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solex

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Staff member
Aug 22, 2015
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Austin Hill, the CEO of Blockstream finally gives their perspective on the block limit.


Disingenuously, he writes about the block limit then leads straight into the Maxwellian road-map in the context of a "soft-fork scalability" i.e. SegWit first, then maybe, but no firm promises of a block-limit change.

Hopelessly inadequate for ecosystem volume requirements during this year, let alone next.
 

Zangelbert Bingledack

Well-Known Member
Aug 29, 2015
1,485
5,585
Anyone else concerned that Classic's "democratic" approach could be its undoing? The SJW aspects @Justus Ranvier mentioned seemed sort of innocuous until I noticed the connection to democracy because of LukeJr's pull request and the Toomim bros. divided response.

I think Classic should frame their democratic voting as just a way to vet what kinds of things get promoted to pull request status or something, never as any kind of final say. It should be clear that Gavin, Jeff, and the other devs/founders are in charge, rather than trying to ape Core's feel-good "we're not a dictatorship, we are a decentralized consensus of developers" schtick. All implementations are necessarily controlled by a central group. The decentralization can't happen there; it has to happen in the existence of user choice among various implementations.
 

Richy_T

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Dec 27, 2015
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Probably they should have qualifications for being able to get to the level of being able to submit requests and rules about disqualification also.

Or maybe make that whole thing be an election process. Someone who already has pull request access can nominate new people and they can be black-balled from access by one or two members and maybe something like a suspension of access with two members requesting it followed by a full vote with a 50% majority for termination.
 

Justus Ranvier

Active Member
Aug 28, 2015
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Anyone else concerned that Classic's "democratic" approach could be its undoing? The SJW aspects @Justus Ranvier mentioned seemed sort of innocuous until I noticed the connection to democracy because of LukeJr's pull request and the Toomim bros. divided response.
The best solution to any single implementation going off the rails is a network composed of many independent implementations.
 

cypherdoc

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Aug 26, 2015
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ouch!

 
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cypherdoc

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Aug 26, 2015
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earlier today i was talking in the Classic channel about Blockstreams reaction to the Classic Team if we hard fork successfully. well, here you go from Austin Hill himself just now:

"Until Bitcoin classic or alternative forks of Bitcoin core have support of the development community (which is orders of magnitude larger then
our entire company then I would be hesitant to support that fork given that it is essence firing the volunteers that brought you to the dance."

what he's saying is his company will not allow it's core devs to help Classic devs. Blockstream will draw a line in the sand.

 

albin

Active Member
Nov 8, 2015
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They have at least 12 guys, and I'm being very charitable only counting devs listed on their website right this moment and not taking into account contractors and the like.

An order of magnitude by definition is 10x. "Orders" means at least two orders of magnitude, i.e. 100x.

Maybe a bit nitpicky, but Austin Hill is somehow suggesting that the Core dev community is 1200 people?

Yet the roadmap has only 54 signatories, and based on my conservative estimate, they would account for roughly a quarter of it. Maybe he's talking "orders" of magnitude in binary?
 
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Peter R

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Aug 28, 2015
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@cypherdoc

This "firing all the devs" rhetoric is crazy. We're changing the governance and vision with the move to Classic--every dev will still be free to contribute (how could they be stopped, anyways?)

On a related note, Luke's pull request and an under-appreciated post by Jorge Stolfi got me thinking about a strange possibility. "Core" is arguing that the support for "Classic" is a mirage--they say it's a governance coup--the miners don't matter--etc. Well Adam Back already invented a weapon to stop a group backed by the miners from co-opting Bitcoin: the "Big Red Button" of changing the PoW algorithm, rendering the miners hardware worthless.

Of course, I see this as ridiculous. It is clear that there's enormous support for 2 MB. But, if the Core Devs really believe otherwise, then shouldn't they be pushing that Big Red Button soon? And if they did, what would happen?

1. They would fully alienate themselves from all the miners, etc.
2. They would lose the small amount of credibility that some of them still have.
3. They might actually succeed in creating two forks that would probably co-exist (whereas if the PoW stays the same, the smaller chain would shrivel-up and die due to the higher difficulty).

Would Blockstream Core create a spin-off to retain their exclusive control over at least one update mechanism for the World Wide Ledger?
 
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Peter R

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Aug 28, 2015
1,398
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I've been following #bitcoin-wizards IRC lately and had notice it start to become more friendly over the past month.

Greg has now made a return and is "frustrated" by people who think that blocks wouldn't be filled to the limit if the limit didn't exist:



PSA: there are actually A LOT of good people on this channel. You can chat in it simply by following this link and hitting "connect":

http://irc.lc/freenode/bitcoin-wizards

Or watch it here:

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/
 
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cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,995
@cypherdoc

This "firing all the devs" rhetoric is crazy. We're changing the governance and vision with the move to Classic--every dev will still be free to contribute (how could they be stopped, anyways?)

On a related note, Luke's pull request and an under-appreciated post by Jorge Stolfi got me thinking about a strange possibility. "Core" is arguing that the support for "Classic" is a mirage--they say it's a governance coup--the miners don't matter--etc. Well Adam Back already invented a weapon to stop a group backed by the miners from co-opting Bitcoin: the "Big Red Button" of changing the PoW algorithm, rendering the miners hardware worthless.

Of course, I see this as ridiculous. It is clear that there's enormous support for 2 MB. But, if the Core Devs really believe otherwise, then shouldn't they be pushing that Big Red Button soon? And if they did, what would happen?

1. They would fully alienate themselves from all the miners, etc.
2. They would lose the small amount of credibility that some of them still have.
3. They might actually succeed in creating two forks that would probably co-exist (whereas if the PoW stays the same, the smaller chain would shrivel-up and die due to the higher difficulty).

Would Blockstream Core create a spin-off to retain their exclusive control over at least one update mechanism for the World Wide Ledger?
uh, that wouldn't work based on what you describe b/c no one would DL their big red button code to obsolete SHA256.
[doublepost=1452998314][/doublepost]
"If I were an engineer who build the technology behind a Tesla car, but Tesla only sold it as a black painted car and it was open source, and another company came along and sold pink, red, blue & green versions of the car gaining all the market share, would developers continue to work on the hard engineering issues or give up? Or would they adapt to ship multi-colour cars?"

what exactly is wrong with ppl wanting pink, red, blue and green cars? and why would expect your workers to stay with your company if you insist on just selling black cars? this is the concept that a guy like Hill can't understand. his view of the world must be that of everyone must like just black cars.
 
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Peter R

Well-Known Member
Aug 28, 2015
1,398
5,595
@cypherdoc

Agree that it wouldn't become dominant, but I think enough people might download it that it would create a "Blockstream coin" that would have some persistent market cap. People would almost certainly mine it too, because difficultly would be reset allowing GPUs to compete.

I'm not suggesting this is a realistic threat to Classic--more like a thought experiment.
 

cypherdoc

Well-Known Member
Aug 26, 2015
5,257
12,995
@Peter R

no, i get that it's a thought experiment.

but it's much easier and less risky to perpetuate miner inertia by FUD'ing any competing implementations; like they're out in force trying to do right now.
[doublepost=1452999416][/doublepost]
I've been following #bitcoin-wizards IRC lately and had notice it start to become more friendly over the past month.

Greg has now made a return and is "frustrated" by people who think that blocks wouldn't be filled to the limit if the limit didn't exist:



PSA: there are actually A LOT of good people on this channel. You can chat in it simply by following this link and hitting "connect":

http://irc.lc/freenode/bitcoin-wizards

Or watch it here:

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/
brg444
anybody find these drive bys hilarious


he HAS to be a Blockstream founder or employee given that he's *everywhere* attacking naysayers. he's the drive by assassin.
[doublepost=1452999572][/doublepost]
Gmax has been in full attack mode on reddit for the past few hours. Look at him go! This guy is a master of demagoguery through authoritative-sounding language.

https://www.reddit.com/user/nullc
Demotruk claimed that gmax was complaining about being fired but i can't find any statement of his that confirms that. you see it?

and yes, Classic has them worried. they are out in force.
[doublepost=1452999845,1452999140][/doublepost]
They have at least 12 guys, and I'm being very charitable only counting devs listed on their website right this moment and not taking into account contractors and the like.

An order of magnitude by definition is 10x. "Orders" means at least two orders of magnitude, i.e. 100x.

Maybe a bit nitpicky, but Austin Hill is somehow suggesting that the Core dev community is 1200 people?

Yet the roadmap has only 54 signatories, and based on my conservative estimate, they would account for roughly a quarter of it. Maybe he's talking "orders" of magnitude in binary?
that list keeps changing. Marshall Long's name was there just an hour ago. now it's gone.

https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases
[doublepost=1453000040][/doublepost]
I've been following #bitcoin-wizards IRC lately and had notice it start to become more friendly over the past month.

Greg has now made a return and is "frustrated" by people who think that blocks wouldn't be filled to the limit if the limit didn't exist:



PSA: there are actually A LOT of good people on this channel. You can chat in it simply by following this link and hitting "connect":

http://irc.lc/freenode/bitcoin-wizards

Or watch it here:

https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/
who is bsm117532?
 
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rocks

Active Member
Sep 24, 2015
586
2,284
@Peter R
but it's much easier and less risky to perpetuate miner inertia by FUD'ing any competing implementations; like they're out in force trying to do right now.
They have been out in force FUD'ing for half a year now and what has it got them? Complete alienation from the entire community.

I say let them keep on doing it, at this point all they are doing is digging a hole deeper and deeper. The fact that they can't see they are only hurting themselves at this point shows how unqualified any of them are.