Hello, ex-Core supporter here, I'd just like to share a 'short' tale with you. (2025words)
Until just after BIP91 was confirmed locked-in, I was a really hard-core and typical mindless Core sheep.
I had been writing articles on my website for a couple of months detailing how and where to buy, and how awesome bitcoin was, I also gave a brief history to people around me and over social media platforms.
The trigger that caused me to actually start digging into the history of bitcoin was really just my own paranoia winning(as usual), I kept thinking about the first video I saw Tone Vays and Roger Ver in. The video was a debate between them about the block-size and Tone kept telling us that he did not understand the code, but he trusts the developers of Core. Tone can sometimes be caught wearing a shirt that says: DON'T TRUST. VERIFY. You can also occasionally catch him saying this phrase. The thing that had been gnawing at me for awhile is that Tone doesn't understand the code, so he can't verify it, or verify that the developers aren't lying to him, or that they aren't very good. I was also bugged by the amount of conflict that was going on in the community, the new hard-fork announcement for BitcoinCash was getting a 'lot' of hate, and a lot of name calling.
I wondered why people were attacking a group of people who wanted to go their own way and leave Core alone to do what they wanted to do. I had also just prior been explaining why it likely wouldn't happen, because at that point Tone had me believing it was just an bluff alt-coin creation to create FUD for lower prices. I didn't swallow another red-pill soon enough, I'm sorry.
I had also of course heard about BCH previously from Tone, and I didn't really pay much attention to the impending fork due to the fact I was a good blind lil sheep. About a week before the fork, I went back to watch that one video debate again, at the time of my first viewing I had resonated with Ver and I'm not sure why I became a Core supporter to begin with.
I finished watching the video, having now much information about the network at my command to help me 'verify' what was being said between the two. I decided to start by looking into the censorship that Ver had mentioned. I had done some of this reading before(thankfully), so I knew a little about what had been going on and occasionally posts about it would appear in news feeds. Ver had spoken about Reddit a lot, and I had watched a documentary on YouTube during that week about the founder of Reddit: Aaron Swartz. Having never created an account or even actually been on Reddit before.. I was very curious as to what it was like. I also found it quiet humorous that Tone spoke about not trusting the operation of a nuclear power-plant to towns people, and instead it should be trusted to the nuclear-engineers, yet he himself is an icon among the Core community, Tone regularly admits and proves that he doesn't understand any code. Tone also regularly proves he doesn't understand the technology he backs at all to begin with, just watch any number of his own videos and or the World Crypto Networks videos to see his ignorance in action!
Anyway, I went off to locate this /r/BTC for their so called 'evidence' and spent a great amount of time reading over what the users had to say, heck they explained a lot of the Core explanations better than most of the Core supporters can/could. Big surprise, right? Reddit actually has technical people who can understand the code, who do discuss the code and people who CAN verify how crap it may or may not be, it shouldn't really be a huge surprise since Core devs do use Reddit too.
During the three days.....that I spent reading /r/BTC, bitcointalk.org and the hours upon hours that I spent reading into cryptography to just have a basic understanding of the encryption process and then searching the internet for explanations to things like wtf Lightning Network(LN) actually did. I ended up on a Medium post by WhalePanda..it was about how /r/BTC had been using bots to spread FUD inside /r/BTC about /r/Bitcoin and how bots were utilized in /r/Bitcoin also, you may have read it. I then reached the bottom of this post at which point I was greet with a GIF that he apparently wasn't going to use in the post, that which said to trust no-one. This gave me a red flag, it's a classic manipulation technique to tell people not to trust anyone, by doing so it gives you the apparent credibility boost in a persons mind and they are more likely to trust you, because you called it into question. It's the same as the technique that involves questioning someone else's loyalty so that they don't question yours. WhalePanda is also an icon in the Core community on Twitter. At the point of reading the Medium post, I had spent a week reading and researching bitcoin from the bitcointalk posts that spanned from Satoshi's first post to even his last, and then some for the other users. It was at this point that I finally thought: I should read the whitepaper so I know what is in it.
I was really surprised to find out that it was only an explanation of his/their vision for the network and how it could/would be implemented, I was hoping it would have technical details(maths excluded), so I was actually pretty disappointed by that fact and the fact I'd waited so long to read it.
At this point I was devastated by my lack of intelligence, I'd simply gone along with everything I was being told. I had even par-taken in the name-calling during April..I feel such shame for my first few months in Bitcoin politics.(Sorry, I started this yesterday, my train of thought is a little off..)
Soon after reading the whitepaper, I began to think things over, if Satoshi wanted a peer to peer currency that people could use without permission, why were we so happy about an upgrade that introduces a middle-man system? LN also creates a middle-man scenario if I'm not mistaken, please correct me if I am(someone will probably try..) .
Okay, now BitcoinCash, commonly regarded to as BCH within the /r/BTC community. is full of people who like me believed in the original vision set -out in Satoshi's whitepaper(knew the vision, didn't read it). They/I wanted a block-size increase, which isn't off the road-map first created, Satoshi himself said: "It can be phased in, like:
if (blocknumber > 115000)
maxblocksize = largerlimit
It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.
When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade."
For the full thread: " https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15139 ".
Now, my question to you is that if Satoshi had in fact six years ago had a way to implement this upgrade, and we have had hard-forks in the past to implement upgrades to the network, why was it denoted as such a bad thing? Back-logged transactions due to full blocks is as Roger Ver says: an issue that needs solving now. Things like malleability that is really an attack, not just a reoccurring issue on the network is something that can be fixed later.. This debate has been going on for around three or so years, maybe four. Had Core just implemented Satoshi's upgrade.. and then worked on malleability.. we wouldn't have had many of the issues we've had, nor would we be so obscure today, even with rapid adoption from countries around the world. Core themselves have told us that SegWit has been ready for use for just over a year, so why did they not just work on a way to hard-fork and fix the issues they say that SegWit could fix? During the time that Satoshi was 'knowingly' around and 'actively' working on the network, he was the only person to make changes to the network, it was a dictatorship, one that as we saw worked very well. You'd also think that Tone would be on board since he thinks only the experts should have a say on the dealings with the network technical aspects.
I used to tell people that the way Core did things was great, because it was true democracy, but ..really what has that gotten us? A civil war brought about by the inability to scale, which was brought about by the inability to upgrade the network with something they say will fix a lot of issues.
I enjoy consensus, but democracy is not consensus, and democracy was designed to give everyone a say..something Tone is against..remember, and it really doesn't work well in this setting. I will agree with Tone at the extent that not everyone that can vote, should vote, I mean just look at The United States of America's voting method(cheap shot, I know, but the point is valid). That being said, a lot of the community does understand, the only people who vote are those with a node set-up. So it's not really true democracy, or true consensus among users, it's only concurrences among node users. I'm surely not against node users, not at all, that would be ludicrous. my point is that if they have an upgrade that can solve a ton of issues on the network, why are they not implementing it? It's needed, it has been needed for awhile now, but they just sit around and don't use it.
If Core nodes: if you don't upgrade to the new code, you're not going to be running bitcoin anymore. People will upgrade! As BCH evidently did, they didn't want what Core offered and decided to go their own way(something they're taking a lot of flak for, right now)!
Hmm, I've not even spoken about the fee-market that Greg Maxwell implemented without asking the community, that second layer that SegWit 'fixes'. Oh, you haven't heard about that, yeah the issues that bitcoin is having that Core can't fix without SegWit from a consensus vote..all these issues where created by Core implementing their code without asking the community first, maybe that's why they're now only doing it via consensus?
(Now it's three days) Sorry, I got caught up with things like reading about things like: "BUIP010 (passed): Xtreme Thinblocks"
" https://bitco.in/forum/threads/buip010-passed-xtreme-thinblocks.774/ "
From what I have read and can tell, the BIP would allow nodes to request only the transactions that their node is missing per block, this would speed up the network considerably. I may also be wrong, please research it and let me(us all) know what you think.
Back the to fee-market. Okay, first off. here is a Reddit link that shows nulic(Greg Maxwell) talking about the fee market: " https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/42cxl9/xtreme_thinblocks/cza9ddu/ ". Please, do read the comments as they are both thought provoking and amusing.
(Four days, sorry..)
I'm very off-topic to what I wished to talk about, at this point. My original and main point though was: read everything, don't shy away because someone you don't like wrote it, or dismiss it immediately, read everything and think it over for yourself.
I don't like Core, I am very open and loud about that fact, I however still watch the World-Crypto-Network, albeit at a lower rate than before, but I nonetheless watch it when I can find time. We need to know the stories of both side before we can make judgement calls.
I know there's some holes in this article, but I really need to post this or it'll be a week long writing. I want you to do your research as soon as possible, I've given you a fair heads-up, now it's down to you.
Thanks for reading(Seriously..) . -XA-Promotions