NY SegWit2x signers can mine Bitcoin Cash without breaking their word (an open letter to miners)

[torusJKL]

This is a cross post of my post on reddit.


This is my attempt of an open letter to the miners that signed the NY agreement in May and miners who think that SegWit2x is the saver way to scale on-chain.


I get the feeling that you see yourselves obligated to stick with SegWit2x and continue mining on its chain because you singed the Bitcoin Scaling Agreement at Consensus 2017.

You are not obligated to do so.

Here is what you signed to do:
- Activate Segregated Witness at an 80% threshold, signaling at bit 4
- Activate a 2 MB hard fork within six months

Although it does not say so, it implies that this needs to happen on the bitcoin chain which has since transformed to the SegWit2x chain.
But it does not say that you need to mine the SegWit2x chain indefinitely.

Nobody could expect from you to keep the miners running if it is not in your economic interest. You could just turn them off and nobody would say that you broke the agreement.

Switching to the Bitcoin Cash chain is the same.
In a way you are shutting your miners on the SegWit2x chain off.
You don't block SegWit activation and you don't block the 2x HF down the road.

Meaning you do not break the agreement or lose face in doing so.


You might want to stay on SegWit2x because of economic reasons.
But you are not considering that the economy will follow the hashrate.
Every BTC owner will own BCC. They will not lose any money if the majority hashpower will switch to Bitcoin Cash.

And in the long run Bitcoin Cash will give miners more profit then SegWit2x thus it is in your interest to switch.


When you signed the agreement in May I thought the SegWit and small blockers advocates would be happy. They got 100% of SegWit and we the big blockers made a huge compromise in going down from originally GB sized blocks with BIP101 to a mere 2MB with no additional increase in the future.

This was an appeasement towards the UASF and Core advocates and giving them way more weight and say than they should have received. Because it looks as if at many (if not on every) conference they are a minority.

But we immediately saw that it had no effect. UASF was going forward nevertheless and even now while having 100% of the blocks voting for SegWit they are still not happy and already plan the future without the 2x HF.

Unfortunately your appeasement did not work.

The SegWit2x path until the November HF will be full of hate, FUD, lies, etc.


I have seen the recent interview with Roger Ver. He looked tired, angry and disappointed. I understand him.

What I don't understand is why he (and maybe you) keep fighting an up hill battle against censorship and Core sheep on their terms when there is a way out.


By moving your hashpower to Bitcoin Cash you change the terms by
* showing that hashpower defines the rules (1 CPU 1 vote)
* showing that enough is enough
* leaving the FUD behind and let the small blockers have their SegWit chain with RPi nodes
* finally getting back on track with scaling bitcoin as it should have been done back in 2016
* not fearing the HF and lay the grounds of many more to come and thus keeping bitcoin competitive


We had XT, Classic, BU and we got closer every time.

On August 1st we have ABC (giving us Bitcoin Cash) and it is time to break free.

Please move your hashpower to Bitcoin Cash and make bitcoin what it was always supposed to be. In return secure your future and profit with more on-chain transactions and fees then you will ever get with the proposed L2 road map and self-crippling soft fork upgrades.

Thank you!


edit: fixed some typos

[rogerver]

Thank you for posting this here.
You make some very compelling arguments.
I will discuss this internally with the other Bitcoin.com team members and decide what to do.