Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Let's deploy BIP65 CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY!

From: John Winslow <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2015 12:17:10 -0700

Two observations from a Bitcoin investor and non-programmer:

1) I think it's possible that those who are adamantly opposed to a soft 
fork may be largely (if not completely) correct on purely technical 
terms, but that they also may be underestimating the risk of a 
contentious hardfork.

2) The downsides of a softfork are unclear because they seem to be based 
primarily on inelegant coding, not that it couldn't be made to work.

As a Bitcoin investor, I am becoming increasingly concerned that the 
rancorous and mostly unproductive debates occurring here daily are 
slowly closing the window of opportunity for Bitcoin to succeed. If this 
were a start-up or public company, the stock would be plunging. Why? 
Simple. Uncertainty. While I think (and I'm sure most here would agree) 
that these debates are necessary (and due to Bitcoin's decentralized 
nature perhaps even necessary to have in a public forum) but when these 
debates go on and on indefinitely thereby reducing confidence in 
Bitcoin's future something different needs to be done. In a public 
company or startup these debates would be happening in private with a an 
eye on competition, public/market perception, timing and anticipation of 
a shareholder-value-increasing outcome followed by a press release or 
marketing campaign. And the clock is always ticking.

My suggestion is the top devs from both sides need to get together 
offline and decide what the best compromise would be and then publicly 
promote a non-contentious solution that balances the technical with 
market concerns that everyone can get behind. Continuing to debate 
technical issues ad-infinitum without compromise or waiting until the 
Hong Kong conference in December to start making a decision while 
Bitcoin dies on the vine should not be an option. If anything, the 
conference should be the time at the end of which a confidence-inspiring 
technical roadmap is announced.

Further, I would like to add that in my perception what Bitcoin needs to 
and can easily become is essentially a public utility/backbone 
blockchain (like IP is to the internet) upon which all current and 
future blockchain stakeholders should see as their best and cheapest 
option for entering the space. For this to happen Bitcoin, from a user's 
standpoint needs to be simple and reliable, and from an 
investor/developer standpoint cost-effective and scalable. I don't see 
why this can't happen.

JTW

On 9/30/2015 8:55 AM, Jorge Timón via bitcoin-dev wrote: On Wed, Sep 30, 
2015 at 2:30 PM, Mike Hearn via bitcoin-dev 
<[email-masked]> wrote:
>> This will not change the fact that the rollout strategy is bad and nobody
>> has answered my extremely basic question: why is it being done in this way,
>> given the numerous downsides?
> You seem to be the only one who thinks that softforks have "numerous
> downsides" over hardforks.
> So everybody just basically disagrees with the assumption in your
> question and thus nobody can answer it.
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