Author: Alan Reiner 2012-12-05 02:08:43
Published on: 2012-12-05T02:08:43+00:00
In an email exchange between Alan Reiner and Gregory Maxwell, the two had differing opinions on a couple of points. Firstly, Alan does not believe that there is any real risk to the centralization of the network by promoting a SPV (purely-consuming) node to brand-new users, as long as all full nodes are full-validation. Secondly, he thinks the current experience for users is poor and that it would be better to encourage new users to start "using" Bitcoin, even if they don't "support" it. Alan believes that users need to experience moving money across the world quickly and easily, without having to sign up for anything or pay any fees. He argues that after users understand the value of the system and want to use it, they are much more likely to become educated and willing to support the network with full node. Gregory disagrees with the promotion of solutions that may endanger the decentralization that makes the system worthwhile in the first place. He believes that it is essential to create software that accommodates both maximizing the decentralization of the network and making the software maximally friendly and painless to get started with and use. If the current experience is so poor that one would consider promoting directions which reduce its robustness, then that's evidence that it would be worth finding more resources to make the experience better without doing anything that reduces the model, even if there's an argument that maybe they can get away with it.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T09:30:54.726292+00:00