Here I am going to share with you what I saw and heard rather than my personal thoughts: I went to a Bitcoin event in Beijing last week. Some prominent Chinese Bitcoiners were also there. The sentiment was overwhelming that the ideal solution to the scaling question is implementing 2MB block size through a Core update as soon as possible. Some felt frustrated that core devs had been ignoring their demand, and this sense of frustration contributed to the conspiracy theory, which was explicitly expressed there: The Bitcoin Core team doesn't want to make a precedent because the team is controlled by Blockstream, who bet heavily on the success of Sidechains and Lightning Networks.
Some expressed the view that while SigWit has its potential, it is something never been tried before, therefore should be given more time for thorougher test; worse, some felt that it represents a development that has deviated from Satoshi's vision and eventually, led to increased complexity of the protocol to such degree that it would be forbidding to most startups.
Overall, there seems to be a sense of helplessness. Some reflected on why the Chinese had so little say in the matter and some urge that the Chinese should form their own core development team and create their own fork.
Let me know what you think as always.
The 2nd half of the Scaling Bitcoin conference was China, where many photos were taken of the world's biggest miners sharing a stage. So I don't see how Chinese Bitcoiners have "little say in the matter" of scaling.
"Chinese Bitcoin" was originally one of Mike Hearn's bad ideas, because Chinese miners didn't want the 20MB blocks Gavin proposed. Consequently, Chinese Bitcoiners once again had plenty of say in the matter of rejecting XT (see
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/major-mining-pools-make-stand-bitcoin-xt-fork-support-bip-100-grows-1440537258 for details).
"Chinese Bitcoin" would be as unsuccessful as any other Hearn-spawned XT-style contentious hard fork, while the resulting drama almost certainly crashes the price (again).
Miners (whether Chinese or not) are not the boss of the Bitcoin system. They are highly-paid, highly-specialized security guards, not Bitcoin's executives.
This concept is explained here:
http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/19/bitcoin-and-voting-power/This is a tremendously empowering situation. A 51% miner does not have 51% of the vote; in fact, GHash has just as much say over the contents of the blockchain as do I, or you, or anyone else. Miners derive their income from the buyers and sellers who recognize the blocks they create. This is why the behavior of a misbehaving miner is proscribed -- they could not, for instance, create 10 million Bitcoins out of the thin air, because no one would recognize those new rules. The blockchain is what we all say it is.
This is why
regular users wield ultimate power in Bitcoin. It is the chain power that determines the shape of the blockchain, not mining power.
Miners are followers, not leaders, in this game. Thus, miners should not make rude "demands" of Honey Badger, because if they push them too far the socioeconomic majority can change the PoW or otherwise veto them.
Segwit, now being carefully tested, is needed to fix several outstanding issues and prepare Bitcoin to truly scale (~orthogonally to max_block_size).
Segwit will probably be done as a soft fork, so there is no way to stop other people from using it.
Please explain the perceived benefit of 2MB over 1MB blocks at this time. Why are they, right now, superior in a cost vs. benefit analysis?
The only benefit AFAIK is that Bitcoin's tiny ~5tps is increased by an equally tiny ~5tps. And that's assuming we don't get more empty blocks because of longer propagation/validation latency.
It's important to get Segwit right, and study its effects on the experiment, before we go about changing an important control variable like max block size.
Please consider the possibility any "frustration" being felt is due to individuals' lack of patience rather than Core/Blockstream lethargy, intransigence, or conspiracies.
We are all eager to see Bitcoin grow up ASAP, but must delay our urge for gratification with perspicacious self-discipline as we wait for the properly auspicious time for an eventual modification of the 1MB block size limit.