We now have a completely divided community where people believe nonsense. A sizable minority have now been convinced that SegWit is dangerous and creates an insurmountable technical debt. These people generally have no development experience, and just blindly repeat misinformation despite the protests of those who do. The vitriol they have been fed is a contagion that is spreading, while others just want to block SegWit out of spite.
I recently tried to compile a list of developers who were opposed to SegWit. The exhaustive list consisted of four. That’s right… four. From the stink kicked up by the anti-SegWit brigade you’d think this number would be far higher.
If you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it. There is a real risk that enough of the non-technical community now believes SegWit is too complicated and risky to prevent its activation. For the technical community this is a total non-debate, actual developers opposed to SegWit are the flat earth society of Bitcoin. Disagree with this? Try to list developer names and credentials opposing SegWit and you’ll soon realise how feeble the technical opposition is.
In addition to SegWit hate, the vitriol directed at Blockstream is absurd. Bitcoin is and always will be open source, and Blockstream’s business model depends entirely on the success of an open and decentralised Bitcoin. All the big names there have a proven track record of dedicating themselves to Bitcoin’s advancement. Their business model is to profit from their expertise, gained by valuable contributions to Bitcoin’s development. This is a sound and reasonable business model that has been successful on many other open source projects such as MySQL. The profit they make can be used to further advance Bitcoin – it is a win, win.
People literally believe that Blockstream is Evil Corp. I’ve seen people argue that Blockstream profits from keeping blocks small so they can charge for the lightning network. This demonstrates a shocking lack of comprehension and common sense. There are even conspiracy theories that Blockstream is a secret banking trojan horse to bring down Bitcoin from the inside. People peddling such misinformed nonsense need their heads inspecting.
Five years ago in response to scaling concerns, I used to argue that Bitcoin could scale infinitely on-chain, often citing Moore’s law. The more I learned about Bitcoin, the more I realised this isn’t viable without risking Bitcoin’s fundamental value proposition – decentralisation.
I have not been “brainwashed by Blockstream lies”, I have simply joined the consensus of those with a more informed technical understanding. With off-chain scaling we can have our decentralised, inexpensive and instant digital money cake, and eat it too. Sadly, we now live in a post truth world, and having the better argument is often trumped by those shouting the loudest.
Valid concerns can be raised about user experience, missed opportunities, and yes, Lightning Network and Sidechains aren’t ready yet and we do need solutions now. Well, guess what, we have a solution right now: SegWit will immediately ease the stress on the network, it is coded, extensively tested and ready to launch… and there is even consensus for a hard fork block size increase after its activation.
The only thing that will prevent SegWit from activating is misinformation combined with a political power grab by opportunistic miners.
There is now a movement, in the form of Bitcoin Unlimited, to hand over control of the blocksize to miners. There are many reasons why Bitcoin Unlimited is a terrible answer to the block size debate. Sadly, much of this discussion takes place in the bitcoin-dev mailing list where the brightest technical minds hang out, while the rest of the community indulges in misinformed squabbles on reddit. In short, handing over control of the block size to miners would be terribly centralising.
People arguing that the community wants a block size increase are right. I’m all for a block size increase too, however it is vitally important for the health of Bitcoin that the best technical solutions win and we do not concede to misinformation and fear. SegWit MUST be activated before a hard fork block size increase.
If the propaganda succeeds in persuading miners to fritter control of Bitcoin’s block size limits away to an implementation as poorly conceived as Bitcoin Unlimited, then that chain and those who created it must be punished by the market.
To do this, I propose Bitcoin 4Core, a hard fork response that would clearly support the scaling vision of Bitcoin Core, and hopefully recruit their talented development team.
I believe the best way to protect the network from attack and simultaneously improve decentralisation would be to introduce additional proofs of work. 4 proofs of work each with 40 minute block creation targets and respective difficulties. We could add Ethash, Scrypt and Equihash to give a mix of CPU and memory intensive methods, and improve diversity of hardware. We could also take the opportunity to introduce a 4MB maximum block size.
By using proof of work methods with existing altcoin implementations, the mining ecosystems already exist, though some altcoins would likely face severe disruption as miners fled to profit from Bitcoin. Existing Bitcoin miners also wouldn’t be shut out completely as with a change of PoW, and could reluctantly return with diminished income and influence when they a realise that the economic majority will overwhelmingly follow the technical majority when given a choice.
I don’t know if the Core developers would support a proposal like this, but I personally think it would be a great way to reclaim Bitcoin and give a clear mandate to the sound vision of the Core development team. This, however, should be a last resort, and I remain optimistic that SegWit can still activate despite all the noise.
John Hardy
Longtime Bitcoin advocate.
Email [email protected]
Donations welcome: 1H2zNWjxkaVeeE3yX6uVqng5Qoi6gGvYTE
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You buried the lead: “In short, handing over control of the block size to miners would be terribly centralizing.”
Then, you provide no basis for the charge.
TL:DR I am lazy and opinionated.