Bitcoin Core roadmap, off-chain scaling solutions, Segregated Witness, user acceptance, soft forks vs. hard forks, big blocks vs. small blocks. This debate about how we scale is about prioritisation and sequencing, which one goes first. The Ethereum hard fork, 70/30 split causing replay attacks for exchanges. Hard forks are dangerous even for things everyone agrees on.
Transcript
[AUDIENCE] A lot of the Core team seem really "Gung-ho" on off-chain scaling solutions, and prioritizing those first. So much so that, [based on] a quote here from Reddit recently, they said, "We should not change Bitcoin to accommodate more users." That is one of the things they were talking about in the IRC. They have decided to go with the SegWit soft fork, [instead of] a hard fork. They were criticized, notably by people like Jeff Garzik, for the inherent risks in a more complicated solution.
How would you compare this to Tom Zander's 'Flexible Transactions' proposal, with the hard fork approach? How might Bitcoin Core's roadmap be wrong? [ANDREAS] I mean, this question would take an hour to answer... But more importantly, I don't think my opinion matters at all to any of the parties involved, nor should it.
This scaling debate about big blocks and small blocks- First of all, I do not think it is accurate to say that... Core is focused on not scaling the [first] layer. As you said, it is just a prioritization issue. Which one will be prioritized first?
I have a nuanced opinion about this - which pisses off everybody. If you have a nuanced opinion, then you are sitting on a fence and both sides can throw eggs at you... for not taking a side, but I will not take a side; I think both sides have merits. Really, the [answer to the] question is a matter of prioritization, sequencing, and conservatism...
versus a more aggressive approach to scaling. From time to time my opinion has changed, as I have seen new data. More recently, two days after the Ethereum fork, I was thinking, 'Wow, that went extremely well.' 'A clear 95-to-5 percent chain split, technologically executed beautifully.' 'This will put a lot of pressure on Core to come up with a similar solution for Bitcoin.' I was wrong. I was very wrong.
Two weeks later, even though the fork worked technologically, it failed politically and suddenly the split was 70-to-30. That was a disaster. There was not enough provision in the software to deal with replay attacks, which cost a lot of exchanges some money. I think there are people from Coinbase in here who may have suffered some losses because of replay attacks.
I heard that other exchanges did too. After that, my opinion was revised. Politically, I think a hard fork [would be] incredibly difficult in Bitcoin and cause a deeper schism. I don't think it is as easy as "one team is right, the other team is wrong." We need to let the roadmap play out.
For the time being, it seems that the majority of participants in the system continue to... put their trust in Core, as long as Core continues to deliver on their roadmap to a certain approximation. I am not worried. I think, in the long-term, we will scale in the [first and] second layers, with blocksize increases and network optimzations; the scaling options are not mutually excusive.
We just need to decide which come first. I think a lot of this drama is unnecessary. In terms of a Segregated Witness soft fork versus hard fork, I think a soft fork is the better way to go. I do.
I think it will be cleaner and quicker than a hard fork. Given the current political situation in Bitcoin, a hard fork is too dangerous. Even if it was for something everyone agreed on. I don't even think you will get that agreement.
That is probably a very nuanced answer about a very large question. I am sorry that I didn't give... a more direct answer, but I don't think there is a simple black or white answer to the problem.