Take two. Leaving the personalities out of it this time and focusing purely on the arguments. I should also stress that leaving that one specific personality out of this topic means I would prefer they kept it civil too. I want to hear opinions from the community about the following:
- Do you think freedom is one of Bitcoin's most important qualities? Or is it more important that we ensure everyone is happy and agrees with any changes? If you had to choose, which takes priority? Freedom? Or ensuring everyone agrees?
Majority always wins and majority must always win! This is how the democracy works and this is how it should be! To stay within a civilized society, it is more important that majority agrees to one point. It is impossible to reach 100% consensus everytime so I will keep it as "majority agrees"! Freedom follows when we follow the path of democracy!
- Do you think "consensus" should always mean a hardfork at 95% agreement? Even if that means that just 6% of the network can then effectively veto any changes and stagnate progress? Or are softforks perfectly acceptable as well? How do you feel about users who express the belief that softforks effectively turn them into second-class-citizens if they don't want to to upgrade? Do they have cause to complain? Or is the fact that they can remain on this blockchain and continue transacting as they always have done a sufficient compromise? Is it right for some users to move forward with a change if others haven't given their permission for that change? Does this weaken or bypass consensus?
I will again prefer to stay with the "majority" and don't agree with the veto power either. Veto is always harmful where a certain group can turn the tide of the game if anything isn't going according to their wish. Just take a recent example of China. While all permanent members of the Security Council of UN agreed to declare "Masud Azhar" as a global Terrorist, China exercised Veto against that decision to support their friend Pakistan and to maintain the border tension between India and Pakistan. So Veto power is harmful to a great extent.
Rather softfork is little more acceptable! If a certain percentage of users want to make their own way, they can softfork their way out and seclude themselves from the main network. However, it is also not great in long run, because then the network will be divided in thousands of small groups with different opinions and visions which will effectively weaken the network for their own good.
In my opinion, hardfork at 95% agreement without the power of exercising veto is the strongest network structure we can observe! Because this is how the majority will win for the greater good!
- Is it wrong or immoral to create code that causes a client to disconnect another client from the network if the features they propose are not compatible? Should users be allowed to disconnect incompatible clients if they want to? Or is this a way to cheat consensus and deprive the users running that client of the chance to express their support for a change in the rules? And, in this morality judgement, should we consider whether replay protection is included in the the client being disconnected if that means users can be safeguarded from replay attacks?
No! It indicates a civil war within the network and shows a weak side of decentralization. It enforces the rule of muscle power!
My points are simple! Decentralization has its own pros and cons as nothing can be flawless in the world. So a rule of "majority wins" should be enforced within the algorithm because that's how today's democracy works and it is one of the near perfect formulas to run things smoothly! I am not getting into any technical discussion because I don't know how to code and I am unable to decipher the meaning of any code. But to have a peaceful solution of almost everything needs a rule of "majority wins". This is how the network ensures that the majority is happy and that's what matters the most![/list]