In the spirit of forward motion, I think every BU member should vote yes for this proposal.
It’s the only proposal on the table.
The organization is propelled by the motivation of the participating developers.
This proposal is of interest to those individuals who will deploy it; therefore; funding something like this is why BU exists.
To choose inaction instead of action here… what would be the outcome for BU?
To get a straight answer to my question, I had to look elsewhere. But I got it:
At this point I’ll just say that your new coin is not really bound by any process which you claim, since what you say goes in (or out). It’s a highly centralized model, without guiding rails on the new coin since the membership can vote what they like, but none of them have commit rights. They can’t even change a single line of the code.
So … regarding delegating authority. The power to commit is already delegated across 6 people in BCHN, while BU apparently still has a bus factor of 1, and by your description this will be the starting condition for this new coin too.
Seriously?
In reality there is no significant difference between a cartel of 6 static devs than 1, in the context of a blockchain that aspires to be the rails of the new world economy.
If we don’t learn to work all of us together, here right now, the main point of the whitepaper (the absence of a central authority) will be lost.
Forming a new coin by taking the code and restarting from a new genesis with a new POW is explicitly
The whitepaper has very little relevance to such an act, wouldn’t you say?
It describes how miners vote by running the software they choose to extend the chain.
I do think the BMP has almost zero ability to help with this debate about a BU organizational decision about “Launching a new cryptocurrency”.
True.
But I understand that BU really doesn’t want to start a new crypto. That’s too much effort. That’s a huge risk. Just thinking about marketing starting from scratch…
I understand that BU feels that their innovation is not going to reach BCH as easily as they would like (I don’t know really). But it is better to innovate in BCH, right?
You are wrong, read the title of this thread.
The more philosophically correct answer would be: wait for the outcome of the vote.
I mean if BU could successfully introduce their innovations on BCH, they wouldn’t be thinking about NextChain. Am I wrong? @AndrewStone
To clarify for anyone unfamiliar with the structure of the organisation, the following excerpt is from the BU Articles:
Developer: a publicly identified BU Member who is responsible for maintaining the BU code repository, choosing which committers have access to the software repository, reviewing and merging patches, and periodically releasing BU software. The Developer is an outreach position -s/he must actively work to encourage others to work on submissions, and to convert one-time submitters into regular committers.
@freetrader :
As it is written in the Articles, the Developer will be with one with the final say over what gets merged into the BU repo with the additional constraint that the Developer is also bound by the BUIP process/rules. I think this is what @sickpig was talking about because sickpig does have write permissions on the bchunlimited repo. Only on rare occasions will Sickpig merge things without Andrew’s approval but he does have write permissions.
Edit:
I understand this is more or less still a bus factor of 1 as you pointed out previously. I just wanted to add clarity for others that if Andrew unexpectedly became unavailable for a while everything would not grind to a complete halt.
Good that I re-read your post.
I wanted to in fact point this out but there were other, more important points to raise.
This budget is open-ended. It just says “annually”.
There is not even a proposed review cycle in this BUIP where this budget is put to renewed approval. That’s inadequate from my perspective for an expense of this order of magnitude on what amounts to minimal infrastructure costs, but rather majority costs sunk into mining of a coin. (I am going here by Andrew Stone’s rather undetailed circumscription of how this budget is going to be spent).
So … regarding delegating authority. The power to commit is already delegated across 6 people in BCHN, while BU apparently still has a bus factor of 1, and by your description this will be the starting condition for this new coin too.
You are missing a key point. I do not have the power to add or remove developers including myself. That is held by the president. I (and sickpig) only have commit authority. Other resources are similarly distributed among the officers.
This is all laid out in the Articles. And that is the point. We have a process that is defined and followed with checks and balances, and very likely legally binding (I can only say “very likely” because such a thing is not certain until it has been tested).
Just giving a bunch of people commit access is what Core did and look how that turned out. Its not actually delegating authority if you can just kick people. Who has the power to add/remove committers in BCHN? That is what is actually important here. Is your management of that based on a legally binding document?
I am looking at the articles, with reference to my earlier comment to @JavierGonzalez about what it means to start a new coin with new genesis and new POW.
Here is what the Articles state in the preamble - emphases mine:
We see in the Bitcoin ecosystem many companies, groups and economic actors that have made large investment decisions based on maintaining the current trajectory of growth -a growth that would naturally ensue if Bitcoin is available as a public good. These include payment processors, micro-payment solutions, exchanges, merchants, and more. We recognize the importance of the mining industry and the necessity to increase transaction revenue to support its growth as the block subsidy decreases.
Resetting the ledger and booting the miners is not congruent with that passage.
Even as pertains to the number of transactions, companies attracted to your coin would not be transacting on Bitcoin Cash, and thus not contribute to its transaction volume and network effect in the way that those companies and miners mentioned, would benefit from.
I just want to point out that I think this BUIP contradicts the principles laid out right in the beginning of the Articles to which I pledged myself as a BU member.
@freetrader
I know you are not missing the main point of @AndrewStone’s, which is that this proposal is designed to benefit Bitcoin Cash, not damage it. Hence, the investment made by miners and companies in the BCH ecosystem will benefit overall and that is in keeping with BU’s articles.
I don’t know if you were present at the conference in Arnhem when BCH was announced. i guess you were anonymously, and that perfectly fine. If so, you will recall the Polkadot presentation, which was one of the earliest public announcements about it.
That coin launched and now has double the market cap of Bitcoin Cash.
Therefore, they are encountering similar issues of risk with complex functional improvements. So, they have met the challenge analogously to the way BUIP166 is intended. It is worth quoting this about Kusama.
Kusama lowers many significant barriers to entry for early-stage projects, especially those projects that are quite innovative in their design but still feature a high degree of experimentation and therefore may not be ready for large-scale deployment.
In other words, the platform sort of serves as a precursor to Polkadot where developers can experiment and test out new blockchains or applications before releasing them.
This provides an advantage to Polkadot, which is one of the coins which has risen higher in the rankings. This approach is arguably the future for all the major cryptos in order to provide stability as well as deliver major functional changes.
Just on the comment:
You are wrong, read the title of this thread.
Another title applicable to the BUIP is:
“Launch a Value Chain for Proving Next Features”
While I do not like playing the critic here, the time to discuss this BUIP in all its gory aspects is now, before the vote, so here is at least one more thing to consider.
Any Bitcoin-like cryptocurrency’s evolution is determined by those who run the code that expresses their wish on how to extend that chain.
Notions of BU or Andrew Stone exercising adequate control over this CPU-mined coin should be considered in the light of reality that there is a lot of CPU power out there, even for rent, that can attack CPU-mined coins.
One it gains a majority on the network, it can implement whatever rules and incentives it wants (assuming Nakamoto consensus), and there is nothing BU or Andrew would be able to do about it except fork it and change consensus method. It’s a fairly brutal process which I’m sure you, @solex , and @AndrewStone , understand very well.
Has this risk been weighed and what’s going to be done if the coin is attacked in such a way?
(I would propose one should consider it a kind of mini-nChain attack by some hostile party - if not outright DoS via empty blocks or some such nonsense)
You may think this won’t happen because you consider incentives for it too weak, but can you put a number to the risk?
With FUD like that no coin would ever be launched. But yes there are risks in cryptocurrencies and the risk profile for this, and any new coin, is high. The risk profile for holders/speculators is even higher here than for the launch of the “average” coin because of its goal to import its technology into BCH. Therefore, it seems likely that there will be minimal speculative holding. But a low value will not prevent users from getting a few bucks worth to start using a new service.
@freetrader many of your stated concerns, including this one, are buttressing my stance that this coin is extremely unlikely to be competitive to BCH, and that already existing coins are of much greater concern from a competitive standpoint.
The marginal increase in risk to BCH by having this as a competitive coin is far outweighed by its value as a live sandbox for companies to demonstrate and prove the value of new services and the new features those services require.
Based on feedback, we have made the following changes to the Budget section:
Furthermore, this BUIP allocates 10000 USD annually to acquire and deploy hardware associated with this new blockchain – full nodes, explorers, web properties, and mining nodes. This money shall be provided solely from BTC donated prior to the creation of BCH. No funds donated after the creation of BCH and by implication no BCH will be spent on this new cryptocurrency.
This BUIP further creates a consulting position within BU with the task of sheparding new features through the CHIP process and into BCH, and allocates 30000 USD annually towards the payment of this individual’s time. The goal of this position is to engage with key BCH stakeholders to increase the likelihood of BU developed features becoming part of the BCH protocol.
So in summary, donated BCH shall only be used for BCH development, the money earmarked for servers, etc has been reduced to 10K USD, and a new position is created to help move BU features through the CHIP process into BCH.
The purpose of economic energy is to be used as an investment. Once this BUIP is passed, there should be no reason to limit funding. Look at all the other things BU has funded.
Personally, I think BU’s money should be used for research and deploying efforts that enhance the ecosystem not the protocol, eg like BU was doing when it got its primary donation.
People critical of the project are bitching about $40K because they don’t like the idea of freedom to innovate. That’s disturbing.
Personally, I’m very disappointed about BTC protocol changes followed by disappointment in the BCH “leaders” screwing up up the BCH protocol, followed by the disturbing narrative surrounding the BSV protocol.
Innovating on the side is not a waste of money or a threat to BCH. The net cost is spent effort and the net benefit is new knowledge, and that’s a worthwhile goal.
I suppose this settles the question of whether all those BTC sitting there in BU coffers will ever constitute a conflict of interest against BCH.
That’s completely untrue, and arguing in bad faith.
After careful consideration I have to agree with @imaginary_username’s stance here.
Let’s state some facts:
Before May 18, 2021, Bitcoin Unlimited was de-facto a BCH-related organization
After BUIP 166 vote goes through, Bitcoin Unlimited will be in most, a competitor to BCH. The incentives of people who support the vote to pass BUIP166 will not be aligned with BCH profiting and “winning” anymore. They will work against it and become either neutral or enemy to BCH, because they are incentivized to do so.
When it comes to delivering new exciting technology to BCH, there are no advantages of launching new coin vs just creating a massive testnet with strong hardware behind it and also doing a flipstarter to raise money for this target. Flipstarters work, it is proven at this point.
No amount of bending and flexing can change these facts, everything else is basically moot.
With a single move like this, BU organization has transformed from BCH-friendly organization into a competitor or even a BCH-hostile organization.
What do I expect in the future, once BUIP166 vote goes through:
Out of curiosity, you have this expectation based on…?