It's time for a break: About the recent mess & temporary new rules

If XT is an altcoin then why aren't sidechains or Lightning altcoins?

/r/Bitcoin is about the Bitcoin currency and network. Lightning allows you to move the Bitcoin currency. Sidechains are on-topic in general because they are a possibly-useful addition to the Bitcoin network. It is possible that some specific sidechains might not be on-topic -- this isn't clear to me yet.

XT is programmed to create a separate currency and network, so it is not Bitcoin. How do you know that there is no consensus?

Consensus is a high bar. It is not the same as a majority. In general, consensus means that there is near-unanimity. In the very particular case of a hardfork, "consensus" means "there is no noticeable probability that the hardfork will cause the Bitcoin economy to split into two or more non-negligible pieces".

I know almost for certain that there is no consensus to the change in XT because Bitcoin core developers Wladamir, Greg, and Pieter are opposed to it. That's enough to block consensus. And it works both ways: if Gavin and Mike are strongly opposed to Pieter's BIP, then this will also block consensus on that BIP.

Other than the core devs, big Bitcoin companies (especially Coinbase, BitPay, and exchanges) could block consensus, as could large groups of average users who are collectively capable of making reasonable arguments and exerting economic force (probably not just random unknown people complaining about nothing).

Even though consensus is such a high bar, I think that in practice any hardfork that gets consensus among the Bitcoin Core devs and makes it into Bitcoin Core has a good chance of succeeding. But again, the developers would just be spearheading the effort, and many others could block them if necessary. But with such a high bar, 8 MB blocks will be impossible!

If consensus can never be reached on one particular hardfork proposal, then the hardfork should never occur. Just because you want something doesn't mean that it's ever reasonable for you to hijack Bitcoin from the people who don't want it, even if your side is the majority (which it isn't in this case). This isn't some democratic country where you can always get your way with sufficient politicking. Get consensus, live without the change, or create your own altcoin.

Hard forks are supposed to be hard. While some hard forks will probably be necessary in the long run, these hard forks will need to have consensus and be done properly or Bitcoin will die due to the economy being constantly shattered into several pieces, or as a side-effect of forcing through technically unsound changes that the majority of experts disagree with (like XT's 8MB block size). Don't most experts want 8 MB blocks soon?

Not by any reasonable idea of "most experts" I can think of. For example, among people with expert flair on /r/Bitcoin, AFAIK any large near-term increase is opposed by nullc, petertodd, TheBlueMatt, luke-jr, pwuille, adam3us, maaku7, and laanwj. A large near-term increase is supported by gavinandresen, jgarzik, and mike_hearn. I don't know about MeniRosenfeld. (Those 12 people are everyone with expert flair.)

I've heard concerns that some experts who oppose any large near-term increase have conflicts of interest. But many of them have been expressing the same concerns for years, so it's unlikely that any recent possible conflict of interest is influencing them. Also, if they believed that increasing the max block size would help Bitcoin as a whole, what reason would they have to prevent this? I don't see the incentive.

We don't need to trust the above list of experts, of course. But I for one have found the conservative position's arguments to be much more convincing than the huge-increase position's arguments. It's not reasonable to say, "You know a lot more than I do, and I don't see any fault in your arguments, but you must be trying to trick me due to this potential conflict of interest, so I'm going to ignore you."

/r/Bitcoin Thread Parent