIn), has to say about that: > And that’s why I’m participating in this first-round financing as an individual investor, and why Blockstream itself will function similarly to the Mozilla Corporation. Here, our first interest is maintaining and enhancing Bitcoin’s strong open ecosystem. And the structure we’ve chosen will give us the freedom and flexibility to prioritize public good over returns to investors. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141117154558-1213-the-future-of-the-bitcoin-ecosystem-and-trustless-trust-why-i-invested-in-blockstream https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20141117154558-1213-the-futur...

Natanael_L 11y ago
The question is one of how the layers should look like. While I don't have anything against LN as such, it would make most custom uses of the scripting language unusable. You can't enforce arbitary year chosen scripts within LN channels the way you can with regular transactions. A layer for transaction merging built using Zero-knowledge proofs which can preserve the full capabilities of individual scripts would be the ideal solution, and could become fully server independent.
robk 11y ago
I have a hard time taking them seriously when one of the Blockstream founders is an avowed scammer and fraudster http://betakit.com/montreal-angel-austin-hill-failed-spectacularly-before-later-success/ http://betakit.com/montreal-angel-austin-hill-failed-spectac...
notlukejr 11y ago
> Out of the 6 maintainers with commit access on GitHub, only a single developer is associated with Blockstream. Please don't be so naive. Greg Maxwell gave up his commit access for "optics" - to make BlockStream look better. Meanwhile, Wladimir van der Laan, the project maintainer, says he won't accept any code contributions which are "controversial". That is, he wants 100% consensus for larger blocks. Yet he blindly accepts anything from Blockstream employees such as RBF and segregated witness fee discounts which are controversial. Also, Blockstream burnt through $10m+ in 12 months, how much of that went into paying consultants and "supporters" such as Peter Todd, Luke-Jr, and even Bram Cohen who laughed at Bitcoin until suddenly in 2015 he loved everything Blockstream was doing? Finally, investors? Investors will say and do anything if it helps them make money!
- bachback 11y ago
  Interesting. Do you have details on the 10M$ spend? Unfortunately I have to agree - Blockstream is a mess. Adam Back and Austin Hill have 0 commits to the project and established them as power brokers.
- nullc 11y ago