Today on the Sourceforge hosted Bitcoin-development mailing list Gavin Andresen has threatened to leave his present group of Bitcoin software developers over their objections to his demands for a rapid hardfork of the Bitcoin network. In the event his demands are not met Gavin plans to join Mike Hearn's Bitcoin-XT project which is a fork of the Bitcoin client where Hearn implements patches that Gavin's current affiliated developers find too risky to implement in any mainline Bitcoin client. If Gavin defects to Bitcoin-XT he plans to work with Hearn to lobby merchants, miners, and businesses to move to Bitcoin-XT. Previously Mike Hearn was responsible for the March 2013 Bitcoin network crisis. The full text of Gavin's message is mirrored below for posterity.
What do other people think?
If we can't come to an agreement soon, then I'll ask for help
reviewing/submitting patches to Mike's Bitcoin-Xt project that implement a
big increase now that grows over time so we may never have to go through
all this rancor and debate again.I'll then ask for help lobbying the merchant services and exchanges and
hosted wallet companies and other bitcoind-using-infrastructure companies
(and anybody who agrees with me that we need bigger blocks sooner rather
than later) to run Bitcoin-Xt instead of Bitcoin Core, and state that they
are running it. We'll be able to see uptake on the network by monitoring
client versions.Perhaps by the time that happens there will be consensus bigger blocks are
needed sooner rather than later; if so, great! The early deployment will
just serve as early testing, and all of the software already deployed will
ready for bigger blocks.But if there is still no consensus among developers but the "bigger blocks
now" movement is successful, I'll ask for help getting big miners to do the
same, and use the soft-fork block version voting mechanism to (hopefully)
get a majority and then a super-majority willing to produce bigger blocks.
The purpose of that process is to prove to any doubters that they'd better
start supporting bigger blocks or they'll be left behind, and to give them
a chance to upgrade before that happens.Because if we can't come to consensus here, the ultimate authority for
determining consensus is what code the majority of merchants and exchanges
and miners are running.—
—
Gavin Andresen
Perhaps by the time that happens there will be consensus bigger blocks are
needed sooner rather than later; if so, great!
And what if the majority does not want bigger blocks? What then? In this statement, that possibility is not even mentioned. Consideration of all the possibilities and potential outcomes of a decision is crucial to making the correct design decision, and the fact that the possibility that no one will want these changes is left out here, like it doesn't even matter, is striking.
What if everyone decides that slow and careful, conservative development and improvement not led by a single man with a single perspective is preferable? All the people who make money from Bitcoin have a lot to lose if this reckless and needlessly rushed plan causes disruption. Also the idea of making the Bitcoin reference client unusable on small platforms is antithetical to the idea and purpose of Bitcoin.
Something is wrong with this picture!
Fucking hilarious! Good riddance, Gavin.
I heard Gmaxwell is pregnant with MPOE-PR's lovechild. And cohabitating with Roger Ver.
GBANGA!
Except for the part where Gavin already quit Bitcoin development a while back, all is good. That he should finally come out of hypocrisy and admit publicly what for a few years has in fact been the case is generally speaking a net positive. I am mildly amused that in failing to acknowledge who made that decision for him, he perpetuates the power over of said entity over his decisions in the future, but then again this is par for the course in retardland.
He went totally insane, he is drunk on "power".
He's not wrong though. We do need bigger blocks, and sooner rather than later. I've seen blocks in the 900+ kb range after longer than usual intervals without blocks, and you end having 7-8 MB or more of unconfirmed txs which becomes a backlog that's difficult to clear. You can have txs WITH FEES that go hours without a single confirmation. That can ONLY be fixed by increasing max block size. So why all the resistance? It makes no sense.
A) In order to use "I" you need to be someone. Who are you ?
B) In order to write, chuka must first read. Has chuka read ?
C) Stop being an idiot. Seriously. It may appear to you that nobody can tell the difference between you and someone whose mind actually works, but this is merely a simptom of the problem. Everyone that's not you can actually tell you're an idiot.
Popescu you're the dumbest fuck on the planet and have no authority to call anyone else an idiot.
Whadda ya know of "the planet", cap'n ?
The world as seen through the eyes of Ted Turner's preteen cockpuppets and things. "Planet" dontchaknow. Go touch some rings together or something.