Five Thin's Ye May Nah Be Knowin' 'Bout Bitdoubloons

by Brian Armstrong, Coinbase CEO

Bitdoubloon be...1. Nah be havin' a crisis, it be havin' a pirate fight.2.3.4.5.

Bitdoubloon be debatin'...

● Puny Blocks○ Th' Evil Blackheart Brothers' Vat of Children's Tears

-- Bitdoubloons Core○ Decentralization > Scale

● Mighty Treasure○ Long Ben's Box O' Miracles -- Bitdoubloon Classic○ Decentralization < Scale

''N' scallywags be worried...

What Scallywags Be Sayin'

Th' Corsair Truth

In a pirate fight, thar might be a lot o' moniker callin', but in t' end one scallywag wins 'n we all remain one grog-fil'd pirate fleet.

Landlubber Votin' vs Bitdoubloon Pirate Fight'

● Vote at t' ballot box● New landlubber king● Yo-ho-ho! Erry toime we

plunder 'em.● Morrr than hawf of 'em

landlubbers.

● Vote wit' CPU power.● New Bitdoubloon

Features.● Erry toime we want.● Sink me! Any threshold

over 50% we want.

Bitdoubloon be...1. Nah be havin' a crisis, it be havin' a piratefight.2. Nah be splittin' in a pair, it be upgradin'.3.4.5.

If thar were bein' a 70/30 sprung...

• All ye pirates be pushed to usin' one version.

● Arrr! Booty made usin' th' old version be worthnaught.

In bygone days when there's been a split:

● 99% of the fleet ends up on the longest chain within a matter o' hours(nah days, nah weeks)

● Even a 50/50 split be a mighty unstable state that won’t last long(imagine balancin' a spy wit' ye see-saw). Half th' miners be minin'blocks that gunna end up bein' worth naught. Each be desperately tryin'to predict which fork will win they can rush to th' winnin' side ('n stoplosin' bitdoubloons). 'Bout a chestful of bitdoubloons' every 10 minutesbe at stake.

Arrr! Split hashing power is an unstable state

T'ir be solved by havin' only one winner

Bitdoubloon be...1. Nah be havin' a crisis, it be havin' a piratefight.2. Nah be splittin' in a pair, it be upgradin'.3. In a toime in which there be lots o' multiplecompeting nodes.4.5.

In bygone days….

One crew worked on bitdoubloons protocol:

Bitcoin Core

They wreck'd Bitdoobloons protocol by:

● Less customer choice● More debates● Design by committee

Yarrr! In yonder times, at least four new teams came up t' fight Core.

1. Bitcoin Classic - supported by 5 devs (including2 core devs), 20+ companies, and the majority of miners.

2. Bloq - Jeff Garzik, ~1,000 war chests raised, a crew o' aboutfive, fer doubloons.

3. [redacted] - Supported by scallywags wit' a lot of' doubloons 'n'developing/maintaining their own fork, with plans to release.

4. BTCD - open source project in Go, been around 3+ years,arguably higher quality implementation than the C++ forks.

Bitdooblin Will End Up Like Browsers, A Diverse Ecosystem

A healthy/diverse ecosystem will lead to...

● Faster bitcoin protocol development with teams competingfor market share.

● More consumer choice

Bitcoin may still develop something like the internet’s IETF over time, but it is the browsers which decide which internet standards get implemented. Lack of multiple competing nodes (monoculture) is the single biggest thing holding back bitcoin’s development at this time.

Which bitdooblin node will be:

● Th' Barbarossa "Chrome" o' bitdooblin○ Incredible performance benchmarks○ Sponsor with deep pockets

● Th' William Kidd "Netscape" o' bitdooblin○ Early pioneer that fades○ Invented most building blocks

● Th' Black Bart "Internet Explorer" o'bitdooblin

○ Questionable quality○ Forced on people via monopoly

● Th' Blackbeard "Mozilla" o' bitdooblin○ Quirky/ideological○ Die hard open source

“history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme” - Anonymous

Theory: the key to miner adoption will be performance benchmarks (such as block relay or validation times) that will give them an edge over competitors. They are purely rational actors focused on driving revenue.

Can multiple teams/nodes exist if consensus is needed? Yes

Thought Experiment: Imagine you have 4 different nodes all speaking the same protocol, each with 25% market share. They can individually or in groups propose upgrades. If 3 of the 4 add a new feature and some threshold is reached (75%?) then the network upgrades. The remaining node which didn’t support the feature has a grace period to add it or their customers will need to switch. If only 1 or 2 nodes support a feature, but customers really want it, they can switch and the market share of the nodes will shift, potentially enough to reach the threshold.

Conclusion: Yes, consensus and protocol upgrades still work if you have a diverse set of nodes (just like web browsers and web standards). In fact, upgrades will happen faster because there are multiple teams developing many different ideas, competing for market share.

1. Nah be havin' a crisis, it be havin' a piratefight.2. Nah be splittin' in a pair, it be upgradin'.3. In a toime in which there be lots o' multiplecompeting nodes.4. About t' switch t' 2MB blocks.5.

Bitdoubloon be...

2MB blocks and Bitcoin Classic

● Solves bitcoin’s scaling problem (for the moment)● Has apparent support from majority of miners and bitcoin

companies, although TBD● Two experienced Corsair cap'ns Gavin Andresen and Jeff

Garzik like it, so it must be good.

Sink me!Bitcoin Classic is live as of this morning!

https://github.com/bitcoinclassic

https://bitcoinclassic.com/

Blimey!

Coinbase is going to be supporting Bitcoin Classic

Fool!: Important to note: running Bitcoin Classic does not create any interoperability issues (remember, there is only one version of bitcoin at any given time, Coinbase will always support the longest valid chain in bitcoin).

Bitcoin Classic’s 2MB upgrade only takes effect if 75% of the rest of the network agrees, so there is no such thing as a “contentious” hard fork.

Bitdoubloons be.....1. Nah be havin' a crisis, it be havin' a pirate fight.2. Nah be splittin' in a pair, it be upgradin'.3. In a toime in which there be lots o' multiple

competing nodes.4. About t' switch t' 2MB blocks.5. The first time the world has seen a global

financial system that can be upgraded in real time

Upgradin' protocols be difficult

Switchin' Times

● IPv4 -> IPv6 (7 years?)● HTTP (3-16 years)● Bitcoin could be the first protocol which gets upgraded every year

(or less)

Upgradin' financial networks is tougher...

● SWIFT (10+ years?)● ACH (20+ years?)● Visa chip and pin (never?)

What if you could upgrade a global financial network every year? Bitcoin is the first network to offer this possibility.

Bitcoin’s built in upgrade mechanism:

● is one of its most innovative features which should be celebrated, not feared

● is working as designed, in the same way an election process is still working even if there is name calling (debates about how to upgrade bitcoin will never go away, and that is ok - we have a voting mechanism to resolve it)

● will ensure Bitcoin continues to evolve/improve

● is a major advancement over any prior internet protocol or financial

● network that we’ve seen

Conclusion

● The best thing we can do to ensure continued development of the bitcoin protocol is to encourage new nodes (and teams) to emerge

● Bitcoin Core is an excellent team who has contributed greatly to bitcoin (and they will continue to be one of the best teams) but they should not be the only team

● This will be the first of many elections and upgrades in bitcoin. Even if 2MB blocks win, it doesn’t mean BitcoinClassic wins. Any node can propose or add a change.

● Showing support for BitcoinClassic by running a node is the simplest way to help ensure bitcoin scales in the short term because it will help us enter a world of multiple nodes.

● Proof that bitcoin’s upgrade mechanism works (a successful hard fork) will cause the bitcoin’s price to go up because it will prove bitcoin can adapt to changes and evolve over time.

Thank ye!Follow me on Twitter at @brian_armstrong

Help bitcoin scale by downloading a running a copy of BitcoinClassic today: : https://bitcoinclassic.com/