
Inside the Fight Over Bitcoin’s Future - donohoe
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/inside-the-fight-over-bitcoins-future?intcid=mod-yml
======
jackgavigan
I feel the article does Pieter Wuille a disservice by mentioning the
Blockstream/sidechains conflict of interest _without_ mentioning the fact that
he is actually in _favour_ of raising the block size limit (albeit gradually,
over time) and has authored a proposal to do so:
[https://gist.github.com/sipa/c65665fc360ca7a176a6](https://gist.github.com/sipa/c65665fc360ca7a176a6)

What's ironic about this whole affair is that four of the five core developers
support raising the blocksize limit (Gregory Maxwell is the sole dissenter,
preferring to wait until a transaction backlog develops before taking action)
but they diverge on exactly _how_ and how quickly to raise it.

~~~
jnbiche
I honestly feel that some of the "pro raising" devs aren't actually in favor
of raising it anytime in the foreseeable future, and are just dragging their
feet in the hopes of that the whole thing will go away.

The whole point of this debate is that we've been litigating this affair for
the past three years, each year a several core devs claiming to want to raise
it "soon", and then it just gets put down another year.

I'm still not sure about the BitcoinXT gaining consensus, but I'm very glad
_someone_ is putting real pressure on the situation, because that's the only
way the block size will be raised anytime in the next few years.

~~~
jackgavigan
My take on it is that the key difference is that Gavin perceives a greater
urgency in raising the limit before we reach the point where blocks start
getting filled up, than Jeff/Wladimir/Pieter do.

I think he got frustrated that no progress was being made, which sparked his
decision to add the relevant code to XT, which is what has brought things to a
head. I actually suspect that his preferred outcome is _not_ to fork the
blockchain into XT and Core, but to put some pressure on the other core devs
to act.

~~~
hollerith
Would Bitcoin XT exist if there were no need to pressure the other core devs?
I.e., does it serve some additional or original purpose?

~~~
jackgavigan
Yes, it's been around for a while and contains various enhancements and
patches that aren't in Core. See
[https://bitcoinxt.software/patches.html](https://bitcoinxt.software/patches.html)

~~~
pstrateman
> Yes, it's been around for a while and contains various enhancements and
> patches that aren't in Core. See
> [https://bitcoinxt.software/patches.html](https://bitcoinxt.software/patches.html)

Only if by enhancements you mean damaging centralization bugs.

TOR blacklisting by default for example

~~~
jnbiche
I'm still not sure how I feel about that patch, but to be clear it does not
blacklist Tor by default. What it does is that if a particular node detects a
DOS attack that originates from the Tor network, each node with then down rate
the Tor IPs (since that's where many of the DOSs originate from), giving non-
Tor nodes higher precedence. And thus avoiding the DOS attach for non-Tor
nodes.

Under normal conditions, Tor nodes are fully integrated into the network.

Like I said, I'm still ambivalent about this patch (for multiple reasons), but
saying blacklisting Tor by default might give people the wrong impression of
what it does.

In the words of BitcoinXT site [1]:

"This patch set introduces code that runs when a node is full and otherwise
could not accept new connections. It labels and prioritises connections
according to lists of IP ranges: if a high priority IP address connects and
the node is full, it will disconnect a lower priority connection to make room.
Currently Tor exits are labelled as being lower priority than regular IP
addresses, as jamming attacks via Tor have been observed, and most
users/merchants don't use it. In normal operation this new code will never
run. If someone performs a DoS attack via Tor, then legitimate Tor users will
get the existing behaviour of being unable to connect, but mobile and home
users will still be able to use the network without disruption."

I've looked at the patch, and that's pretty much what it does [2].

1\.
[https://bitcoinxt.software/patches.html](https://bitcoinxt.software/patches.html)
2\.
[https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/commit/73c9efe74c5cc8...](https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/commit/73c9efe74c5cc8faea9c2b2c785a2f5b68aa4c23)

------
erikb
I totally agree with that part of the conclusion that says Bitcoin has failed
in regards of it's "no need to trust anyone" goal. It's not a failure for us
though. There are so many things we can learn from Bitcoin, like no matter
what your technical solution is, you'll always have power bubbles (e.g., for
bitcoin the power aligns around the developers and the huge farm owners),
you'll always have disagreement in the community no matter how morally high
your goals are.

~~~
pron
> There are so many things we can learn from Bitcoin, like no matter what your
> technical solution is, you'll always have power bubbles

If many of Bitcoin's believers had only been less dismissive of the social
sciences, they could have known that long ago. In fact, if they had only been
less dismissive of politics, they would have known that people who dismiss
politics are simply people who don't know what it is, and those are the people
who eventually do _bad_ politics.

Politics is a property of any social interaction and is simply _influence over
others_ (by any _social_ means -- even technological). As an academic field of
study it is the study of the flow of power (simply put -- influence) in a
society.

~~~
mike_hearn
I wouldn't lump all us Bitcoiners together. It was very clear right from the
start that Bitcoin is just a tool that lets people rearrange and disperse
power, not a magic cure-all (even though some people get rather breathless
over The Blockchain™).

If you look at the current dispute, it looks somewhat like what an election
campaign for central bankers might look like if western countries were to
allow for such things. Or rather what the first one might look like, if the
current set of central bankers weren't really on board with the whole idea.
You've got different groups with differing visions running something that
vaguely resembles an election, but the issues are rather wonkish and
technical.

Undoubtably many people will look at this whole thing and say, look how much
more professional the dollar or the euro is. You never see such disagreements
in the Fed! But I think the social failures that are leading to this crisis
are actually also present there too: an assumption that experts never
disagree, a preference for opaque unanimity, and a strong mental/emotional
link between (perceived) unanimity and credibility.

Put another way, it's difficult to imagine a new central banker announcing
that his/her predecessors and peers were all wrong and - for example - the
correct inflation rate to target is 0% and not 2%. Even though there _are_
economic papers out there that imply their policies might not be correct
(written by economists at central banks, no less), the giant shitstorm that'd
unleash would be extremely un-Central-Banker like and be seen as a serious
threat to the credibility of that CB or even that country.

Bitcoin, for all its faults, does at least have some kind of mechanism to
handle the case where the people making boring technical decisions stop doing
it right.

~~~
pron
> If you look at the current dispute, it looks somewhat like what an election
> campaign for central bankers might look like if western countries were to
> allow for such things.

But they do (indirectly, of course)! Conformity of thought arises not because
of the _rules_ of the democratic system, but because of the way power tends to
get concentrated in homogenous groups (another thing the social sciences tell
us), unless resisted by some civil action.

> Bitcoin, for all its faults, does at least have some kind of mechanism to
> handle the case where the people making boring technical decisions stop
> doing it right.

I don't think that the Bitcoin _system_ has any such advantage. The only
difference I see is that Bitcoin's leadership are not accountable (even
nominally) to any collective social interests that go beyond technical
concerns regarding the currency. Whether that's good or bad depends on your
ideology.

You cannot fix the bugs in the workings of a system that on paper seems like
it should work (i.e. modern democracy) without understanding what the bugs are
and how they're created (and even then it's very hard, and entails a lot of
politics, meaning influencing people), and you can't learn about those bugs in
the mechanism if you dismiss the academic disciplines that have studied it for
decades to centuries (depending on the discipline). You certainly can't do all
that without an appreciation for politics.

~~~
mike_hearn
> But they do (indirectly, of course)!

Who do?

In all western democracies that I'm aware of, the central bankers are meant to
be independent of politicians. Of course you can view this as a fiction, but
all the players do seem to believe it and it's exceptionally rare for
politicians to directly argue with, let alone override, central bankers.

> I don't think that the Bitcoin system has any such advantage. The only
> difference I see is that Bitcoin's leadership are not accountable (even
> nominally) to any collective social interests that go beyond technical
> concerns regarding the currency.

Of course they are. You don't see developers releasing forks of Bitcoin that
try to bring about economic outcomes, because such a fork would be almost
certainly ignored by the userbase. But that doesn't mean it's impossible, or
that it'd never happen even if the users were collectively strongly in favour.

Besides, the two can't be easily divided. The block size debate is a bizarre
witches brew of technical concerns, pseudo-technical concerns and
social/economic concerns. The line between them is often blurry. So even a
fork implementing a very minor technical change is causing massive uproar.
Some people just _really_ like the idea of a central planning committee of
experts. Regardless, that's not a technical limitation of the protocol. In
theory the fork can work.

~~~
pron
> In all western democracies that I'm aware of, the central bankers are meant
> to be independent of politicians.

What do you mean? They are _appointed_ (and reappointed or not) by
politicians.

> But that doesn't mean it's impossible, or that it'd never happen even if the
> users were collectively strongly in favour.

The difference is that in a state these things are done as part of bargains,
which help prioritize. For example "I'll support your nomination for the chair
of the central bank if you support my law allowing same-sex marriage".
Sometimes these bargains can take the form of hostage-taking and be annoying,
e.g. "If you don't repeal the ACA, I won't vote to raise the debt ceiling",
but that's all part of the same process of keeping people in control. That
bargaining, BTW, happens regardless of the political system (i.e. even in
autocracies), only in a less explicit way and sometimes with different people
involved.

Once you completely separate the power structure for the currency from other
concerns, you lose that control, and you lose it in a very radical way. Thing
is, it's harder to bargain with people with money because they are relatively
immune to many social effects. However, one of the classical checks-and-
balances mechanisms in history is that of money and violence (and, at some
point, religion). The two are both forms of power (i.e. ability to influence),
but unlike money, violence is much harder to concentrate in the hands of the
few (technology is changing that, but there are other, subtler sanctions at
play that resist total concentration of violence). So the rich could starve
the poor _and_ had horses and swords, but they knew that if they went too far,
they couldn't withstand an uprising.

The state made an interesting deal: a central authority (though ideally not
concentrated -- the two are different concepts) would have a monopoly over
violence (up to a point), and, in exchange, it would regulate money. It
wouldn't let the poor kill the rich (again, up to a point), but, through
regulation it would make sure that the rich don't starve the poor. Once you
separate the two, and, in the process, make even extreme violence less
disruptive, you break a very important balance that has been reached. Like
some sort of a MAD doctrine, you _want_ to keep a mutual, implicit threat
going.

Which brings me back to the first point about central bankers. Even after
their appointment, and even if they're not interested in another term, they
still have a responsibility toward their community -- as I hinted at before,
democracy only formalizes certain rules that have always implicitly had an
effect, and certain sanctions are always at play even if not made formal by
the democratic system. Bitcoin breaks that, too.

------
spectrum1234
This is very good news (that there is a fight). Open sourced currency that
could be forked at any moment is a feature not a bug.

The fact that government currencies can't be forked, and thus never guarantee
they stay competitive, is the main reason a bitcoin like currency is nearly
certainly the future.

The downside is some medium/long term uncertainty in that exact currency.
However this is a NECESSARY component.

~~~
yellowapple
I've tended to agree. Bitcoin is really just an early iteration of the
cryptocurrency concept, and many of its "failures" are, in the long run,
successes. This is why the "altcoin" ecosystem is so vital; they're doing a
lot of the fundamental experimentation that's necessary for cryptocurrency in
general to approach perfection.

Unfortunately, a lot of people fail to realize this, and champion Bitcoin
specifically as the be-all-end-all of electronic money despite the sheer
number of problems with it. This attitude, while understandable, is
regrettable.

------
sneak
Bitcoin XT also has other changes decided solely by their two devs without
fanfare or discussion; for instance, it disfavors Tor nodes and hampers
anonymity.

This is not widely reported but is indicative of what we can expect from such
a BDFL model. A BDFL is the end of Bitcoin.

The reason to oppose XT has nothing to do with blocksize and everything to do
with control.

~~~
u02sgb
Interesting, source?

~~~
sneak
[http://cointelegraph.com/news/115153/bitcoin-xt-fork-can-
bla...](http://cointelegraph.com/news/115153/bitcoin-xt-fork-can-blacklist-
tor-exits-may-reveal-users-ip-addresses)

and

[https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/privacy-backdoor-bitcoin-
xt/](https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/privacy-backdoor-bitcoin-xt/)

------
stuhood
This article is already stale: a near majority of the network has voted for
BIP100 in the last few days.

[http://bitcoinist.net/block-size-debate-takes-turn-f2pool-
re...](http://bitcoinist.net/block-size-debate-takes-turn-f2pool-rejects-xt-
adopts-bip100-instead/)

~~~
pbreit
"Near majority" or ~25% (i.e., sufficient to win but far from majority)?

~~~
stuhood
Ah, sorry. Even the article I linked is potentially stale. Things seem to be
moving quickly. The "near majority" statement was based on unconfirmed reports
that another large pool has hopped onboard:
[https://twitter.com/mkomaransky/status/636534235508178945](https://twitter.com/mkomaransky/status/636534235508178945)

------
Hermel
The Bitcoin core has definitely left the stage of rapid innovation. Instead,
we can expect slow, consensus-based progress at best for the future. This is
normal for a successful protocol and happened to html, smpt, tcp, etc. as
well. Committees have taken over.

~~~
cb18
_The Bitcoin core has definitely left the stage of rapid innovation. Instead,
we can expect slow, consensus-based progress at best for the future. This is
normal for a successful protocol_

But that alone isn't indicative of the protocol's success, is it, can't that
also be attributed to infighting?

Committees may propose things, but they've not really taken over as it's still
the community(those controlling the networks computational power) that decides
what changes to adopt right? And the only people who can actually implement
changes are those with access to the core right? Or former core people who've
splintered off(XT.) So what do committees have to do with this?

------
kang
Suppose a client and server were connected with a connection running with
speed of light. Even then, there is some finite limit as to how many bits can
be transferred. How do we handle scalability beyond it then? By abstraction.
Rather than sending raw data we only send what is relevant & decode it at
either ends.

Now transactions are raw data that flows in the bitcoin network, but there
will always remain a practical limit. Throughput of the network is number of
transactions per unit of time it can handle, which translates to number of
blocks per unit of time.

To increase the value of this equation, 3 things can be done: 1.increase block
size 2.Decrease block time 3.Abstraction

The problem is that XT side considers increasing blocksize is the only way.
The core side has presented sidechains as one of the methods of abstraction,
but since they invented it they formed a company out of it and now it appears
as conflict of interest. Anyways, XT side is painting the Core side as anti
scaling, which is totally untrue, but since sidechains are not even being
heard, they are inviting other proposals to be presented at the workshop in
Montreal on 12th Sept.

~~~
ssharp
What I don't get is how quickly the debate started and then dissolved with a
potential hard fork as the outcome.

What was the urgency to make a change? Yes, Bitcoin couldn't scale as it was,
but there wasn't even close to enough demand for Bitcoin transaction for the
topic to have escalated so quickly.

Are Bitcoin people so delusional about how popular Bitcoin is or will be, that
they thought the amount of transactions that could be put into a block was of
such dire importance?

~~~
toomim
What do you mean "quickly"? The debate has gone on for years!

How many years do you think we should debate before someone takes action?

~~~
ssharp
The debate may be old, fair enough, but the past three or so months, gasoline
was poured on the fire and I'm not sure why.

------
pstrateman
The simple truth of the matter is that there is no urgent action required.

Blocks are only just now half full on average.

[http://ozlabs.org/~rusty/diagrams/blocksize-
pretty.svg](http://ozlabs.org/~rusty/diagrams/blocksize-pretty.svg)

