Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Block Size Increase

From: Peter Todd <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 May 2015 09:02:40 -0400

On Thu, May 07, 2015 at 01:29:44PM +0200, Mike Hearn wrote:
> What if Gavin popped up right now and said he disagreed with every current
> proposal, he disagreed with side chains too, and there would be no
> consensus on any of them until the block size limit was raised.
> 
> Would you say, oh, OK, guess that's it then. There's no consensus so might
> as well scrap all those proposals, as they'll never happen anyway. Bye bye
> side chains whitepaper.

If Gavin had good points to make, he'd probably eventually change
everyone's mind.

But if he fails to do that at some point he'll just get ignored and for
all practical purposes won't be considered part of the consensus. Not
unlike how if someone suggested we power the blockchain via perpetual
motion machines they'd be ignored. Bitcoin is after all a decentralized
system so all power over the development process is held only by social
consent and respect.

At that point I'd suggest Gavin fork the project and go to the next
level of consensus gathering, the community at large; I'm noticing this
is exactly what you and Gavin are doing.

Speaking of, are you and Gavin still thinking about forking Bitcoin
Core? If so I wish you the best of luck.

Sent: Wednesday, July 23, 2014 at 2:42 PM
From: "Mike Hearn" <[email-masked]>
To: "Satoshi Nakamoto" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Thinking about a fork
I don't expect a reply, just getting some thoughts off my chest. Writing them down helps.

Forking Bitcoin-Qt/Core has been coming up more and more often lately in conversation (up from zero not that long ago). Gavin even suggested me and him fork it ... I pointed out that maintainers don't normally fork their own software :)

The problem is that the current community of developers has largely lost interest in supporting SPV wallets. Indeed any protocol change that might mean any risk at all, for anyone, is now being bogged down in endless circular arguments that never end. The Bitcoin developers have effectively become the new financial regulators: restricting options within their jurisdiction with "someone might do something risky" being used as the justification.

If alternative low-risk protocols were always easily available this would be no problem, but often they require enormous coding and deployment effort or just don't exist at all. Yet, wallets must move forward. If we carry on as now there simply won't be any usable decentralised wallets left and Bitcoin will have become an energy-wasting backbone for a bunch of banks and payment processors. That's so far from your original vision, it's sad.

I know you won't return and that's wise, but sometimes I wish you'd left a clearer design manifesto before handing the reigns over to Gavin, who is increasingly burned out due to all the arguments (as am I).

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2g9c0j/satoshi_email_leak/

-- 
'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
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