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Comment by oskarth | Hacker News Reader

> The fork failed so spectacularly

Really? How do you quantify this? Most people who are pro big blocks felt it went well (r/btc) and it'll take a while to make it profitable for miners to mine it. Many people who are against big blocks thought it'd immediately dive to $1, which is 1/200 of where it is currently at. It also seems like many pro-Blockstream people would dump Bitcoin Cash regardless, just because they don't believe in the rationale for it (r/bitcoin threads about how to sell Bitcoin Cash w/o analysis).

You could argue about market liquidity etc, but 4B market cap is hardly a failure. This doesn't mean it is a success. It is more accurate to call it undecided for the time being. To call it a failure is definitely premature and uncharitable, though.

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> people who are pro big blocks [...] > people who are against big blocks

Please don't play up this narrative unnecessarily. It's an easy narrative, but it's also wrong and misses important things about governance and identity. It makes it sound like the Segregated Witness proposal, which won supermajority support on the development list, does not increase block size (which it does, just in a backwards compatible way).

It has been known for quite some time that apart from a bug in the software, that could destroy value in an instant, the biggest challenge will be managing an open source project in the face of competing interests. It's the first time the IETF governance model meets fintech, and if Bitcoin continues to grow it will make the patent drama round rtcweb look like child's play.

> pro-Blockstream people

This is also simplifying beyond what's reasonable. Bitcoin is an open source project. There is a mailing list. You can join it.

It's not always roses and civilized technical discussion, but every argument can be heard out and there are enough people lurking the sidelines to act as a guard against abuses of power.

The Blockstream narrative plays down the contributions of Lau, Lopp, Lombrozo and dozens of others which do a lot of the development and release management of the software.

Using the Blockstream narrative to dismiss contradictory ideas is basically how r/btc maintains their belief it's a success. It's been very entertaining watching them seize on every big block as proof the "small-blockers" are wrong that nodes couldn't keep up even though the overall transaction rate is actually a small fraction of Bitcoin's right now and arguing that the price going up was a sign that everyone claiming they'd dump their BCH was lying back when no exchanges were accepting deposits.

Also, as you point out big block isn't really the defining characteristic of the Bitcoin Cash fork since in principle Bitcoin is having a block size increase in the near future too. The bigger difference is ripping out the SegWit fix for transaction malleability, with the stated intention of making Lightning Network off-chain payments which require malleability to be fixed not work. In an interesting attack of irony, the ViaBTC exchange (one of its main proponents) just has to stop withdrawals because transaction malleability was breaking them: https://twitter.com/ViaBTC/status/893744282087047168

> The bigger difference is ripping out the SegWit fix for transaction malleability,

Sure, and as ironic as it may be that BCH deposits was malleability attacked earlier today, I still don't think it is a good idea to focus on the technical features of these forks. Who is behind the fork is more interesting than what is in the fork.

This is not a conflict among developers, with a few notable exceptions. This is a governance conflict. That is why the conflict is not very visible in the developer community, but rather outside in social media.

The open source project is a multi stakeholder model which can be very foreign to people who consider themselves influential. In many ways it looks more like academia than a corporation. Everyone would like the developers on their payroll, but no one wants to pay for it. Pretty much like academia, I suppose.

SegWit is not just a malleability fix. Bitcoin Cash removed SegWit but they do plan to fix malleability and enable second-layer scaling solutions; they just don't like arbitrarily limiting on-chain scaling to force second-layer adoption, or using complicated solutions when simpler ones will do.

One source: this interview with a dev of the main Bitcoin Cash client: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/future-bitcoin-cash-int...

It's not just a narrative. There are multiple sub-communities and they have radically different worldviews. The fact that BCH exists is one proof of that.

This quite real and significant divergence of worldviews is one of the biggest challenges that civilization faces, and, I believe, is also the primary thing holding back wider deployment of innovative technologies, rather than technical or financial limitations.

This is not to say that people shouldn't have different views. But identities are tied up together with communities and the general belief system that goes with them. It's just human nature and no technology is immune to it.

The market cap figure is meaningless precisely because of the lack of liquidity. You could make your own bitcoin clone, put it up for trade at some unknown exchange for $1000 and claim that you have a $17B "successful fork".

Market cap is a somewhat flawed metric, I agree, and it should not be looked at in isolation.

The daily volume tells you that Bitcoin Cash is traded (or maybe dumped?) quite a bit. It's volume is about that of LTC currently which really is not too shaby.

Don't forget that Bitcoin Cash was an as friendly fork as possible. I don't think anybody realistically expected that it would overtake Bitcoin right away. I'm not even sure if the initiators expect it to overtake Bitcoin at all. In a slightly conspiracy theoristic view, it might just have been a rehearsal for if the 2X part of Segwit2X doesn't happen and a hostile takeover might be tried.

Cryptocurrencies don't easily die and so far, Bitcoin Cash is doing okay. Calling it a failure at this point is premature.

What does Blockstream have to do with anything?

Very little. They are just used as a boogieman to focus the narrative of those who don't agree with the path toward layered scaling or who have an ulterior motive to cause conflict within the community

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