
Segwit2x Bitcoin Fork Suspended - avinassh
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-segwit2x/2017-November/000685.html
======
bpicolo
So bitcoin went up because they were going to fork, and now it's going up
again because they will not?

k

Edit: Otoh, looks like it's seeing a bit of a drop now, but I doubt it will
hit the pre-anticipation levels.

~~~
pwaai
Market fundamentals seem non existant here. At least a few years ago, when
there were bad news the prices would reflect that. Now, it seems to go up
anytime bitcoin is mentioned at all, regardless whether the market understands
the implications or not.

~~~
zanny
This is why I got out of bitcoin trading. It used to correlate to the general
attitude about it. Now the coins and miners are so centralized the real
driving force of bitcoins price is the thousand wallets holding 95% of all
BTC. Its like trying to predict market movements for a stock where 95% of the
shares in a company are owned by one person. It isn't up to anyone else _but_
that person where the price trends, because the behavior of the 5% crumbs mean
nothing against the behavior of that one holder.

The price will simply go up when the whales want it to, and go down when said
whales want to cash out. Fees could go up or down, China could do X or Y, the
Fed could regulate it or not, and the general opinions of the ecosystem don't
matter whatsoever - price is fairly solely dictated by the whims of a few
dozen elites nowadays.

~~~
nosuchthing
Reposting this as pertinent:

    
    
      In economics, the Gini coefficient is the standard measure 
      of how inequitable a society is. This is tricky to 
      determine for Bitcoin, as it's not quiet a "society" in 
      the Gini sense, one person may have multiple addresses and 
      many addresses have been used only once or a few times. 
      (The commonly-cited figure of 0.88 is based on one small 
      exchange in 2011.) However, a Citigroup analysis from 
      early 2014 notes: "47 individuals hold about 30 percent, 
      another 900 a further 20 percent, the next 10,000 about 
      25% and another million about 20%"; and distribution 
      "looks much like the distribution of wealth in North Korea 
      and makes China's and even the US' wealth distribution 
      look like that of a workers' paradise
    
      Dorit Ron and Adi Shamir found in a 2012 study that only 
      22% of then-existing Bitcoins were in circulation at all, 
      there were a total of 75 active users or businesses with 
      any kind of volume, one (unidentified) user owned a 
      quarter of all Bitcoins in existence, and one large owner 
      was trying to hide their pile by moving it around in 
      thousands of smaller transactions. (Shamir is one of the 
      most renowned cryptographers in the world and the "S" in 
      "RSA encryption")"
    

[1] via
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidgerard](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=davidgerard)

~~~
Anm
For context, those numbers came from 2014.
[http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-
inequality-2014-1](http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-inequality-2014-1)

I can't find any more recent study specific to the Gini coefficient, however
these[1] charts show an improvement over this snapshot[2] from May 2015.

[1]: [https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-
addresses....](https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-
addresses.html) [2]: [https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/1-bitcoin-community-
controls...](https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/1-bitcoin-community-
controls-99-bitcoin-wealth/)

~~~
nosuchthing
The original studies suggests early mining rewards were distributed mostly to
a small group of users. It also shows attempts by large stakeholders to hide
their large holdings by distributing funds across several wallet accounts.

If someone were to have monitored IP addresses in the swarm it may be possible
to correlate attempts from single users hiding their funds across many
wallets. Simply looking at the blockchain balances of single addresses will
not necessarily indicate a single person controlling many addresses.

------
nikcub
Considering the history of spoofed messages aimed at manipulating the market,
they should have cryptographically signed the message

That said - if this is true, they've done the difficult but right thing.

~~~
gtrubetskoy
It is my understanding that signed messages are generally frowned upon in the
Bitcoin community, Satoshi never signed his messages.

This is because it is more important what is in the message than who wrote it.

~~~
VMG
> This is because it is more important what is in the message than who wrote
> it.

not in this instance

~~~
gtrubetskoy
> not in this instance

not really. why does it matter that this message is authentic? that 2x
_really_ isn't going to happen? it can still happen, and it doesn't matter who
posts what online.

~~~
TD-Linux
Jeff Garzik was the only author of btc1, the primary 2x implementation. For it
to survive for any length of time, someone needs to step up and take over code
maintainership.

------
wmf
Sadly, this exact scenario was predicted by multiple people and could have
been avoided by making segwit and 2MB activate atomically at the same time.
This is a huge embarrassment for big blockers; they have been completely
politically out-maneuvered.

~~~
makomk
The likely reason Segwit was activated when it was is because there was a
movement by non-2X supporters to forcibly activate it around that date, and
the 2X side blinked first. It's as simple as that. Also, 2X is inherently
harder to deploy than Segwit because it's a hard fork, which means that
everyone everywhere would have to upgrade their software. Even the proposed
timeline for 2X was quite aggressive - more so even the BIP-50 upgrade back in
2013, which unlike 2X was entirely uncontroversial and absolutely necessary
because nodes running the old version would end up stuck on different forks
from each other.

~~~
wmf
Yes, in retrospect this was a huge win for the UASF because they got segwit
activated and no block size increase.

------
hudon
"6 people called off the fork. Think about that." [0]

A censorship resistant digital cash is being built, and it only took 6 small
time CEOs to completely throw everyone off and almost derail the project. When
someone like CME Group, who now has skin in the game, also starts pulling
their weight, who knows if the bitcoin experiment will survive?

[0]
[https://twitter.com/arronschaar/status/928316853092433920](https://twitter.com/arronschaar/status/928316853092433920)

~~~
lawn
Contrast it to how many people it takes to block any on chain scaling. As
everyone practically runs Core the power in practice lies with their
maintainers.

Bitcoin as it is now is crippled. There is no reason to block on chain scaling
except for the Core maintainers to retain their power and allow their second
layer solutions to viable.

~~~
hudon
People choose to run Core and the network is worth 122 billion dollars. You
haven't provided any good arguments for on chain scaling but the market is
screaming "bitcoin is doing it right".

~~~
lawn
> You haven't provided any good arguments for on chain scaling

Multiple dollar fees doesn't require any more arguments. The lack of arguments
against on chain scaling, backed by actual research, is what's lacking.

> but the market is screaming "bitcoin is doing it right".

Have you considered that it's driven by speculation instead of technical
merit? When the blockchain becomes unusable due to high fees and congestion
the bottom will fall out. It cannot be driven by pure speculation forever.

~~~
hudon
The pure speculators I know invest in smaller cap cryptocurrencies to maximize
their gains. The only people I know invested in bitcoin are in because they
believe in its long term value.

Anyway at this point you're trying to predict the future and I'm sharing
anecdotes so we're not getting anywhere, let's tackle your main point:

> The lack of arguments against on chain scaling, backed by actual research,
> is what's lacking.

The value of full nodes is widely understood by bitcoin contributors
[0][1][2]. Increasing the block size directly increases the amount of
resources required to run a full node. Increased bandwidth requirements is
especially a problem.

It is up to the _candidate_ (s2x), not the _incumbent_ (core) to show that no,
it won't be harder to run full nodes, or to show that you can have just as
much security by running an SPV node. Because the candidate has failed to back
up their proposal with evidence that security is not harmed, the proposal
cannot be allowed to move forward. Makes sense?

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/3eq3y7/fu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinBeginners/comments/3eq3y7/full_node_question/ctk4lnd/)

[1] [https://medium.com/@morcos/no2x-full-
nodes-889c20100a8d](https://medium.com/@morcos/no2x-full-nodes-889c20100a8d)

[2]
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Full_node](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Full_node)

~~~
lawn
So your only focus is on full nodes. So where's the research of how expensive
nodes are and how many nodes would be lost if an upgrade to 2MB would happen?
How big of a loss would be acceptable? Ideally how many nodes should exist in
the network for it to be sufficiently decentralized? How much bandwidth is
needed? How long can we expect our storage to last?

 _There is no credible research done_ , there are no numbers, yet even the
smallest size increase is blocked.

It's also blocked by the same people who have previously supported even larger
increases. What made them change their minds? Sure isn't any new research.

But the fundamental issue is that not everyone need to run a full node as long
as you can connect to sufficiently many nodes yourself. There's simply no
point in engaging in full node fetishism where everyone need to run one where
the worst internet connection hamstrings the entire network. Most people run
SPV wallets today anyway and the important nodes are the ones run by
businesses and wallet services.

~~~
hudon
> So where's the research of how expensive nodes are and how many nodes would
> be lost if an upgrade to 2MB would happen? How big of a loss would be
> acceptable? Ideally how many nodes should exist in the network for it to be
> sufficiently decentralized? How much bandwidth is needed? How long can we
> expect our storage to last?

> There is no credible research done

That's precisely my point. Contributors have shown that full nodes are
necessary to preserve the security of the network (see the links I posted),
but the proposal of S2X was executed without ever engaging on a discussion to
answer the very questions you are asking now.

They are good questions, and we should discuss them and we should answer them.
But Jeff Garzik and the 5 other CEOs did not attempt to do this research and
instead steamrolled ahead with btc1/s2x.

~~~
lawn
The damage the 1MB limit has done and is doing to Bitcoin is far more than
possibly a couple of lost nodes would mean after an upgrade to 2MB.

This has been a problem for _years_. For example Gavin thought 16MB would be
perfectly safe. There's research being done now examining 1GB blocks and how
that would affect propagation time. A lousy 2MB is honestly laughable.

Doing nothing isn't the pragmatic or sane approach, it's the insane one.

~~~
hudon
In one post your criticism is that there is a lack of research, and I agree.
But now you're making unsubstantiated claims again... the damage done to
bitcoin? All meaningful metrics from BitPay's transaction volume [0] to on
chain USD volume [1] to the price [2] shows that Bitcoin is doing fine and
does not need saving. Public data shows that even though a fee market is
developing, Bitcoin is still rising quickly in use and value.

As for the 1GB block research you're talking about, it was literally presented
5 days ago. S2X proposal started in May and the fork was planned for next
week. The way we want this secure digital money thing to work is that
proposals that are controversial or that may affect security are researched
and the research is reviewed over many months or years.

I know you want to take the quick approach and just LOWER FEES NOW, but we
know -- from experience -- that a cowboy attitude with blockchains makes it
trivial to lose a lot of money [3].

[0] [https://blog.bitpay.com/bitpay-
growth-2017/](https://blog.bitpay.com/bitpay-growth-2017/)

[1] [https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-
volume-...](https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-
usd?daysAverageString=7&timespan=2years)

[2]
[https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#charts](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitcoin/#charts)

[3] [https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/08/accidental-bug-may-have-
froz...](https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/08/accidental-bug-may-have-
frozen-280-worth-of-ether-on-parity-wallet.html)

~~~
lawn
> But now you're making unsubstantiated claims again... the damage done to
> bitcoin?

How about comparing Bitcoin's percentage of total market capitalization [0]
which crashed from ~80% down to ~40% when the blocks became full? The last
month has regained that quite a bit but you could speculate it's because the
promise of long overdue on chain capacity increase.

> I know you want to take the quick approach and just LOWER FEES NOW

It's been _years_ since the limit should have been increased. Yet here we are
with no on chain scaling for Bitcoin even remotely close to reality.

> that a cowboy attitude with blockchains makes it trivial to lose a lot of
> money

You're really comparing apples and oranges if you compare raising the block
size with Ethereum's poorly designed smart contracts.

[0] [https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/](https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/)

------
chatmasta
The idea of “consensus” in the bitcoin network is interesting to me. The code
expresses “consensus” mathematically, and there exists a binary truth of
whether a consensus has been “reached.” That’s simple and straightforward.
It’s easy to reason about what happens once a consensus has been
tautologically reached.

However, answering the question of “do we have a consensus yet?” is far less
precise. Answering “what compromises can we make to achieve consensus,” even
less so. All deliberation and conversation must happen offline, in “meatspace”
amongst humans and operating outside mathematical principles. For example with
the segwit2x fork, there was the New York Agreement, discussion all over the
internet, etc. But does anyone have a precise number for the “theoretical
consensus” or is all discussion based entirely on estimates?

I’ve always thought the “51% consensus” and the “hard fork” idea were hand-
wavy solutions to a problem that can fundamentally only be solved by human
cooperation. I also think Satoshi never expected this kind of discontent to be
such a common occurrence.

Bitcoin should include a consensus building layer of code that acts as an
arbiter for building consensus. It could execute polls, enforce rules of
deliberation, etc. This is basically decentralized voting, which is generally
seen as a distinct topic from bitcoin. But it seems bitcoin, one of the
biggest decentralized networks, could benefit from a consensus building
protocol.

The problem of decentralized governance is not going away. Solving it will be
a massive technological step forward.

~~~
hudon
I think the most promising work here is around fork futures. Paul Sztorc (of
Bitcoin Hivemind, the original decentralized prediction market, and
Drivechains) has a lot to say about how with fork futures, we can let the
market tell us how valuable proposals are [0].

We saw this in practice with the numerous S2X futures that were available.
They were all predicting that S2X had about 13% chance of winning. This signal
can then be used as substantial evidence in meatspace to retract or push
forward a proposal.

[0] [http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/fork-
futures/](http://www.truthcoin.info/blog/fork-futures/)

------
xwvvvvwx
I still don't really understand why people were so against a block size
increase.

I get that there are centralisation risks if the block size increases too
much, but it doesn't really seem as though increasing to 2mb really make such
a big difference?

Am I missing something?

~~~
lawn
There are no real technical arguments against increasing to 2MB, only
political.

The main actors against a block size increase are Core developers who are also
part of a company called Blockstream. Blockstream's business model is about
selling side chains. But why use side chains if you can use on chain
transactions instead? Well if you limit on chain scaling users would be forced
on to your side chains...

The movement against the Segwit2x upgrade was so fierce precisely because it
threatened to offset Core as the de facto Bitcoin client, making them loose
their power.

They profit heavily from censorship on the bitcoin mailing list, the "bitcoin"
subreddit and bitcoin.org. Their consistent propaganda and abuse has now
caused the miners and businesses to back down on the Segwit2x upgrade, which
would have been a certainty with 95% hashpower and business support.

Keep these things in mind and you should get a better picture.

~~~
hndamien
There is also the contention that increasing blocksize would make running full
nodes harder (at least by some margin) which therefore means an increase in
centralisation (by a proportional margin). It would also set a precedent that
miners are in control (or alternatively it could be interpreted as no-one is
in control). The question then transaction speed and low fees are more
important than the marginal increase in centralisation. Core would argue that
any increase in centralisation is too much. Not sure why they think middle men
are acceptable though.

~~~
lawn
> There is also the contention that increasing blocksize would make running
> full nodes harder (at least by some margin) which therefore means an
> increase in centralisation (by a proportional margin)

Yet there is no attempt to quantify by how much. The damage done to Bitcoin by
full blocks is much more than what a potential increase to 2MB would cause.
This zero tolerance policy rhymes extremely poorly when the fees makes Bitcoin
more expensive to use than to run a full node.

> It would also set a precedent that miners are in control (or alternatively
> it could be interpreted as no-one is in control).

Miners are in control because the real power lies with them. The problem is
that they aren't coordinated and so status quo is favored.

------
runeks
I guess this is one of the merits of proof-of-work: force miners to mine on
one chain only, and if the token on the fork is worth less compared to their
relative increase in hash rate on the fork, they lose money.

In my opinion, the financial motive of miners played a big role in this
decision, and that’s exactly what proof-of-work is supposed to achieve:
consensus through selfish miners.

Has anyone done the math on the profitability of Bitcoin Cash miners versus
regular Bitcoin miners?

~~~
srwx
It's graphed in real time: [https://fork.lol/](https://fork.lol/)

~~~
runeks
Awesome! Not as clear-cut as I thought, though.

The BCH income also seems a lot less stable than for BTC; shooting up to twice
as profitable as BTC and then down to half as profitable. I assume there’s
quite a lot of variance in the time-between-blocks in the BCH network.

------
VMG
Wise decision. Surprised to see Jihan Wu sign it too.

I hope this brings some peace to to the community.

------
olegkikin
A few altcoins immediately went +20% up - NEO, IOTA, Omnise, Lisk, Waves, Ark.
But not the ones I expected - like Ethereum.

~~~
lavezzi
Doesn't Ethereum have its own problems right now?

~~~
olegkikin
Not ethereum, but one of the contracts written on top of it had a bug that
some newbie triggered by mistake and locked something like $160M worth of
moneys.

~~~
wc-
Ethereum's value, its reason for existing, is the deployment and operation of
smart contracts.

When one of the most popular semi-complex smart contracts fails not once but
twice in a matter of months (losing hundreds of millions USD in the process),
it is time to look not at the newbie or the contract programmer, but the
platform itself.

~~~
olegkikin
Ethereum works fine as a currency too (~15 sec per block, quite nice). It also
works fine with simple contracts, it's the humans who aren't good enough (yet)
to write bug-free code.

Bugs in software of various kinds cause billions of dollars worth of damage,
deaths too. Yet I don't see people claiming it's the fault of C++.

~~~
xwvvvvwx
_Yet I don 't see people claiming it's the fault of C++_

A major driving force behind the development of Rust is that exact claim.

~~~
olegkikin
I doubt software written in Rust has no bugs.

~~~
xwvvvvwx
I don't think anyone is claiming that, it does however seem quite likely that
it will have less.

------
captaincrunch
What a great way to manipulate the market.

~~~
thefalcon
I don't understand this desire to immediately assume bad faith in these
situations. It's a complicated situation, involving a lot of actors. Yeah,
probably some of them are acting in bad faith. But probably most of them are
just trying to develop a functional cryptocurrency. This stuff is very hard,
and having it all so decentralized only makes it harder.

Personally I was hoping for the 2x fork to succeed, or, barring that, for some
kind of miracle switch over to Bitcoin Cash, which has the 8x capacity without
the baggage of Segwit. But realistically this is probably the best outcome for
Bitcoin for the reasons outlined in the message.

~~~
tlrobinson
What’s your opposition to SegWit?

~~~
natch
I can't speak for the user thefalcon you replied to, but most opposition as I
understand it comes from the fact that segregated witness makes things more
likely to rely on centralized infrastructure, departing from the original
vision of bitcoin as a decentralized system that can't be controlled by
entities like governments and banks.

~~~
VMG
> but most opposition as I understand it comes from the fact that segregated
> witness makes things more likely to rely on centralized infrastructure

That simply isn't true. It's just a new transaction format.

------
rcdwealth
> Bitcoin remains the greatest form of money mankind has > ever seen, and we
> remain dedicated to protecting and > fostering its growth worldwide.

How sad that people are lured into "money" and selling and buying "money"
while not understanding that provision of products and services are the most
valuable in the world, and that any money is just a certificate of trust
exchangeable for such products or services.

Bitcoin is nothing but speculation and this kind of forks cannot make it
better. Basic agreements especially relating to money shall never be changed
or people loose trust in it.

------
joering2
Mike Belshe, Wences Casares, Jihan Wu, Jeff Garzik, Peter Smith and Erik
Voorhees.

Don't have anything against those guys but what was that part about
decentralized crypto-currency that no one agency or government oversights?

------
temp987654
So... this should probably mean a deep dive for btc price then, right?

~~~
ashark
I checked coinbase expected exactly that, thinking "oh man, I'm glad I didn't
sell my eth a month ago to buy into bc trying to capture free altcoins like
others did and like I considered doing, it'll be down like 10% at least" but
it... shot up about 10% instead. I don't get it.

~~~
RexetBlell
Having too many forks makes it confusing for newcomers (and even hedge funds).
So naturally avoiding a fork and keeping the community together is good for
Bitcoin, which made the price go up.

~~~
jwilliams
The speculation prior was the the fork was driving people to buy BTC - hence
the expectation of a correction.

~~~
celticninja
on wex it went up as high as $7900 and as low as $7000 so it is still very
volatile, I would expect more of a sell off as people who bought in hoping to
capitalise on a fork now exit their position but this may also mean more risk
averse investors will buy in now that there is no contentious fork due. so, as
usual with bitcoin, no one knows what the hell is going to happen

------
sova
The note states there was not enough consensus (only 30%) How much consensus
would be quorum for this sort of shift? Making a hardfork is really a last
resort. If we are trying to increase transaction capacity, is blocksize really
the most efficient way to go about it (without screwing up the other aspects
of BTC)?

~~~
zik
The support for the earlier Segwit change was only 30%. The advertised support
for this 2x change was over 80%.

------
659087
It would be incredibly interesting to see who opened short positions shortly
before this announcement.

I'd be willing to bet at least a few of the names at the bottom of that
message are among them.

------
joering2
Looking whats happening on Ethenerum, those who knew in advance already made
fortune. Funny we don't have SEC actually able to look into these. Amazing
times.

~~~
paulpauper
up a whole $10 ..not exactly 'making a fortune'

~~~
searine
A $10 shift is a fortune in arbitrage.

If you have insider info about the direction of a market, then you have a much
reduced risk. You can move in big, take your bite of the change, and then cash
out.

~~~
topmonk
In something as volatile as crypto, ethereum's 3.3% shift is not worth the
risk.

------
cypherpunks01
Wow! Site is down, can someone copy the text over here?

~~~
thefalcon
The Segwit2x effort began in May with a simple purpose: to increase the
blocksize and improve Bitcoin scalability. At the time, the Bitcoin community
was in crisis after nearly 3 years of heavy debate, and consensus for Segwit
seemed like a distant mirage with only 30% support among miners. Segwit2x
found its first success in August, as it broke the deadlock and quickly led to
Segwit’s successful activation. Since that time, the team shifted its efforts
to phase two of the project - a 2MB blocksize increase.

Our goal has always been a smooth upgrade for Bitcoin. Although we strongly
believe in the need for a larger blocksize, there is something we believe is
even more important: keeping the community together. Unfortunately, it is
clear that we have not built sufficient consensus for a clean blocksize
upgrade at this time. Continuing on the current path could divide the
community and be a setback to Bitcoin’s growth. This was never the goal of
Segwit2x.

As fees rise on the blockchain, we believe it will eventually become obvious
that on-chain capacity increases are necessary. When that happens, we hope the
community will come together and find a solution, possibly with a blocksize
increase. Until then, we are suspending our plans for the upcoming 2MB
upgrade.

We want to thank everyone that contributed constructively to Segwit2x, whether
you were in favor or against. Your efforts are what makes Bitcoin great.
Bitcoin remains the greatest form of money mankind has ever seen, and we
remain dedicated to protecting and fostering its growth worldwide.

Mike Belshe, Wences Casares, Jihan Wu, Jeff Garzik, Peter Smith and Erik
Voorhees

\--

 _Mike Belshe_ _CEO, BitGo, Inc_

------
paulpauper
total meltdown. sell on news event ...wow. I think a lot of people were buying
in anticipation of getting an alt coin, which is not going to happen. Given
that alt coins are falling now, this looks like just another capitulation
event, with the fork cancellation being the trigger.

------
runeks
Interesting move on the price chart after this announcement:
[https://i.imgur.com/EkxgJb2_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&fidelity=high](https://i.imgur.com/EkxgJb2_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&fidelity=high)

The activity starts 11 minutes after the email.

------
imron
To the moon!

------
tryingagainbro
Bitcoin will do very well...until it doesn't.

------
whataretensors
Here comes the alt flood.

------
thescriptkiddie
This is just one guy, Mike Belshe, declaring his intention not to participate
in the hard fork. Meanwhile, the miner support for the fork is still over 80%
[0]. So it's pretty clear he doesn't speak for the majority.

[0] [https://coin.dance/blocks](https://coin.dance/blocks)

