Samson Mow, organizer of the expansion conference: Take action, this is the most important thing

On February 20, 2016, representatives from the Bitcoin industry and development community spent 18 hours signing an agreement at Hong Kong Cyberport. This was the final consensus reached after several months of intense debate on the expansion route.

According to the negotiation agreement, "core agreed to incorporate the hard fork to 2MB into the core framework. In exchange, Chinese miners also agreed to only run core, which is the biggest achievement of this consensus." In terms of time nodes, it is expected that the isolated witness will be released in April 2016; in July 2016, the hard fork code development will be completed and available for use; in July 2017, if it can get widespread support from the community, the hard fork will take effect. (For details, see "Consensus Interpretation")

Bitcoin core developers from all over the world, representatives from the five major mining pools, representatives from the four major exchanges, individuals and industry representatives witnessed and signed the consensus agreement. Some people think this is the best result that can be achieved under the current conditions, while others think that this consensus is meaningless. But community representatives sitting together and discussing some agreements may be more important than reaching a consensus.

BTCC COO Samson Mow was the initiator of this roundtable meeting. We were fortunate to have an exclusive interview with him shortly after the consensus was reached. He gave us a detailed interpretation of the impact of the expansion consensus and the subsequent doubts.

8btc: What do you think of the results of this expansion meeting?

Samson Mow: The most important thing about reaching consensus is that everyone sits together and discusses some agreements, which may be more important than this letter. Because it shows that everyone in the community, from miners to exchanges and companies to developers, wants to find a way to work together.

8btc: What impact does the current expansion consensus have on BTCC?

Samson Mow: The letter and the consensus reached are not a binding agreement. We have a path forward, but now it is up to everyone who attended the meeting and everyone who supports this consensus to lead everyone to agree to work together. For example, only five Bitcoin Core developers attended the meeting. They do not represent all developers, so they need to communicate with every Bitcoin Core developer to make them come to the same conclusion and agree to move forward based on the recommendations listed in the consensus. We met and drafted this letter, but it does not mean that the future will develop exactly as stated in the letter. As industry leaders, we need to communicate with others who did not attend the meeting and did not sign this statement.

8btc: Previously, you sent a discussion letter to community representatives about the expansion consensus, with the purpose of "reaching a consensus through negotiation", and we can also see the result - the newly reached expansion consensus. What were your considerations at the time?

Samson Mow: Behind the call for consensus is this debate, or war, that has been so painful for Bitcoin Core developers, the Bitcoin ecosystem, and the price of Bitcoin. We want to stop the quarrel and tell the world that Bitcoin has a future. We can reach a consensus and move forward.

8btc: Does BTCC have any plans to train its own Bitcoin developers and enhance its voice?

Samson Mow：Yes, we hope to contribute more to the Bitcoin Core project. We think it is very important for China to participate more in Bitcoin development and contribute to the project, rather than just asking the current Core team to work on it. There is still a lot to do and a lot of bugs to fix. We need everyone to believe that Bitcoin will continue to improve and actually support it, not just talk about it.

8btc: After the expansion meeting, what are BTCC’s recent development plans?

Samson Mow：After the meeting, the Bitcoin community must work together to draft a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal. But Segregated Witness will be released first. We will run Segregated Witness in April, and then in July when the hard fork code is developed, we will support the Bitcoin Core team to run it. In the meantime, we will only run Bitcoin Core compatible consensus systems. It is very important that everyone trusts each other, and by only running Core compatible forks, we show trust in them and encourage them to work. Too much time has been wasted on arguments before, and now we need the Core team to focus on their work.

8btc: Some people say that this consensus is meaningless. Someone in a foreign forum questioned: "After the first version was issued, Adam Back was protested by Blockstream employees, saying that he could not represent the opinions of the entire company. (Obviously, not everyone in the company agreed with this consensus) So he was asked to sign in his personal capacity." So how should we interpret the value of this consensus here?

Samson Mow: People on the forum can say whatever they want, and they did. No matter how good a statement is, there are ways to twist it, and that's normal on the Internet. The consensus reached is not a legal document, it is a consensus reached by a group of people who really care about the development of Bitcoin. Executives from all over the world took time out of their schedules to fly to Hong Kong and spend 18 hours in a room trying to reach some agreement. It's not meaningless, the most important thing is to express our purpose, what we want is cooperation, and this is the most powerful result of this. After these things, we are stronger, not superficially, but on a very specific level, even on an emotional level. As a community, we are stronger after hosting this Bitcoin Roundtable.

Blockstream is a very special company. To be honest, Coinbase is one of them. Blockstream and Coinbase allow their employees to have different opinions, which is very rare in the industry. Even with different opinions, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is still willing to listen to his engineering director Charlie Lee. Blockstream also wants all employees to express their true thoughts, which is no problem. It is impossible to expect everyone in the world to think the same way, and it is even impossible to expect all employees in a company to have the same ideas.

In fact, if a Blockstream employee protests the open letter, that’s a good thing. If everyone agrees on one thing, it’s definitely groupthink. There’s a line in the movie World War II starring Brad Pitt: “If nine out of ten of us see the same information and come to exactly the same conclusion, the tenth person who disagrees is the one who is truly responsible.”

Back signed the letter with his own name instead of Blockstream’s. The employees of the company did not force Adam Back to do this. He made this decision just because he agreed with the letter, but he did not want to go against the wishes of some other employees of Blockstream. Adam is such a humble, rational and honest person, he said, “Oh, I just want to support this letter with my personal name.”

There are a lot of people who like to talk about a lot of different things on the internet, but what matters most is who is actually willing to take action. The Hong Kong Bitcoin Roundtable included Bitcoin core developers, representatives from the five major mining pools (BTCC, AntPool, F2Pool, BW and BitFury, which together account for 80% of the Bitcoin network's hashrate), representatives from the four major exchanges (BTCC, Bitfinex, OKCoin and Huobi), and other individuals or industry representatives including Xie Kang, Bitmain, BitmainWarranty, Bit-X, Blockcloud, Coinfloor, Genesis Mining, HaoBTC, Ledger, Adam Back, LightningASIC, BitExchange and Spondoolies-Tech also made considerable contributions during the roundtable, spending time discussing all things related to the Bitcoin scaling roadmap. Taking action is the most important thing.

Reporter: Meng Dada
Source: Babbitt News (http://www.8btc.com/samson-mow-bitcoin-roundtable-consensus)