Thoughts on BU vs Segwit

[rogerver]

Segregated witness provides a few main benefits:
1. Fixes transaction malleability
2. Fixes quadratic hashing issue
3. Saves some block space by separating the signatures.

All of those things are useful improvements to Bitcoin, but none of them are urgent in regards to the scaling debate, and Segwit certainly isn’t the only way to achieve them.
BU has fixes for all of those issues on the roadmap, but doesn’t view them as priorities.
I agree with this assessment.

A good analogy would be someone who hasn’t had anything to eat for several days, but also needs a haircut.
Any sane person knows that having something to eat should take priority over the hair cut.

Segragated witness is the haircut.
BU is having something to eat.

Also note that: BU is currently much closer to activation than Segwit, so if anyone is blocking anything, Segwit supporters are blocking BU.

[chopstick]

At this point, I really don't trust anything coming from Blockstream. Their intentions simply cannot be trusted.

Segwit, IMO should never be allowed to activate.

We need to push for a total & complete BU victory.

One can only wonder how far the price has been held down @ 1mb blocks and if so much marketshare had not flooded into altcoins, I'd wager that with an increased blocksize we would have already been in the 2K per bit range by now.

[lethos3]

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[rogerver]

This tweet seemed to stir things up a bit. It would be good for more people to make their voice heard:
https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/839814062003253248

[Rmcdermott927]

I think many people are at the point where they don't even care which solution wins in the end, they just want something and want it now; myself included.

Also, there is a lot of misinformation being thrown around on both sides of the fence, so many are unclear as to which is the better solution.

[Thetamind]

Honestly, this whole Segwit vs BItcoin Unlimited battle, has me terrified for the future of bitcoin. I don't even trust my investments in it like I used to. I feel this argument, and the winner of the argument, will destroy bitcoin and make it worthless. I may be wrong. I am novice to crypto currencies, and to bitcoin, so my opinion is naive. However,from everything I've read, both of them scare me. If bitcoin isn't currently able to handle a high volume of users and transactions, and no one can come to a decision on what to do about it, it kind of gives off the impression of flogging a dead horse. Is bitcoin dead and we just don't know it yet? I am starting to think so. I would very much like to see a magical solution rise up, that makes everyone happy, and keeps bitcoin in one piece, but that doesn't appear to be the case. Big changes are coming in the future, and that makes its future extremely uncertain. As a result of this, I have already moved some of my bitcoin investment into other currencies. Like Dash. Until the bitcoin train can change tracks, I believe it will run out of track in the future, and it's going to take a lot of people and a lot of money with it. My intuition is ringing danger ahead. Especially if the ETF is approved and everyone begins jumping on board the train, making it's scalability and block size issues a very big and noticable problem. I don't believe segwit or BU are the solution, I think they are a whole new set of problems, that BItcoin cannot sustain right now, at the height of its popularity. I believe this war, is going to produce no victors. I do not believe bitcoin needs to be fixed, I believe it needs to be kept as it is, and used as it is, while being integrated with bigger and better systems in place to be compatible with bitcoin. After this ETF, I will be looking at moving all of my investments out of bitcoin, as I do not like this uncertainty. I really don't want to, I think bitcoin could have an extremely promising future, if it didn't have this dark cloud looming over it. Bitcoin has the potential to soar, and I think it's only just getting off the ground. I'd hate to see it crash and burn, all over an argument in which neither side is right. It seems kinda silly doesn't it?

[chopstick]

Honestly, this whole Segwit vs BItcoin Unlimited battle, has me terrified for the future of bitcoin.

No great battle was ever won by doing nothing.

Doing nothing will almost certainly doom Bitcoin's future.

Your suggestion to leave Bitcoin as-is and hoping *everything will be fine*, is just plain silly.

[Thetamind]

No you're not understanding what I meant.

Nobody knows what will happen if BU or SG is activated. No one knows. It could potentially destroy it.

I think bitcoin doesn't need to be changed. However, other currencies can interact with it and use it as is. My idea before, made sense to me, but again, im a novice, and really dont know what I'm talking about. My idea, is to use bitcoin as a bank, and to use another crypto as cash. So people store the cash they don't use, and aren't using in bitcoin. Bitcoin retains its value, and people have security in keeping their money in bitcoin. When they need money, they withdraw it to another crypto, like dash for example. They then use dash to trade it like cash, p2p, decentralized and anonymous.... They then buy bitcoin with the dash they no longer use, to store it for the longer term, and take more out when needed. Essentially turning bitcoin into the online bank of the world. People can still use it to transfer money if they want, but it's no longer the primary means of doing so. This would keep the scalability of bitcoin within reason, fees low, and a team effort with another crypto to bring about a financial revolution the world has never seen. Bitcoins legacy and revolution will still be 100% valid, it's just going to be bitcoin, and another crypto that did it. Youtube and facebook and instagram, all teamed up, I see peoples instagram photos all the time on fb and i dont have an instagram account.... Bitcoin and another crypto, can team up, work together, and make it easy for everyone.

[torusJKL]

When I started with bitcoin in 2011 and read the white paper I was fascinated by the idea of having every transaction on-chain and the immutability.
These are 2 key properties for me in bitcoin.

I still believe that as much as possible should be on-chain (although I can understand that for some applications this is not feasible).
This is why I'm running a BU full node and I am mining on a pool that supports BU.

But I think that if others want to do transaction off-chain we, the on-chain supporters, should not be the judges and let them do that in addition.
Both solutions are not mutually exclusive and as a community we should be focused in allowing additional technologies instead of prohibiting them (as long as they don't interfere with the existing ones).
Thus instead of this threads title "BU vs SegWit" I would love to see more "BU and SegWit".

I think first order of operation is to enlarge the block size as soon as possible to let some steam off but immediately thereafter activate SegWit or something similar to enable the off-chain technologies in parallel.

[eddy1337]

At this point, I really don't trust anything coming from Blockstream. Their intentions simply cannot be trusted.

Segwit, IMO should never be allowed to activate.

We need to push for a total & complete BU victory.

One can only wonder how far the price has been held down @ 1mb blocks and if so much marketshare had not flooded into altcoins, I'd wager that with an increased blocksize we would have already been in the 2K per bit range by now.

I agree with some of what you are saying. But i am not very keen to change the core protocol in bitcoin just because of some issues.. A good analogy here could be that if you where hungry and you would be less hungry and still get to cut your hair, and you can eat later because you have to share with all the others that also went without food in many days.. Lol.. My point being that we cant take any big decisions just because we dont have a better solution..

A simple solution would of course be to make an offchain confirming network that could verify confirmations before they are confirmed at the regular chain. This would not affect anyone just using bitcoin as usual and wont need to change a thing.. Different vendors could have different verifiers.. Like Visa/Mastercard or paypal for Fiat money!

Remember if we put block size at 8mb. Most blocks will probably prioritize to mine as big as possible as they can confirm more transaction and get more fees.

With higher fees we also get less micropayments(which in the big picture not counts for much) and altcoins will get more traction and give bitcoin even more traction.. Also not everyone on this earth have internet that is fast enough for 8mb each 10 min.. (that is just downlad) if you run a node your internet will skyrocket! just now i got 178mb down, 8GB up in 12 hours or so.. So 8gb x 8 would be 64gb in 12 hours.. Think before spamming the blockchain with big blocks please! (An maximum of 2 or 3 mb blocks, rest have to be solved another way!)

[lethos3]

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[torusJKL]

Remember if we put block size at 8mb. Most blocks will probably prioritize to mine as big as possible as they can confirm more transaction and get more fees.

That is not necessarily true.
Bigger blocks mean it will take them longer to propagate though the network.
If a few seconds after a miner has found a 8MB block another miner found a 1mb block chances are that the 1MB block will propagate faster and will be accepted by the majority before the 8MB block.

Because of this the miners will have to weight benefit (more fees) against risk (propagate time) and thus will not create the biggest possible block just because they can.