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Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by jlrubin on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @08:58PM (#15032782)
@dang/mods, it might be appropriate to re-title this as:

Controversial Bitcoin Upgrade Attempt Planned for November 2017 at Block 494,784

This "upgrade" has not been agreed to nor has it been ratified by the majority of the community.

edit: adding a source, https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support which has a column for Segwit2x

Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by 6nf on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @09:18PM (#15032886)
90% of miners agree, and that's really what matters. Not some easily inflated node count. Anyone can run 100s of nodes and signal anything they like.
Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by nadaviv on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @11:15PM (#15033541)
> that's really what matters

Bitcoin would be quite useless if this were the case! If the miners were the ones deciding the system's rules, why shouldn't they increase the inflation rate and pay themselves more?

The entire value proposition of Bitcoin is based on the fact that everybody validate the rules, and not even the miners can change them.

Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by modeless on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @09:04PM (#15032815)
The original title is fine. This upgrade has been agreed to by >90% of Bitcoin miners as well as many prominent Bitcoin-using businesses including Coinbase (YC S12).

There is opposition, yes, led by another company, Blockstream, which employs the most vocal contributors to the Bitcoin Core project. However as for "the community", there is no good evidence to support a majority opinion on either side.

Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by jlrubin on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @09:31PM (#15032965)
It's a meme that Blockstream leads opposition; the opposition to SegWit2x is actually pretty decentralized.

See the Blockstream team[0] and cross reference it with dissenting developers[1].

Alex Morcos has written a good take-down on why even if prominent companies like Coinbase are willing to fork, it doesn't really matter[2].

Personally, when Barry emailed one of the organizations I founded the messaging was as Alex put it, bullying. There was no room for discussing or changing the proposal, just, "my way or the highway". We opted not to sign the letter because of that, among other reasons.

My beef with the framing, and hence suggestion to re-title, is because this type of bullying aims to disenfranchise users. When Facebook rolls out an upgrade, as a user you are more or less along for the ride. Bitcoin is a participatory technology where everyone can have a real voice and influence, every user gets to decide if they want to opt-in to this upgrade attempt or not.

[0] https://blockstream.com/team/

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support

[2] https://medium.com/@morcos/no2x-bad-governance-model-97b8e52...

Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by modeless on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @09:42PM (#15033030)
That wiki page is not independent evidence, as it is maintained by luke-jr (a Blockstream employee and borderline radical Segwit2x opponent) and hosted by Theymos, the guy who enforces strict censorship on the largest Bitcoin forums. Please cite a more independent source.
Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by jlrubin on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @09:50PM (#15033093)
That's a pretty serious character attack and insinuation of misbehavior.

I can attest at least that my own entry is accurately represented and I have not been in contact with any other developer who has expressed that they have not been able to add their own entry or that luke-jr or Theymos have otherwise misrepresented their entries.

Have you heard from anyone having such difficulties listing their opinion that this is not a good source for developer sentiment on fork proposals?

edit: At the very least, it likely suffices for the purpose which I suggested, which is to cross reference blockstream employees and non-blockstream employees?

Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by nadaviv on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @11:28PM (#15033599)
> I can attest at least that my own entry is accurately represented and I have not been in contact with any other developer who has expressed that they have not been able to add their own entry or that luke-jr or Theymos have otherwise misrepresented their entries.

As a technical participant of the bitcoin community and the CEO of a company in the bitcoin space (in my profile, for anyone interested), I have the same experience. The entry for our company is accurate and I'm not aware of anyone claiming to be misrepresented on that page (also, I'm not personally familiar with any technical person in the bitcoin space that supports the 2x proposal. not even one!).

Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by CyberDildonics on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @10:03PM (#15033167)
> That's a pretty serious character attack and insinuation of misbehavior.

I guess this is the point where you play the victim. Anyone familiar with Theymos and Luke-Jr. knows that Theymos engages in excessive censorship of /r/bitcoin and every other forum he controls.

Luke-Jr. has openly said he believes the sun revolves around the earth and has proposed that max block sizes actually be REDUCED to be only 300KB, which is of course ridiculous for any number of reasons.

The OP was being generous, don't try to pretend anything different to confuse people unfamiliar with these two.

Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by nadaviv on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @11:30PM (#15033611)
The censorship claims are pure nonsense being blown out of proportion. r/bitcoin engages in standard moderation, not different from what I would expect to see in any other subreddit. Their job is more difficult than normal, though, due to all the voting robots and narrative manipulation that the bitcoin community has been suffering from in recent years [0].

[0] https://medium.com/@shesek/observing-forced-narratives-and-m...

Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by CyberDildonics on Thursday August 17, 2017 @07:26AM (#15035699)
This is pure, unadulterated nonsense. Go there and make a post about increasing max block size, bitcoin cash, or any other obviously relevant topic that doesn't suit their narrative and see how long your comment lasts. Theymos was clear from the start that he was going to use heavy handed censorship to force their narrative to people new to bitcoin.

Their moderation logs also aren't open so they can hide what they actually do censor. They also reorganize threads that don't go their way by most controversial, so they can further hide anything that doesn't say what they want. Claiming there is no censorship on /r/bitcoin is absolutely absurd, and if you really don't think it is true then you need to educate yourself.

Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by vulturalcptlst on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @11:33PM (#15033625)
are we resorting to ad hominem attacks now?
Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by CyberDildonics on Thursday August 17, 2017 @07:30AM (#15035731)
Which part is an ad hominem? For that to be true it would have to be irrelevant to the discussion.
Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by RustyRussell on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @09:17PM (#15032874)
> This upgrade has been agreed to by >90% of Bitcoin miners

90% of hash power, which is an important difference.

The key is that the current bitcoin developers have rejected this and are not supporting it. And yes, some of them founded Blockstream, but the majority are not involved with Blockstream, nor have we taken a company position on this.

Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by nadaviv on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @11:23PM (#15033583)
The opposition to 2x is not led by Blockstream. Nearly every prominent bitcoin developer objects it strongly[0], not just the few that are Blockstream-related. My own company, Bitrated[1], objects it strongly as well[2].

Also, many of the major bitcoin exchanges, wallets and businesses aren't signed on the New York agreement [3]. Segwit2x doesn't have as strong as a consensus as its supporters try to make it appear.

[0] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Segwit_support#Developers

[1] https://www.bitrated.com/

[2] https://medium.com/@shesek/why-i-dont-support-the-compromise...

[3] http://nob2x.org/

Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by jlrubin on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @09:40PM (#15033016)
To respond to the ">90%" figure...

Miners are not contractually bound to follow any of these agreements. Usually, if they say they will support a fork, it comes with many caveats, e.g., if it seems that there is substantial enough support among users, companies, developers, and hashpower-minority miners.

Re:Bitcoin Upgrade in November 2017 at Block 494,784 by nadaviv on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @11:25PM (#15033594)
Agreed. The title is very misleading.