Should Bitcoin Core deprecate the GUI?Should Bitcoin Core deprecate the GUI?
As someone who has occasion to use the Bitcoin Core GUI, I was interested to see this discussion that Antoine Poinsot started on delving about hebasto's suggestion that Core
Deprecate and abandon the Bitcoin Core GUI. It is insufficiently developed and reviewed, and current users have viable alternatives.
For some time, Bitcoin Core has been attempting to separate its various elements into separate modules that can receive updates individually without needing to act like a monolith. For instance, it would be cool if when a bug is found in the wallet software, the node doesn't need to be updated. This initiative is called multiprocess.
One of the elements that Core has attempted to separate out is the GUI. Apparently, it is becoming apparent that the GUI does not receive as much attention as other parts of the Bitcoin Core project. Given how many ways there are of interacting with nodes and wallets, it is not surprising that the GUI is languishing a little bit.
Bitcoin Core is primarily a nodeBitcoin Core is primarily a node
Poinsot clearly sees Core as a node project (I'm probably putting it too gentle, and he may opt more for the term reference implementation). The GUI exists mostly because Satoshi packaged a GUI in the original software he released.
If Core's purpose is to provide node software that makes the Bitcoin project maximally censorship resistant, then it is a bit of a question whether the GUI is integral to that mission.
It is obvious to me that if Bitcoin Core never had any wallet or GUI, it would be ridiculous to suggest that Core contributors take some time off maintaining the software underpinning a trillion-dollars network to develop and maintain yet-another Bitcoin wallet/GUI. Of course, this is not to say that those have not been historically important components, material to Bitcoin’s success. But Bitcoin is very different now than when they were introduced. There are now superior alternatives to both, and the mission of maintaining the node has become critical, with orders of magnitude more people (and value) that depend on it, and this is where our focus should be.
Importantly, Poinsot points out that the GUI does not receive the same level of review and development effort that the rest of the project sees. If this trend continues, it could get to the state where shipping a binary with the GUI becomes a risk. Thankfully, it doesn't seem like this is where we are at yet.
Overall i do not think this software is in such a bad shape that it would be irresponsible for us to ship, as long as we make it clear to users it does not receive the same level or review as the rest of Bitcoin Core.
However, since the GUI has been around so long, and because some people cough me cough may use Core's wallet via this GUI, Poinsot notes that it probably isn't a great idea just to get rid of it.
That said, precisely because Bitcoin Core has shipped with a wallet and a GUI for so long, such a shift can’t happen overnight. So i agree on the goal, but i am not sure about the timeline. I agree with marking it as deprecated ASAP, if only to set expectations for users that it does not meet the bar we set for ourselves and may be removed in the future. But there is currently no reasonable replacement to manage a Bitcoin Core wallet. So to buy into the complete removal timeline i would like to first be convinced that the burden of keeping the GUI around is a higher cost than its users being unable to upgrade their node and their wallet past version 34.
One of the reasons that I was originally attracted to Bitcoin Core's software (node, wallet...and due to my crappy computer skills: GUI) was that I assumed it has the most review. Sure, I could try some wallet with like two maintainers, or I could use the wallet packaged with the software 98% of the network was running. I had not previously considered that certain elements of the software package may be receiving significantly less review than others.
It is something I should consider.
I have a feeling the right decision is to deprecate the GUI and eventually jettison it. It will make me sad, but I'll probably have to get used to managing my node and wallet on the command line.
On the one hand, this is retarded, more people should be using Bitcoin in the most direct way possible... and that's a native UI. It speaks to the dysfunctional priorities and NGO capture of Core that the users are an afterthought.
On the other hand, dropping it removes a reason for users to run Core, and is a step towards librarification that undermines the squatting on its legacy to hijack its distribution.
Shrug.jpg
could you point a casual observer to more info about?
many thanks
Core is largely maintained by salaried developers, people that work on it for a paycheck, not because they love it or even "get it". They are recruited and operationalized.
These salaries are paid by a few NGOs, Spiral and Chaincode notably, others perhaps even some undisclosed.
These are front organizations for well financed interests, like banks, intelligence agencies, private equity, and so on.
Bitcoin Core is to Bitcoin as the World Health Organization is to health.
All devs should work for free always. Food and shelter are overrated, amirite?
'more people should be using Bitcoin in the most direct way possible'
Agree 100% and using it here on Stacker News via LN is a great option to support and build the protocol stornger.
The OP does not even show attached wallets - seems like hes all talk and no walk.
Aren't you a CoinOS user?
Get your own house in order.
I do not claim to be technically expert but do know that almost every post, comment and zap I perform here is transacted via the LN and thus supports the LN and the sats saturation of the SNs economy.
By attaching LN wallets SNs users maximise the use of sats and LN in their transactions.
Those without attached wallets are not doing that.
There are many ordinary folk like me here who lack the technical proficiency to run nodes and self custody on LN at least yet, but they support the network and protocol as best they can.
What is really strange is the OP who clearly knows all the technical jargon but who cannot seem to bother attaching and showing a LN wallet.
Coinos are soon introducing self custody option- they can achieve this level of technical development because users like me use them everyday here on SNs and elsewhere and they glean the transaction fees and liquidity that provides.
At the same time Bit Talk No Walk hypocrits like @Darthcoin moan its too hard to use LN there on SNs - 'its too hard on my nodes' and so @Darthcoin uses CC shitcoins 'because they always work'.
What a useless technocrat and hypocrit.
So much for him 'living on The Bitcoin Standard' what a joke.
Or do you think we should wait until self custody wallets and self running nodes is something everyone can easily do before actually starting to use Bitcoin everyday?
Some of the dumbest people here (or anywhere) have figured it out, it just means you wont show PoW.
The irony is you're deranged over CC's, while yourself using CoinOS Credits. Same Same.
I recall maybe seeing some fake L2 garbage but not self-custody for LN.
Fine if you want that, but it's the same as CCs. Another credit with someone using LN because you're too lazy or inept.
I made a node you can set up in under a minute and share with friends/family to be your own CoinOS.
https://lightning.pub
Literally can't get simpler, copy paste one line in, another out.
I timed it to a live audience at a conference, 59 seconds.
It's even the easiest to pair with SN.
Darth's proof of work is not in question, he's done as much for the network as anyone.
You have put in zero effort to even attempt using LN however, seems you are the hypocrit.
Justin, in all fairness, a lightning pub is a way to give CCs to friends and family. If something goes wrong, they will blame the pub owner for losing those. Your node is indeed very easy to install, but one must be an IT expert for not to fuck up running it. ))
I am using sats.
People without attached wallets are much more often not.
Attaching a LN wallet ensures and shows that you are using the LN for transactions here on SNs as much as is reasonably practical.
People who do not bother attaching and showing LN wallets attached are not...they are instead debasing the sats saturation of the SN economy with CC shitcoins
You seem to think we must wait until everyone can manage a self custody LN wallet and nodes before we can all use LN everyday for SNs.
That is absurd and defeatist nonsense.
Only by using the LN can it grow stronger.
I am using sats despite my low technical knowledge- if I can do it anyone can- but elitist arrogant hypocrit cunts like @Darthcoin are not.
Do you even know who he really is?
Nobody does except his sock puppets.
What we do know is that state surveillance agencies will be watching and monitoring any group who voice anti establishment opinions and that they will want to infiltrate such groups and understand the technical systems such groups are developing.
@Darthcoin fits perfectly the posture such infiltrator cunts would present.
No you're not using sats. Your using API credits.
Larping hypocrite.
No need to wait, I gave you the resource to run a node in one minute.
Illiterate, lazy, hypocrite.
You're not an LN user, but we know Darth is.
No there is no proof @Darth is using LN in fact he has admitted he prefers using C/Cs because 'they always work'.
He pointedly refuses to attach and use LN here on SNs- this has been stated by him repeatedly.
I am using LN and sats P2P which any recipient can immediately use from their LN wallet whether it is non or self custodial.
You are talking shit to assert otherwise...probably another @DarthCoin sock puppet.
My transactions here occur over the LN as much as is reasonably possible - @DarthCoin s transactions don't.
Thanks for this phrase. It is what I was stretching for and failing to come up with. I have always had the sense that the less stuff that sits between me and bitcoin, the better. I figured if I was going to use a wallet that still made calls to Bitcoin Core, I might as well use Bitcoin Core.
Exactly, everything beyond Bitcoin is additional surface risk... You depend on Bitcoin, the OS under it, and then anything over top of it... Over the top introduces new variables.
The QT interface is of course still over the RPC, but the case is the Bitcoin repo has the maximum number of eyes on it vs anything in the stack beyond it.
QT also doesn't support seed phrases, which have been responsible for more lost and stolen coin than anything, so users are automatically in better position by using QT by default.
100%
'more people should be using Bitcoin in the most direct way possible'
But you @Scoresby do not have and show attached LN wallet here on Stacker News.
How can content consumers, the lifeblood of Stacker News economic model take you seriously when you are stubbornly refusing to use and show you are using LN here?
Guess I'll need to keep copy pasting the facts and context that you cannot refute so that maybe one day you might get it...or so that at least your blatant hypocrisy is highlighted.
What is Stacker News?
It is a social media platform intentionally created to enable a P2P V4V BTC denominated community.
Originally Stacker News (SN) custodyed sats on behalf of participants but the threat of government regulatory prosecution on the pretext of money transmitter forced a move away from the custody of sats by the platform to the platform enabling participants to send sats via their wallets.
To achieve this participants need to attach wallets to both send and receive sats.
Where participants do not or cannot attach LN wallets transactions will often default to Cowboy Credits.
This change was a compromise forced by the threat of government prosecution.
The difficulty of attaching both sending and receiving wallets is moderate- it takes some effort and newbie or non tech people may struggle with it, but most competent Bitcoiners can succeed in attaching wallets and thus enabling sats denominated P2P transactions.
But a number of Stackers have chosen not to attach wallets- in particular sending wallets which enable you to send sats into the SN community.
Very few have attached just a sending wallet- many have attach just a receiving wallet.
Those who only attach a receiving wallet can receive sats from others but cannot send sats into the community. They may feel that as content providers they have no need or obligation to send sats into and within the SN community. I disagree.
Where these receive but not send (horse but no gun) Stackers proclaim to be Bitcoiners but refuse to enable a sending wallet they are demonstrably hypocrits. They claim they want to build and grow the BTC LN MoE network but they cannot be bothered contributing toward that growth by attaching a sending wallet and demonstrating they are not just talking, but are also walking and supporting a sats denominated platform.
If we do not use the LN wherever and whenever we can it will not grow and develop.
Some claim it is too hard to attach wallets- its too hard on their self custody nodes or wallets- this just highlights how much work the LN still needs before it is capable of anything approaching 100% reliable MoE capability.
But the best way to grow and strengthen the LN is it use it – despite its remaining flaws and glitches.
When wallets are supported by people using them they receives transaction fees and can develop liquidity and systems further.
When LN wallets are not used the LN decays- it does not have the usage and fees income to grow.
So when self proclaimed advocates for BTC and LN refuse to attach wallets (especially sending wallets) I see hypocrit.
I will continue to see hypocrit until and unless someone can explain why I should not.
Calling me a Nazi, trolling and making fun of me crudely seeking to avoid the issues I raise will not stop me from asking why are you claiming to be a Bitcoiner but refusing to attach wallets and use the LN here where we can help it grow.
Now some are deliberately concealing their wallet status, as if this is about a right to privacy.
Concealing your wallet status means nobody else can verify whether or not you are serious about using BTC LN, or whether you are just an all talk no walk hypocrit.
Do not trust- verify.
What about this fundamental principle do they not understand?
And then they talk about 'content' being more important than whether or not you have attached wallets - in this context the intentional lack of attached wallets undermines your credibility as your actions do not match your words.
Your submitted content may be great, but you as someone claiming to be a serious Bitcoiner are undermining your credibility and the credibility of your content by being a hypocrit.
Your content, is tainted by your verifiable hypocrisy.
SNs needs both good content providers and those who pay for that content if it is succeed.
I am more in the latter group than the former but both are required overall or the model does not work.
So as a net contributor of sats and thus a net consumer of content I object where content providers refuse to engage in the P2P V4V ethos by refusing to attach both sending and receiving wallets and I will both withhold my contribution of sats and sometimes downvote in response.
V4V needs to work reciprocally or it will not work at all.
The content providers need net sats contributors/content consumers who send sats into the platform, or the entire platform fails.
I agree. A Bitcoin node should be run headless, and this UI cannot connect to one over LAN or VPN. But what is an alternative to command line if I want to control UTXO selection and fee rate below 1 s/vb?
I still use Bitcoin Core GUI from time to time. I like it's UX better than, for example, Electrum.
No kidding. personally, I've never actually minded the UX. But Poinsot's point about a lack of dev attention/review does give me pause.
It could make sense to split it off as a separate project in the future.
Can't you manage your Core wallet from Sparrow or any other wallet app?
I always assumed the wallet feature was just a relic from the days when core nodes were mining and validating blocks on the same machine.
You can import a descriptor into Sparrow, but I don't believe you can import a wallet.dat file. It doesn't make too much difference, but the descriptor will just have onchain info, while your wallet.dat file might include labels. It is still a little sad that there isn't a good standard for Bitcoin wallet info that most popular wallets support. I guess seed words or descriptors are about as close as we get.
https://bip329.org/
yes, i thought about that. Perhaps I am wrong, but I thought a wallet.dat file in Core did a little more than labels (as in, you don't need to rescan the chain if you load a wallet.dat file) - but I might be wrong.
A thought experiment-
Imagine you were an OG and had stacked a few coins when they were cheap as shit.
You had spend decades opposing what you saw as the undermining of your civilisation by bankers and corporate lobbyists who had advanced an ideology that proposed there is no community, only the individual, and that as such government has no place or validity- that markets alone should determine all things in human society.
These amoral neoliberal hypocrits ignored the historical reality that business only succeeds when supported by a strong legal system and a government that can enforce the law within its jurisdiction and project power externally to support import and export trading in goods and commodities.
But these neoliberal parasites did not give a fuck about history or culture.
If they needed cheap labour they imported it, or exported their factories to countries where labour was cheap.
They bought and owned most of the politicians with money created out of debt which debased the savings of all citizens.
They built an empire of debt and slavery to increase their wealth at the expense of most citizens.
Pivotal to their empire was fiat money.
Just as their greed and treachery reached epic heights a spanner was thrown in the works- Bitcoin was created.
It was possible now for anyone to hold capital and transfer value directly P2P without any need for the bankers.
So, humanity was offered a chance to regain its integrity and reclaim all commerce and exchange of value from the parasites who had seized a monopoly over the settlement all trade and commerce.
But this was a narrow hope- one that assumed enough people would make the effort to free themselves.
Bitcoin was not and is not a free ride to liberty- it is only a road, a narrow and difficult path to salvation.
But some did see the need and Bitcoin grew.
It was attacked and mocked and jeered, but its proposal was sound and enough people of conscience did support it so it grew.
But the opposition was and is strong and determined- it was made 'difficult' to use as a MoE payments protocol in most 'liberal democracies' and was outright banned in most autocracies.
It was allowed more as a speculative commodity which enabled large corporate players and bankers to gain an ever increasing share of issuance either directly or by proxy.
And it was tracked and traced- KYC became increasingly universal.
The hope of freeing money from the state and its bankers was never guaranteed and looked increasingly slim.
There was a need to have places where the P2P payments protocol could be used by anyone and show its potential...but few merchants dared accept it and face complex tax implications and FUD smear.
And then you come across an experiment- a social media platform using sats as a V4V means of both moderation and economic viability.
Stacker News!
This platform could operate and show how sats can be used everyday.
The many transactions required would support the growth of the LN and demonstrate it in use in a positive and useful way.
The state/banker cartel of course was watching and duly threatened it might prosecute on the premise of money transmission- so the platform was forced to require users to attach wallets.
This was not easy and created an entry barrier and the compromise of allowing new users and those not capable of attaching a wallet to use a substitute inhouse token called a Cowboy Credit...nominally of equal value to one sat but only valid within the platform.
Most users attached wallets but some refused to and yet they were often some of the most vocal about Bitcoin adoption- claiming to be 'living on The Bitcoin Standard'.
In reality they were deliberately and knowing degrading the sats denominated nature of the entire platform.
What is their motivation?
It seems unfathomable.
It seems like blatant hypocrisy.
They appears just as corrupt and full of shit as the bankers.
And so, after trying to reason with them, you decide to put your stack to use and mete out some wrath upon these hypocrit parasites.
Life is short and freedom is difficult to obtain.
But you can always try.
The future of the Bitcoin Core GUI - Antoine Poinsot
fucking idiots.