Published on: 2015-06-26T19:30:31+00:00
In a series of email discussions, several key points regarding the regulatory question of Bitcoin and the blocksize issue were raised. Pindar Wong emphasized the need to involve all Bitcoin holders in any changes to the blocksize, not just miners. He proposed a technical meeting at the Cyberport in Hong Kong to discuss various proposals, such as BIP100 and 101. Peter Todd agreed with the need for science-driven investigations on Bitcoin to gather hard data for decision-making. He mentioned attending a conference in London where the blocksize issue was being discussed by attendees with different views than those on Reddit. Aaron Voisine argued for major changes to non-consensus code to handle blocks filling up, suggesting that hardfork deployment should be discussed more often. He expressed his interest in proposing a fork himself if necessary. Mike Hearn responded to Voisine's email, mentioning alternatives to the XT hard fork, such as a modified version of Gavin's proposal or BIP100. Bryan Bishop cautioned about evaluating consensus changes carefully. Pindar Wong expressed interest in collaborating with Constance Choi, Primavera De Filippi, and Peter Todd for science-driven investigations on the blocksize issue. He also noted that regulatory questions extended beyond local jurisdictions to customers' jurisdictions.Developers discussed reducing or limiting blockchain growth and proposed various ideas, including setting minimum fees for acceptance and using replace-by-fee (RBF) to estimate fees correctly. Concerns about transaction propagation and fee estimation for mobile wallets were raised. Troy Benjegerdes suggested that non-consensus hard forks could be beneficial for the long-term health of the Bitcoin ecosystem. He advised against picking fights and emphasized the need for collaborative efforts. Adam Back and Peter Todd discussed arranging an open summit in Hong Kong to meet with Chinese miners and coordinate with the blockchain-tech conference held by Constance Choi and Primavera De Filippi. They stressed the importance of considering regulatory issues and potential threats to Bitcoin. The Bitcoin development community engaged in a contentious debate over scalability, with discussions on the risks of unilateral hard forks. The community rejected the idea of a hard fork and proposed a combination plan focusing on improving decentralization, gradually increasing block size, and algorithmic scaling. Mike Hearn addressed the security and incident response during the deployment of the unilateral hard fork for Bitcoin XT, expressing confidence in dealing with them. He also discussed the potential risk involved and the need for consensus. Mike Hearn expressed frustration over the insistence from Adam Back, Gregory Maxwell, and others that "the technical community" agrees with them. He emphasized his and Gavin Andresen's contributions to Bitcoin and called for mutual respect in the debate. Venzen urged Mike Hearn to cease his activity of a unilateral hard fork, highlighting the importance of collaborative work and due process of change implementation by consensus. He suggested using soft fork rules as a reasonable compromise and involving users in the decision-making process.In an email thread, Mike Hearn responds to Adam's questions about the proposed hard fork and the consensus process. Hearn explains that the Bitcoin protocol does not have definitions about developer consensus and voting is not a perfect mechanism. He suggests that a proposed hard fork vote would require each party to lay out a long-term plan and proposal. Hearn and Gavin Andresen do not have plans to implement new scaling facilities, and Hearn believes that Lightning is not a coherent proposal. He argues that the notion that change has no consensus is inaccurate, as there are highly technical and passionate developers who have built up the Bitcoin user base. Hearn asserts that many wallet developers, major exchanges, payment processors, and mining pools want to see the limit lifted.The email chain discusses potential changes to Bitcoin's mempool size and transaction propagation rules. Aaron Voisine suggests that ejecting transactions from mempools instead of preemptively refusing them based on network-wide propagation rules may result in inconsistent transaction propagation and an increase in transaction rebroadcasts. He also raises concerns about the lack of transparency in fee estimation with replace-by-fee (RBF). Alex Morcos responds by mentioning improvements made to the fee estimation code and efforts to overhaul block creation and mempool limiting code to incorporate actual outstanding queues in fee estimation. There is also mention of upcoming inclusion of CPFP and RBF in Bitcoin core to handle edge cases.In another email conversation, Eric Lombrozo expresses his disagreement with the means being used by Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen to lift the block size limit. Lombrozo believes that while the limit needs to be lifted eventually, the current method is not the right approach. He suggests that permissionless innovation is one of Bitcoin's virtues and adoption will ultimately decide what Bitcoin is and isn't.The email thread discusses the concerns raised by Adam regarding personal ownership of the proposed hard fork in Bitcoin-XT. Faiz Khan urges caution and suggests that anyone wishing to fork the protocol should reconsider whether they are truly ready to test their skills and resources in such a way.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T13:19:24.235942+00:00