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SegWit was a soft-fork block size increase with other scaling improvements. I'm strongly against having any hard fork in Bitcoin. The last Ethereum hard fork (w

SegWit was a soft-fork block size increase with other scaling improvements. I'm strongly against having any hard fork in Bitcoin. The last Ethereum hard fork (when half of the devs wanted to cancel it because of the bug that was found) showed how dangerous it is. At this point Bitcoin is worth so much, that it's better to not touch it at all without a formal proof that the network is not harmed at all. The biggest difference Segwit2x would make in centralization is the fact that block propagation latency is already very slow, and if it gets to over 10 minute for the whole network, the network can split. Bitcoin is an amazing store of value, and those of us who hold the currency wouldn't accept any risk of increased centralization just because non-holders want low transaction fees (that can be very easily be created by a centralized system)

lawn 9y ago
Hard forks aren't dangerous. Monero has scheduled hard forks all the time. It's the best and cleanest way to upgrade. > The biggest difference Segwit2x would make in centralization is the fact that block propagation latency is already very slow, and if it gets to over 10 minute for the whole network, the network can split. Yet there's no research to remotely suggest a meager increase to 2MB would have any effect. Compact blocks and Xthin (and recently Graphene) also improves on this immensely. > Bitcoin is an amazing store of value, and those of us who hold the currency wouldn't accept any risk of increased centralization Typical black and white thinking. Bitcoin must have a primary use case that's not a store of value otherwise it will crash down when no new money is injected. > just because non-holders want low transaction fees Yeah because non-holders are the ones who want to use Bitcoin as was always intended. Pure holders are only in for the speculation. The title of Bitcoin's whitepaper is "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" not "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Store of Value System".
ChrisClark 9y ago
> The last Ethereum hard fork showed how dangerous it is. The last hard fork was on Oct 15, 2017. It did not split the chain, it went smoothly and added great new features. Ethereum has had many hard forks. Only the DAO one was controversial. Using hard forks to upgrade the network is smooth and works great.
xwvvvvwx 9y ago
What are the technical reasons that mean bitcoin has such a long time between blocks? Other large chains (Ethereum, Litecoin) have significantly lower confirmation times.
- wmf 9y ago
  Lower block times increase orphan risk and increase the size of the chain (because there are more block headers), but I suspect Satoshi pulled 10 minutes out of the air and now it can't be realistically changed.
  - xwvvvvwx 9y ago
    now it can't be realistically changed why?

lawn 9y ago

Hard forks aren't dangerous. Monero has scheduled hard forks all the time. It's the best and cleanest way to upgrade. > The biggest difference Segwit2x would make in centralization is the fact that block propagation latency is already very slow, and if it gets to over 10 minute for the whole network, the network can split. Yet there's no research to remotely suggest a meager increase to 2MB would have any effect. Compact blocks and Xthin (and recently Graphene) also improves on this immensely. > Bitcoin is an amazing store of value, and those of us who hold the currency wouldn't accept any risk of increased centralization Typical black and white thinking. Bitcoin must have a primary use case that's not a store of value otherwise it will crash down when no new money is injected. > just because non-holders want low transaction fees Yeah because non-holders are the ones who want to use Bitcoin as was always intended. Pure holders are only in for the speculation. The title of Bitcoin's whitepaper is "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" not "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Store of Value System".

ChrisClark 9y ago

> The last Ethereum hard fork showed how dangerous it is. The last hard fork was on Oct 15, 2017. It did not split the chain, it went smoothly and added great new features. Ethereum has had many hard forks. Only the DAO one was controversial. Using hard forks to upgrade the network is smooth and works great.

xwvvvvwx 9y ago

What are the technical reasons that mean bitcoin has such a long time between blocks? Other large chains (Ethereum, Litecoin) have significantly lower confirmation times.

wmf 9y ago
Lower block times increase orphan risk and increase the size of the chain (because there are more block headers), but I suspect Satoshi pulled 10 minutes out of the air and now it can't be realistically changed.
- xwvvvvwx 9y ago
  now it can't be realistically changed why?