Author: Peter Todd 2015-02-14 13:13:20
Published on: 2015-02-14T13:13:20+00:00
The consensus critical Satoshi-derived source code is a protocol specification that happens to be machine-readable and executable, so rewriting it would result in dropping out of the political process that is Bitcoin development, contributing to its centralization. By maintaining the Eligius fork of Bitcoin Core that something like 30% of hashing power runs, Luke Dashjr has significant political power over the development of the Bitcoin protocol other than the Bitcoin Foundation. Miners know if they run it they aren't going to lose tens of thousands of dollars. It's why it's easy to get transactions mined that don't meet the Bitcoin Core's IsStandard() rules: they aren't part of the protocol spec, and Luke-Jr has different views on what transactions should and should not be allowed into the blockchain. Instead of wasting time, we could help get the consensus critical code out of Bitcoin Core and into a stand-alone libconsensus library, wrapped in the mempool policy, p2p networking code, and whatever else one feels like, and convince some hashing power to adopt it. Then enjoy the fruits of our efforts when the next time we decide to soft-fork Bitcoin the process isn't some secretive IRC discussion by a half-dozen "core developers" - and one guy who finds the term hilarious - but a full-on DIRECT DEMOCRACY OCCUPY WALL STREET MODIFIED CONSENSUS POW-WOW, complete with twinkle fingers.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T17:20:22.621100+00:00