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Some such cross-camp conversations happened, e.g., on the mailing list, various Bitcoin Core pull requests, BIPs PRs, podcasts, Delving Bitcoin, and other social media.
AFAICT, the conversations largely failed at the stage of establishing sufficient shared facts to have a conversation. E.g., while neither group seems to be fond of NFTs, they disagree on whether spam constitutes a significant harm. This is considered obvious by one side and speculative by the other. There are a number of other such disagreements that led to most arguments being considered invalid by the respective other side. Ultimately, the positions seem completely irreconcilable, so the split is bound to happen.
Thanks, that's a helpful framing. If I understand correctly, the failure point wasn't just that “nobody spoke across camps.”
Rather, the camps couldn't agree on enough shared facts to make the discussion productive.
That is probably the part I find most interesting. From the outside, the disagreement often gets reduced to:
“Spam is obviously harmful”
versus
“Filtering it is either ineffective, harmful, or outside the proper role of node policy”.
But these aren't merely preferences. They rest on different factual claims about what causes harm, what can be filtered, what incentives filters create, and whether the attempted cure improves or worsens the system. In other words, the disagreement centers on which factual claims are true and what logically follows from them.
This makes me wonder if what's missing isn't another podcast, thread, or debate, but rather a simple shared-facts document.
Something like:
- What does each side agree is true?
- What facts are still disputed?
- What evidence would settle each disputed point?
- Which disagreements are technical, and which are philosophical?
- Where is the disagreement actually irreconcilable?
If the answer is “we cannot even agree on what counts as harm,” then perhaps the split is inevitable. Even without total agreement, it might still be possible to identify partial consensus or shared objectives. Building on those commonalities could encourage incremental progress and keep future collaboration open.
This is the bit I keep coming back to.
In a normal infrastructure or business-critical project, you would bring engineering, operations, product, risk, commercial users and decision-makers into one room to separate facts from preferences.
We all know Bitcoin has no CEO or central product owner, and that is part of the point.
But has that cross-camp conversation actually happened?
Maybe I have missed it, but all I seem to see are meeting notes, podcasts, posts and threads from one camp talking to its own side, while the other camp does the same.
What I would like to see is a factual, civil discussion with people from different perspectives in the same room, ideally with a neutral moderator.
Not “Core good” or “Core bad”.
More: what is the actual problem, what are the trade-offs, who is affected, what evidence supports each side, and what would change anyone’s mind?
Did I miss the memo? Are these conversations already being had outside of this site and Bitcoin Twitter?