segwit2x and the end of the known BTC universe

Troy Benjegerdes hozer at hozed.org
Sat Jul 1 07:51:45 PDT 2017


The way some people are talking about segwit/segwit2x/big blocks
is as if there is some sort of existential crisis like the polar
ice caps were going to fall off from the excess heat from miners.

For example, while this has a couple of good technical points:

https://medium.com/@lukedashjr/the-segwit-2x-beta-review-and-thoughts-ca480694a8c7

There is this little confused bit of reasoning:

"Next up is "testnet5". It's a new testnet, for reasons never made
clear to me. It would seem if you wanted to test a change to Bitcoin,
you'd test it as a change to testnet rather than make a new one. It's
not clear to me why a new testnet was created instead."


I think, if you want to **test** activation of segwit with some
different parameters, you might actually want to test it on a network
that doesn't already have it activated. 

That means either:
a) 51% attacking the existing testnet and rolling back to before the
   activation point
b) start a new test network

Did I make this clear, or am I just being sold some evil propaganda
from $EVIL_EMPIRE


Personally, the worst part about this whole disaster is we now have
something that looks like assembly code looking for magic numbers
in the coinbase field for segregated witness, instead of something
straightforward, like, you know, incrememeting the transaction 
version in a way that clearly tells clients they need to upgrade.

At least so far there has been no nation-state with guns telling
people which code they need to run. (yet)

Can some government just get it over with and issue Fedcoin already?


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