What is behind the controversial “fork” led by Gavin?

Last Sunday, two well-known Bitcoin developers made a controversial attempt to "fork" the Bitcoin software in an effort to solve Bitcoin's scalability issues. The "forked" software, called Bitcoin XT, is a patched version of Bitcoin Core. The two developers are former Bitcoin lead developer Gavin Andresen and former Google employee Mike Hearn. Gavin is the main person in charge of the Bitcoin XT code, while Hearn is responsible for reviewing and fixing software bugs.

It should be noted that this kind of "fork" is not what we call a real Bitcoin fork. The fork we often refer to is the fork of the blockchain. It is easy to understand that the original blockchain will be split into two starting from a certain block, becoming two parallel blockchains that do not interfere with each other.

The bifurcation of the blockchain is exactly what the two Bitcoin developers wanted, and the switch that triggers this result is the miners' vote, or 75% to be exact.

In Hearn's own words:

“By mining with Bitcoin XT, you generate a block with a new version number, which tells the rest of the network that you support larger blocks. When 75% of the blocks are new version blocks, then the decision is made to start generating larger blocks (greater than 1MB), which will be rejected by Bitcoin Core nodes.”

What does this mean? That is, when 75% of miners vote with their feet and say they support blockchain forking, then the blockchain will start to fork, and from then on, each party will go their own way. If Bitcoin XT does not receive enough "votes", then nothing will change, and everyone will still be playing in the same pond.

So, what is the current situation? There are currently 6123 full nodes in the network, of which 541 are Bitcoin XT, accounting for about 8.83% .

Why did this fork happen?

Simply put, it is caused by differences of opinion among developers.

Gavin's point is:

1. Bitcoin must be expanded, and the faster the better. Our network traffic analysis is professional.

2. We currently believe that a feasible solution requires upgrading through a fork.

3. What the opponents mentioned is not convincing. I have refuted them one by one, but you failed to convince me.

(The above are all conclusions drawn from Gavin’s article, not his original words.)

Mike Hearn directly pointed the finger at "a group of people". In his article "Why Bitcoin Must Fork", we can see that he is dissatisfied with the current development of Bitcoin. From his article, it is not difficult to see his complaints. He said:

The problem is that any change, no matter how obvious, can be completely vetoed if it becomes "controversial." With five maintainers, and many other non-maintainers who can also "dispute," a stalemate has been created. The fact that the block size was never permanent is no longer important: removing the block size limit itself is what is being debated. It's like a committee without a chairperson; the meetings never end. To quote one maintainer, "Bitcoin needs a leader like a fish needs a bicycle."

How to understand this sentence? It means that Gavin and I have worked so hard, but why is it completely rejected just because of some people's opposition? Seeing the results of their hard work completely rejected because of some developers' objections. They are not willing to accept it!

Then, in his article, Hearn pointed the finger at another group of people, saying:

“I don’t think this is an accident, but it is. Their view is that there shouldn’t be any alternative view to their decisions. Anyone who disagrees with them, for whatever reason, should be blocked forever… Then Bitcoin becomes their toy.”

This group of people refers to a group of people who have different development directions from Gavin and others, that is, the developers of side chains and lightning networks. Hearn himself said that the main conflict occurred here. Gavin and he did not agree with this direction, which was also one of the triggers of this "fork".

After the software "fork", Hearn said that Bitcoin XT followed the will of Satoshi Nakamoto, while sidechains and lightning networks were outliers. Then he changed the concept of the majority supporting expansion to support Bitcoin XT. The purpose was to canvass votes for Bitcoin XT. Of course, what was the effect? ​​I was quite disgusted anyway.

What do other developers think?

Core developer Peter Todd believes that the 75% threshold is too low, warning:

“For technical reasons, the 75% threshold is really low and could lead to a high risk of blockchain reorganization, and miners would take a big risk adopting this code,” he said, adding that the team behind the software is “unproven” and “inexperienced.”

Pieter Wuille, another Bitcoin Core developer, told CoinDesk that if the blockchain were to fork, then the ‘loser’ fork and the ‘winner’ fork would become a big issue:

“People can’t trade between the two forked chains, and all the tokens before the fork will become double (one on each chain), which is what Bitcoin is trying to prevent. Maybe it will succeed or fail, but I don’t think it’s worth taking the risk, even if it has advantages.”

Huge controversy

Such a "fork" has caused unprecedented controversy in the Bitcoin community. Opponents will say that Bitcoin XT is just a copycat coin and a joke! Bitcoin.org has banned discussions about Bitcoin XT, and yesterday, the moderator of Reddit r/Bitcoin, theymos, also modified the rules of the section, trying to ban discussions related to Bitcoin XT.

This also led to XT supporters to simply create a new community r/BitcoinXT. As of now, the number of subscribers to this section is 3,348.

In addition, someone used Satoshi Nakamoto’s account (last year, it was rumored that Satoshi’s email account was stolen) to post a note on the Bitcoin development mailing list:

“If two developers can fork Bitcoin and successfully redefine what Bitcoin is using populist tactics in the face of widespread technical criticism, then I have no choice but to declare the Bitcoin project a failure. Bitcoin should have both technical and humanistic soundness. The current development is very disappointing.”

Whether this person is the real Satoshi Nakamoto or a fake, someone is trying hard to prevent this fork from happening.

Now that Gavin and his team have taken this step, they will surely try to canvass votes for Bitcoin XT. As Hearn himself said:

“At this point, we think it’s plausible that Bitcoin XT could get majority approval, but it will probably take a lot of work.”

An internal "battle" within the Bitcoin community is unfolding...

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