A lot of high profile Bitcoin people are getting their knickers in a knot as they’re starting to realise that they don’t have any real control over Bitcoin and how it evolves.
As Wired points out,[ref]Cade Metz (2016/02/11), The Schism Over Bitcoin is How Bitcoin is Supposed to Work, TechCrunch.[/ref] the current schism is more akin to a vote than anything else, and it is working as designed.
Bitcoin’s ledger is protected by an indirect consensus process. Rather than voting on which ledger is correct, with Bitcoin we prefer the ledger (the version of the truth) that has contains the most “embedded work”, as this should be the ledger with the support of the largest proportion of the mining community.
Bitcoin’s definition – its consensus process (protocol in geek, the whole transaction definition, proof-of-work thing) – is protected via a similar mechanism. Miners are free to adopt any version of the consensus process they chose; big blocks, small blocks, etc. We should also remember that there is no restriction on who can offer up a version; they don’t need to be from the “core team” or other blessed group of individuals.
Consequently Bitcoin governance – just like the state of the ledger – is based on the consensus of the miners. This is quite different from the governance models we’re used to in industry or government. It’s also a long way from the traditional open source world.
What we’re seeing is a bunch of high profile individuals getting in knots as they realise that they don’t have any real control over Bitcoin, which is working as designed.
Image source: Marco Krohn.
