For Grasberg!

Sunday, August 2nd, 2020

What follows is a work of fiction. Characters and events are products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.

Let me paint a picture for you.

Imagine you're just some guy with a day job. You're good at what you do, you're well paid, and you work in a professional environment at one of the biggest tech companies in the world.

On the side you have a growing interest in Bitcoin. You heard about it early on but didn't pay much attention at first. You thought it was an interesting project only you didn't think it could scale.

Then Cyprus happens. A couple years later, the price of one BTC hits $1000. You realize people are noticing, maybe there's something there.

You buy some coins and you start paying more attention to the space. Then come the scaling wars and you really start paying attention. You realize your expertise as a network architect could be useful. You decide to make contact.

You join an already existing team that's working to activate big blocks to see if you can contribute but quickly realize it's a total shitshow. These people don't know what they're doing. It's amateur hour. You say something like yo, you guys need to improve a few things or things are going to break. They look at you like who do you think you are? You're nobody. How dare you question us. You try to warn some other people but no one seems interested. After all, you're just some guy with a day job.

But sure enough a couple of weeks later there are multiple catastrophic zero days and the network goes down. You don't want to say it, but I told you so.

The one good thing to come out of this is that some people have now taken notice of you. Important people. They realize you were right and had tried to warn them so they reach out and ask to collaborate. They want you to design an alternative node client to activate big blocks. You think about it and ask yourself if you can do this. The idea starts to grow on you, like this could be something important, an opportunity for you to actually make a difference in the world. You quit your job and decide to go for it.

You start by looking at the code base and thinking about the best way to tackle the problem. You try one solution but it doesn't work out, and you're back at square one. Maybe there's a reason 3 other teams failed trying to do this already, you think.

Eventually you realize the only way is to create a minority fork. As you start working on the code someone who'd already been working on something similar reaches out and offers to help. Time is running out, so of course you accept. Little by little a few others join you. At this point you're also in contact with one of the heads of the biggest mining rig manufacturers in the world, as well as a mining pool operator, and an exchange owner. You start coordinating to get everything in order for the fork on August 1st.

When fork day finally arrives the entire industry is watching, but you're watching your screen, waiting for that first block. You wait for 8 fucking hours. When a block is finally mined, the network is online.

But it isn't smooth sailing. Right away there are fire drills everywhere, not to mention it becomes obvious the difficulty algorithm is a problem. You knew it would be, but you weren't adamant enough and let other people have their way. Shit's fucked up and you need to hurry up and fix it. Everyone's stressed, especially you.

You look at various solutions but they all come with different trade-offs. All the people who had failed to activate big blocks before are yelling and telling you what you need to do. The first guy who had offered to help you isn't happy because he thinks you're too difficult to work with and quits. In the end, you say fuck it, I'm just going to go with what I think is best given the circumstances. Luckily it seems to work, at least for a time.

Years pass. Years that are difficult, and frustrating, filled with countless moments that prove life is indeed stranger than fiction. There are plenty of days you ask yourself why did I ever quit my cushy job? Maybe I should give this shit up and go back to making real money and not having to deal with a bunch of bozos.

But you can't because you're committed to this project, it's your passion, and people are counting on you.

The only silver lining is you still have a few people on your side who seem to get it. You're hanging on, but barely.

Then one day the mining pool operators come to you with a proposal. It would be a way to get your team some badly needed funding. They've actually been pushing this idea for some time, but you knew how controversial it would be and kept saying no in the hopes that things would change. But now you have no choice but to face reality. You think it over and the game theory makes sense. It could work, it could more than work.

When the proposal is announced you feel cautiously optimistic. There's still some hesitancy in the community, but it's not an outright rejection. You get a little too excited. You appoint yourself and some trusted colleagues as the people who should decide which teams get funded. But this doesn't go over well and the mob is outraged, including some who have deep pockets. Former allies turn their back on you. Fuuuuuckkk I hate this shit! you think.

Everyone starts piling on, especially the old timers who still hold it against you that you embarrassed them by being able to do what they couldn't.

The next thing you know a whole campaign is set in motion to take off your head. A brand new node implementation is announced and what do you know, the lead dev is the guy that abandoned you when the shit hit the fan years earlier. Ho, you can't believe this crap.

A new fundraiser is planned to help various teams in the ecosystem as if those other teams provide any real value. Well, some do add value, but no one is adding as much value as you.

The people setting up the fundraiser want to seem like the good guys so they are magnanimous and allow your team to participate as well.

You decide to keep your mouth shut for a while. Let the inmates run the asylum so to speak. The fundraiser happens and every node team gets funded but yours. Nevermind that 80% of the money came from two guys.

The mining pool operators have now left you hanging, but you don't blame them, because you get it, it's not their fault. You have no other choice but to raise the funds another way. Luckily out of nowhere this guy from a different project shows up at just the right time. He does his best. You guys only get half of what you're looking for, which wasn't much to begin with, but it's still nearly triples what all the other node teams were able to raise combined. What a fucking joke, you think.

You trudge forward, waiting for the next bomb to explode. Now a couple of smaller mining operations have signaled they're going to be using the newest node implementation, which is basically an exact copy of your node implementation, except now they announce they're taking out the automatic replay protection. Here we go again, you think.

Shortly after that there's some chatter about the DAA again. Everyone's complaining about the oscillations, blaming you since it's your DAA, nevermind that the reason it's getting bad is because other people, some of whom you can't believe are still around, keep getting in the way and the ratio has dropped to fucking 2.5%. Plus, if you'd gotten your way we would have preconsensus by now.

You're not an idiot. You know a new DAA is worth putting in when a former member of your team, another person who quit on you, has found something interesting. You begin looking at the idea as do others.

One day a proposal is announced to the entire community by a member of the peanut gallery. People cheer and rejoice and say this is the fix we've been waiting for. You take a look. To your surprise, it does indeed look like a possible solution. You would have preferred they handled it another way but what's done is done. You extend an olive branch and tell them to submit a diff and we'll look at the code. They promise something in a few days. Meanwhile you don't have any time to spare, you don't want to be pulling all-nighters at the last minute like so many times before, so you resume working on the code you'd been quietly working on by yourself.

While doing so you have an epiphany. What if we go back and fix the historic drift as well? What if the halvings could be on the right coin emission schedule, like a course correction? You sit there at your desk and look away from your screen and think about it. The more you do, the more you like the idea. There's something elegant about it. It's going to add some complexity, but it's worth it. Not only would we fix the historic drift but we'd temporarily lower the inflation which could help holders.

I think I'll call it Grasberg, you say.

It's been a week and no code's been submitted by the other party so you can't be bothered and make your own announcement. The "community" doesn't like it. They think you're stealing someone else's proposal and saying it's your own. Whatever, this is open source, no one is stealing anything. You try to explain, you tell them things they should already know but they can't be bothered to understand. You can't help but be frustrated. Do they expect me to always drop everything I'm working on and take a look at whatever shit they're working on when they won't even bother making the effort to get it in the format I want? You think of the last time you went to your friend's house and how his five year old kept yelling at him, Daddy look at me, look at me!

The community is in an uproar. They want to remove you from your own project. This reminds you of what happened to Gavin, but fuck that, you've poured your blood, sweat, and tears into this project for more than three years. You have a vision and you want to see it through. Besides, Grasberg is good. Let them all test it and tell you it isn't.

The next thing you know there are memes everywhere. Memes that make no sense, funny memes, meta memes, and the occasional gem that is so spot on you can't believe it. What the fuck is going on? you think.

You can't help but laugh, just another day in the fucked up world of Bitcoin Cash.