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Everything you said is correct AFAIK. > It's not clear to me why an increase to 2 or 4MB wasn't done though. Perhaps to force the issue? Yes, and it seems als

by apeace 9y ago

Everything you said is correct AFAIK. > It's not clear to me why an increase to 2 or 4MB wasn't done though. Perhaps to force the issue? Yes, and it seems also out of spite. They could have increased to 2MB in order to avoid the horrible congestion on the network for a couple years. Once that was in place, they could have continued the SegWit work. In fact, originally, everyone was in support of SegWit. Even the big-blocks camp (we can see that from the New York Agreement, where virtually the whole industry supported both big-blocks and SegWit). The only reason so many like Bitcoin Cash are against it today is because the debate has become emotionally-charged and us-versus-them. SegWit is an all-around good idea. But the Core developers held out from a blocksize increase because, once they had declared that going from 1MB -> 2MB would be the end of the world, the network would become "centralized", etc, they didn't want to walk it back and simply compromise. IMO, this is the main reason the ecosystem is migrating to Ethereum. It's not because of the Turing-complete scripting that is possible on Ehtereum, it's because development has been a lot more sane. Despite the problems they've had (e.g. the DAO), the Ethereum ecosystem is more diverse and professional. They rationally discuss problems and make tradeoffs. They encourage alternate implementations, whereas the Core folks have engaged in baseless fear tactics to ensure theirs is the only implementation on the network[0] (and not talking about protocol changes--simply alternate implementations of the same protocols and consensus rules). I think unless these leadership problems are addressed somehow, Bitcoin is going to fade into obscurity as others, like Ethereum, lead the way. [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20160316061949/https://blog.conformal.com/the-bitcoin-consensus-red-herring/ https://web.archive.org/web/20160316061949/https://blog.conf... --- EDIT: Corrected "Bitcoin ABC" to "Bitcoin Cash"

Taek 9y ago
> Yes, and it seems also out of spite. They could have increased to 2MB in order to avoid the horrible congestion on the network for a couple years. Once that was in place, they could have continued the SegWit work. This statement demonstrates a very shallow understanding of the blocksize debate. There are a large number of reasons to object to any hardfork (causes instability and chaos, breaks compatibility, is a point of control for the people dictating the hardfork, is potentially opposed by many users, no easy way to measure support), and even more reasons to oppose a block size increase hardfork (doubling the blocksize worsens bottlenecks that are already significant, buys only a few months of time, is not a repeatable strategy to achieve real scalability, and the fight seems much more about control and pride than the actual block size - otherwise segwit would have been adopted immediately). As bitter as the fighting has been, the opposition to a block size increase hard fork stands on very solid ground.
ChrisClark 9y ago
I'd like to comment about something I realized when reading your post. About the difference between the Bitcoin development/community and the Ethereum one. If you want to completely oversimplify it, the Bitcoin community appears to be full of fear, anger, attacks and competition among themselves. While Ethereum seems to be compromise, inclusion, discussion, working towards a greater goal. You see a change proposed, and one developer comments that they think it's a bad idea for certain reasons. Then after a month of discussion he will come back and say that, yeah, I was wrong, it's actually a good idea. The recent multi-sig wallet hack was due to some bad refactoring by one of the developers on the Parity node/wallet team. Gavin Wood wrote a post about it, and instead of blaming his employee, he blamed himself, that he didn't put enough security into the Solidity language itself. And then he proposed some changes to make it safer. There definitely was some ugliness with the ETH/ETC fork and controversies, but now we have pull requests from ETC developers that help improve ETH. There seems to be a lot less ego in the Ethereum developer community. The fighting inside the Bitcoin community leads to attacking other communities too. Whenever there is a setback or hack or just the Ether price drops a bit, the threads are full of Bitcoiners coming in to laugh, attack, 'concern troll'. But you rarely see the reverse. Usually the attacks on Bitcoin come from the people who think all cryptocurrencies are a scam, they target everyone equally. Of course there are exceptions, there are amazing people in Bitcoin and horrible people in Ethereum. I'm just making a broad generalization on the feeling someone gets when reading and talking in their communities. It's no wonder that Ethereum has the largest developer interest, it's just a really nice place to work.
- apeace 9y ago
  Exactly. To make an analogy, consider what would happen if the president/congress appointed an incompetent fool as the chair of the Federal Reserve. The whole world would lose confidence in the dollar, and another currency would take over. This is why I agree with Mike Hearn that the "Bitcoin experiment has failed"[0]. In fact it already did so in late 2015. He makes technical arguments there which you could debate (some of his technical arguments have been shown to be misleading[1]). But I think where he hits the nail on the head is that Bitcoin is now simply a circus. Unless the community can be united again, it won't last. The Reddit censorship, DoS attacks, "scaling" conferences where solutions are not allowed to be proposed. It's childish, and almost shocking that people have stood behind their ridiculous behavior for so long, when they are on the verge of changing the world economy. [0] https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7 https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experi... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14833567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14833567
fapjacks 9y ago
Right. I've been describing it like this: That Bitcoin doesn't have a Good King anymore (Satoshi). Ethereum has Vitalik, and Linux has Linus. Projects with a Good King typically defer tough decisions to the king, and the project is (usually) overall better off for it. But with Satoshi gone, everyone has their own ideas about what's "best" for Bitcoin, and there is no unifying force. Ethereum development is sane because Vitalik is heavily involved in it. I believe that is why Ethereum will succeed over Bitcoin in the long run.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  All good kings eventually die. So projects without a good king are more future proof if they survive because they have already priced that reality in. The other projects could very well collapse once their good king dies.
  - fapjacks 9y ago
    Perhaps. But which project is more likely to survive into the future: Bitcoin, or Ethereum? I think having a good king steers a project well enough to future-proof it in most cases, if for no other reason than that it's engineered better along the way.

by apeace 9y ago

Taek 9y ago

> Yes, and it seems also out of spite. They could have increased to 2MB in order to avoid the horrible congestion on the network for a couple years. Once that was in place, they could have continued the SegWit work. This statement demonstrates a very shallow understanding of the blocksize debate. There are a large number of reasons to object to any hardfork (causes instability and chaos, breaks compatibility, is a point of control for the people dictating the hardfork, is potentially opposed by many users, no easy way to measure support), and even more reasons to oppose a block size increase hardfork (doubling the blocksize worsens bottlenecks that are already significant, buys only a few months of time, is not a repeatable strategy to achieve real scalability, and the fight seems much more about control and pride than the actual block size - otherwise segwit would have been adopted immediately). As bitter as the fighting has been, the opposition to a block size increase hard fork stands on very solid ground.

ChrisClark 9y ago

I'd like to comment about something I realized when reading your post. About the difference between the Bitcoin development/community and the Ethereum one. If you want to completely oversimplify it, the Bitcoin community appears to be full of fear, anger, attacks and competition among themselves. While Ethereum seems to be compromise, inclusion, discussion, working towards a greater goal. You see a change proposed, and one developer comments that they think it's a bad idea for certain reasons. Then after a month of discussion he will come back and say that, yeah, I was wrong, it's actually a good idea. The recent multi-sig wallet hack was due to some bad refactoring by one of the developers on the Parity node/wallet team. Gavin Wood wrote a post about it, and instead of blaming his employee, he blamed himself, that he didn't put enough security into the Solidity language itself. And then he proposed some changes to make it safer. There definitely was some ugliness with the ETH/ETC fork and controversies, but now we have pull requests from ETC developers that help improve ETH. There seems to be a lot less ego in the Ethereum developer community. The fighting inside the Bitcoin community leads to attacking other communities too. Whenever there is a setback or hack or just the Ether price drops a bit, the threads are full of Bitcoiners coming in to laugh, attack, 'concern troll'. But you rarely see the reverse. Usually the attacks on Bitcoin come from the people who think all cryptocurrencies are a scam, they target everyone equally. Of course there are exceptions, there are amazing people in Bitcoin and horrible people in Ethereum. I'm just making a broad generalization on the feeling someone gets when reading and talking in their communities. It's no wonder that Ethereum has the largest developer interest, it's just a really nice place to work.

apeace 9y ago
Exactly. To make an analogy, consider what would happen if the president/congress appointed an incompetent fool as the chair of the Federal Reserve. The whole world would lose confidence in the dollar, and another currency would take over. This is why I agree with Mike Hearn that the "Bitcoin experiment has failed"[0]. In fact it already did so in late 2015. He makes technical arguments there which you could debate (some of his technical arguments have been shown to be misleading[1]). But I think where he hits the nail on the head is that Bitcoin is now simply a circus. Unless the community can be united again, it won't last. The Reddit censorship, DoS attacks, "scaling" conferences where solutions are not allowed to be proposed. It's childish, and almost shocking that people have stood behind their ridiculous behavior for so long, when they are on the verge of changing the world economy. [0] https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7 https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experi... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14833567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14833567

fapjacks 9y ago

Right. I've been describing it like this: That Bitcoin doesn't have a Good King anymore (Satoshi). Ethereum has Vitalik, and Linux has Linus. Projects with a Good King typically defer tough decisions to the king, and the project is (usually) overall better off for it. But with Satoshi gone, everyone has their own ideas about what's "best" for Bitcoin, and there is no unifying force. Ethereum development is sane because Vitalik is heavily involved in it. I believe that is why Ethereum will succeed over Bitcoin in the long run.

jacquesm 9y ago
All good kings eventually die. So projects without a good king are more future proof if they survive because they have already priced that reality in. The other projects could very well collapse once their good king dies.
- fapjacks 9y ago
  Perhaps. But which project is more likely to survive into the future: Bitcoin, or Ethereum? I think having a good king steers a project well enough to future-proof it in most cases, if for no other reason than that it's engineered better along the way.