Why not use Bitcoin 0.10 to hard fork ? #5265

I'm simply an advanced user who speaks for the scalability hard fork.

So, I am sure you know the psychological difference between a 0.10 version and 0.9 version. They can be seen as 0.1 and 0.0.9 versions by users.

And only a 0.20 (0.2) version can reproduce this effect.

The problem is the time that separates these two versions:

• If it is too short, version 0.20 will be less quickly adapted by users than 0.10 version.
• If it is too long (6 months or more), the hard fork can be an emergency measure.

From this fact, and allowing users to update within 3 months, why not hard fork with 0.10 ?

As an example, we can note the hard fork of Dogecoin (1.8):

Dogecoin has 4 times less nodes than Bitcoin, but within 3 weeks, more than 50% of nodes have update, without the media exposure of Bitcoin.

3 months for update, it seems very correct.

What's the plan for it?

A hardfork needs 100% to update.

Also, there needs to be:

• an actual specific proposal for a hardfork
• an implementation
• very extensive testing
• pervasive consensus

I think we have none of these, and there's no reason to hold up a release for that.

Thanks for answers :)

Why not publish a precise roadmap about it? With dates.

Feel free to make a specific proposal, but this makes no sense for a release that is in its later stages.

A hard fork includes significant amounts of cost and risk, and increases centralization.

It is not something to do "just because"

Alt-coins hard fork all the time because they are insecure and centrally managed, not decentralized.

And now Litecoin will hard fork to introduce sidechain, correct multisig and many others: https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=23054.0

You take no risk, this is the problem.

Planned release schedule for 0.10, as posted to the mailing list is:

• November 18: split off 0.10 branch, translation message and feature freeze
• December 1: release 10.0rc1, start Release Candidate cycle

Further major versions will use a fixed six-month release schedule:

• July 2015: 0.11.0 (or whatever N+1 release is called)
• January 2016: 0.12.0 (or whatever N+2 release is called)
• July 2016: 0.13.0 (or whatever N+3 release is called)

You take no risk, this is the problem.

The problem of what?

I think it's perhaps problematic of not daring to innovate.

I feel that there is a huge fear of a fork, a taboo thing.

A disproportionate fear that significantly retards innovation.

For exemple, how many users would like to have a 1 minute block time generation? I think we now the answer.

Sincerely, I see several years before such a decision is taken, while others innovate.

This is a problem seeing serious competitors as Ethereum, while Bitcoin has not even begun his life.

I'm sorry to be the guy who says it.

Bitcoin is just no longer the place to do experiments. There is an actual economy built on top. And to make any such significant changes requires everyone everyone to agree, as indeed, there is a fear of a fork. Shouldn't we be? Every coin that existed before the fork can then be spent twice. That breaks the entire purpose of Bitcoin's existence.

Furthermore, some changes may be wanted by some group of users, but not others. The system has the rules that people accepted and have invested in for years now. You can't just change those from under them. In case there is no overwhelming consensus that a particular change is needed, you just can't make it. The inter-block time is certainly one of those things that would be very controversial to change.

If you're actually interested in proposing such changes, please do so on the mailing list. This is just one project, and the maintainers of one piece of software shouldn't be in charge of making system-level changes. You need support from everyone using it.

Even though it can be said that Bitcoin is still an experiment, we can't afford a "nothing to lose" mentality here.

The front-line of innovation is intentionally left up to other projects. Even if innovation would stop right now, Bitcoin would still fill a niche as most established and stable of *coins. This is also the idea brought forward in the sidechains paper. Sidechains would allow using bitcoins in fancy experiments without hardforks. Of course, innovation doesn't stop, it just means that bitcoin can pick and choose what turns out to be a good idea from other projects.

There is no hurry here. It is easy to call fears disproportionate from the sidelines, but a critical problem in bitcoin is likely to make people lose trust in the entire crypto-currency ecosystem for a long time.

Ok, thanks for this debate :)

Wladimir,

But aren't you using a "nothing to lose argument" in your reasons for doing nothing so far? I think it's crazy to destabilise the Bitcoin economy by doing nothing and risking miners switching to another coin.

We need something that offers an alternative to the current Bitcoin and that won't destabilize the Bitcoin network. There is an answer. A hardfork that uses merged mining so that miners can continue mining the current Bitcoin and the new coin. And if the new coin continues from the existing Bitcoin block chain then it won't cause people to sell off Bitcoin before it goes live either, as would be the case if litecoin gets there first. On Nov 13, 2014 8:32 PM, "Wladimir J. van der Laan" < notifications@github.com> wrote:

Even though it can be said that Bitcoin is still an experiment, we can't afford a "nothing to lose" mentality here.

The front-line of innovation is intentionally left up to other projects. Even if innovation would stop right now, Bitcoin would still fill a niche as most established and stable of *coins. This is also the idea brought forward in the sidechains paper. Sidechains would allow using bitcoins in fancy experiments without forks. Of course, innovation doesn't stop, it just means that bitcoin can pick and choose what turns out to be a good idea from other projects.

There is no hurry here. It is easy to call fears disproportionate from the sidelines, but a critical problem in bitcoin is likely to make people lose trust in the entire crypto-currency ecosystem for a long time.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub #5265 (comment).

@rebroad If you want to propose a hardfork to add merged mining at a higher level, write up a draft BIP and mail it to the dev mailing list. It's too late for 0.10 either way.

But aren't you using a "nothing to lose argument" in your reasons for doing nothing so far?

Doing nothing? Really?

Locking this issue, this is not constructive and is going into a clueless direction.

For serious discussion on specific reasons to hard-fork, please use the mailing list, as said.

We need something that offers an alternative to the current Bitcoin and that won't destabilize the Bitcoin network

I suggest reading the sidechains paper (see http://www.blockstream.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/sidechains.pdf ). It describes exactly such a mechanism.