Chinese miners engage in heated discussion at Hong Kong Bitcoin scalability workshop

If the goal of the second Scaling Bitcoin workshop was to highlight “reaching consensus” on the challenges facing the bitcoin network, then the day’s discussion panels served to highlight the sometimes extreme differences of opinion that exist among key stakeholders in the technology’s open source community.

    On the first day of the symposium, held in Hong Kong’s Cyberport district, speakers were comfortable discussing various proposals for how transaction processing on the bitcoin network should be increased, often weighing in on their preferred paths forward.

    But given the conference’s location, it was perhaps the cultural differences in the debate that were most on display, as the panel found that opening dialogue between the dominant Western bitcoin development community and the China-based mining industry was difficult.

     The much-anticipated mining panel, which featured media-shy Chinese companies such as Avalon, Bitmain, BTCC, BW and F2Pool, went through a series of technical discussions in which “China” was often used as a placeholder whenever describing how participants in transaction processing were dealing with breaches in network security.

    It is less clear whether this nuance can be translated successfully, although members of China's mining industry have suggested that they hope to improve dialogue between the parties.

     Overall, the mining community mostly wants to reach consensus on how to best scale the network, but they also believe that decisions should be made by the community through a research-informed approach and not by any one group alone.

Bitmain’s Pan Zhibiao said:

     “We have many technical solutions. Each solution has its own advantages and disadvantages. There are no lawyers on either side. We should use the miners as a jury. And we need a lawyer, more discussions and more evidence.”

     Although the dialogue successfully enabled all parties to voluntarily reach a consensus and find a solution, the resolution of the details still encountered problems due to language barriers.

     The question was intended to allow the mining community to express their opinions on scalability, but only received scattered and mostly brief responses in favor of not increasing the block size.

Miners join the debate

     Given the lack of public dialogue on the topic among participants, the panel led by Mikael Wang, executive president of bitcoin mining and trading provider BTCC, was perhaps the most direct in its assessment of existing scaling proposals.

     The panel, which included BW’s Robin Yao; F2Pool’s Wang Chun; FinalHash’s Marshall Long; Bitmain’s Pan Zhibiao; Avalon’s Liu Xiangfu; KnCMiner’s Sam Cole and BitFury’s Alex Petrov, answered questions about the most widely cited proposals for scaling the bitcoin network, with most pointing to BIP100, which proposes allowing miners to decide block size, and BIP101, which sets a timeline for how bitcoin can scale further, through 2036.

     Notably, miners like Sam Cole of KnCMiner and Long of FinalHash have said they would like to see a solution that combines elements of both proposals.

     Other mining groups have been more direct in their support for specific proposals, with Bitmain’s Pan Zhibiao and BTCC’s Wang Chun echoing their companies’ support for BIP100.

     Panelists also had to push back against common assumptions made by the community about their behavior, stressing that competition in mining means that the amount of voting power they have on the network will always fluctuate under certain proposals.

     They also object to the idea that all mining operations are equal — noting the difference between centralized industries like KnCMiner and BitFury, and mining pools like BW.com and F2Pool that unite many smaller users — as well as the idea that an entity could attack the network.

Confrontational Thinking

     Andrew Poelstra of Blockstream was the first to introduce what he called “adversarial thinking,” noting that Bitcoin was designed to operate without having to determine how outside factors, such as legal contracts, affect certain participants.

     “A lot of communities restrict adversarial behavior,” Poelstra said. “Things online are either anonymous or pseudonymous, and there’s no way to track them. If the system can be compromised, someone will do it. We can’t assume they’ll be caught.”

Scope and objectives

     While the conversations tended to be specific, many speakers stressed that all members of the Bitcoin community are working toward common goals.

     Poelstra encouraged the community to think big in its view, noting that the network’s transaction volume would need to scale up “orders of magnitude” to compete with payment systems like Visa.

     Todd also advocates taking smaller, more immediate steps to try to ease the focus on the startup community, but delaying major decisions about network design until they can be tested to avoid negative consequences.

     Todd suggested that the community proceed with a small increase in block size, while payment channels enabled by the Lightning Network should be deployed.

Also aimed at unifying was an introductory speech by Blockstream’s Jorge Timon, which explained the difference between a hard fork, in which a majority of network participants must update their software, and a soft fork, in which further updates can take place.