Bitmain Threatens Hard Fork if User Activated Soft Fork Occurs

in #bitcoin7 years ago

The bitcoin community’s “community” problem went from terrible to shit this morning as bitmain announced that if there is an attempt at a user activated soft fork on the network come August, they have all intentions of hard forking the network and splitting it in two. Not only did this send the price free falling, but it has forced people and companies who have stayed semi neutral in this debate to pick sides. By threatening a hard fork and making open plans to hard fork the network, bitmain is only dividing the community further.

I personally have lost all hope for some sort of compromise and think that now both sides are being unreasonable. You cant reason with unreasonable people and neither side will budge on their demands. Bitmain wants to keep their mining advantage via asicboost and core wont settle for anything less than what they have planned. One thing however is sure, if nothing is done to help lower transaction fees and clear up the mempool, bitcoin will not be the network that both sides want it to be.

I wholeheartedly believe that no one is trying to sabotage the entire project, they just have two completely different views of what bitcoin should be and how to get there. Maybe we are better off in the long run if bitcoin splits into two. The community is so fractured at this point that many of the old timers have left the space completely. Those who remain are sticking vehemently to one side and not budging. In the shot term though a hard fork would most likely send the network into panic and companies into disarray.

If bitmain chooses to hard fork the code, the real test will be if the companies in the bitcoin space will support them. Companies that provide infrastructure like coinbase or bitpay will probably choose a specific side and ideology over the other. Some companies will refuse to support the new hard forked coin out of principal and no matter what the support, wont accept it. Others will probably accept both because they will see financial value in it, but many industry leaders are terrified of two bitcoins.

Two bitcoins will not only confuse newcomers in the space, but also split the money that goes into bitcoin. However we are already seeing this with the current high market share of altcoins, so maybe nothing will change at all. I am curious at this point if an actual hard fork is less dangerous than keeping the status quo in bitcoin. Even if core managed to get segwit through today, there would still be fights over other scaling plans in the future. Maybe it is time both sides went their separate ways and follow the ideology which best suits them.

No matter what happens, user activated soft fork, or hard fork, we have a very unsure future ahead of us and one can only hope it works out for the best. Hope is all we have at the moment because expectations have proven to let me down. What do you think about the potential hard fork? What side would you support?

Sort:  

You couldn't be more wrong. The Bitmain announcement is GREAT NEWS!!! Bitcoin can now scale on-chain the way it was always envisioned - with larger blocks.

Many of you are new to crypto and bitcoin. I'm not. I was trading bitcoin in 2011. Bitcoin's core development has been bought out by corporate interests and they are trying to choke the amount of transactions by limiting the size of blocks. (Blocks are basically just groups of transactions and the system is set up to create one approx. every ten minutes. By constraining them to 1MB in the code, they have limited the amount of transactions the system can handle so many transactions end up stuck in limbo - very bad). So why are they doing that? Because they have patents for their own payment system they want to build on top of the current bitcoin network. By choking the main chain to only 1MB, they force people off unless they pay the highest fees to get added into a block. The goal is to make it a settlement network for the payment system they have patents on. Rick Falkvinge, another early adopter, has a great article about this: https://falkvinge.net/2017/05/01/blockstream-patents-segwit-makes-pieces-fall-place/.

There is absolutely no reason for SegWit, and it is an even bigger mess of code for what is already messy code. Why then?? Because the bankers trying to take over bitcoin can use it to shoehorn in their second layer system that they have patents on. The company that was created to hijack bitcoin for the bankers is called Blockstream. They were funded by too-big-to-fail corp giant AXA, whose former CEO also happens to also be Chairman of Bilderberg. Gee, wonder how a bunch of people who want to enslave humanity with a one world fiat currency feel about a p2p digital cash system that makes banks irrelevant? But this poster thinks THEIR PLAN is the one that is best for bitcoin???

Can you elaborate a bit more, excuse the pun. I thought Segwit, the Bip148 user activated soft fork was a good thing...? But so is the Bitmain hard fork as you say.
seems niether wants the corporate bankers to control the coin ...so hard vs. soft fork, unless the user activated soft fork are the bankers. so i will look into this more...

thx for the perspective on the fork disussions

The good news and Im not sure if its been mentioned is that Bitcoin will be scaled no matter what happens and that is a good thing at the end of the day.

Thank you for this detailed post I am resteeming and following thanks for the info.

I think bitcoin has grown large enough that it can handle a split. Currently it holds close to a monopoly on coins. Just in naming of bitcoin vs altcoin. I think the split could drive serious competition and help develop the platform further.

do you really think that a split would really result in two competing coins? Bitmain has what is essentially a premine for their hard fork...

That is not what pre-mine means. Pre-mined is when someone creates a coin and then mines a significant portion of them before anyone else even knows about it. Bitcoin isn't a new coin.

im talking about how they hedge against their own coin

They're hedging against a UASF attack from BitFury and BTCC. If you don't know who BitFury is, this may help.

yes, click on the link, then make sure you GO BACK to this page. if you are wondering and are not going to click on the link, Bitfury is funded by Clintons, Soros, IMF and so it boils down to corporate one coin idea vs Bitmain and all the current miners and their equipment ??

DON'T WORRY BITCOIN IS KING
SPLIT MAKES MORE VOLATILITY

Better they hardfork and solve it once and for all

I will keep believing in bitcoin , no fear here

For someone kind of new to bitcoin, this is a very scary proposition. Don't know if I should be more worried than I am. I am definitely not selling any bitcoin though and have my hard wallet on deck. So I'll just ride out the storm and hope for the best.

Don't worry. Bitmain news is awesome news. UASF fork is going to be spectacular failure for bankers trying to ruin Bitcoin. Just make sure you upgrade to a wallet that accepts bigger blocks if you run a full node.

What are some examples of bigger wallets, that could run a node? sorry for the newb question, I appreciate the the info you've put down in these comments. Thanks

Run either Bitcoin Unlimited, Classic, or XT. They all support big blocks. You can also probably google how to patch Core to accept big blocks.

New to the whole thing so I don't have any knowledgeable input to offer, other than I guess this will entail a lot more study on my behalf and see where it goes from there. Just seems like "investment" choices are becoming much more fractured. Fortunately buying silver is still a "backup the truck" buy!

Thanks for the update for those of us trying to read the tea leaves.

Thanks for this info! As a newbie I think a hard fork might be better for the long run, if they can't work together. It's a shame, but it's also normal that people disagree on things.

how do you see a hard fork as "better for the long run"?

Because we need to have bigger blocks.