Cheapy Supports the VMLA and Big Int CHIPS

Cheap Lightning (of the BCHF, Flipwatch, https://t.me/bchchannel, https://t.me/BCHMEMES, Discover.cash) endorses both CHIP-2021-05 VM Limits: Targeted Virtual Machine Limits and CHIP-2024-07 BigInt: High-Precision Arithmetic for Bitcoin Cash, and wish to thank Jason Dreyzehner and everyone who worked tirelessly to make this happen*

*however…..

I wish to express a caveat that comes with my endorsement.

It seems like every time I write a post on read.cash it starts with “BCH is decentralized…” which is starting to feel redundant but at the same time is important for framing.

There is no “right way” nor is there an “official” anything. There is no official node or telegram or foundation or even upgrade schedule. So of course there is also no official way to conduct an upgrade. BCH is a collection of all the things people have agreed upon as good. But those good things are the result of literally millions of dollars spent, untold thousands of human hours of effort and pain and not at all without sacrifice. We got to where we are today not through magic or chance or luck. We got to where we are now because many SOMEONES aligned on a common goal and purpose and worked incredibly hard to achieve those goals.

The path we took was hard fought. Satoshi was a visionary, but he was not clairvoyant. If he stuck around longer he may have been able to set the foundation for upgrades and dispute resolution with some amount of clarity. He understood the code very well and how to make the thing. But he did not really considered the weakest element of the network. The very weak flesh.

If bitcoin is decentralized money for the world and the code is without bugs it will chug along fine with little need for human interference… right? Even assuming for a moment that there are no bad actors and that since the WP was published everyone has been acting in good faith all along, humans will still have a difference of opinion on how best to get from point A to point B. Some will argue there is not even any point in going from A to B if we can jump right to C and others will even argue that the alphabet is dumb and we should use numbers instead. Nakamoto consensus works on a very technical level…assuming that miners and hash are willing to make any effort or take any interest beyond short term profits. But there are multiple levels of effort that need to be made before we get to voting by hash. If Satoshi had considered the social level and dispute resolution in 2014, the hashwars would have looked very differently assuming they would have happened at all and global adoption and bitcoin development would be 10 years ahead of where it is now.

BCH is the phoenix that has had to raise itself from the ashes multiple times. Every time we have survived a near fatal blow it has come from the social layer. BTC still has no upgrade process nor any way to measure consensus or “technical consensus” which is by design. It keeps the plebs from “tricking the code”. When BCH had a “benevolent dictator” upgrades were every 6 months and not always done for the best of reasons. BCH indeed had a dictator. He was more or less holding the keys to the kingdom. This was (arguably) used as an excuse for the BSV fork. This was also what lead to the eCash split. Daddy wanted to get paid one way or another and decided to force the issue. If things were truly decentralized at that time there would have been a process to guide or indicate support for his plan other than all out social war followed by 3rd hash war and worst of all another community split. But through all this strife it became clear there has got to be a better way to “improve” the chain than dumping millions of dollars in the toilet and telling 50ish% of the community, projects and developers to fuck off. The survivors thought the same and while many people were involved in the creation of the CHIP process, Imaginary Username was the first to formally write it out. CHIPS.MD is the culmination of all the learning from our trauma and mistakes. It brilliantly lays out a schedule and process to keep BCH improving and also avoid social disputes and if disputes do arise how to resolve them.

What does this have to do with Big Ints?

We are more or less aligned as a community at the moment, and there has been little dispute over how development is progressing, which is amazing and due in no small part to the CHIP process. If you have not read CHIPS.MD read it now. CHIP may not be the best system. But it is the best we have.

Upgrades come in many shapes and sizes. The cost of evaluating and implementing them also comes in all shapes and sizes. This is an unavoidable burden that goes hand in hand with decentralization. If no one is in charge to dictate what is and is not accepted we have to discover who does and does not want X to happen and the only way to do that is ask people to participate. In a perfect world all the stakeholders would be tuned in and involved in the discussions and miners would be right there with us weighing in and providing insight. But that is not the world we live in. “BCH insiders” may be relatively well tuned in but it is unreasonable to assume that even “BCH insiders” are keeping their eyes on bitcoincashresearch.org to sniff out what is going on. They have businesses to run and their own projects to work on and develop. CHIPs.MD lays out a schedule that allows a lot of time and leeway to evaluate, test, consider and debate these changes that have far reaching consequences. Part of the reasoning for this very long schedule is to lessen the burden across the network for stakeholders to come to consensus on their own schedules without having to enter panic mode. Forcing stakeholders to make last minute decisions will have overall negative results.

1. Many people in the wider ecosystem will simply abstain because they don’t have time. This leads to very low engagement where as consensus should be obvious and overwhelming.

2. People who are not so technically inclined rely on those who are to come to conclusions and then take those conclusions into account while making their own. Again pushing back their own research further to the “deadline”.

3. Rushing leads to mistakes. Be it bugs or even just misunderstanding or misinterpretation.

In the case of BIG INTS and VMLA it was the worst time for me personally. The proposals were finalized on OCT 1st 2024 and I was asked on OCT 4th 2024 for my support which sadly was also exactly when I had unavoidable family issues that needed my immediate attention. I am not a developer myself and I stand on the shoulders of giants to help me inform my opinion. Opinions that to some degree are not available yet, assuming they will ever come, less than 1 week away from “lock in”. Looking at stakeholders.md there is pretty strong support from within the central BCH community, but ideally I want to see much stronger support from people/projects who are not in the BCH trenches on a daily level.
The Knuth node team published support but with some strong footnotes about risks and alternatives that the wider community won’t have time to discuss or evaluate on November 6th.

Ideally I would like to have had far more time to evaluate and research. I tried to keep myself abreast of developments and the CHIPs as they progressed but also at the same time there is the added burden of evaluating a thing that is not complete and then having to re-evaluate it multiple times as the kinks are worked out. I watched as BitcoinCashAutist, Calin Culianu and others burnt the midnight oil to help get these proposals ready for prime time. For that reason and my faith in Jason and his abilities I endorse these CHIPs. However I also really hope that future CHIPs will not have the same degree of last minute rush needed.

I can only speak for myself and my projects. This is of course just my opinion and if I end up in the minority that thinks we need to have things finalized for evaluation sooner vs. “move fast and break things” then so be it. However consider this a one and only exception. I refuse to have these CHIPs set some kind of precedent as to how close to November 15th CHIPs can be finalized for evaluation. Going forward I will refuse to evaluate or support and will "disapprove" of any proposal that I feel needs to be rushed or requires me to re-prioritize my own work and efforts for my endorsement to ready by November 15th.