@solex: Yes, I think it is very important to be very careful with new members now, in these times! Absolutely!
So I took a look and here's what I found in jcnike's reddit posting history regarding Bitcoin's future direction:
- his first Bitcoin related post seems to be from Nov 4th 2013 (so arguably, it isn't a bought 8 year-old account reactivated just now)
- Bitcoin's overall direction isn't an issue in any of his posts until probably this one:
2015-06-01 20:44:21 I agree. I find Peter Todd somewhat insufferable. I do like his instinct for making sure we're getting the most bang for our buck out of resources like the block size limit, but in no way does that negate our need to nip obvious scaling issues in the bud right now.
Other posts I found that are pertinent to our cause or Bitcoin's general direction:
2015-08-25 21:17:36 I agree. Multiple implementations of Bitcoin is healthy for the ecosystem and protocol.
2015-10-13 02:57:18 Yes, and Coinbase has supported BIP101 in the past. I think we as a community need to bite the bullet and accept that BIP101 is the only solution that kicks the can down the road far enough. The other options will run into issues rather soon.
2015-11-05 01:54:22 I'm sick of the "higher fees solves everything" argument. No it doesn't. If you don't have enough space for new users, then you don't get to have new users. Fewer users means the network effect doesn't get to work its magic and it hurts the exchange value of BTC. All of this so we can protect an artificial arbitrary 1MB block constraint that was meant to be removed all along.
2015-11-07 06:54:45 I don't like it. My first impressions are that it complicates the blockchain with no clear win.
The claim is faster, more powerful first confirmations than bitcoin core does today. However, under bitcoin-ng, as I understand it, there's no way for a miner to close out his block. This implies that there's no way to know if any of the elected miner's microblocks will be included in the final chain. This is no more effective than 0-conf transactions today. In bitcoin-ng miners rely on the next "key" block to build off of their lastest microblock. Again, there's no way to guarantee they'll do this.
To me, bitcoin-ng hasn't demonstrated real benefit. Its "first confirmation" isn't much more than a 0-conf transaction of today.
2015-12-28 10:31:17 The con is that you no longer have signature data in the blockchain. At the very least, you now need data from more places to replay for yourself the whole truth of what happened. It hasn't been explained to my satisfactiom what risks this introduces into the system. Perhaps someone can clue me in. I estimate SegWit to be perhaps halfway through the dissertation preparation stage of a PhD. To take it for granted as the solution to an immediate threat of blockchain logjam is inappropriate, naive and nearsighted at best.
I think that once it's proven out, SegWit will be a welcome addition to the scaling bitcoin arsenal. It doesn't do nearly enough at the moment.
I believe Bitcoin can handle and was intended to handle much larger blocks. It's in everybody's best interest to have much larger blocks that can support many more users on Bitcoin proper.
2015-12-29 01:16:58 This just isn't true. The proposal removes signature data from affecting the merkle tree that ends up being hashed. This means the magical "block header hash" that has to meet the difficulty requirements no longer references signature data for SegWit transactions. With SegWit, you no longer have proof of *which set of signature data* was included when the block was verified.
The implications of this need to be studied carefully and explained to the community before it's deployed.
EDIT: I'm looking further at it now, and it appears that there is a a mirror merkle tree that is included in the block hash header after all. In any case, SegWit needs further study IMO, and won't help enough in the next 6-12 months.
2015-12-30 06:04:20 Finally, some people talking sense. Cheers to Jeff and Gavin!
I'm still in favor of BIP101 fwiw.
2015-12-31 11:06:02 In computer science we have a thing called the robustness principle. It basically states "Be conservative in what you send, be liberal in what you accept"
This is basically the mantra of bitcoin unlimited. I see nothing wrong with it. It's far from the chaos that will ensue when 1mb blocks fill up.
2015-12-31 22:25:09 Given the bip is just now being published in draft status, why are we counting on this as the solution to blocks filling up?
I believe SegWit is a silly way to increase the block size limit anyway. Let's just call it what it is, a malleablility fix and a first step towards pruning.
2016-01-02 20:20:25 my concern isn't them as much as the entirety of the network. degrading huge swaths of fully validating nodes to spv nodes seems like the opposite of what core should be suggesting.
2016-01-22 02:46:33 Count me (one technical mind) in the Jeff/Gavin Camp.
I think Core has some brilliant ideas, but they are way too afraid of hard forking. Hard forking is something that will need to be done many times. The cost of lessons learned is increasing, not decreasing as time goes on.
The fact that Core finds a softfork of SW as the most sensible and least risk capacity increase is very disheartening. SW, while theoretically very simple, is still an involved change that affects the Bitcoin block format and many systems at many layers. SW should not be rushed, and we shouldn't be counting on it for our near-term needs.
Btw, SW is a neat accounting trick, but really inappropriate as a scaling solution, IMO.
I'm of the belief that we should let the market decide the block limit, rather than a hard coded parameter. Believe me, miners won't publish blocks that are bigger than necessary, as they are the ones risking increased orphan rates. I'm actually really disappointed with the mining community for giving their voice and votes to Core.
Ultimately, Core has really done a poor job of listening to the community, and of giving businesses a clear roadmap of understanding (on-chain) Bitcoin capacity.
2016-02-03 19:06:45 They have outsized influence over Bitcoin Core, the reference implementation. They also have a much different vision for Bitcoin than the one laid out in the whitepaper.
Their biggest problems are poor communication and an unwillingness to compromise on the block size issue.
[.. stopped here, list is not comprehensive ...]
@jcliff: Sorry for this nosiness! Don't take it the wrong way, given all the shenanigans that went down, I think it is very important for BU to keep itself healthy and avoid infiltration from Blockstream minions or whoever else.
Personally, I am very happy with this posting history - that guy speaks my mind