I think you fail to envision how the dynamics will play out if Segwit2x wins. Core will simply merge the ~1k lines of code that make up the segwit2x features, and mostly everyone will be back to business running Bitcoin Core instead of BTC1, since the two code bases would be equivalent. That's it. No big war. No mass resignation of Core devs. No ceding the control of Bitcoin to "another group". Most Segwit2x supporters want a smooth "reintegration" scenario like that to take place. We don't want to "fire Core" or such nonsense you might read on r/Bitcoin.
Things would be a lot simpler if Core simply agreed to double the block size. That's all we want. A one-time block size increase, to give the blockchain some breathing room while we all continue to work on off-chain scaling (NimbleWimble, LN...) that we all already agree are the proper long-term solutions.
Hasn't been true since July: https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size
> full blocks and high fees have caused Bitcoin to lose many users to alts (LTC, ETH, ETC, DASH...)
What's the evidence for this? All my friends own btc and alts... but none of them transact in it. They own them only for investment purposes. I don't think anybody is using alts for their higher throughput.
Yes it's true. I said WEIGHT not SIZE. A distinction few understand. Check the kWU column at https://blockchain.info If a full node has built a 4Mweight/1MB block, it is full, because non-segwit txs have wasted the 4M weight quota and prevented the block from growing over 1MB. If segwit adoption stays low, blocks WON'T be able to grow much beyond 1MB.
In fact the problem is that the rate of adoption of segwit is too low compared to the rate of increased txs that Bitcoin needs to be able to support. Therefore blocks are going to continue to stay at or near the ~4M weight quota.
The tx rate of ETH, LTC, and other alts started sharply increasing in March/April 2017, which is exactly when Bitcoin blocks reached capacity (~250k tx/day)
7% in two months. What kind of adoption had you expected? Everyone won't switch over night, that's the whole problem behind why flag dates in distributed systems are hard, and why many people adocate backwards compatible changes whenever possible.
> if Core simply agreed to double the block size
Core is the name of the Bitcoin software. Perhaps you mean the Bitcoin community? The functionality needed to roughly double the block size was released last year and finally took effect in August. If that's too slow for your use case, then you are probably on the edge of where Bitcoin is useful anyway. It's hard to imagine any sort non-contentious hard fork planned and executed in less time than that, without endangering other people's money.
None of this is very relevant to the uptake of segwit transactions however, unless as a what-if scenario had segwit been done as a hard fork instead. That was the original intent of the proposal, if I remember correctly, and there was a lot of discussion at the mailing list exactly how this should best be deployed. Looking back at it, it is quite clear it could have been deployed quicker had another mechanism been chosen.
The NYA happening with a few CEOs "behind closed doors", was pretty much a result of the year and a half of no progress on the safe hard fork part. Also remember the miners aren't really a fan of cheap transactions, which eats into their profits, and does fundamentally alter their ROI.
Segwit2X was originally sold as a compromise. Activate SegWit for the future since it requires software updates as you noted for the additional transaction formats, and schedule a 2X HF to help the network grow immediately.
> The big-blocker anti-segwit movement stalled work for years, politicized the Bitcoin space, and contributed to making many of the core devs be the target of harassment
I agree sadly, but unfortunately it was the same story on the reverse side. Look at the ridicule and scorn Mike Hearn and Gavin got for their big block proposals in 2015.
They were invited but declined: https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/74ow7f/erik_voorhees_o...
> I don't think anyone, including Core, is against that (higher transaction throughput). But on-chain scaling alone can't get you very far, and it has large costs that need to be carefully considered.
Meanwhile, no one has yet provided a believable scenario how miners can get paid in the long term that isn't high transaction volume at low cost.
> The idea that another capacity upgrade should be rushed so soon immediately after Segwit is kind of silly.
This debate is ongoing since almost four years. I wouldn't call that rushed.
> The idea that it should be decided so soon behind closed doors by a few CEOs is sillier.
See above, regarding invitations.
> Let's be clear about the word "update": it means to switch their software to a fork that none of the active community Bitcoin developers contribute to and that none plan on contributing to.
And many others see 2x as the first real sign of the incentive system actually working.
So just merge (or reimplement) segwit2x's consensus changes back into Core and continue as if nothing happened?
Some more tidbits of information from my perspective:
>The anti-2Xers argue that the NYA should not be binding because it was negotiated behind closed doors, and that a change of this magnitude needs to be more carefully considered before it is adopted.
No active developers were part of the NYA. Some in the NYA have said that they agreed because they believed Core was party to the NYA.
>But there is another school of thought, which is that Bitcoin is (or should be) a currency rather than a commodity, primarily a medium of exchange rather than a store of value. These are the folks who want you to be able to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks with Bitcoins.
I don't think anyone, including Core, is against that (higher transaction throughput). But on-chain scaling alone can't get you very far, and it has large costs that need to be carefully considered. The (backward-compatible) Segwit capacity upgrade just happened, and it takes time for people to update their software to make the newer more-efficient transactions. (... If the consensus was that Bitcoin really was urgently hurting for transaction capacity, you'd expect people to be updating to Segwit transactions faster than they are now.) The idea that another capacity upgrade should be rushed so soon immediately after Segwit is kind of silly. The idea that it should be decided so soon behind closed doors by a few CEOs is sillier.
>The 2X advocates have refused, citing the NYA, and secure (at least apparently) in their belief that enough people will update their code that there will be no doubt that 2X is the One True Chain.
Let's be clear about the word "update": it means to switch their software to a fork that none of the active community Bitcoin developers contribute to and that none plan on contributing to. Many have said that if Bitcoin "fails" after the fork, they have no interest in contributing to the Segwit2x fork's software. (The big-blocker anti-segwit movement stalled work for years, politicized the Bitcoin space, and contributed to making many of the core devs be the target of harassment; imagining that unpaid volunteers are going to switch to working on a project made by the latest iteration of that is ... to call it wishful thinking seems too kind.)