[Bitcoin-development] questions about bitcoin-XT code fork & non-consensus hard-fork

[Dr Adam Back]

Its clear Gavin knows more about Bitcoin code and detailed micro
algorithms than I do (there are many detailed algorithms for anti-DoS
etc at code level which I do not know).

Its possible I know more than Gavin or have a better internalised
reasoning about the logic and design parameters for about
decentralised systems and distributed trust systems, and ecash
protocols, threat models in p2p privacy systems - which is quite a big
slice of what Bitcoin is trying to do.  Or not - I dont know all of
Gavin's expertise nor career experience!  Something you may not
realise is a bunch of us on the cypherpunks list back in like
1995-2005 spent a lot of applied research effort into finding a way to
do something with the characteristics of bitcion.    My PhD is in
distributed systems also.

Anyway I do not mean to have claims to authority, particularly because
I believe firmly in pure meritocracy philosophically and detest such
argumentation as a failure of reason, but coincidentally I do actually
know something about it and worked on it on Bitcoin-like system design
and p2p novel trust-model & security model on and off for 20 years.

But I do think people who are proposing big-blocks are underestimating
and being super-optimistic about a range of things, almost to naive
extent.  I am not imputing unsaid things, Gavin wrote many blog posts
on these topics.  Mike Hearn made some videos and posts about his
views, and they are quite disconnected from p2p privacy system design
thinking.  Someone should probably respond to some of those posts to
clarify why they think some of these assumptions are incorrect and
optimistic to prior experience and precedent.

Adam

On 18 June 2015 at 20:24, Sean Lynch <seanl at literati.org> wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, Jun 17, 2015 at 3:51 PM Dr Adam Back <adam at cypherspace.org> wrote:
>>
>> If people on *cypherpunks* cant get the points in the post, I think
>> the world has a problem.  The price of security in a distributed
>> system like bitcoin is eternal vigilance, but if people dont
>> understand what constitutes a risk and hence what to be vigilant for,
>> the meta-system can be unreliable and lose its assurances.  I think we
>> need to explain some more concepts and probably people will over time
>> learn things and and an influencer pyramid emerge as happened in
>> privacy technology.
>>
>
> Yes, I'm sure that when people who disagree with you, it's always because
> they are wrong and never because you don't understand the situation as well
> as you think you do. I'm sure you know more about Bitcoin than Gavin does.