
Major Bitcoin-to-bank payment processor releases protocol,consensus trojan horse - DINKDINK
https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/898205684789125121
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DINKDINK
For those who haven't been following what's been going on in the Bitcoin
space:

Various groups have been proposing new rules that govern what constitutes a
valid Bitcoin block (Called consensus rules). Bitcoin, as a blockchain
protocol, functions by communicating with other peers in the network that meet
the same consensus characteristics.

If a peer communicates a block to you that is in disagreement with your
consensus rules, your node bans that peer. Similarly, if you update the
blockchain with a block that is in disagreement with what your peers consider
as a valid block (say you increase the mining reward) your block is rejected
by your peers.

What Bitpay has done in this situation is tell their clients that the code
that they are releasing is for a feature (Segwit - segregated witness) that
doesn't break consensus while simultaneously __implements a change to the
blocksize which breaks consensus with all other nodes on the Bitcoin
blockchain __.

The ethical issue here is that Bitpay hasn't disclosed these consensus-
violating changes in their release notes and _any_ client following their
instructions will be out of compliance / consensus with the rest of the
Bitcoin network.

Imagine if ICANN "released an update" enabling new top level domains (that
everyone agreed was something they wanted) while installing software that
simultaneously turned it into AOL/Compuserve and fracturing those nodes off of
the internet -- __AND DIDN 'T DISCLOSE TO USERS THEY WERE DOING SUCH __.

Bitpay's motive here is likely that they want to force the network to change
and gain political control, by fracturing the Bitcoin network into the two
consensus paradigms: The legacy Bitcoin consensus and Bitpay "btc1" consensus.

