Why should we resolutely oppose Core's soft fork Segregated Witness? Jiang Zhuoer, who has invested tens of millions of real money in the mining industry, will tell you the answer!

In "Why Support Segregated Witness, BTCC COO Tells You the Answer!", BTCC COO Mr. Miao Yongquan used the method of stealing the concept and only talked about Segregated Witness, avoiding the real focus of the controversy - Core's roadmap after Segregated Witness. This made me feel that it is necessary to write a special article to clarify what Mr. Miao Yongquan avoided talking about.

1. The real focus of the dispute: Core’s roadmap

Mr. Miao Yongquan talked a lot about the benefits of Segregated Witness in the article, and then accused the expansionists of "provoking political struggles" by opposing Core. But the fact is that the expansionists also support Segregated Witness and Lightning Network. What the expansionists oppose is Core's roadmap - implementing Segregated Witness in the form of a soft fork, and then permanently limiting the block to 1MB, turning the main chain into a remittance settlement network like SWIFT, and driving daily transactions to the Lightning Network through high fees of hundreds of yuan on the main chain .

Why is Core's roadmap wrong? The logic is simple (yes, I'm going to talk about logic again:) - more is better than less, one more path is better than one less path .

"I think I am right, so I deprive you of your power" is a very dangerous view . How dangerous is it? The deaths of millions and tens of millions of people in red regimes in various countries are ultimately the result of this view. Why did the Big Leap Forward kill tens of millions of people unprecedentedly? Because farmers were deprived of the right to migrate by strict grassroots organizations and household registration systems. In the past, they could escape during famines, but now they can't move without a road permit ("Historical Silhouette: Road Permits"). If the higher-ups conceal the truth, they can only die.

Who can guarantee that they are right? What if they are wrong? Who can be held responsible for the tens of millions of people who died?
Can Core guarantee that it is right? What if it is wrong? What power does Core have to deprive me of the right to use the main chain? Can Core be held responsible for the collapse of Bitcoin?

2. Fragile Lightning Network

The second-layer network, the Lightning Network, can only serve as an auxiliary to the main chain and can never replace the main chain. The large nodes (large operators) of the Lightning Network have very obvious advantages in capital efficiency and operation. It is very naive to expect the Lightning Network to always maintain N small nodes and a group of small fish and shrimps. The Matthew effect definitely exists, and the big fish eating the small fish is also certain to happen. The Lightning Network will eventually form a monopoly of several giants such as Alipay/WeChat Pay. What is the point of talking about "decentralization" at this time?

A while ago, there were rumors that "domestic trading platforms would be restricted from transferring Bitcoin to overseas platforms," ​​and everyone laughed when they saw it. But if all transactions were run on the Lightning Network monopolized by giants, would you still be able to laugh?

Lightning Network operators cannot confiscate your Bitcoin, but they can require you to do a compliance audit under government laws. Do you want to say that you don’t need it anymore and go back to the main chain? Core has already thought about it for you. The 1M block can only accommodate large-value Lightning Network settlement transactions, and the handling fee will only rise to the SWIFT level. At that time, the handling fee for a transaction is 500 yuan. Will you use it? Or will you use it?

3. Dangerous Soft Fork Segregated Witness

Core implements Segregated Witness through a soft fork and relies on deceiving old nodes to achieve forward compatibility, which poses huge technical risks and will incur heavy technical debt.

Core needs to deceive old nodes and make them look as if nothing has changed even though the underlying data structure has changed. The difficulty is equivalent to creating the twisted hand in the picture. The technical risks and the technical debt that will be incurred in the future are self-evident. It is conceivable how difficult it will be to do further development on this twisted hand.

Why would Core developers say that "the Segregated Witness soft fork modifies almost every line of Bitcoin code"? (Although the original intention was to show off their workload)
Why is it that the Segregated Witness soft fork, which should have been released in April 2016 and launched in July according to the Hong Kong Roundtable, has only been released in November now, under the huge pressure from the consensus protocol and miner pools?
Because what Core was trying to create was a twisted hand like the one in the picture.

The increase in system complexity will inevitably lead to a decrease in stability. What is the price of eth's so-called "Turing completeness"? After four or five consecutive hard forks, a large number of nodes were attacked and crashed .
Can Bitcoin, as a financial system in official use with a market value of tens of billions of dollars, pay such a price? Can Core be held responsible for this?

4. More than enough block capacity

If the current network cannot support blocks larger than 1MB, then Core’s restriction on block size is understandable, but what is the actual situation? Even Chinese mining pools that are blocked by the firewall believe that 8MB block size is acceptable (June 2015 "Mining Pool Technology Seminar - Block Size Expansion Draft")

Compared with Core, which says "I am your father, I make the decision for you", Bitcoin Unlimited is not so arrogant and condescending:

① How to determine the block size? Let the mining pool responsible for packaging the block decide. No more than half of the mining pools will vote for a block that is too large to exceed the network load (otherwise the mining pool will suffer high orphan block losses)

② How to determine the transaction fee? Let the market decide. If the network really cannot bear too large a block, then when the mining pool has limited block space, the transaction fee will rise to the market equilibrium point.

③ Should we use the Lightning Network? Let the transaction fee decide. If the network cannot accommodate large blocks, and the Lightning Network is fast and cheap, then why don’t people use it with high transaction fees?

Although I don’t think ② will happen—I used a 56K modem when I was in junior high school, and now I use a 200M fiber, which is still 150 yuan/month, but the capacity has increased by 4,000 times—I have no objection to ③. Core believes that ② is bound to happen, so "I am your father, I will make the decision for you", I will first help you castrate the main chain transactions and help you decide that future transactions must go through the Lightning Network .

Why is there such a rush? Is Core the god or is the market the god? Or is it because Core’s godfather Blockstream has set the standards for the Lightning Network?

5. Who is responsible for the security of Bitcoin?

Core broke the big toy of Bitcoin, what are the consequences? Just pat your butt and leave. With so many Internet companies, can't there be a glorious "former Bitcoin developer"?

Only miners, who have invested a lot of real money and a lot of sunk costs in the Bitcoin system and cannot sell all of their money in a few minutes like the holders, are qualified to be responsible for the security of Bitcoin . Mt.Gox exchange will suppress the price of Bitcoin due to the loss of coins, hoping that the price of Bitcoin will fall. Miners only hope that Bitcoin will develop, that the number of Bitcoin users will increase, and that the price of Bitcoin will rise.

I can responsibly conclude in advance that Core's soft fork segregated witness will never be activated. It is not a matter of the 95% threshold. Even if it is 75% or even 51%, it will never be activated.
Why am I so sure? Because I am a member of a mining pool and a miner, and I have invested tens of millions of real money in mining.
Don't agree? Please invest.

In the rolling wheel of history, there are always some people who will be nailed to the pillar of shame in history forever.

Expansion & Bull Market Series:

January 22, 2016: [Bitcoin faces a critical choice] We urge all holders to support the 2MB expansion.]
March 11, 2016: [Basic Science] Can Bitcoin support all human transactions?
June 26, 2016: "4,000 yuan is the beginning of the Bitcoin bull market"
October 15, 2016: [Completely end the debate between hard and soft forks] Safe hard forks are soft fork expansions
October 20, 2016: "On the Correct Approach to Bitcoin Upgrading (and Refuting ahr999's "Consensus Rules")"
October 29, 2016: "Pouring cold water on Zcash - With Deep Black, does the market really need Pure Black?"
November 4, 2016: "Beware of Exchange Risks Under Tightened Foreign Exchange Regulation"