Quote from: Alttrader203 on July 10, 2017, 10:56:01 AM

I like the fact that bitcoin has no governance. That is how you keep it decentralized.

This way, no government can pull the plug.

However, as we are all interested in bitcoin for whatever our reasons are, we want it to be able to develop.

By simple rules of nature: if you can not evolve, you will not survive.

Hence, we need to have some way of creating consensus.

I really hope that we can talk to each other to understand why people suggest certain things, without making this a political governance issue.

In the end: if any group feels they are owning bitcoin governance, bitcoin will fail.

We all own it. We all have our say. But we cannot reject proposals, even if they come from a group that threatens bitcoin with a fork.

I think this is the fundamental misunderstanding and the fundamental contradiction in "crypto currency development".

But first, one should make a distinction between the protocol and the code.
The rules of bitcoin, the protocol, is a contract between all users. It is "the law of bitcoin".
The implementation of these rules is the code. It "runs bitcoin".

Of course, the code is free to evolve, to become more efficient, there can be many code implementations.... as long as it respects "the law". This is similar to having several e-mail clients and servers, while they all talk SMTP. There can be very efficient implementations, and there can be much simpler implementations that are not so efficient. It doesn't matter. Everyone can write in principle his bitcoin node or bitcoin miner software, as long as it sticks to the protocol, there's no problem.

However, a change in the protocol is something entirely different. This is not "evolution of code", it is "modification of the law", or "modification of the contract". This is the DEFINITION of politics: the power to change the law, the rules, the contract. Given that bitcoin handles real-world economic value, any such change in rule will make winners and losers. The losers will not agree (but may be overwhelmed by the power of the political decision, lobbied by the winners).

The entire invention of a decentralized system was to have NO POLITICAL POWER, and hence, essentially, to have immutability of the rules. The only solution to having no political power, is to have no possible change of the rules.

The true problem is that bitcoin's rules are badly set up. They didn't solve certain issues, they put in artificial limitations, but one has no solution to this problem in bitcoin's economic model.

It is absolutely possible to have a system with a LAW that is immutable and doesn't need to evolve. But then, that law should have been conceived to be, indeed, immutable. Bitcoin's law wasn't, because at its conception, these notions weren't fully understood. Changing bitcoin's law into something more workable will need (centralized) political power, which will bring economic advantage to those being able to exert that power (like in all modifiable law systems, where an aristocracy can modify the law, and in doing so, serve its own advantages, and comforting their position).