...and he made a list...and he made a list
"I knew this already...""I knew this already..."
Carter is a smart guy. I've learned a lot from many of the pieces he's published. Unfortunately, he is also arrogant.
I knew this to be true already, having followed the discussions, but I was actually surprised when I did this exercise at how completely indifferent the most important developers were.
Okay. Well, the interesting part of this post is trying to figure out what Carter actually wants.
The Maintainers want to make it absolutely clear that they are not “in charge” but rather a nebulous consensus of stakeholders is. They will often claim to represent “the will of the people” in some vague Rousseauian sense.
Of course, they do not go around asking Bitcoiners worldwide whether they agree with a change. The actual way it works is, if you get a half dozen of the most influential developers to agree that a change is important, you might be able to get it through.
When Carter said this, it made me worried. This sounds bad. If changing Bitcoin is only a matter of getting six people to agree with you, Bitcoin is very much not decentralized! But next Carter says:
This is very hard and unusual, and as a result, change almost never occurs.
So, now it sounds like getting six people to agree is hard. I don't think that's true. So I suspect that changing Bitcoin is actually a matter of getting a lot more than six people to champion your cause.
it’s precisely the wrong governance structure
I do wonder some which governance structure Carter would prefer...but putting that aside for a moment, there is this interesting
Until the most influential devs sign on to one of these proposals, nothing will happen.
As well as this nice footnote:
Yes, you are free to quibble with the precise ordering of my list, but it’s undeniable that a group of unelected developers wielding soft power control what updates are considered and which are not.
While it may not be true that you only have to convince six people to change Bitcoin, it may well be true that there are six or ten or some number of people who almost have a veto on changes to Bitcoin.
Of course, the whole business with BIP 110 kind of contradicts this. But one wonders where that movement would be if Luke Dashjr wasn't backing it.
Maybe this is the best system we can have. Bitcoin is a mess and that's a good thing, but it's also a hard thing.
Whatever the case, I'm getting the sense that this is going to the year where everyone wants to change Bitcoin's "governance structure."
They only have a veto on changes to Bitcoin Core. Bitcoin users, including nodes and miners, are free to run other software.
While I fully agree with you, it is more complicated than that. The reason Core has such high market dominance is not solely because it has always delivered what users want.
Developing and maintaining an alternate implementation is a challenging task (probably because maintaining and developing Core I'd a challenging task). But there's also this thing where an implementation of Bitcoin really, really has to get it right.
...And how do we even know what getting it right means? At the moment, it kinda means coming to consensus with Core nodes.
I know what you mean. But one must be wary of imposing "governance structures".
Because once you claim a "governance structure", you are trying to legitimize something that not everyone may have agreed to. At least the Core developers do not claim any sort of political legitimacy like a "governance structure" would attempt to claim. Core's dominance arises out of the game theory of switching costs and coordination equilibria, not from any sort of claimed political authority.
The problem with "governance" is that once "governance" is claimed, eventually some group will decide that they don't accept this governance. Then, we can go one of two ways:
I just think trying to solve these tricky issues with words like "governance" is a dangerous slope.
sometimes i think I am the only mofo here that still loves core
honestly I think they are doing a helll of a job and slowly moving in the right direction.
most important thing core is doing is getting all consensus code into one standalone library.(libbitcoinkernel )
this will enable more clients and weaken the power of core which is actually what core wants
I run Core as my node of choice. It is an amazing project. I don't think that prevents me from also observing that it would be nice if we had multiple strong, well maintained implementations of Bitcoin.
i don't have any problem with Core
but clearly, many do. I don't really know if their grievances are justified. I don't follow these issues closely enough.
I do know that I generally learn towards Core's side in the anti-spam debate
I run 3 core nodes. I am not an expert...
But I think the vast majority of the "criticism" of core is unwarranted. In other words don't listen to the twitter drones they just repeat the same BS over and over and have zero interest in anything to the contrary. It's way too much 'groupthink' that doesn't help.
Core imo has done a great job considering the overall situation and the challenge of changing software
Nic should stay in his lane and do what he does best. Whatever that is.
I think it's good he's raising discussion. "Stay on your lane" thinking is dangerous: let's judge ideas based on their merit.
It's not as if this topic hasn't been discussed. People who know much more about quantum computing and bitcoin than Nic or I have been discussing it for years. It seems like he's simply not happy that these people have come to a different conclusion than he has.
Fair point. And since his VC background, I guess it would be in his incentives that some Bitcoin quantum businesses got traction.
That's the best point. I can't put my hands on it now, but @Scoresby linked to a good article about how ridiculous it is to dismiss the barriers to quantum computing as mere "engineering issues." Not to mention the fact that if this fantasy comes to pass, the entire world financial system is a far bigger and less secure target. Somehow the banks never get punished with this fud.
Not constructive to compare banks' response to the quantum threat to Bitcoin's because banks can just update their ledger and bam, it's quantum-proof. Bitcoin's decentralized network needs more coordination.
I guess that's true. It's more complicated than just a ledger, though. Gaining full access to internal communications of banks, military, governments, etc. seems like a juicier target than bitcoin.
I believe that was singing with the Backstreet Boys.
💯
Is he just now figuring out bitcoin
That part about the 'veto power' is what sticks with me. It’s a double-edged sword—it keeps the protocol stable and safe, but it also creates this invisible ceiling for innovation. Do you think we’ll ever move past this 'soft power' era, or is a certain level of hierarchy just inevitable for Bitcoin to survive
Where has this dude been? I'm starting to wonder if he even understands bitcoin. That would explain a lot