On-chain Scaling Meeting: Is a Hard Fork Really Necessary?

On August 30, the On-Chain Scaling Conference returned to discuss many solutions for scaling the Bitcoin chain. Developer Jeff Garzik, Cornell University professor Emin Gün Sirer, and attorney Andrew Hinkes expressed their views on the potential for hard forks and the legal issues of managing blockchain protocols on-chain.

Jeff Garzik: Driving Innovation - How Scaling Problems Lead to Scaling Actions

(Jeff Garzik)

Jeff Garzik's speech was titled "Pushing the Envelope – How Scaling Leads to Scaling". He mentioned that there are many constraints in the development of the Bitcoin network, and Bitcoin itself is a dynamic system that requires regular maintenance. Now that the block capacity problem has emerged, we should take action.

Garzik also described the advancement of various technologies in different eras, such as the personal computer era, the Internet era, the smartphone era, and the upcoming decentralized era. The decentralized era has the characteristics of the Bitcoin protocol, including public application, trust transfer, automation, and immutability.

He explained that as the above technologies evolve, the differences between centralization and decentralization, or between Bitcoin's small blocks and large blocks, will intensify the conflicts between "economic participants."

Garzik then explained recent updates to the Bitcoin protocol, including accommodating dynamic fees by limiting the memory pool capacity, signature validation, compact block relay, Child Pays For Parent (CPFP), and CheckLockTimeVerify (CLTV). With the release of these updates, developers are also seeking consensus and considering some network upgrade issues, including forks.

He explained in detail how hard forks and soft forks abolish existing rules and add new ones. He said that the advantages and risks of hard forks coexist. For example, the Ethereum hard fork caused ETH and ETC to part ways, and users were also very confused and disappointed for a time. In the final analysis, the fork was too hasty.

Garzik concluded his speech with the characteristics of Segregated Witness. He believes that most people who choose Bitcoin economy also support the spirit of Bitcoin. He said that soft forks are not completely risk-free, and there is no need to reach a consensus to execute soft forks. Finally, Garzik said that in the long run, the time we spend on expansion issues will be costly, which will eventually affect users and related companies.

Emin Gün Sirer: Scaling Bitcoin for the Next Generation

(Emin Gün Sirer)

In his speech, Cornell University professor Emin Gün Sirer revealed a new protocol he is working on, called Bitcoin-NG (Next Generation). He did not mention the features of this protocol or the progress of the expansion code testing.

Bitcoin-NG is a Byzantine fault-tolerant blockchain protocol that creates the concept of microblocks. Professor Emin Gün Sirer prefers solutions like Bitcoin-NG, saying that solutions like the Lightning Network will only complicate the user experience.

For the Lightning Network, he expressed concerns about privacy, routing and user experience. As for Bitcoin-NG, he and his colleagues have experimented with the code and believe it can achieve optimal scaling, including network bandwidth, execution time and propagation time.

Sirer said NG has been tested several times, and a miniature replica of the Bitcoin blockchain has been demonstrated in simulation at Cornell University. He believes this is an exciting time for the industry. But he also worries that scientific solutions may not be the best path to solving Bitcoin's problems.

Andrew Hinkes: Legal issues surrounding forks

（Andrew Hinkes）

The last speaker was attorney Andrew Hinkes, who specializes in contract litigation, business torts, and electronic discovery.

Hinkes believes that users and stakeholders in the blockchain field should assume corresponding legal obligations.

Bitcoiners must learn lessons from the legal management of the Ethereum DAO and learn how the Ethereum community handled the situation.

Hinkes pointed to Ethereum.org’s legal agreement, which states that users must take responsibility for their own actions and the potential risks of other unofficial Ethereum networks.

But it is actually difficult for users to tell which ones are official and which ones are unofficial.

He also said that the DAO attacker could actually sue the Ethereum Foundation because the foundation took back his property through a hard fork. Although this sounds unethical, it is legally reasonable.

Finally, Hinkes shifted the topic from Ethereum to the Bitcoin protocol. He said that the block capacity debate is not a one-sided decision. On the contrary, he believes that if Bitcoin does hard fork, different branches will be formed, and a minority chain may exist for quite a long time.

However, hard fork is not the ultimate fate of Bitcoin. But in any case, change is inevitable.

He speculated that if user funds were lost, the fork would lead to some legal issues, but in fact no one in the Bitcoin ecosystem would be held responsible. Since the Bitcoin network is not controlled by any developer or company, the chances of legal issues are low. This is different from Ethereum, because Ethereum is manipulated by someone inside, which can easily lead to legal issues.

Summary of the on-chain expansion meeting

In general, all three speakers expressed rich views on hard forks and on-chain scaling solutions.

It seems that we can conclude from the speeches of the three speakers that a hard fork of the Bitcoin network is necessary and there is no need to worry too much. A hard fork will include different methods of executing different codes and possible legal issues.