Re: Is Bitcoin infrastructure too Chinese? What should be done technically?
I still think that PoCW will need to be deployed successfully in an altcoin and tested in the wild for a good while before the bitcoin community will seriously consider it.
There are a few folks that take the pool problem seriously and that value real mining decentralization, but I think not enough to make a difference at this time. I'm happy to be wrong on this point of course, but if others thought like I do then only a few innovative coins would have any value right now, and PoS and tokens wouldn't be a thing...
If you get a library of working code and decide to launch an altcoin with it, let me know. I might be able to help out.
Wow! We got a contributor. Appreciate your support mate, will be in touch soon. There are a few folks that take the pool problem seriously and that value real mining decentralization, but I think not enough to make a difference at this time. I'm happy to be wrong on this point of course, but if others thought like I do then only a few innovative coins would have any value right now, and PoS and tokens wouldn't be a thing...
If you get a library of working code and decide to launch an altcoin with it, let me know. I might be able to help out.
As of altcoin vs bitcoin thing:
Well, ... I'm not ok with such a hypothetical dilemma. Sooner or later, we need to do something about Chinese and centralized mining, and it would be a hard-fork, undisputable. Now no matter how persuasive you are and what level of consensus is reached, there always are actors who continue mining on legacy chain, ignorantly or intentionally.
I don't know who invented this term, 'altcoin', first but as a software engineer/developer I approach bitcoin like any other system, it needs overhaul and versioning at least every few years, there is and there will be no eternal system, protocol, contract, constitution, ... ever. I understand bitcoin is a social compromise and is to be treated cautiously but it doesn't change everything and we are late already.
Now, what is bitcoin? Our decent upgraded version which is maintained directly by tens of thousands of solo miners or the legacy version that is maintained by a handful of Chinese pools?
I don't care about labels, I'm sure that getting rid of pools is the most exciting event in cryptocurrency since 2009.