[rsi_oww]

There is near complete consensus, see:

https://medium.com/@bitcoinroundtable/bitcoin-roundtable-con...

Nearly every developer, along with the vast majority of miners, have agreed to this.

The group that did not agree (Coinbase, 2 developers, and some small miners) is extremely good at social media and has done a great job of spreading a false story of "serious scaling problems" and "developers can't reach consensus". It's simply not true.

They want to take over the bitcoin network with a fork, which will follow different rules, called "Bitcoin Classic". This is their second attempt at a takeover, the last was the failed "Bitcoin XT" fork. There is no sane reason to fork the network short of trying to take control of the protocol.

Here is the roadmap that the main Bitcoin ("core") team has put together and is working on:

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2015/12/23/capacity-increases-faq...

[Vespasian]

Your reply is demonstrating the parents issues with the discussion perfectly.

Anyone not closely following the situtation(such as myself) just sees a enormously heated up discussion (I was reminded of [1]). Every party involved is accusing the others of spreading lies,misrepresenting the situation and trying to take control over the blockchain/bitcoin/protocol.

Based on that, I have difficulties understanding and evaluating the potential technical and political challenges.

Bitcoin (and similar crypto currencies) seem to be a huge risk at the moment: Everything might collapse tomorrow (or not). The market could be split into incompatible segments(or not). One entity could become strong enough to take control of the network and enact unfavourable policies(or not).

Right now,I do not see why somenone would decide to start investing (time and money) into bitcoin while there are generally accepted, scaled up and working solutions for the underlying problem of getting money from A to B (Banks Credit cards, etc). These work fine for most people/companies and their cost and risks can be estimated fairly well in advance.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc

[rsi_oww]

"The reports of Bitcoin's problems are greatly exaggerated".

There is a small group who seem really good at spreading a message of "Bitcoin is about to collapse". They are doing this either because they control a lot of competing currency (Ethereum), or because they think it will help adoption of their Bitcoin fork.

The reality is, 95% of Bitcoiners are very happy with the team working on the protocol, and the market seems happy too (the price has gone up +68% over the last 6 months.)

But you absolutely should not take some random internet person's word for it. You'll have to invest large amounts of time reading bitcointalk, reddit and the like to make a sound decision. Luckily it's pretty fascinating reading. In time when Bitcoin's future is clearer, it will either be worth much more, or nearly nothing. But I think you can get great insight into where it is going by following it closely today.

[dwaltrip]

Your 95% number is completely made up, and doesn't match what others are seeing. There are many posts in r/bitcoin that are pro-large-blocks/anti-Core with hundreds of upvotes.

[TazeTSchnitzel]

Look, even without the block size issue, the infighting is a problem.

[lhl]

I think the text of the linked summary refutes the consensus (at least from the reports of the Roundtable participants' show of hands).

Jihan Wu (CEO of Ant Miner, Antpool, formerly #1 and currently #2 mining pool [1]) has been pretty vocal about his unhappiness with the HK meeting on his Twitter account: https://twitter.com/jihanwu and posted a very lengthy essay on 8btc. Partial translation here: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/495866/the_rbtc_china_...

F2Pool (also a HK signer, currently the #1 mining pool) now offers Classic voting for miners, as does Slushpool (they've published their voting results which also clearly doesn't show a consensus among miners: https://slushpool.com/stats/#voting-results )

Here is Classic's roadmap, just since you posted Core's: https://github.com/bitcoinclassic/documentation/blob/master/...

I think both sides have been pretty politically adroit in their own domains, but to pretend that there aren't two sides, or to conclude which side has more support, or to even talk about takeovers, considering both sides have different visions for the evolution of the protocol (on-chain vs off-chain scaling may be the most succinct summary) makes me raise an eyebrow.

[1] https://blockchain.info/pools

[dwaltrip]

This is false. There is not "near consensus". There was heavy pressure at the event to reach some conclusion -- some who agreed have since expressed other viewpoints. A number of miners who signed that document went on to experiment with Classic (the alternative client). Also, that group wasn't fully representive.

Looking at users, the majority are very unhappy with how Core has operated over the past year.

Additionally, running Classic isn't "taking over the network", it is a way to get a change into the protocol without Core's approval. The next software upgrade after that could very easily come from Core. Of course, it also sends a strong message that Core needs to listen to others more, and that can't unilaterally mold Bitcoin to their own personal vision.

[riprowan]

> They want to take over the bitcoin network with a fork, which will follow different rules

A simple and clear understanding of which group is trying to distort Bitcoin from its mission can be had by simply reading this informative white paper:

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

I would encourage everyone following this discussion to start by reading the foundation document, and then comparing the design and goals of the system envisioned by its creators and adopted by early-adopters, with the vision being propounded here.

I would furthermore ask everyone who has read the paper, to decide for themselves what it means for Bitcoin that "consensus" can be "reached" by putting all the key players in one room and signing a document.

[mcguire]

Thanks for this. For those of us not following closely, that paper explains the issue clearly.

From my reading, the protocol is supposed to adjust the difficulty of the block chain proof of work to provide a certain number of blocks per hour?

[riprowan]

Yes, that is correct.

[gravypod]

From what I understand from reading many of your comments (riprowan, seems like you understand what you are talking about):

  - Some people don't want to increase the block size
  - The original whitepaper says that this is supposed to increase
  - People who advocate for this have some big players trying to hinder their discussion

I don't know if I am getting this right. But does that sound about what is happening here?

[riprowan]

point 1 is obviously true

To point 2 - the original white paper doesn't even mention "block size limit" because originally Bitcoin did not have a block size limit. "Honest miners" are assumed by the author to always include all profitable transactions (ie. where the fee > marginal cost to include it in a block).

The limit was added after an attack in the earliest days of Bitcoin. That attack vector is simple: a miner who mines a block includes bogus transactions to himself in order to inflate the block to gigantic proportions. Other miners, who have to validate its contents, choke on the block. Meanwhile the attacker is free to keep mining, and / or the network stops processing transactions.

The original attack, and why it's no longer relevant, is described in this blog:

http://gavinandresen.ninja/One-Dollar-Lulz

In short, the attack vector which prompted the creation of a block-size-limit consensus rule is no longer a concern, as it has been addressed in two ways:

(1) This attack surfaced in the earliest days of Bitcoin, when it cost nothing to mine and miners risked nothing if they mined a block and threw it away by attacking the network. Today, industrial miners risk $10K with every block they would lose if they tried the original attack - which by the way

(2) is preventable without even having a consensus rule, for example by running Bitcoin Unlimited, a version of Bitcoin which attempts to re-create "original" Bitcoin by allowing each miner to set his own "anti-attack" limit, instead of requiring the network to agree to share the same limit.

It is clear from the various online records that the limit was intended a non-economic anti-attack threshold, to be removed if it ever became an issue.

[gravypod]

I wish you wrote a blog post about this, I'd like to see what perspective you would bring to the table.

A lot of this makes little sense to someone from the "outside" like me, but you are able to explain it in a good way.

Thanks for the help!

[toomim]

Please read the article that this whole thread is about--you know, the link at the top of this page that we're discussing. Gavin says that 75% of the people at roundtable 3 voted in disagreement with the document you linked.

[jhildings]

But still, the thing is that regardless of who is right there is a bias in the most comments, including yours. This is the conflict that is bad it itself

[x3n0ph3n3]

Why shouldn't I believe the narrative that Blockstream is attempting to control Bitcoin by limiting transaction count growth?

[jron]

rsi_oww is one of the few users posting facts and his comments are grey...

[studentrob]

Wow. At first I believed the other posts that there was no consensus. And reading about the moderation of promoting alternate coins on /r/bitcoin does make it sound too heavy handed. But just reading this comment and seeing that someone does feel there is a large majority consensus is a really different point of view.

I'm just dropping this note to give an outsider's perspective. I have no stake here and no interest in betting on something like this. I hope it does get sorted out and the concept of secure digital, decentralized money lives on in some form or another. Good luck.

EDIT: Aaaand now I'm downvoted for no reason. This thread is absurd.