Hard forks leading to chain splits. Are chain splits a political/ governance failure? Is it better to do them sooner rather than later? Ethereum's frequent iterations and flexibility vs. Bitcoin's slower iterations and conservatism. The market has chosen to follow the Core roadmap, which has the overwhelming majority of the development and (often unpaid) developers for Bitcoin.
Transcript
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in a um recent talk uh you said in the current um situation that a hard Fork would lead to a chain split yes and you went on to say that you consider this type of chain split as a political failure um I I would not consider the chain splitting a political failure if there's a significant um division of of ideology and and opinion on an issue I in the example of etherum I would even consider this to be a positive thing and can even be facted as being part of the governance mechanism itself um that's certainly the case in ethereum yes yeah you don't think that's the case in Bitcoin I don't think that's the case in Bitcoin I think the there's a fundamental difference in the governance models of the two systems ethereum because of its larger tax surface because it needs to be much more flexible has to go through a lot more iterations some of them fairly radical especially now in the early stages which means there will be more hard Forks um Bitcoin is far more um conservative in its development model and it already has enough adoption that we don't want to break things for backwards compatibility I also think that there is a significant risk when you break into multiple coins and you have these divergences that it creates confusion in terms of adoption for software engineers and developers like right now if you're writing contracts classic or ethereum that's going to be uh at the moment it's a fairly easy answer um as long as they keep um in parallel in sync but they're diverging and they're diverging fast and at some point um you know it's a bit like Evolution at some point the the mule the horse and the donkey diverge fast enough that they can no longer interbreed and what you get if you try to is a mule um that's basically what happens with the Divergence of Technologies they drift apart until they're no longer compatible and then you have two sets of knowledge and two sets of Developers I think we should try to avoid that in Bitcoin unless it's absolutely critical that a hard Fork happens and I would argue the market has already said it's not absolutely critical that a hard Fork happens yet um I suppose um I I um so some people have a greater see see greater importance in that and I think a lot of people I think maybe some people can even come to the point where they can say if core keeps its current road map that a split actually becomes inevitable uh wouldn't it be better to do this sooner as opposed to later uh I I think the market pressure to do it now isn't there uh and uh I think the market has already chosen to follow the core road map for as long as the core road map makes sense that's a fairly short lease to be on if you're I mean when we say core what do we mean I'd like to be explicit about that because a lot of people say core and it's turned into a big well as in the boogy man coreos and the people who have control over that uh Bitcoin core is 95% of the development of Bitcoin it's 95% of the developers of Bitcoin it's uh people who have dedicated their lives very often at no pay to do this um for years and years and years so I I don't subscribe to conspiracy theories three years ago you were wondering about how we're going to fund development now we have a very well-funded uh Team of core developers and a very robust team of core developers and they're doing work uh that the market is accepting so we don't know what happens next I'm interested to see uh I think it would be politically dangerous to attempt to force a hard Fork um at this stage but we'll see how it plays out I fortunately don't have to make that decision I think time will inform our theories very well right exactly and and in Heights side then we can see whether those theories were correct and I can can tell you that I often have to revise my theories uh the first week after the ethereum hard Fork I was like oh this seems to have gone very very well um this is going to put pressure on core and then four weeks later it's not going so well anymore now now it can be used as an argument for why core was right to do a more conservative approach and some other people might say it's an argument for why we should yes exactly and that's that's the thing I mean this is a system where there's a lot of open debate and people can make choices and the consensus mechanism on bitcoin makes sure that when you make those choices you have to commit um your money to that choice and that makes it very difficult for people to be frivolous people are not going to Simply Be voting just for a protest vote in this case you're talking about the minors on the network more specific the minor no not just the minors the five constituencies of the consensus mechanism miners developers merchant services exchange services and wallet designers they all have to agree on what the core protocol is if you have a network of miners who mine without transactions because the exchanges merchants and wallets stayed on the other chain they're mining non-bitcoin one fortunate aspect of this mechanism is that investors at least don't have to make that choice at least not immediately um the advantage of the mechanism in investors don't have to make that choice if there is a hard for in any cryptocurrency that means you now have money on both sides uh so you can just relax and watch the fireworks and then choose a good time to sell one of them thank you