March 14, 2016 at 23:17Satoshi Nakamoto Roundtable Summary: Fork, Elections and Decitization
Increase the block size, give the right to vote to all users, decentralize mining. Such guidelines for the development of bitcoin were indicated by participants in the Satoshi crypto retreat , which was held in Florida in early March.
As we wrote , the venue of the round table was kept in strict confidence, and only invited participants were notified about the coordinates of the conference, however, during a live broadcast on Reddit, a message flashed that the conference was being held in Florida, which was consistent with the data, published on the event’s website, which stated that the Satoshi Roundtable would be held at a “North American resort.”
After several general presentations, the participants were divided into 7 working groups, which discussed the most acute, in their opinion, problems of the bitcoin community. The results of the debate were brought to general discussion.
Judging by the broadcast, the most important thing for the bitcoin community is now the issue of increasing the block size, time and method of scaling (soft / hard fork); the problem of the popularization of bitcoin and the decentralization of mining. Most participants agreed that such meetings and discussions should be held more often.
Bitcoin lacks a scientific approach to solving technical problems, and the disunity of the community and the lack of understanding of the magnitude of the consequences of decisions make it difficult to solve conceptual problems. All these issues are inextricably linked to the main issue on the agenda: the problem of scalability of bitcoin.
After so many months of fierce struggle, and despite all the calls for a compromise, the community returned to where it started: Gavin Andressen, the author of the hard fork project, delivered a report that received a very cool response from the audience. Many hoped that a dialogue between him and other developers was possible, and for several days Gavin seemed to ponder alternative solutions. However, after a short silence, he again returned to eulogies to Bitcoin XT.
He is told that a quick transition to larger blocks carries danger and high risks for the system. As the developers of the basic protocol, advocating for the “soft fork” of Segregated Witness, said the earliest when it is possible to introduce a “hard fork” - in 12 months. During the conversation, it was also noted that according to available data, now the blocks are only 40% full.
Despite the fact that leading representatives of the bitcoin industry admit that they can’t even imagine what kind of bitcoin will be in five years, according to most, the optimal block size should be no more than 8 MB. This opinion was expressed, in particular, by Chinese miners.
During the conference, a proposal was voiced to introduce “coin voting” or “readiness signaling” into the Bitcoin ecosystem. This proposal implies the introduction of a special code in the transaction, which will allow a larger number of participants in the bitcoin community to express support for one or another solution. End users will be able to include in the transaction a certain signaling code that will say "I'm ready to upgrade to such and such a solution." This will allow developers to take into account the opinion of the majority of the community when developing updates.
One of the working groups discussed the proposal to mining companies to move part of their equipment to different legal zones, reducing the concentration of mining capacities in China. According to the authors of the idea, excessive centralization discourages some investors and representatives of the financial sector from bitcoin.
Satoshi Roundtable is one of the most important events of the year for the bitcoin industry. The round table was attended by several dozen representatives of bitcoin companies and Bitcoin core developers, as well as investors specializing in fintech startups, among them: Bitcoin Foundation representative Gavin Andressen, Blockstream president Adam Beck, developers Matt Corallo, Peter Todd and Luc Dashir, Bloq founder Jeff Garzik, Justin Newton from Netki, Gabriel Abed from Bitt, Charles Allen from BTCS, Mike Belsh from BitGo, Mick Winkelspecht from Gem, Roger Ver from Bitcoin.com, David Johnston from Factom, Alex Petrov from BitFury, Charlie Lee from Coinbase, Marco Strang of Genesis Mining, Jez San from Angel Investor, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase and many others.
A bit of auto-training from Stephen Peer, co-founder and director of Bitpay:
If you support the decision to limit the concentration of mining in a certain legal zone, we remind you that you can mine in the cloud, along with HashFlare .
As we wrote , the venue of the round table was kept in strict confidence, and only invited participants were notified about the coordinates of the conference, however, during a live broadcast on Reddit, a message flashed that the conference was being held in Florida, which was consistent with the data, published on the event’s website, which stated that the Satoshi Roundtable would be held at a “North American resort.”
After several general presentations, the participants were divided into 7 working groups, which discussed the most acute, in their opinion, problems of the bitcoin community. The results of the debate were brought to general discussion.
Judging by the broadcast, the most important thing for the bitcoin community is now the issue of increasing the block size, time and method of scaling (soft / hard fork); the problem of the popularization of bitcoin and the decentralization of mining. Most participants agreed that such meetings and discussions should be held more often.
Problems and solutions
Bitcoin lacks a scientific approach to solving technical problems, and the disunity of the community and the lack of understanding of the magnitude of the consequences of decisions make it difficult to solve conceptual problems. All these issues are inextricably linked to the main issue on the agenda: the problem of scalability of bitcoin.
After so many months of fierce struggle, and despite all the calls for a compromise, the community returned to where it started: Gavin Andressen, the author of the hard fork project, delivered a report that received a very cool response from the audience. Many hoped that a dialogue between him and other developers was possible, and for several days Gavin seemed to ponder alternative solutions. However, after a short silence, he again returned to eulogies to Bitcoin XT.
After repeated attempts to reach a compromise on the block size issue, which did not complete with anything, it became clear that some developers were not at all interested in solving this problem. They believe that more elegant but technically cumbersome solutions, such as the Lightning Network , can solve the problem of scaling in the future. They are wrong.
- Gavin Andressen's Blog
He is told that a quick transition to larger blocks carries danger and high risks for the system. As the developers of the basic protocol, advocating for the “soft fork” of Segregated Witness, said the earliest when it is possible to introduce a “hard fork” - in 12 months. During the conversation, it was also noted that according to available data, now the blocks are only 40% full.
Despite the fact that leading representatives of the bitcoin industry admit that they can’t even imagine what kind of bitcoin will be in five years, according to most, the optimal block size should be no more than 8 MB. This opinion was expressed, in particular, by Chinese miners.
Useful with useful: vote embedded in a transaction
During the conference, a proposal was voiced to introduce “coin voting” or “readiness signaling” into the Bitcoin ecosystem. This proposal implies the introduction of a special code in the transaction, which will allow a larger number of participants in the bitcoin community to express support for one or another solution. End users will be able to include in the transaction a certain signaling code that will say "I'm ready to upgrade to such and such a solution." This will allow developers to take into account the opinion of the majority of the community when developing updates.
Decentralization of mining: lay eggs from a Chinese basket
One of the working groups discussed the proposal to mining companies to move part of their equipment to different legal zones, reducing the concentration of mining capacities in China. According to the authors of the idea, excessive centralization discourages some investors and representatives of the financial sector from bitcoin.
Satoshi Roundtable is one of the most important events of the year for the bitcoin industry. The round table was attended by several dozen representatives of bitcoin companies and Bitcoin core developers, as well as investors specializing in fintech startups, among them: Bitcoin Foundation representative Gavin Andressen, Blockstream president Adam Beck, developers Matt Corallo, Peter Todd and Luc Dashir, Bloq founder Jeff Garzik, Justin Newton from Netki, Gabriel Abed from Bitt, Charles Allen from BTCS, Mike Belsh from BitGo, Mick Winkelspecht from Gem, Roger Ver from Bitcoin.com, David Johnston from Factom, Alex Petrov from BitFury, Charlie Lee from Coinbase, Marco Strang of Genesis Mining, Jez San from Angel Investor, Brian Armstrong from Coinbase and many others.
A bit of auto-training from Stephen Peer, co-founder and director of Bitpay:
The main conclusion that I made for myself: people care about what will happen to Bitcoin, and thanks to these people it exists, it's not about the code, and not about the software. We are not immune from mistakes and failures, but Bitcoin will survive. No decision of a group of persons or the absence of one can destroy it.
If you support the decision to limit the concentration of mining in a certain legal zone, we remind you that you can mine in the cloud, along with HashFlare .