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CUSF will be the greatest example of why a miner activated soft fork is not an actual activation.
Why can't you just undo soft forks? Because nodes enforce the rules of soft forks and undoing those rules would require everyone to coordinate i.e. a hard fork.
But what if nodes aren't enforcing a soft forks rules? Well then it could be undone easily by the miner coordination.
Well the whole fork drama of 2017 was a miner lead soft fork essentially that was challenged by a user activated soft fork. What that means is that on paper 90% of the hashing power by mining pool supported segwit 2x. And it was opposed by a grassroots and very loud user movement that would block the transmission of any segwit 2x blocks.
Miners had a lot of potential revenue on the table that could be lost within the days in which that would be resolved. Users (holders) on the other hand could sustain such a consensus crisis for weeks. But don't think the solution was easy this was very chaotic and we don't know what would have happened if the mining pools had not folded early.
On the Bitcoin cash front it was a minor-led hard fork. It was the signed by bitmain. and they changed the difficulty algorithm in order to keep the chain alive because they knew they had a minority. But if they believed they had a majority of hashing power they could have basically forked the network and taking the hashing power. It would have been a much different situation.
Without consensus from the user base it could lead to multiple versions of Bitcoin and if the one we like has less hashing power then a lesser version it could be very chaotic. Eventually you might settle on the markets. Exchanges will have to choose which fork has which ticker. And the price would swing wildly.
Finally if the miner lead Hard fork or soft fork won both the ticker and the majority of the hashing power, and hodlers tolerated it. Then it would set a precedent for miners to lead upgrades. This could lead to a whole new development path for Bitcoin one where miners upgraded in whatever direction increase their profitability or perceived profitability. They're economic incentives are historically different than that of hodlers. The assumptions that the market has of bitcoins stability would be significantly changed. We don't know what that roadmap looks like. We do know that it could lead to mev as well, miner extracted value which leads to centralization of pools as seen in other chains.
Basically there is a long list of unknowns and it would probably change a lot of assumptions in bitcoin. Destroying bitcoins lead is probably not off the table.
The good news is I don't think it has any consensus among holders.
Putting aside many of the incorrect statements such as "Then it would set a precedent for miners to lead upgrades." Which miners had all along the history of bitcoin (many updates simply don't concern node operators), there being different versons of "Bitcoin" software was always the case and is the case.
This approach is different and by design is not excludable or censorable the way ordinals were.
The block size wars were a giant waste of resources and Bitcoin is more centralized and heading towards centralization more and more:
ASICS, CEX's, compliance, centralization of Core, Centralization of LSP's (which was supposed to scale bitcoin use, they can't btw) much higher adoption of custodied wallets and on ramps.
All could have been avoided with larger or dynamic blocks.
I think as long as it doesn't affect me (it doesn't, it's opt in) and or is reversible should something undesirable happen (soft forks are reversible) i don't see myself as a pure virgin prisetess dictator protecting other's from economic benefit/risk.
How dare you use the name of a fictional Capitalist but advocate for Bitcoin Communism.
Cusf and Bip 300/1 allow the market to decide and not core (who decide nothing and will gladly watch Bitcoin die because they are captured by the state)
@psztorc has lost all credibility to me ever since I hard him being disingenuous when discussing proposals other than Drivechains. If he's dishonest about competing proposals, how can I trust him when discussing his own stuff?
Wow, omega bait huh? Can't believe that's actually your opinion, because if it is then you are really misinformed, in any case this type of flame war is not really welcome.
How about we have a constructive debate instead? Something that doesn't entail calling the work of lots of people 'nothing' or 'bullshit'.
Lightning sucks, doesn't scale to 8 billion people. Is terribly and overly designed with game theory that does not work.
Recent bugs and revelations about these bugs lead to persecution from the community, so the lightning dev culture is broken and waiting to lose A LOT of peoples money.
Some shitcoins might have value, only time will tell, all plants need fertilizer.
the one attitude that is guaranteed to fail over time is the toxic maximalist
who represent an species over specialization (think dodo's) sensitive to heretofore unseen ecological changes
For example, if quantum computing is actually being used right now and has been for years by and against secret agencies, we the public would be the last to know. Meaning all our bitcoin was vulnerable this whole time.
This is what happens in a centralized dictatorship, it over specializes and collapses on its weak points.
If however bitcoin had been more pluralistic, embraced big/dynamic blocks and other changes, or at a minimum BIP 300/1 such that core could remain the same but allow for opt-in experimentation, all the shitcoin development and some few actual technologicaly interesting advancements such as zk-proofs would have happend on Bitcoin (a good thing because shitcoins are, remember, fertilizer) including perhaps tokenized experiments in Quatum resistance.
ALL while paying bitcoin fees and supporting the network.
The market would have rewarded those who chose to invest in those experiments.
But no. Because Bitcoin maxi's are communists we are all at risk of unseen black swans at the same time.
Love your show dude! So glad you're here! You have a great quirky show, ask good questions, let people talk a lot, and keep it at a level us plebs can understand.
Honestly I listen to most of the more technical podcasts too, but yours and Bitcoin Audible I think are the two best for trying to help normies and maxis understand what the hell is going on in Bitcoin dev space, and why it's important.
Thank you sir, much appreciated! Had a pretty rough year with a couple of nerve-breaking moments, it's good to see some appreciation too. It's what motivates me to keep going.
But why not drive Drivechains on Monero first ?
The way I understand it, it will attract more miners to their chain.
and when Monero is with more hash-power we just migrate/drivechain Bitcoin to the more secure chain.
Bitcoin miners are too busy to merge-mine Namecon at the moment.
Getting deja vu. I'm always impressed how much money people waste trying to change Bitcoin to suit their vision. How much did the bcashers lose all told? Must be on the order of a million BTC.
Bitcoin miners are too busy to merge-mine Namecon at the moment.
[meta]Will we have our first boost war?