The following is a brief write-up of a meeting between Tobias Ruck and bomtom1, their (dis-)agreements, and beliefs. It‘s meant to explain opposing views in the current debate and proves that civilized discussion can be had despite meme warfare and escalating reddit debates.
The /r/btc-subreddit is curse and blessing as it brings Bitcoin lovers and haters, developers and users, lurker and barkers all together in one spot. It manifests what an ancient Greek Agora must have been like. Ironically the founder of the SLP Agora and me jostled each other just there. We decided to sort things out the non-digital way and met up irl four days later. The following sketches what was discussed between beers and jokes.
On the IFP
Agreements
Generally a plan to fund infrastructure development would be a good thing.
Such a fund should be managed by a foundation.
A public discussion about the governance of such a foundation and the distribution mechanism of its funds should ideally have preceded ABC‘s announcement of their current IFP fee.
The lack of any previous discussion on governance / distribution mechanism and the lack of any official statement on such a foundation does not exactly promote ABC‘s side in the debate.
Disagreements
Tobias believes ABC will provide the missing information on a foundation and its governance in due time and that will be sufficient to follow their lead.
bomtom1 believes a public discussion must necessarily be had prior to any unilateral announcement let alone implementation. Its absence rather disqualifies ABC‘s lead.
Tobias believes a single leading node implementation (capable of acting) will be more beneficial for Bitcoin Cash because it allows for more effective development into the future.
bomtom1 believes a multi-node ecosystem which creates consensus through discussion is more beneficial for Bitcoin Cash because it allows for a joined-forces community.
Why Tobias favors ABC over other development teams
Tobias is an entrepreneur who wants to build products on top of Bitcoin Cash as a base layer. It‘s essential to him that this base layer
successfully scales beyond 30 MB blocks,
successfully implements pre-consensus to prevent double spends [0],
has a responsive and professionally working base-layer development team at his disposal.
Given his personal experience working and communication with several teams, ABC is simply his best bet on getting what‘s important to build his business [1].
Why bomtom1 favors a multi-node ecosystem
bomtom1 is a user of Bitcoin Cash who enjoys to see the ecosystem as a whole flourish.
Giving all power to one node implementation introduces a single point of failure which has led us down the wrong path before with Bitcoin Core.
Money is a social construct. The larger the community is which agrees on one particular implementation of money, the larger is the benefit for all participants, and the more momentum can be created from within the community if it pulls together.
While bomtom1 acknowledges Tobias' needs, it is perceived as given (no matter the development team in charge) that the former two of his points will be met with Bitcoin Cash anyway if it would achieve an adoption requiring 30 MB blocks (i.e. the 300 fold of todays usage).
On Mitra
No matter the outcome of the upcoming hardfork Nov. 15th funding Tobias‘ Mitra flipstarter will better the cryptocurrency space independent of his standing in the IFP debate. The work proposed in the flipstarter does not propel any chain over the other and generated insights could be used by either side. By contributing you will enable an inspiring young lad to contribute meaningfully to the cryptocurrency space. If anything it is by generosity that the voluntarist side can prove their approach to the IFP side.
DS proofs are pretty much a first logical step towards a stronger preconsensus anyway. Lets do them ASAP and measure how much of an improvement it was and then decide on further steps. It's quite possible that DS proofs are going to be good enough. Demanding amaurys's version of avalanche now seems quite unreasonable.