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?
- 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?
bitcoin users already agree to bitcoin's consensus rules.
backward compatible soft forks are compatible with the consensus, which all users already agree with. so based on node behavior alone, any arguments claiming that eg people didn't agree with segwit are bullshit on their face. if you didn't agree with segwit, go ahead and fork yourself off the bitcoin network cuz you apparently didn't agree with bitcoin's consensus rules to begin with.
hard forks are
not compatible with the consensus. there is no possible way to measure "consensus" for a hard fork because by definition, it means
leaving the current network/consensus. the idea that you could get affirmative agreement from every single one of the millions of bitcoin users to leave the bitcoin network and start running a hard fork is ridiculous. any hard fork proponent claiming they represent all bitcoin users is a straight up liar. and using hash rate as a measure of "support" from bitcoin users is insulting to everyone's intelligence. miners represent a tiny, tiny portion of bitcoin users.
for me, the room for hard forks is very, very small. if ECDSA or SHA-256 get broken, based on incentives i think we could justify a hard fork. but for controversial things? good luck![/list]