3 ms·

Taproot, aside from the upgrade itself, is very interesting because it will be a test of Bitcoin's upgrade-ability. Last effort to improve Bitcoin (Segwit) was

Taproot, aside from the upgrade itself, is very interesting because it will be a test of Bitcoin's upgrade-ability. Last effort to improve Bitcoin (Segwit) was basically a giant shitshow. Let's hope the ecosystem has matured and this one will be a little more orderly.

BelenusMordred 6y ago
Taproot is far less controversial.
- ftlio 6y ago
  What was controversial about segwit outside of a large commercial interest (Bitmain) losing the ability to leverage a patented algorithm that effectively increased their ASIC productivity? I always thought that was what drove most of the drama and Bitcoin Cash, a place where they could continue to arbitrage that mining boost, to come about.
  - nullc 6y ago
    Well a lot of people were bamboozled by manufactured misinformation there. There has been a lot less of it here-- presumably because there is a lot less incentive to create and propagate it-- and fewer people have been falling for what misinformation exists.
    - ftlio 6y ago
      Back then it was so clearly orchestrated propaganda, but it took a lot of newcomers. I'm not looking forward to this cycle's "blocksize" debate. It seems that rolling new coins is the better vector overall for such schemes, for better or worse. Thank you for continuing the discourse all these years and keeping people informed.
  - BelenusMordred 6y ago
    Wasn't my opinion on it, just a casual observation on the difference between the two BIPs. The monetary incentive for Bitmain was without dispute last time. Such a thing doesn't exist this time. Taproot will pass without any drama.
  - rocqua 6y ago
    I don't think there were people who thought segwit was bad. There were simply people who thought that more was needed to allow more TXses in a block. They were generally in favor of allowing much larger blocks. The reason segwit got involved was mostly that it was framed as "either we do segwit, or we do bigger blocks"
    - nullc 6y ago
      > I don't think there were people who thought segwit was bad. Well there were people saying it, how much anyone feel for their false claims is unambiguous. Rick Falkvinge, for example, put out a series of articles and videos falsely claiming that segwit was patented. People falsely claimed that segwit removes signatures from the blockchain. People falsely claimed that segwit would make it impossible to prove ownership of coins. People falsely claimed that segwit would make bitcoin less secure and that users funds would be stolen. People falsely claimed that segwit would reduce scalability by using 4MB of data for 2MB of transactions. (other people claimed that they were 10% larger, which is also untrue). People falsely claimed that segwit would not fix the malleability attacks. People falsely claimed that segwit would require everyone to upgrade, and that it required "all bitcoin software to be partially rewritten". People falsely claimed that coins using segwit would be less valuable. People falsely claimed that segwit didn't solve the quadratic computational cost of signature hashing. People falsely claimed that segwit was not a softfork. People claimed segwit was activated in spite of majority opposition (in fact when segwit activated >90% of nodes were running the software and 95% of hashpower). People claimed that segwit was a "poison pill that would result in a network suicide". People falsely claimed that segwit was a plot by Bilderberg to give some shadow "jew" coalition control over Bitcoin. (I really had no idea how much anti-semitism was still a thing online until I was getting a bunch of fucked up shit sent to me ... and I'm not even a jew, but the facts didn't stop the people hating on segwit). I'm actually copying these brain damaged arguments out of published articles, I just don't want to give that retardation traffic. This doesn't even include the more hyperbolic nonsense that got taken offline as it was embarrassingly disproved. :) By the time segwit activated bcash already existed-- so the bigger block people had thing and were basically in full on sabotage-bitcoin mode.
      - 6y ago
rawtxapp 6y ago
Yep, even though pretty much everyone agrees taproot is a positive change, the most controversial part so far was on agreeing how to activate it, this activation process is actually pretty conservative and gives enough time/participation. Hopefully, it lands nicely and future improvements will be more smooth as well.
nodja 6y ago
Let's not kid ourselves. The segwit/2MB nonsense basically drove all developers away that aren't blockstream. There's no one left in bitcoin core that cares enough to go against blockstream unless it affects their bottom-line i.e. miners. This upgrade will boil down to "will mining pools bother to upgrade their nodes"?
- nullc 6y ago
  That is simply untrue. I think there is only one regular contributor to Bitcoin that is affiliated with blockstream, and meanwhile you can't name one contributor who left. [Perhaps you think you'd name Gavin Andresen? but he had stopped contributing years before blockstream even existed. ... and left the space entirely after an infamous incident where he vocally endorsed a pretty obvious scammer.]
  - nodja 6y ago
    Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn are the big ones yeah. Sure they left before the 2018 drama but they did leave due to block size disagreements. But that's not here nor there. The developers that left bitcoin aren't the developers putting commits on the protocol implementation. It's the developers that made tools on top of bitcoin itself. From not so legitimate sites like betting sites to sites and apps like openbazaar, retailers/payments processors, etc. After the 2018 debacle and the ever growing mempool/fee market most developers put bitcoin in legacy mode and started adopting other more frictionless coins like ethereum, bcash, litecoin, etc. I have a multireddit setup that has the big crypto subreddits inside (r/btc, r/bitcoin, r/bitcoincash, r/ethereum, r/monero), I check it once or twice a week when I'm bored, and I barely hear anything new coming from the bitcoin camp, no development discussion, no cool new service, no adoption talk. It's all HODL memes, value talk and the occasional lightning network update. I don't see development talk among the bitcoin community anymore. I'll repeat what I said, the developers that cared about bitcoin have left, the only people left that have a saying are people building layer 2 solutions (blockstream mostly) and miners. This upgrade doesn't affect miners, so I doubt they will contest.
    - nullc 6y ago

BelenusMordred 6y ago

Taproot is far less controversial.

ftlio 6y ago
What was controversial about segwit outside of a large commercial interest (Bitmain) losing the ability to leverage a patented algorithm that effectively increased their ASIC productivity? I always thought that was what drove most of the drama and Bitcoin Cash, a place where they could continue to arbitrage that mining boost, to come about.
- nullc 6y ago
  Well a lot of people were bamboozled by manufactured misinformation there. There has been a lot less of it here-- presumably because there is a lot less incentive to create and propagate it-- and fewer people have been falling for what misinformation exists.
  - ftlio 6y ago
    Back then it was so clearly orchestrated propaganda, but it took a lot of newcomers. I'm not looking forward to this cycle's "blocksize" debate. It seems that rolling new coins is the better vector overall for such schemes, for better or worse. Thank you for continuing the discourse all these years and keeping people informed.
- BelenusMordred 6y ago
  Wasn't my opinion on it, just a casual observation on the difference between the two BIPs. The monetary incentive for Bitmain was without dispute last time. Such a thing doesn't exist this time. Taproot will pass without any drama.
- rocqua 6y ago
  I don't think there were people who thought segwit was bad. There were simply people who thought that more was needed to allow more TXses in a block. They were generally in favor of allowing much larger blocks. The reason segwit got involved was mostly that it was framed as "either we do segwit, or we do bigger blocks"
  - nullc 6y ago
    > I don't think there were people who thought segwit was bad. Well there were people saying it, how much anyone feel for their false claims is unambiguous. Rick Falkvinge, for example, put out a series of articles and videos falsely claiming that segwit was patented. People falsely claimed that segwit removes signatures from the blockchain. People falsely claimed that segwit would make it impossible to prove ownership of coins. People falsely claimed that segwit would make bitcoin less secure and that users funds would be stolen. People falsely claimed that segwit would reduce scalability by using 4MB of data for 2MB of transactions. (other people claimed that they were 10% larger, which is also untrue). People falsely claimed that segwit would not fix the malleability attacks. People falsely claimed that segwit would require everyone to upgrade, and that it required "all bitcoin software to be partially rewritten". People falsely claimed that coins using segwit would be less valuable. People falsely claimed that segwit didn't solve the quadratic computational cost of signature hashing. People falsely claimed that segwit was not a softfork. People claimed segwit was activated in spite of majority opposition (in fact when segwit activated >90% of nodes were running the software and 95% of hashpower). People claimed that segwit was a "poison pill that would result in a network suicide". People falsely claimed that segwit was a plot by Bilderberg to give some shadow "jew" coalition control over Bitcoin. (I really had no idea how much anti-semitism was still a thing online until I was getting a bunch of fucked up shit sent to me ... and I'm not even a jew, but the facts didn't stop the people hating on segwit). I'm actually copying these brain damaged arguments out of published articles, I just don't want to give that retardation traffic. This doesn't even include the more hyperbolic nonsense that got taken offline as it was embarrassingly disproved. :) By the time segwit activated bcash already existed-- so the bigger block people had thing and were basically in full on sabotage-bitcoin mode.
    - 6y ago

rawtxapp 6y ago

Yep, even though pretty much everyone agrees taproot is a positive change, the most controversial part so far was on agreeing how to activate it, this activation process is actually pretty conservative and gives enough time/participation. Hopefully, it lands nicely and future improvements will be more smooth as well.

nodja 6y ago

Let's not kid ourselves. The segwit/2MB nonsense basically drove all developers away that aren't blockstream. There's no one left in bitcoin core that cares enough to go against blockstream unless it affects their bottom-line i.e. miners. This upgrade will boil down to "will mining pools bother to upgrade their nodes"?

nullc 6y ago
That is simply untrue. I think there is only one regular contributor to Bitcoin that is affiliated with blockstream, and meanwhile you can't name one contributor who left. [Perhaps you think you'd name Gavin Andresen? but he had stopped contributing years before blockstream even existed. ... and left the space entirely after an infamous incident where he vocally endorsed a pretty obvious scammer.]
- nodja 6y ago
  Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn are the big ones yeah. Sure they left before the 2018 drama but they did leave due to block size disagreements. But that's not here nor there. The developers that left bitcoin aren't the developers putting commits on the protocol implementation. It's the developers that made tools on top of bitcoin itself. From not so legitimate sites like betting sites to sites and apps like openbazaar, retailers/payments processors, etc. After the 2018 debacle and the ever growing mempool/fee market most developers put bitcoin in legacy mode and started adopting other more frictionless coins like ethereum, bcash, litecoin, etc. I have a multireddit setup that has the big crypto subreddits inside (r/btc, r/bitcoin, r/bitcoincash, r/ethereum, r/monero), I check it once or twice a week when I'm bored, and I barely hear anything new coming from the bitcoin camp, no development discussion, no cool new service, no adoption talk. It's all HODL memes, value talk and the occasional lightning network update. I don't see development talk among the bitcoin community anymore. I'll repeat what I said, the developers that cared about bitcoin have left, the only people left that have a saying are people building layer 2 solutions (blockstream mostly) and miners. This upgrade doesn't affect miners, so I doubt they will contest.
  - nullc 6y ago