Adam, While greatly appreciating your prior efforts in crypto-ccy R&D and current efforts for Blockstream, its not a plus for your reputation to be using emotive terms like ³attack², ³fork war" and throwing so much FUD into the developer email channel directly after Eric¹s email.
We would appreciate seeing your well-argued thoughts, not FUD and flaming. There are multitudes of trolls in all forums already. On 17/8/15 10:36 pm, "Adam Back via bitcoin-dev" <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: >Thank you Eric for saying what needs to be said. > >Starting a fork war is just not constructive and there are multiple >proposals being evaluated here. > >I think that one thing that is not being so much focussed on is >Bitcoin-XT is both a hard-fork and a soft-fork. It's a hard-fork on >Bitcoin full-nodes, but it is also a soft-fork attack on Bitcoin core >SPV nodes that did not opt-in. It exposes those SPV nodes to loss in >the likely event that Bitcoin-XT results in a network-split. > >The recent proposal here to run noXT (patch to falsely claim to mine >on XT while actually rejecting it's blocks) could add enough >uncertainty about the activation that Bitcoin-XT would probably have >to be aborted. > >Adam > >On 17 August 2015 at 15:03, Eric Lombrozo via bitcoin-dev ><bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: >> NxtChg, >> >> In the entire history of Bitcoin we¹ve never attempted anything even >>closely resembling a hard fork like what¹s being proposed here. >> >> Many of us have wanted to push our own hard-forking changes to the >>protocoland have been frustrated because of the inability to do so. >> >> This inability is not due to any malice on anyone¹s partit is a >>feature of Satoshi¹s protocol. For better or worse, it is *very hard* to >>change the rulesand this is exactly what imbues Bitcoin with one of its >>most powerful attributes: very well-defined settlement guarantees that >>cannot be suddenly altered nor reversed by anyone. >> >> We¹ve managed to have a few soft forks in the pastand for the most >>part these changes have been pretty uncontroversialor at least, they >>have not had nearly the level of political divisiveness that this block >>size issue is having. And even then, we¹ve encountered a number of >>problems with these deployments that have at times required goodwill >>cooperation between developers and mining pool operators to fix. >> >> Again, we have NEVER attempted anything even remotely like what¹s being >>proposed - we¹ve never done any sort of hard fork before like this. If >>even fairly uncontroversial soft forks have caused problems, can you >>imagine the kinds of potential problems that a hard fork over some >>highly polarizing issue might raise? Do you really think people are >>going to want to cooperate?!? >> >> I can understand that some people would like bigger blocks. Other >>people might want feature X, others feature Yand we can argue the >>merits of this or that to deathbut the fact remains that we have NEVER >>attempted any hard forking changenot even with a simple, totally >>uncontroversial no-brainer improvement that would not risk any sort of >>ill-will that could hamper remedies were it not to go as smoothly as we >>like. *THIS* is the fundamental problem - the whole bigger block thing >>is a minor issue by comparisonit could be any controversial change, >>really. >> >> Would you want to send your test pilots on their first flightthe first >>time an aircraft is ever flowndirectly into combat without having >>tested the plane? This is what attempting a hard fork mechanism that¹s >>NEVER been done before in such a politically divisive environment >>basically amounts tobut it¹s even worse. We¹re basically risking the >>entire air force (not just one plane) over an argument regarding how >>many seats a plane should have that we¹ve never flown before. >> >> We¹re talking billlions of dollars¹ worth of other people¹s money that >>is on the line here. Don¹t we owe it to them to at least test out the >>system on a far less controversial, far less divisive change first to >>make sure we can even deploy it without things breaking? I don¹t even >>care about the merits regarding bigger blocks vs. smaller blocks at this >>point, to be quite honest - that¹s such a petty thing compared to what >>I¹m talking about here. If we attempt a novel hard-forking mechanism >>that¹s NEVER been attempted before (and which as many have pointed out >>is potentially fraught with serious problems) on such a politically >>divisive, polarizing issue, the result is each side will refuse to >>cooperate with the other out of spiteand can easily lead to a war, >>tanking the value of everyone¹s assets on both chains. All so we can >>process 8 times the number of transactions we currently do? Even if it >>were 100 times, we wouldn¹t even come close to touching big payment >>processors like Visa. It¹s hard to imagine a protocol improvement that¹s >>worth the risk. >> >> I urge you to at least try to see the bigger picture hereand to >>understand that nobody is trying to stop anyone from doing anything out >>of some desire for maintaining control - NONE of us are able to deploy >>hard forks right now without facing these problems. And different people >>obviously have different priorities and preferences as to which of these >>changes would be best to do first. This whole XT thing is essentially >>giving *one* proposal special treatment above those that others have >>proposed. Many of us have only held back from doing this out of our >>belief that goodwill amongst network participants is more important than >>trying to push some pet feature some of us want. >> >> Please stop this negativity - we ALL want the best for Bitcoin and are >>doing our best, given what we understand and know, to do what¹s right. >_______________________________________________ >bitcoin-dev mailing list >bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org >https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev _______________________________________________ bitcoin-dev mailing list bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
