Ethereum experts criticized Blockstream for not meeting community requirements and being unable to achieve expansion in the short term, which attracted criticism from the Bitcoin community

Recent statements made on social media by Taylor Gerring, technical director of Ethereum and former vice president of engineering at the Hive Bitcoin wallet, have sparked controversial discussions in various online Bitcoin communities.

Gerring wrote on Twitter, "Bitcoin needs to fork Blockstream. Their mission and goals are no longer aligned with the community," criticizing the behavior of Bitcoin Core developers for not meeting the needs of the Bitcoin network community and users. He specifically condemned the Blockstream team for its inability to research short-term expansion of the Bitcoin network, which is slowing down the network's growth.

“@Codiox their actions are not aligned with their stated goals. The community (including miners) is losing trust in Blockstream. — Taylor Gerring (@TaylorGerring) August 19, 2016”

Responding to criticism

In response to Gerring’s criticism, Bitcoin experts and Core developers, including Peter Todd, presented a series of arguments to prove that Gerring’s statement is contradictory. Todd explained that the Blockstream team is working on the scaling problem and has proposed several ideal solutions, including Bitcoin Core developer Matt Corallo’s block transmission solution, which is being created for on-chain scaling.

Bitcoin community members were quick to point out the irony in Gerring’s statement, saying the community’s trust in Blockstream is stronger than ever as the Ethereum Foundation and developers execute a hard fork to save the funds siphoned from the DAO network.

Computer scientist and hacker Andrew Desantis wrote:

“@TaylorGerring @Codiox Thank you for your transaction that reversed the hard fork. The community’s trust in Blockstream has reached a new level. — Andrew T. DeSantis (@desantis) August 19, 2016”

More supporters in the Bitcoin community are calling out Gerring's statement as an attempt to undermine the Bitcoin network and community, in a desperate attempt to legitimize the Ethereum Foundation's operations. However, a large portion of the Bitcoin community still disagrees with Blockstream's vision and long-term proposals. Various projects and groups, including /r/btcfork, have emerged in an attempt to scale the Bitcoin network in the short term.