IFP Trade Offs

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Avatar for MobTwo
Written by
4 years ago

For newcomers, the IFP is an Infrastructure Funding Plan proposed earlier this year to provide funding for selected Bitcoin Cash developers.

I have tried to avoid participating in the IFP discussions previously because I lack sufficient information to form an opinion about it. With future upgrades for Bitcoin Cash every 6 months, I think it is reasonable to believe that Bitcoin ABC will want to make it happen again. That thought prompted me to write this article.

I wasn't for nor against the IFP because decisions are usually just a bunch of trade offs, and depending on individual's perspective, some feel the trade offs are worth it and some feel the trade offs are not worth it. In fact, I always suspected that the IFP was not executed properly, and had it been done better, it might have gained majority support and activated.

With the IFP, Bitcoin Cash infrastructure will receive a significant sum of funding. The developers at Bitcoin ABC worked and they expect to be paid. The argument makes total sense and I can understand Bitcoin ABC's position.

On the other hand, the IFP comes with a bunch of trade offs and risks. Money don't come for free and usually there is a catch so I feel it is reasonable to explain some of these trade offs based on what I understood from the people against the IFP.

- The IFP (based on the proposal in May 2020) creates a perverse incentives structure. Once the IFP is activated, Bitcoin ABC receives plenty of money, whether they work 18 hours a day or they spend the full 6 months at the beach smoking weed, they still get paid the same amount of money. Some supporters of the IFP may argue that this is just a temporarily scheme but history is full of things that claimed to be temporary but turned out otherwise, for example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRzr1QU6K1o&t=1m2s and video showing Amaury working for Blockstream.

- The IFP incentivizes kickbacks to miners and Bitcoin ABC, due to the mining competitive nature, whoever do not participate in such kickbacks will lose out. Such kickbacks have already happened in other cryptocurrencies with similar funding proposals to the IFP so we have evidence on that.

- The IFP is a massive change to the fundamentals of Bitcoin Cash, where people choose to participate on a voluntary basis, based on their passion or ideology, into one where people participate for the money and then leave the moment the money dries up.

- The IFP, based on the proposal in May 2020, is not transparent enough and is highly arbitrary to the control of Bitcoin ABC. The Bitcoin ABC of today may be benevolent, but this is a central point of capture and the Bitcoin ABC of tomorrow could well be malicious, if Bitcoin ABC is captured by any means. There may be some people who said that Amaury cannot be captured and I have considered this possibility. At the same time, I imagined if I am in control of BCH and the FBI comes to my house and say, "Give me the control or I will break your legs.". I think my response is likely to be, "Can I make you some coffee and some food perhaps while you guys wait for me to transfer the access to you?". In order for Bitcoin Cash to be resilient, we cannot afford to risk such a central point of failure.

In the end, I think whether one supports the IFP or not, depends on how they value certain trade offs in return for the benefits.

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Avatar for MobTwo
Written by
4 years ago

Comments

A very great and interesting concept

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Thanks I really wanted someone to do this for new users. As I was being lazy to do it :D Thanks for this.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Another anti-BCH article pretending to be unbiased from a writer who has clearly chosen to support the anti-funding effort. The dishonesty of one of the BCH heros pretending to be unbiased is the part that worries me.

EDIT: An unbiased writer would show the opposing arguments to each of the "Con" points.

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4 years ago

Disagree strongly

$ 0.00
4 years ago

You appear to be fooled by the social engineering. Maybe it is a language barrier or something. I was saying the author did not provide unbiased coverage of the issue while claiming he was. Since he only provided one side of every argument, it was not unbiased coverage.

You may be responding to my assumption that the article was anti-BCH or my claim that the author has chosen to support the anti-BCH-funding movement? I could make a post about the former if you would like to debate it. As for the latter, I think it is obvious and not the first anti-funding article the author posted claiming to be unbiased.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

I got the impression from the other article I read from him that there are things and or people he likes from ABC. He also complained that people have been too hateful about it. After reading this one, I just think he doesn't like how they wanted to set up the IFP. It is very unfortunate that that no 'middle ground was found. People SHOULD get paid for their work but it appears there's big potential for that to be taken care of....

Ultimately, I think ABC made a bad decision about not being transparent enough. Systems involving handling money are notorious for becoming corrupt. And not sharing enough info in the beginnings of a proposal is typically a red flag. That is what I noticed people getting the most frustrated about from the people that originally supported the idea and even invested in it.

Personally though, I didn't like the idea of it no longer being the cheaper, smarter version of bitcoin.... One of BCH's strongest features is extremely low fees. It enables people with very little or no money have a chance....

I was homeless when I discovered BCH. Couldn't get a loan or a credit card. Didn't have even $100 bucks to invest into bitcoin . Small amounts of BCH via tips at memo.cash literally FED ME. Several times. I don't think that would be AS possible with higher fees. It's really a HERO for underdogs.

I'm still struggling because it takes time, hard work and or luck to get anywhere prosperous starting from zero. But now at least I feel like I have more of a chance. Higher fees would have made it a lot more difficult for me.

$ 10.00
4 years ago

Again you post a bunch of false assumptions. For example, assuming we do not all agree with your points about the IFP and ABC transparency. Yes, ABC blew it in many ways. They are not perfect and probably did not expect a developer funding strategy voluntarily proposed by miners would be so controversial and need to be implemented more carefully. I think they were wrong on that.

The BCH attackers are constantly data-mining ABC activities to use in their attacks, so, transparency is not always the best choice.

I am not sure why you make false implications about ABC trying to raise BCH fees, slow down BCH and hurt the hungry. That sounds like baseless social engineering like we get from the anti-BCH team a lot. The IFP was designed to allow miners to donate funds they had already earned by mining to developers. It had nothing to do with fees users pay.

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4 years ago

I think I have been misinformed by several people. Can you explain further please? What do you mean by 'mining to developers'. I don't know a lot about mining....

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4 years ago

Miners get paid "rewards" to keep the network secure. Some of them offered to let BCH developers set up an automated system to take a small percentage of their payments and send them to an infrastructure development fund to help the underfunded developers of BCH. Anti-BCH forces hated this great (in theory) idea and attacked the idea with massive trolling on social media.

IMO, ABC came up with code to implement the idea and the implementation was not well designed or discussed by the community in advance. The troll attackers gained real BCH fans as supporters for various good reasons and now use them as tools to harm BCH.

Marc is one of the real BCH fans I believe is getting fooled into attacking BCH.

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4 years ago

How are they harming BCH? By causing division and hate? Or more complicated?

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4 years ago

If you mean the anti-BCH army of social engineering agents I call "trolls", they have a thousand different ways they attack BCH and promote the fake "Bitcoin" (BTC). BTC, like BSV is currently an attack on Bitcoin. IMO, most, if not all of the troll army works for the dark forces behind the capture and corruption of BTC. When directly attacking BCH (currently the best chance at the creation of a real "Bitcoin" (peer-to-peer electronic cash for the world's people), they attack our developers and supporters personally, development strategies, goals, lack of complete success, etc., etc, etc..

If you are wondering about the effort to stop the IFP, I believe they started out trying to stop miners from donating to development infrastructure projects while simultaneously demonizing our primary development team. They did succeed in mostly stopping the donations.

Also, their efforts spawned BCHN that they are now using as a tool to divide BCH by making exaggerated claims such as:

The BCHN team is "the new leadership of BCH development" (even though they have no track record or stated intent to do the work that comes with that position).

The replacement of ABC by BCHN is "Supported by the majority of the community" (a false claim they often make when attacking something good with a bad idea). In this case BCHN may be a good idea, but, the part where it is the "accepted" new leadership of BCH is the dishonesty.

'ABC will be responsible for the new fork if one happens even if BCHN removes the automatic replay protection (safety feature) like BSV did and then pushes consensus breaking code'.

The list actually goes on and on as the very sophisticated and professional anti-BCH army never rests and has massive numbers of accounts all over social media pretending to like "Bitcoin" or acting insane while promoting BCH to make BCH look bad, lol.

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4 years ago

Sounds terrible. If it makes it any better I've never even heard of BCHN before. Shows how little I know about the subject though. Think I've learned my lesson talking about things I have no clue about.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Careful, he's trying to mislead you. Miners have always been able to donate funds to developers directly, the IFP would not change that.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

There's not much to explain on the other side because it's extremely simple. And he did mention that. But it only takes 2 sentences at the most to explain that people want to get paid for their work. Everyone understands that.... On the other hand, the potential problems are quite a bit more complicated. And for someone that doesn't understand ANYTHING about what all of the arguing is about because they are new to the crypto world.... This article simplifies the basic concerns that A LOT of people share that have seen bad things happen with other cryptos.

And on the contrary to you assuming he just doesn't like ABC.... He actually speaks well of ABC in another article of his called "Some Random Thoughts"

$ 3.00
4 years ago

Your false claim is what the biased article implies. 'That there is no disagreement over his anti-funding points'. It is 'obvious they are all true'. That's classic troll army strategy to fill a post with false assumptions.

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4 years ago

More details required, any website

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4 years ago

The first and last points are solved by https://read.cash/@micropresident/on-bitcoin-cash-development-funding-34a29d8a The 3rd point is moot, because that's already how it works, eg with miners mining just for profit. So the only remaining valid criticism is kick backs. Which are arguably a feature, not a bug.

$ 0.00
4 years ago

What a great concept

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4 years ago

is there any website

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Thanks for posting this. 😊

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Very well then.

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4 years ago

Amazing concept!

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Thank you for such a useful and interesting article

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4 years ago

Amazing writing concept. Thank you sir.😌

$ 0.00
4 years ago

Interesting article keep it up

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4 years ago

The compulsion of IFP is a big fraud. Perhaps, if it is made voluntary contributions it could have helped BCH.

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4 years ago