Gavin Andresen made his first public visit to the Chinese community and talked about the development path of Bitcoin

Besides Satoshi Nakamoto, Gavin Andresen is probably one of the most watched figures in the Bitcoin community. This is even more true after Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared. In 2014, Gavin Andresen resigned from the position of Bitcoin developer leader and became the chief scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation. In 2015, he joined MIT's Media Lab and continued to work on Bitcoin. On April 21, 2016, Beijing time, with the cooperation of many parties, Gavin Andresen and Chinese Bitcoin community users held an online AMA across half the world in the 8BTC community (8btc.com).

This was the first time that Gavin publicly answered questions from Chinese community users. Undoubtedly, this AMA attracted unprecedented attention from the Chinese community. In addition to a more in-depth discussion on the long-debated Bitcoin development path, Chinese community users also raised more extensive and interesting questions: his trip to Beijing at the end of March, his relationship with Blockstream, and some personal issues such as how to balance Bitcoin and family. Gavin answered them one by one in detail.

Expansion controversy: just a difference of priorities

“I think it’s just a matter of priorities and risk-benefit assessments,” Gavin has repeatedly answered questions about the expansion controversy.

The debate over the development path of Bitcoin has been going on for a year, and the community was arguing fiercely. This time, Gavin gave detailed answers to all questions based on facts, speculations, and conspiracy theories.

“BIP109 does not start the hard fork when it reaches 75%, but starts the hard fork 28 days after the 75% consensus is reached – so when the hard fork occurs, the computing power on the branch chain should be close to 0. So the so-called branch chain does not exist.”

When someone suggested that the BIP109 (Classic) solution would have a hard fork at 75%, and that the 3:1 hashrate ratio would bring the risk of a split, Gavin responded like this:

“In March 2013, Bitcoin unexpectedly forked, and panic selling occurred in the market, and the price fell from $48 to $37 within a few hours. But the various mining pools quickly reached an agreement and selected the main chain. The problem was solved in 24 hours, and a week later, the price rose to more than $60.

From the experience of the last two consensus forks, once the consensus reached 75%, the remaining miners switched to the majority chain very quickly. In the last soft fork, it took only one week to go from 75% to 95%. So I believe that once the hash rate support reaches 75%, all the remaining miners will upgrade, not to mention that BIP109 (Classic) gives those miners 28 days. No miner is willing to produce a block that the network does not accept. "

Users in the Chinese community directly expressed that the code update frequency of Classic is much lower than that of Core. One of the reasons for not supporting Classic is that the technical team of Classic cannot undertake the subsequent development tasks of Bitcoin. Gavin replied:

“Classic is just a 2MB patch to Core, so we can update the code less frequently. The priority of the Classic team is to improve Classic as much as possible , so that developers are more willing to choose to develop for Classic instead of Core, and at the same time attract more developers. You should see some results in this regard in a month or two .

At the same time, he advocates that any capable developer can join the development of Bitcoin.

“One of the great things about open source software is that if you think the development team isn’t good enough (or you think they’re going in the wrong direction), you can always take the existing source code and hire a better team to improve it.
I welcome capable developers from anywhere to help develop Bitcoin open source software, including China. Whether it is developing Classic, Core, Unlimited, bitcore, btcd, ckpool, p2pool, or bitcoinj. ”

Beijing Conference Confirmed

Earlier, it was reported that on March 30, representatives from Coinbase, 21 Inc, Blockchain.info, OKCoin, Antpool, F2pool, BTCC, haobtc and KNC attended a closed-door meeting in Beijing. This meeting may affect the progress of the expansion route implementation. Gavin was also present. The specific details of the meeting were not made public, but the trip to Beijing was also confirmed in this AMA:

“The purpose of the Beijing trip was to meet with some mining pool administrators and miners to understand their views on issues such as block size expansion, segregated witness, and block halving.
I didn’t say much, mainly clarifying some technical details about BIP109, and then explaining to them the views of Western companies of all sizes.”

Currently, the world's largest transactions and computing power are concentrated in China. There is no doubt that a considerable part of the problem is concentrated on the prediction of the mining situation and the expectation of Bitcoin prices.

“I’ve done some work to make Classic better for mining . But there’s no difference at this stage, so it would be dishonest to say that Classic or Core has a significant advantage.” He also explained that compared to the development path of Core dev, Classic’s vision is to support more transactions, pay a small fee for each transaction, and add up to high returns for miners.

“The current price reflects confidence. If people think Bitcoin will be more valuable in the future, they will buy and hold. Everyone knows about the halving, so in theory it won’t affect the current price. I think the successful expansion is a positive, because the more people can use Bitcoin, the more valuable the network will become.”

I respect and appreciate the contributions that Blockstream has made to Bitcoin.

As a company focusing on innovation in cryptocurrencies, Blockstream launched a beta version of the sidechain in 2015 and announced its first commercial product, Liquid. Another project, the Lightning Network, has also attracted much attention recently. Blockstream's chairman, Adam Back, has undoubtedly become an important figure in this protracted expansion dispute. It is very interesting that although Adam Back signed the "Expansion Consensus" at the Hong Kong Roundtable in February this year as the chairman of Blockstream, there are still different opinions on the development path of Bitcoin within Blockstream.

Talking about his views on Blockstream, Gavin said:

“Blockstream is an interesting company with a lot of people who disagree and are very stubborn. It’s possible that they will never agree on scaling.
I think everyone at Blockstream wants Bitcoin to succeed, and I respect and appreciate the contributions the people at Blockstream have made to Bitcoin.
However, we have major differences in priorities. I think the risk of raising the block cap immediately is minimal, and I see that individuals and companies are deterred from Bitcoin by the current cap and are investing in other assets (such as Ethereum and private chains). Although the risks to Bitcoin are still unknown, I think these risks must be greater than the risks of raising or removing the block cap. ”

Gavin believes that the fate of a company has no direct relationship with which path Bitcoin will eventually take . "I don't think the fate of Blockstream depends on whether BIP109 is adopted. The fate of the company depends more on whether it can find customers willing to pay for the technology it has developed."

Likewise, if the hashrate is successfully maintained at Core in 2018, the companies that currently support Classic the most, such as Coinbase, Bitpay, and Blcokchian.info, will not be hit hard. Gavin believes that "companies like Kraken support other currencies (Kraken supports Litecoin and Ethereum); more companies will 'hedge their bets' by supporting other currencies that have simple roadmaps to support more transactions."

Segregated verification soft fork, sidechain technology, lightning network

“The best way to verify whether something can succeed is to let the public try it themselves. Maybe many things will fail, but as long as some of them succeed, it’s not a problem.” In Gavin’s opinion, SegWig is a great idea.

“And it’s a little easier to do with a hard fork than with a soft fork (because it’s better to put the merkle root for witness data in the block header rather than in the transaction). But the overall design is good.
I think sidechains are a great idea, but the main problem is how to ensure their security. I think the best sidechain model is to publish "write-only" public information in Bitcoin. For example, I would like to see exchanges try to put buy and sell orders on the sidechain and trade on the sidechain because the sidechain can guarantee the security of these transactions. In this way, customers can verify that each transaction is executed as it is, and no one can do anything shady. "

The implementation of the Lightning Network does not require a hard fork. It is not complicated to implement it at the Bitcoin protocol level, but the difficulty lies in building a wallet that can correctly handle the Lightning Network: "I think the Lightning Network is great for some emerging payments (such as hundreds of payments per minute between machines), but I am skeptical about whether it can be used for payments on the Bitcoin network today, because it complicates wallets and makes it difficult for the public to understand."

Bitcoin is getting better in the best way I think

Gav is not shy about talking about his personal income sources and his Bitcoin holdings:

“The vast majority of my personal assets are in Bitcoin — far more than my financial advisors would have suggested.

My main job at MIT is to make Bitcoin better in whatever way I think is best. This is the same as my job at the Bitcoin Foundation. Sometimes I think writing code will make Bitcoin better, sometimes I think it's blogging about what I see and hear in the Bitcoin world, and sometimes it's traveling and talking to people.

My salary is paid by MIT Media Lab, and other than that I have no other regular income.

As a technical consultant, I occasionally receive small stock options from Bitcoin companies (Coinbase, BitPay, Bloq, Xapo, Digital Currency Group, CoinLab, TruCoin, Chain), which may be valuable one day if these companies develop very well. I also make it clear to these companies that my first priority is to make Bitcoin better, and the purpose of being their technical consultant is to understand the problems their companies face when promoting Bitcoin to customers.
In addition, I sometimes receive speaking fees (once or twice a year).”

The statement that “blockchain can be applied in all scenarios” will disappear in one or two years

Since the second half of last year, people have started to talk more about blockchain rather than Bitcoin. Regarding this phenomenon, Gavin said:

“My guess is that all this ‘blockchain can be used for everything’ stuff will die down in a year or two, and a lot of people will be disappointed.
Then in a few years we will see real applications of blockchain, probably quietly deployed in stock markets and foreign exchange exchanges and other places. Some will use the Bitcoin blockchain, some will not. Except for engineers, the average person will not pay attention to the difference. All in all, I think Bitcoin is likely to continue to expand, preferably with fewer surprises.
As for ‘we like blockchain’ rather than ‘we like Bitcoin’: I don’t have a strong opinion on that. I answered another question about private chains; I think they make sense for some use cases but not others.”

With the popularity of blockchain concepts and the recent price increase, Ethereum has received more attention. This is how Gavin views Ethereum:

“Most of the functionality of Ethereum can be implemented with Bitcoin’s multi-signature transactions, which is interesting. I haven’t seen a good application of Ethereum yet. I think Ethereum’s smart contracts can be designed to steal users’ funds, which would be a big problem because only a few people have the ability to identify a complex smart contract .”

How to balance family and work? The key is to learn to say "No"

Gavin, who will be 50 years old at the end of the year, is still writing code. As an important contributor to Bitcoin, how does he balance his life and work on Bitcoin? He answered:

“I’m trying to work less. I need more exercise and time with my family (my kids are going to college in a few years). I usually work five days a week, seven hours a day.
I have two children, a boy and a girl, both in their teens. The key to finding a balance between life and work is to say 'no' often. For example, 'I'm sorry, I can't come to your meeting in Botswana. '"

Started with an internal message

Like most people, Gavin was skeptical about whether Bitcoin was feasible when he first learned about it. Fortunately, he read as much information as possible about Bitcoin at the time, including the source code, and after that, he believed that Bitcoin had the potential to succeed and was not a scam.

In 2010, Gavin built a website called "Bitcoin Faucet" and distributed 5 bitcoins to each visitor. Later, he began to submit code to Satoshi Nakamoto. Finally, one day, Satoshi Nakamoto asked Gavin if he could put his email on the homepage of Bitcoin, and he agreed. Since then, Satoshi Nakamoto has retreated behind the scenes and Gavin has become the leader of the project. Now, he has stepped down from the position of Bitcoin development leader and served as the chief scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation to deal with broader Bitcoin issues.

Talking about his first contact with Satoshi Nakamoto, Gavin posted the first internal message he sent to Satoshi Nakamoto on the BitcoinTalk forum. Without this internal message a few years ago, Bitcoin might not have grown into what it is today:

“Hello Satoshi Nakamoto,
I want to contribute to the success of Bitcoin. I have already created a website: freebitcoins.appspot.com, and have several apps in the works.
But I think I could have played a bigger role in other ways. I was the lead architect of VRML 3D-graphics-on-the-web (which is still the mainstream approach, unfortunately), and the process of getting it standardized by ISO really annoyed me.
I’m curious about you - how old are you? Is Satoshi your real name? Do you have a full-time job? What projects have you been involved in before?
Anyway, Bitcoin is a grand plan, and I want to contribute. What can I do? "

We would like to thank Zhong Yin (cnLedger) for communicating with us during this AMA, and Gavin for his attention to the Chinese community. The online collaborative translation of the answer document is more than 50 pages, with a total of more than 34,000 words in Chinese and English, which took more than a week. We would like to thank Zhong Yin (cnLedger), kcb, pangcong, emusher, miner and other friends for their contributions to this event.