Blockstream and Monetas are essentially competitors, no?
Seems like a good time for me to chime in here. Maybe a year ago I used to hear this sort of thing about Ripple, that somehow Ripple and Monetas were competitors. But we are not, since our software does different things. This will become much more evident as our software rolls out.
The same is true of Blockstream. If you generalize enough, you can find some sort of overlap and then assume we must be competitors. But the reality is that no one else is building what Monetas is building, and no one else will be able to do the things that our software does.
That's nothing negative on Blockstream, it's just different -- that's all. Anyone who thinks there is competition between us lacks an understanding of what we're building and how we plan to monetize it.
I welcome Blockstream's entry into this space and I think alt-coins are the ones most concerned about what they represent.
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re: Justus, Adam Back
The reason Monetas contracted Justus to help us build the voting pools is because he is a Bitcoin purist. Justus keeps us honest. And I think that is the same role he is playing here in this thread. Bitcoin is his highest value.
And I think what Justus is saying is, that a framework needs to be developed for any changes to Bitcoin. I think he's right that it's not good enough for changes merely to be "open source, open IP." There
is a potential conflict of interest, and there
is an easy way to put any concerns to rest.
Justus said it best:
I think this concern could be minimised if the soft fork needed to support sidechains was part of a larger clarification of the Bitcoin protocol development process.
If there was a clear process that explained what kinds of changes to the protocol are acceptable, and what kinds are not, combined with a development roadmap and a transparent sequence of steps for adding things to it, I think there would be less reason for Bitcoin users to worry about Blockstream and sidechains.
I really don't think that's much to ask. Do you, Adam?
I think Adam is a good guy with good intentions. Certainly he deserves respect -- he has earned it. All around. He's a brilliant guy and he's been working for good for a long time. We all owe him our thanks at the very least for his invention of hashcash, his work at Zero Knowledge, etc. And I know Justus can be blunt; Adam has been very graceful in this thread.
Yet it is true that Monetas is not asking for any forks in the Bitcoin protocol. Blockstream is. That's why these questions are being raised. There is an easy way to put them to rest.