My thoughts on Roger's Interview with Omar: Part 2

Thursday, October 1st, 2020

As stated in Part 1, I am highlighting 3 specific portions of Roger's recent interview with Omar Bham regarding the current situation facing BCH. In today's installment, he is asked a question about BCHN and other full node development teams working on Bitcoin Cash, and once again he sidesteps answering that question to go on yet on another Amaury digression:

"Do you believe in BCHN and other dev teams' quality as you believed in Bitcoin ABC devs? I guess do you think that they can guide Bitcoin cash in the right direction moving forward?"

"Ok so there's another argument put forth, and I forget his difficult French name, but basically he argued that ABC is far more competent than Bitcoin Unlimited, than Bitcoin Cash Node. I feel bad I can't remember his name at the moment, but he wrote a really substantial post saying how ABC is a more competent group of devs than any of the other full nodes and that's why the IFP is okay. And I replied to him and said even if everything you said is true, and it very well could be that ABC has been more competent. You know Bitcoin Unlimited had those serious bugs, the whole scaling war could have gone the entire other way where big block Bitcoin was the default Bitcoin and the small block segwit coin was something else if Bitcoin Unlimited didn't have those 2 bugs in the course of 3 weeks and it was a big, big, giant disaster during the debate in Bitcoin. And ABC did a better job, and to Amaury's credit, he reached out to me in 2014 or 2015 or something complaining about Bitcoin Unlimited' s lack of attention to detail and how they're going to have bugs and Amaury did complain about that. But to BU's credit they reached out to me and said, hey we have another crazy Luke Jr type on our hands here with Amaury. A guy who can't get along with anybody and is just toxic and abrasive and rude with everybody. Turns out both sides were right there. And so what do we do about that? I don't see how ABC being more competent in regards to not having bugs justifies them getting 8% of the block reward. I see those as totally unrelated things. Maybe ABC is more competent than every other full node implementation but that doesn't mean they suddenly deserve 8% of the block reward.

First of all, I want to credit Roger for being honest and speaking so openly about some of the history surrounding the scaling wars, but it still baffles me that he can't seem to see the facts staring him in the face. That this is all in his own words makes it even harder to fathom.

By Roger's own admission, he appears to concede that ABC could very well be the best team of protocol developers working on BCH (and based on what he said earlier in the interview, they may have just gotten even better with their newest hire), but he doesn't believe their competence justifies ABC getting 8% of the block reward.

So does he believe in a system where competence goes unrewarded? Are developers supposed to work for free? Perhaps 8% of the block reward might seem high if one BCH was trading at $10,000 like BTC is, but at today's BCH prices, we're not talking about a whole lot of money. To me it seems more like Roger is against the plan for personal reasons than anything else.

He mentions how Amaury warned Roger back in 2014 or 2015 that Bitcoin Unlimited was lacking in attention to detail and would eventually have problems with bugs. He even acknowledges Amaury was right, but then goes on to say that Bitcoin Unlimited warned Roger about Amaury being rude and abrasive. Well, guess what, maybe Amaury was abrasive and rude for a reason. It sounds to me like he was fighting to save the big block version of Bitcoin, and of course the people he was calling out would think he was rude. Nobody likes being told they are wrong, but smart people are willing to listen, especially to those who are knowledgeable. That BU failed in this regard and failed the big blockers in the process is a sign that they are not to be trusted.

It also shows me Amaury has conviction and knows what he's talking about and isn't afraid to speak up and voice his opinion. Everything you want in a good project leader.

I know Roger doesn't see eye-to-eye with Amaury, but I am hoping he can still change his mind about him. Roger seems to think it's important that Amaury be a better community builder than he is a software developer. I disagree. I think we need our protocol developers to be focused on the technical roadmap of Bitcoin Cash so it can scale to become world money. But in all fairness to Amaury, from what I can see he is doing a pretty good job of building a community as well. Despite what ABC's critics will tell you, I see plenty of BCH supporters gravitating towards ABC and their mission focused culture. If the fact that one of Roger's best developers just jumped ship to ABC isn't a big enough sign, I don't know what is.

Finally, I know Roger takes issue with 8% of the coinbase reward going to ABC, but think about the alternative. You don't pay ABC and they leave to work on something else and where will that leave you? I think at that point you're going to have a lot more to worry about than miners diverting 8% to an address controlled by ABC. As Roger pointed out, if BU hadn't had those 2 major bugs during the scaling wars, Bitcoin might be in a totally different position today. I for one don't want history to repeat itself, and I think it's time to pay the people who have proved themselves most capable.

I thought Roger believed in meritocracies. This is the ultimate version of that. It's not about funding people who are nice. It's about funding the people who get the job done.

As someone that the community still looks up to, as someone who still holds a lot of influence over the BCH ecosystem, I hope that Roger can take a minute to deeply reconsider his position.

I don't mean to attack anyone, but BCHN is still unproven. Let them prove themselves first before dismissing the team that has proven themselves over and over again for the last three years.