BCC#8: To those against the IFP + ABC

Stagnation will also cause people to leave. Stagnation doesn't mean you can always come back. Some communities enter a death spiral and there is no coming back from it.

One single team has been throwing fire and causing stagnation in network effect, the most important metric for success of a cryptocurrency, for years. Guess which one it is?

Stagnation in network is far worse than stagnation in technology. An alien superweapon coin nobody uses is still a dead coin - you of all people should know that.

Bottom line: stagnation on any front is unacceptable, and never something to settle for.

Nobody wants stagnation. We're talking about the classic "2 bad options" conundrum. Corruption or stagnation? I think there's at least a bit of truth to the idea that we need more adoption more than we need more development. Stagnation on the protocol isn't good but I'd argue it's the better out of 2 bad choices.

If nobody wants it, let's take if off the list of options. And identify better options.

We definitely need more adoption. At the same time, how do I onboard people onto a chain split? How do I onboard people into 2-5h block times?

We need to do both, at the same time, and we need to be sure development serves adoption and adoption feeds back and funds development.

What corruption? I see plenty of people saying if ABC gets funding they will waste it or steal it and do no work. Is there any real evidence of bad intent by any of the proposed recipients?

I do agree the current IFP implementation strategy and details need work, so, ya, choice of evils, but, lets fix the plan unless there is a reason to think ABC is corrupt like the anti-IFP (liars?) claim.

I agree with Lugaxker that stagnation is not the worst outcome. Uncoordinated growth can lead to eventual collapse, if things are not handled properly on the way up and the whole thing becomes a bureaucratic and political tangle.

In this sense, I'm very satisfied with the past leadership of Amaury. Sometimes publicly calling out the internal BS in your own camp, even if it is bad press, is the right thing to do. Is that what you claim had been causing stagnation? Or are you thinking of something else?

Maybe IFP is a terrible idea that will also cause trouble, maybe not. Starting fights about who should be in charge of the protocol development, when the current team has mostly done a good job, is definitely a terrible idea.

Not all the bullshit he "called out" are justified. In fact he often retconns history in his favor (see also: Peter Rizun was the first to call CSW out, but Amaury somehow was taking credit for it despite being friendly up till the formal breakup).

CSW was an easy bullshitter to spot. And I didn’t see anything friendly about the way Amaury dealt with CSW. But I started following the BCH scene rather late, just a few months before the BSV split. Maybe you are refering to friedliness prior to that?

On another subject, Peter Rizun should know better than advertise the idea that you can just implement anything that is requested of you, without need to properly refactor your code fist in anticipation of the change, and without budgetting a maintenance cost (I’m thinking of the 25 transactions limit polemic).

Appreciate your comments nyusternie. I'm glad many in the community can still be civil. I get your concerns about v0.21.0 but my understanding is they will be releasing a new version of the ABC code that will set it so it defaults to a no vote regarding the IFP.

abc could be more transparent and detailed about their funding needs.

i've been absolutely flabbergasted how you can claim to want $6M; and NOT detail "how" you plan to spend that money .. from day ONE, it's always seemed to me that ABC has been looking for "back pay" .. and that's fine!

but why would you make an "irreversible" change to the coinbase (that's been working fine for over a decade now) to "TRY" and make that $$$??

abc could be more transparent and detailed about their funding needs.

I agree and see no reason we can't ask for and expect that if ABC is going to get the funding.

see no reason we can't ask for and expect that if ABC is going to get the funding.

what incentive do they have with the IFP in action to be transparent? None.

I'd like to turn the table and say: if they were more transparent and specific about their needs, they might get way more voluntary contributions.

To be honest I do not want the devs working on scaling to waste time jumping through hoops (even though I agree they are important hoops) I want them to keep dev'ing. I am happy someone claims they are going to be helping them with fundraising (which may be that same thing).

As for incentives, to keep from splitting the community, of course. That threat is real now that the anti-BCH forces have recruited real community members to their cause. I hope to see a negotiated settlement of this big mess that makes everyone happier. This issue could easily be added to that deal. I think most if not all the real complaints about the IFP can be solved to make both sides (of the real community) happy. My concern is how well the anti-BCH side has been able to keep their real BCH community members from being interested in a solution (fixing the bad IFP and it's bad implementation strategy) by using personal attacks/grudges and false assumptions.

That threat is real now that the anti-BCH forces have recruited real community members to their cause.

I'm not sure what you're implying and you keep saying things like that.

I'm a real community member and I haven't been "recruited" by anyone. I'm also not anti-BCH.

You made a good comment a while back and I still owe you an answer on that, but the kind of accusations make it hard to keep interacting...

by using personal attacks/grudges and false assumptions.

let's clear it up then?

I believe you know that before this IFP controversy erupted there was an active anti-BCH "army" working to harm BCH. When the pool operators offered to set up an automated way to let miners donate to BCH development that would avoid the free-rider problem so all the miners that donated would not feel like they had to do it alone, the anti-BCH army went into overdrive building true and false arguments to split the community. They mixed all the old grudges and disagreements from the past into their carefully crafted social engineering efforts to divide the community. Their efforts have been effective at recruiting pro-BCH people like you into supporting a fork of the code and willing to split the community to stop miners from donating to developers. They have warped minds into thinking it is something different. I bet you think I am mistaken about what you are opposed to.

Anyway, I do try to "clear up" the false assumptions everyday. They use so many of them and they repeat them so often, it is hard to stand up to the wave of false information. When the lies are things people would rather believe than the truth or are connected to the deep-seated grudges or real issues like Amaury's attitude, convincing people they are fooled is quite challenging. The "army" of professional social engineers look for those weak spots and tirelessly use them to divide us. I believe they have found very powerful allies in the anti-BCH and pure-greed-based miners that do not want this to push some mining hash onto the BTC-Chain.

Of course this IFP is flawed and that makes the social engineering so much easier. I don't blame people for believing many of the arguments that it is bad. That said, most real pro-BCH community members with an understanding of the BCH history would not support dividing the community to stop miners from donating to our developers like this. That is the part that the army is working for.

I called it out weeks ago when I saw their plan. I whined over and over about them ramping up their attacks and how they were using this disagreement to divide the community. It seems it has worked so far. Those who want to split the community are now on the same side as the known trolls and the many new agents that have joined the discussions. Some of them very very well written and calling for division at all costs. Some even go so far as to say things like 'let's kill ABC before we consider how to make things better'. I know ABC has issues, but, they are a big part of BCH and that is why they are under attack by outside forces.

OK so now we need to fund 2 developer groups? Multi-polarity is excellent, but I'm not sure this represents a complete solution.

a link would help, can't seem to find what you reference

https://read.cash/@jonald_fyookball/resolving-the-ifp-situation-d3a20ba0

This video is full of truths and false assumptions mixed up to make it seem like the conclusions are true. There is an army of anti-BCH attackers that have been using professional social engineering to fool real BCH fans into thinking the stuff in this video. Now even fans like Marc are part of the social engineering. It is sad the anti-BCH agents are working to cause a community split on BCH and that is currently working.

Hopefully we will get a compromise solution that fixes this mess in the next few months before this activates. The anti-BCH forces pushing this divisive attack on BCH will try to stop any compromise.

I understand this line of thinking, but my main questions regarding BCH Node is who on the team has significant protocol development experience. Will freetrader be the lead dev? How dedicated will he be to BCH protocol development and how long? Will he be hiring others to help him? That sort of thing. The worst case scenario for me would be if ABC abandoned the project as a result of all this and we end up with no one to replace them.

That might be your worst case, but to a significant part of the community, that is less worse then breaking the social expectations when it comes to the block reward that underpins the PoW system.

I don't know how dedicated the protocol development team behind BCHN will be, and I dont' want ABC to throw in the towel and shutdown - but consider this:

Protocol development is not the only part of the ecosystem that has an opportunity cost and right now there's a significant amount of work being done because people want to do the work on BCH. Remove that desire, and those people will need financial incentives to stay with the ecosystem, and it might be significantly harder to raise those funds than to stop squabbling about the IFP and start trying to raise funds for protocol development.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/f4qgry/lets_have_a_show_of_hands_who_supports_the_ifp/

I agree. I would love it if we could raise funds for protocol development through donations, but I don’t know if it’s enough.

Given what we know, I don't see any issues. Right now, a set of miners if voluntarily donating to fund protocol development. Adding toolings, systems and information to expand the reach and get a more varied set of donors should be helpful - but it doesn't take away from the current model.

If the case is that the miners no longer want to donate as much though, then of course, it is uncertain if the efforts will be enough. We can't know until we've tried and exhausted the available options.

If the IFP goes through though, expect some part of the community to leave and that the potential pool of donors to shrink, significantly. This would mean that while the IFP-enabled parties might get the funding they need, the rest of the ecosystem that might get funded otherwise will be pointed to the IFP and requested to get funds from there instead.

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/f4qgry/lets_have_a_show_of_hands_who_supports_the_ifp/

damn! that's a lot a hands

Get back to building on the roadmap we had before, hopefully having lost none of the talent in the process.

yes, this!