The Bitcoin Mining Parliament Solves Coordination in a Multi-Polar Decentralized BCH Ecosystem

We are now in a multi-polar Bitcoin Cash ecosystem. Decentralized. We just demonstrated that no one can rule Bitcoin Cash. We are clans of pirates. Tribes of Israel. Many teams. Like, truly MANY. We are diverse groups and people who share a common mission.

When one guy ruled the roost, coordination was easy. We did what he said. He gave orders to employees and they executed. He rebuffed outsiders and they were frustrated.

But that’s over now.

Things are more complex now. We need coordination and communication to bring (pre-) consensus out of the seeming chaos. Chaos is actually a good thing. It is the default nature of a free system.

But we don’t want that chaos evolving into disorder, much less infighting, conflict, exclusion, or anything like that.

Avoiding the "Core Team" Mentality

We have to avoid falling into the same pattern of there being 1 central “core” team with a “lead developer” where:

• everything revolves around them;

• where decisions are made quietly behind rejected GitHub merge requests; and

• people feel excluded, left out and disconnected.

We have to be radically open, we have to communicate and we have to protect our nascent multi-polar nature.

“The swarm isn’t just open, it is also transparent as a defining feature. There are almost no secrets at all. This can be a mind-boggling concept, coming from a traditional organization. Everything is transparent by default. Financial records are transparent for all to see. Discussions about strategies and tactics are trans- parent for all to see (and open for all to participate in). Conflicts are transparent for all to see. This is because all discussions happen in places where everyone can see them.” — Rick Falkvinge, Swarmwise

Kudos to BCHN

I just want to be clear that I think Bitcoin Cash Node has done great work so far and I congratulate the team.

But that doesn’t mean we are good where we stand. A vision has been laid out of a decentralized ecosystem. If we stop here, then we have only replaced one core team with another.

That’s not enough.

Likewise, the Bitcoin Cash Node team cannot sustain a multi-polar ecosystem on their own. They are just one team. Other teams are stepping up and need to keep pushing forward their efforts hard. We need to encourage teams like Flowee, Bitcoin Verde, BCHD, Knuth and Bitcoin Unlimited when they challenge the new centrality of BCHN.

The Limits of Coinbase Signaling

Coinbase string signaling over the last 3 months has been invaluable. Teams like Bitcoin.com, BinancePool, AntPool, BTC.TOP and others used coinbase string signaling to let the world know that they supported a change in Bitcoin Cash from the “core team” model of Bitcoin ABC hegemony to this new multi-polar ecosystem we find ourselves in.

But coinbase signaling is inherently quite limited.

1. Coinbase signaling requires hashing and engineering downtime in order to change the message. That is costly. When something is expensive, we know we will get less of it. But we want every team engaged and communicating. Miners must not be penalized or experience a higher cost in order to engage in a verifiable fashion.

2. Coinbase signaling only permits mining pools to participate. But what about individual miners? Those are the people we want to hear from. Pools are a centralizing force. We don’t want them to have to run internal processes that are off-chain to decide how they signal. Condensing the opinions of perhaps thousands or small miners into a few characters in a coinbase string is madness. We can do better.

3. Coinbase signaling only permits a few characters. This removes all subtlety and nuance from these communications. The inability to communicate fully and clearly only gives rise to misunderstanding, frustration and resentment. This is not ok. This can do real public relations damage to Bitcoin Cash.

Chats and Polls in 4K

So if you like coinbase string signaling, then you will love the Bitcoin Mining Parliament (BMP). The BMP solves all of these problems.

1. The BMP requires no downtime in order to send a new message or vote in a new pool.

2. The BMP permits individual miners, not just pools, to speak in “4K” via chats and polls. This counterbalances the centralizing tendency of pools and facilitates a vibrant ecosystem of miner speech and pre-consensus formation.

3. The BMP permits ample chatting and the creation of and voting in polls. This enables tremendous subtlety, nuance and granularity. Further, it permits delegation, so anyone who either creates blocks in the 28-day window or is delegated hashing power on-chain via OP_RETURN can participate. The BMP is inclusive and as decentralized as Bitcoin Cash itself.

A side benefit of the BMP is that it creates more on-chain transactions! We can use more of those!

The Problem is Consensus

Consensus is the problem and the BMP enables the formation of pre-consensus, which would have been extremely valuable on 6 Aug when the IFPv4 was announced.

Imagine if miners could have expressed a clear and overwhelming pre-consensus against it within minutes or days of the announcement. We could have saved months of uncertainty — instead of enduring months of Bitcoin Cash being dragged through the mud and our partners wasting time preparing for an inconsequential candy-coin airdrop that may not even happen.

Signaling "BCHN" in the coinbase string over the last three months was ultimately helpful and necessary. But it also gave rise to the whole "ABC vs BCHN" narrative, which has done real PR damage to Bitcoin Cash and was helpful to ABC. “ABC vs BCHN” makes it look like this is one team vs another engaged in infighting or a power struggle — instead of one team with near-zero support against the whole united BCH ecosystem.

Bitcoin Cash is a multi-polar ecosystem. The scarcity of coinbase string space and the lack of granularity that permits, the lack of polls and chats, means one team, BCHN, was elevated above all the rest. While we owe a lot to the BCHN team, we need to recognize that in a multi-polar world, communication — granular, vibrant and ample communication — is an absolute requirement.

The Bitcoin Mining Parliament gives us that.

Conclusion

The Bitcoin Mining Parliament permits miners to speak with a perfect signal-to-noise ratio in “4K” at almost no cost in a manner as secure and decentralized as Bitcoin Cash itself.

The BMP is not just for the big pools, like the coinbase string, but for every single individual BCH miner. The BMP is on-chain mass digital democracy for miners that aligns with the Bitcoin whitepaper. Coinbase signaling is an oligarchy of the pools. It has been and remains very valuable and appreciated. But we can do better.

With the Bitcoin Mining Parliament, real, true, honest-to-God miners, even little tiny miners, can speak with a perfect signal-to-noise ratio almost for free, bypassing pools and enabling many voices to be heard. True pre-consensus is thus borne, nurtured and sustained.

Coinbase signaling alone is not enough. We have promised and been promised a multi-polar Bitcoin Cash ecosystem. The Bitcoin Mining Parliament is an absolute pre-requisite not just to fulfill that promise, but also to protect it.

Onboard Today

Miners, learn more and onboard to the Bitcoin Mining Parliament (BMP) today.

English: https://github.com/JavierGonzalez/BMP/blob/master/README.md

Simplified Chinese: https://github.com/JavierGonzalez/BMP/blob/master/README_CN.md

Español: https://github.com/JavierGonzalez/BMP/blob/master/README_ES.md

Questions? Ask them in the BMP Lobby: https://t.me/joinchat/G-kTM1WQsK-EL68_TRDq2w