One miner loses $12k from BU bug, Some Core devs scream. Users pay millions in excessive tx fees over the last year "meh, not a priority" - Gavin Anderson
adambalm in bitcoin
Gavin Anderson has expressed his thoughts on the blocksize battle, basically what is going on is that there are 2 camps. Segwit aka Blockstream want to keep the blocksize at 1mb and then there is Bitcoin Unlimited and they want the miners/free market to control the blocksize. To start the 1mb block was a temporary patch that was implemented by Satoshi and Gavin Anderson to stop a theoretical problem of people being able to spam the network with 0.00000001 ฿ (1 satoshi) transactions clogging up the network. (Click the link if you wish to see Satoshi and GA discussing this in detail.)
The Bitcoin core devs need to be thinking about increasing the block size. Instead they are offering a solution that would line there pockets as they are the ones that part own Blockstream, the company that made the lighting network. For the lighting network to work on top of Bitcoin they need to fork Bitcoin so they can implement Segwit. What they need to do is they need to increase the block size and not one person can say why we should not. The blocks are full, they need to get bigger. These guys are selling a solution to a problem they are causing by inaction. They can implement what ever they want but they still need to fix Bitcoin's blocksize.
The Bitcoin Unlimited crew wants the free market and miners to decide on the blocksize. The other thing is that the path that BU uses to go forward is voted on by a group of it's supporters. Right now there are about 50 members and they are taking applications for 50 more that they want added in the next 4-6 months. I have thrown my name in the hat as I would like a say in the direction that Bitcoin goes and to make sure it remains decentralized and available for everyone to use. The BU crew has no problems with SW implementing side-chains when they can get consensus from the community, but not if it intends to force people to use it because the blocks are full and clogging the network. The solution for full blocks is to increase the blocksize not make workaround solutions that are controlled by a centralized company that has to listen to it's funders and shareholders that may have an agenda that is not what is best for Bitcoin.
If you want to keep an eye on what is going on you can check this website for up to date stats. That site also offers a decent Bitcoin legality and classification by country secton. Bitcoin Core/Segwit started out with 100% of the nodes as there used to be only one Bitcoin client but as you can see by this chart Bitcoin Unlimited is quickly gaining traction and Bitcoin Core is loosing traction. Another thing is that for the first time ever BC/Segwit has mined less then 800 blocks in the last 1000 blocks. While at the same time for the first time ever BU has mined 200 blocks in the last 1000.
Luckily how Bitcoin works is by consensus and for the most part the miners have the voting power to choose it's direction. There has been an attempt to coerce the public into thinking there is only one solution. The thing is that the miners are tech savvy and are not easily coerced as they have to be more knowledgeable about Bitcoin then the average user and care about blocksize quite a bit. Bigger blocks can hold more transactions and bigger blocks come with potentially more transaction fees per block that are then handed to the miners. Bitcoin Unlimited has had a very hard uphill battle due to this mass censorship and the overwhelming amount of funds that Blockstream has taken from investors that they use to pump there message and suppress any other alternate solutions that are offered. Next time I will write about this in more detail. There will be lots of facts and links so you don't have to believe my meandering potential BS.
Hopefully this has given you a bit of incite into the blocksize debate. If you have any questions feel free to ask them. Follow me and share if you liked this post I have a few more along this topic line that I am going to put up. The others will be slightly more controversial then the next but I believe that I can back them up with facts.
Off topic: One of the cool things about Steemit is you can put stuff like this up on the internet and no one can take it off. This inability to censor people will drive people to this platform.
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