FabulousPandaCo 2 points 4 hours ago

Thanks for the linkage - FYI I don't personally know any of the individuals on the dev teams, and wrote that article as a result of it not being too easy to at a glance figure out what was going on. I think perhaps Gavin has expressed support for XT as a means of convincing the core team to agree on some important issues they've failed to which have been apparent since at least 2011. I have had some limited contact with luke-jr on github and I used eligius.st but I am not declaring support for any team or individual in this. I do believe however that there are significant issues that need to be addressed, and that a raised max block size (even were it 2MB rather than 20) would be best for now, and the issues regarding maintaining decentralization and/or implementing sidechains should be explored fully, but not immediately forced upon us.


luke-jrLuke Dashjr - Bitcoin Expert 0 points an hour ago

   But the debate over the block size limit and how to manage it has caused some of the best known developers to set up another client for bitcoin, here:

Bitcoin XT actually predates the block size matter entirely, and was forked by Mike Hearn (not a Core developer) to merge some relatively ill-advised things appropriately rejected from Core (because they don't/can't work): particularly, double spend relaying/detection.

   essentially, if you have 1 Bitcoin, after the fork (if you have today's wallet backed up) you will have 1 Bitcoin, and 1 'BitcoinXT', each with independent values based on their popular adoption.

To complicate matters a bit: if you send 1 BTC, you also send 1 BTCXT, and vice versa. Unless the bitcoins being redeemed (essentially chosen at random) happen to only exist on one or the other blockchain.


FabulousPandaCo 1 point 6 minutes ago

Thanks for the response luke, I will update to address and clarify on that, however from what I've read (and I'm not as in the loop as I have been) it doesn't seem that clear cut. Mike Hearn certainly set up the other github some time ago, although it attributes the double spend relaying to Gavin Andresen and Tom Harding. It freely admits not to completely solve the double spend issue, but aims to improve it, could you please expand on the advantages/disadvantages of the implementation proposed in XT?

As far as I can tell, supporters of the changes in XT are willing to allow for increased data usage in order to allow for increased usage of Bitcoin in the short term, whereas the opposition would prefer to allow necessary transaction fees to rise as we approach/hit the max block size ceiling for transactions to be successful on the basis that such data requirements would cause increased centralization. But as it stands we don't have an accepted viable alternative - only a brief whitepaper on sidechains which leaves a lot to the imagination, and would require a significant period of testing and some real world implementation before the community would trust it, and I'm sure you're aware of the fears that Blockstream may result in centralization - can you do anything to allay those?

Gavin also seems to be claiming that his support for the increase in max block size and to a lesser extent the other changes in XT are a call for action on the part of the Core team to adopt some change to max block size whether set specifically or adaptive as that change on it's own is not a deviation from the initial spec of Bitcoin. Surely if that minor change were implemented the risk of a hard fork to XT would be drastically reduced, and it's role limited to a a beta branch of Core?

Regarding the fork, as long as the Core protocol doesn't change significantly and XT doesn't reach 90% adoption it's not going to happen, right? Can we get some clarification on the future of the Core - for instance, is Gavin still going to have influence on it?

I would agree that just allowing the max block size to increase indefinitely is fraught with problems, but problems that are a way down the road and also not a deviation from the Bitcoin whitepaper. For that reason I wonder why Blockstream don't start their own cryptocurrency to start pegging sidestreams to?