
Why is Bitcoin forking? - edward
https://medium.com/@octskyward/why-is-bitcoin-forking-d647312d22c1?1
======
lawn
For more context, here's a list of posts by Mike giving some background and
some more thoughts:

The capacity cliff: [https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-capacity-
cliff-586d1bf771...](https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-capacity-
cliff-586d1bf7715e)

Crash landing: [https://medium.com/@octskyward/crash-
landing-f5cc19908e32](https://medium.com/@octskyward/crash-
landing-f5cc19908e32)

On consensus and forks: [https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-consensus-and-
forks-c6a050...](https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-consensus-and-
forks-c6a050c792e7)

They were quite useful for someone not familiar with the topic.

~~~
Taek
Let's balance the discussion out a bit:

Greg Maxwell's thoughts (small blocks):
[http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34090559/](http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34090559/)

About internet bandwidth growth (~neutral):
[http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=493](http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=493)

An attempt at a well-rounded overview (~neutral):
[http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=535](http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=535)

some thoughts by bittorrent creator Bram Cohen (small blocks):
[https://medium.com/@bramcohen/bitcoin-s-ironic-
crisis-32226a...](https://medium.com/@bramcohen/bitcoin-s-ironic-
crisis-32226a85e39f)

Some thoughts by gavin andresen (large blocks):
[http://gavinandresen.ninja/](http://gavinandresen.ninja/)

~~~
bhouston
Sort of interesting that Mr. BitTorrent is involved:

> some thoughts by bittorrent creator Bram Cohen (small blocks):
> [https://medium.com/@bramcohen/bitcoin-s-ironic-
> crisis-32226a...](https://medium.com/@bramcohen/bitcoin-s-ironic-
> crisis-32226a85e39f)

I give him a fair bit of credit and he really portrays this quite differently
than in the main article here.

Has anyone responded to Bram Cohen's writeup on the pro side of things?

------
Taek
For people who have not been following along, the Bitcoin block size debate
has been very intense and pulled out a lot of interesting psychology from the
Bitcoin community.

Most of the core devs of Bitcoin are strongly opposed to increasing the
blocksize to 8mb. 2 people in particular, Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen, have
been making very strong political pushes to get the majority of Bitcoin users
to favor their block size limit increase proposals, and it appears that they
have largely been successful.

Everyone has an opinion on the block size debate, and it has become clear that
politics are very important to Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a complicated and delicate
protocol, and having a qualified opinion on something like the blocksize
debate likely requires around a year of studying the academic properties of
Bitcoin. Most people don't realize this, and hold their own opinion in high
esteem. In many ways, this would be similar to non-cryptographers engaging in
debates about key scheduling in AES - it takes a lot of education before you
are really qualified to make an opinion.

Unlike AES however, with Bitcoin most people believe that they have a
qualified opinion, and actively engage in debate, religiously clinging to
certain ideas without properly grasping their full implications.

Perhaps even more interesting is all of the drama and chaos on /r/bitcoin.
Right now there are posts with 93% upvotes requesting that the moderators be
replaced. The comment threads have lots of brigading, trolling, loudmouthing,
and occasional spurts of academic discussion.

There are many accusations of the moderators censoring discussion that opposes
their viewpoint on the subject. The moderators have been very active in
deleting posts. Certainly many of the deletions were of garbage comments, but
there also seems to be abuse-of-power happening.

Certainly there are many people trying to be as disruptive as possible, and
deleting their comments only results in more assertions of censorship.

One big controvertial decision by the moderator team was to censor all posts
relating to Bitcoin-XT, a client that runs code which will hard-fork Bitcoin
after reaching 75% miner-usage. The two biggest proponents of the block size
increase are responsible for XT, and censoring posts about XT seems synonymous
to censoring topics about the block size. 'Off-topic' really doesn't seem like
an appropriate label.

The behavior of proponents of both sides of the debate has been abysmal.
Something in Bitcoin is broken, and it's not just related to the block size
limit. The decision making process, and 'social consensus' process as a whole,
needs improvement.

~~~
troymc
"Dr. Hoenikker used to say that any scientist who couldn't explain to an
eight-year-old what he was doing was a charlatan." \- Kurt Vonnegut, _Cat 's
Cradle_

The argument that "I understand this and you don't, so you don't get a vote"
seems like a lazy way to suppress democratic process. A better alternative is,
"This might seem complicated, but really it's not; here's a simple but
complete explanation to help you make an informed decision."

~~~
Confusion
Right, it's completely ridiculous that I had to study for months to understand
the transport properties of a nabotube with magnetic contacts, after having
studied for years to obtain the base knowledge to start that project. The prof
should have been able to explain that to me when I was 8 years old. Obviously
he doesn't understand his stuff and neither do I.

Or could it maybe, just maybe, be that it is entirely reasonable that it takes
years to have sufficient background understanding before an expert can convey
the knowledge you need to study for another few months to actually understand
something and also have an expert opinion on it?

~~~
timothybone
Do you see anything redeeming about the quote? It seems problematic if
something like this can be so political but be impervious to the logical
debate an 8yo can engage in, no?

~~~
Confusion
You imply that a logical debate is somehow 'better' than a political debate.
That's a category mistake: those two are incomparable. They necessarily
coexist, because they are about different things.

Politics is about ethics. In this case: the ethical consequences of certain
technical choices (under which I include a consideration like 'I will make
less money'). (Expert) knowledge of the technical choice itself is mostly
irrelevant for those parts of the debate. We can discuss the military merits
of e.g. nuclear weapons until kingdom come, but if I'm opposed to them on
humanitarian grounds, no amount of technical merits will convince me.

As for the quote, it depends on context. In a context where expert knowledge
is necessary to make useful contributions to the debate, there is nothing
redeeming in the quote. It merely encourages people to be disrupt it. In the
more general context where you ask a researcher to be able to explain his
work: of course he should be able to dumb it down. But not for the purposes of
subsequently engaging in fruitful discussion with him.

~~~
timothybone
Politics is about ethics? Yes, well, do you think an eight year old can look
words up in the dictionary? Yes, of course you do. Well I argue that's all it
takes, essentially, beyond that an eight year old needs some time, to answer
some questions of their own, to be lectured at about the implications. But, an
8yo is perfectly capable of making the right choice, given context/access to
information.

And, I'll additionally argue that technical merits can convince someone
opposed on humanitarian grounds, the two are not incomparable, we do these
sorts of comparisons just fine in the real world.

You are attempting to modularise the argument in a way I find unpalatable is
all, our differences are likely surface deep.

------
zekevermillion
There is no law against publishing software that would introduce a blockchain
hard fork if run. Yes, XT infuriates those who hope to make money based on the
appreciation of their pre-fork bitcoins. Publishing XT introduces economic
uncertainty in the short term, and long-term undermines confidence that we can
rely on the mathematical promises of bitcoin at all. If XT is successful, why
wouldn't Hearn (or Coinbase, or another person with interests divergent from
large bitcoin holders) publish XT 2.0 removing the coin max? Or introduce any
number of other inflationary changes?

If it can be done, eventually it _will_ be done. It's inevitable that people
will eventually propose all manner of changes to bitcoin, some good, some
stupid. Real bitcoin (or original bitcoin) could still continue to run as its
own fork, in the background, waiting for the market to decide on a winner.
Just as it is inevitable that developers will propose a small infinity of
bitcoin-derived altcoins, trying to capture the windfall of a self-published
bootstrapped currency. But very few altcoins will become successful networks
in the long term, a smaller and smaller percentage of new coins as time goes
on.

Either Hearn and Andresen are correct, in which case their success will speak
for itself -- even if they totally screw over the large bitcoin bag-holders in
the process. Or, XT will become an insecure, centralized network and will die
off on its own. No need for politics, in this case mathematically dictated
incentive structures will decide who wins.

~~~
hollerith
>Yes, XT infuriates those who hope to make money based on the appreciation of
their pre-fork bitcoins.

Could someone explain how the XT fork might affect the future value of
currently-existing Bitcoins?

I expected it to have a neutral effect, since one fork will eventually die out
(and since the fork does not try to change the rate at which Bitcoin are
created). Even if both forks persists somehow, every holder of a current
Bitcoin will essentially have 2 Bitcoin -- one spendable on one fork, another
spendable on the other.

~~~
olalonde
There is also one possible scenario where both forks survive and become two
distinct currencies.

~~~
hollerith
OK, but then if you have one BTC now, you will have one of each kind of BTC
later, so that scenario does not explain why "XT infuriates those who hope to
make money based on the appreciation of their pre-fork bitcoins".

~~~
olalonde
It is correct that bitcoins mined before the fork will be spendable on both
chains. That being said, it is also possible (and in my opinion probable) that
the combined value of both currencies (BTC and BXT) will be less than the
current value of BTC for a variety of reasons (Metcalfe's law, loss of
confidence, etc.). That being said, I think it's more likely that one of the
forks will win (e.g. the core devs will merge Bitcoin XT to Bitcoin Core if
the fork happens).

------
im3w1l
This was bound to happen sooner or later. Good that is "only" about something
relatively minor like this, so that the community can practice handling it.
Maybe later there will be a conflict where serious money is on the line and it
would be bad if that was the first one.

I mean this change will affect miner revenue, but transactions fees are still
completely insignificant compared to block rewards.

~~~
ctz
I thought that if the split does happen all existing coins will be spendable
on both sides of the split. Does that not count as 'serious money' on the
line?!

~~~
im3w1l
That is just like a stock spinoff, it doesn't favour one group of users over
another. And the actual forking of the chain (so far only the software has
been forked) is some time in the future so everyone will have time to prepare.

For an example of something that would favour one group of users over another,
we can take a change of block reward decay schedule. If it decays faster, old
users are favoured. If it decays slower, new users and miners are favoured.

An increase in blocksize later on, when fees are majority of mining revenue
would favour users over miners.

------
wslh
Security is my concern, even simple changes open big bugs. Bitcoin is not a
blog engine where you are just exposing your content, it is one of the most
delicate protocols found on Internet and most transactions are irreversible
(indeed all transactions are irreversible but sometimes you can recover your
money).

Forking code sounds great but we are talking here about money and assets, I
would prefer agreement even when distributed systems are exciting.

~~~
FatalLogic
Yes, but Bitcoin really is just an experiment. If something in it is
fundamentally not going to work, (including the consensus development
concept), then isn't it best to blow up and fail now when there's only $4
billion at stake, instead coddling it until it stagnates and dies, or until
there are trillions of dollars at risk?

"...bitcoin is an experiment. It's getting to be a scarier and scarier
experiment as it gets larger and larger, because if it fails there will be a
lot of people who will lose the money they've invested..." Gavin Andresen,
Bitcoin Developer, 2014 -
[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/05/gavin_andresen.html](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2014/05/gavin_andresen.html)

------
compcoin
Bitcoin is Forking on it’s principals

There is great debate and concern about Bitcoin trying to change its core
software. Network tests have found the credit card processor can process many
more transaction per second than Bitcoin can. Some influential leaders want to
make changes that will make the protocol more competitive with
VISA/MASTERCARD. They want to change increase amount of transaction processed
in each block (the block in blockchain technology). The important issue is not
about changing Blockchain size it is about changing the hard coded rules that
are the foundations for trust in Blockchain based systems. What is there to
stop future forks that change other rules that users relied upon in their
choice to participate in this financial system. Lets say some economic
interests in the future lobby the influential core developers and miners to
change the amount of coins mined in the future to let say 100 million. If the
users rely on the software to enforce it rules any important changes to the
rules that are significant can effect the end users in unpredictable ways. The
users of Bitcoin have no say. Once again a small group is making choices and
if they are wrong they can destroy the entire system. A system that relies on
influential few promoting there own economic interest is no better than a
public company issuing out more shares when they see the need or the
government printing more currency. Those who want to take Bitcoin into direct
competition with VISA/MasterCard should simply create a new coin designed to
do this. There is so much more to the potential of the protocol than just a
cheaper way to spend money. The principal of hard coded rules they can not be
changed and are enforced by the software is one of the true revolutionary
idea’s of Bitcoin. There is more at stake than creating competition for banks.
Its about staying true to a financial system rules that users chose to
participate in.

~~~
harryh
Bitcoin originally did not have this 1MB limit. It was only added when there
were concerns about spam transactions or blocks that could clog the network.

Why do you think it was OK to make a change to add a limit but not make a
change on the size of the limit?

------
corv
As can be seen on [http://xtnodes.com/](http://xtnodes.com/) there is
significant growth in full nodes running code for larger blocks.

------
bhouston
Is this also sort of a coup attempt? The way this is being done sort of feels
like that to me.

If there is a fork and it is because of this advocacy of Mike Hearn and
friends, do they become more prominent as the defacto leaders of bitcoin?

------
jamiesonbecker
> Why is Bitcoin forking?

"Why are _we_ forking Bitcoin?"

------
ryanmarsh
With so much money at stake (and potentially large concentrations of it) why
isn't there much of a governance model for Bitcoin?

I see many articles touting the so called democratic governance model of
Bitcoin and if that is indeed the model then what other "popular delusions and
madness of crowds" will my money be subject to in the future?

------
tomp
Are they also doing anything about the centralization of mining pools? AFAIK,
the main problem is that right now it's possible for miners to prove that they
were mining "for the pool" and not for themselves. If this proof was
impossible, each miner would be a selfish miner and any collaboration would be
impossible.

~~~
ProblemFactory
Would that reduce the centralisation though?

An independent miner with an average affordable rig might find somewhere on
the order of one block per year _on average_. This means that due to
variability, a good proportion of miners would not find any blocks at all
within the lifetime of their hardware, and give up forever.

If low-income-variability pooled mining becomes impossible, then my guess is
that mining will be centralised to people who run purpose-built datacentres
full of miners, not the casual users.

~~~
tomp
> If low-income-variability pooled mining becomes impossible, then my guess is
> that mining will be centralised to people who run purpose-built datacentres
> full of miners, not the casual users.

AFAIK, that's already happened. The difference is only that mining pools owned
by independent entities wouldn't be able to collaborate. So you'd be more
likely to have e.g. 5-10 big pools, as opposed to 2.

------
davidgerard
All of this is noise. The opinion that counts is the miners: if the four
largest mining pools go for it, it happens; if they don't, it fails.

~~~
lambda
Mmm, no. If the four largest mining pools go for it, but the various exchanges
and online wallets do not, then you get a very dangerous fork where you now
have two separate currencies, and have the possibility of double spends. The
nodes that are not updated to allow these larger block will keep on going
along with their chain, just rejecting the other chain as invalid; and the
ones that do accept the larger blocks will probably see their chain as longer
and so only accept that one. That fork means that until all of the online
wallets, exchanges, and anyone accepting Bitcoin directly realize that there
are now two different currencies, all kinds of fun can be had with double
spending.

~~~
AJ007
Should we assume any update that "fixes" the mining pool problem will be
rejected by the pools? If so is a dangerous fork of Bitcoin certain?

------
bakhy
what exactly happens to the value of the currency after the fork? the number
of Bitcoins in circulation effectively doubles?

~~~
ISL
Something complicated will happen for an indeterminate but probably fairly
short period of time, and then one fork will emerge as a winner.

Nobody wants to _buy_ unspendable BTC, so it's in almost everyone's interest
to find consensus, even if it's tragedy-of-the-commons consensus, very
quickly.

------
datashovel
It's somewhat ironic that one of the big selling points of Bitcoin was
decentralization. The thing that they failed to realize is the team also needs
to be decentralized. For something like this to take off it needs to be a
specification for a federated network with zero single points of failure, and
not an actual codebase with a dedicated team.

~~~
gus_massa
> _specification for a federated network with zero single points of failure_

The problem is that some people want to change the specification (bigger
blocks) and some want to keep the current specification. The block size is
part of the specification or that it's only an implementation detail?

For me, it's not clear what a "specification for a federated networks" means

* One interpretation is that the specification is written in assembler and is the current official Bitcoin client, and any other client has to be 100% bug compatible with it. Nobody can change it ever.

* Another interpretation is that anyone can add a new version inside a general framework, and somehow the people decide which version to use. You need some kind of number identifier for each version, or to make it user friendly you can use a nickname. If the network is too general, you can include Bitcoin and Litecoin (and all the Altcoins) in it. The network is just Internet.

Both alternatives have "zero single points of failure". The problem is that
people want something in between.

~~~
datashovel
I imagine it would be closer to the 2nd of the two.

When I've thought about it, I come to the conclusion that the base
specification needs to be so simple (with clear path for extensibility) that
no one will disagree, and everyone can see that it's critical for an
electronic currency to exist. Namely the ability to own it, and to exchange
it.

Another thing is, I believe that in order for something like a global
electronic currency to become universally accepted, without support from /
cooperation with governments, there can be no center of power, and
unfortunately structurally I can't imagine something like that could happen
with a blockchain-based currency.

Don't get me wrong. I see the beauty / elegance of the blockchain, but I can't
get my mind wrapped around the idea that everyone (or even a significant
percentage of people) around the world will accept the idea that their
currency is at the mercy of decisions being made by some relatively small
group of people who basically answer to no one except in the sense that
they'll always attempt to do popular things in order to prevent people from
leaving their currency for another.

