Breadwallet CEO: Support Bitcoin Core's expansion roadmap, but Bitcoin needs a hard fork

(Photo: Aaron Voisine, CEO of Breadwallet)

The “scaling roadmap” proposed by Bitcoin Core developer Gregory Maxwell has been signed off by mobile Bitcoin wallet Breadwallet.

In an interview with Bitcoin Magazine, Breadwallet CEO and co-founder Aaron Voisine also emphasized that breaking the Bitcoin block size limit needs to be accomplished through a hard fork, and it is better to do it sooner rather than later.

“I’m concerned that hard forks are becoming increasingly difficult. We should find sustainable scaling solutions as soon as possible,” Voisine said.

The block size controversy, which made headlines in mid-2015, concerns the trade-off between the Bitcoin network’s processing power and decentralization.

In order to increase the number of possible transactions, Maxwell's roadmap (supported by a majority of developers) effectively adds additional optimizations within a limited block size increase. Importantly, this plan relies heavily on Bitcoin Core developer Pieter Wuille's Segregated Witness proposal, and therefore does not require a hard fork of the Bitcoin network.

“I am excited about the SegWit proposal and Breadwallet will support it as soon as it is available,” Voisine told Bitcoin Magazine. “However, I am a little concerned that it may delay the implementation of the hard fork, which I believe is still necessary. It is important to increase the block size of Bitcoin as soon as possible to enable Bitcoin to become a major currency and maintain an acceptable user experience.”

As such, Voisine agrees with the view recently raised by Jeff Garzik and Gavin Andresen, two prominent Bitcoin Core developers, who have suggested that the Bitcoin block size limit should be increased in order to maintain Bitcoin's current low fee policy. Garzik and Andresen argue that if Bitcoin blocks are allowed to fill up, this would constitute a fundamental shift in Bitcoin's economics, which in turn could harm Bitcoin companies and drive users away from the Bitcoin network.

“The risks of not increasing the block size limit are far greater than the centralization risks mentioned,” said Voisine. “Some developers strongly prefer to maintain the status quo when it comes to the rules of the network, without considering that the behavior of the network will change radically if the rules are not changed as usage increases. With billions of dollars of equity value in the Bitcoin system, it is important to take a conservative approach and maintain the current behavior of the network in the face of growing usage.”

According to Maxwell’s bitcoin scalability roadmap, in the future, most transactions are not recorded on the bitcoin blockchain, but are built on a dependency layer that some developers believe can provide most of the benefits of “on-chain” transactions, but with some additional fees.

However, this concept is not what Breadwallet wants.

“These additional layers are interesting research projects, but the Bitcoin network needs to stand on its own,” Voisine said. “It would be unwise to make Bitcoin’s future dependent on other networks whose decentralization, security and stability have not been fully researched and tested, or even implemented yet.”

Instead, Voisine believes that Bitcoin’s decentralization should be optimized through protocols such as Segregated Witness and others. The Breadwallet CEO is particularly excited about the proposal for Fraud Proofs, which would greatly increase the security of SPV clients (or “light wallets”) such as Breadwallet.

While SPV clients are still not as secure as full node clients, Voisine believes that the fee policies of miners and individual nodes will ensure that the Bitcoin network is protected from attackers.

Original article: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/breadwallet-ceo-aaron-voisine-we-support-core-s-scalability-road-map-but-bitcoin-does-need-a-hard-fork-1452545148
By Aaron van Wirdum
Translator: Satuoxi
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/breadwallet-hardfork)