Hacker News Reader

Comment by ptokb3 | Hacker News Reader

Hey nullc,

I'm a software consultant for my own developing firm. I don't have a conflict of interest. As I've said before, this is a new account and my only account here. I've read HN for some 5-7 years now as a morning news source and have not gotten involved in the conversation until this point.

To the issue:

MIT would probably be happy to support more Core developers and that would definitely lessen the current conflict of interest.

Is it hard to see that one company paying most of the top developers in the accepted codebase is something that makes people uneasy? It does and the considerable pushback from modest on-chain scaling (which needs to happen eventually anyway) has people worried that you're (Blockstream) is trying to control or limit Bitcoin due to your funding from AXA.

View on HN

> MIT would probably be happy to support more

MIT doesn't support _any_ developers. MIT DCI pays MIT and is funded by undisclosed parties, but you never even care to ask about that. (And not that MIT is magically benevolent, in any case...)

We've tried for _years_ to get sustainable funding for development; but the Bitcoin 'industry' is just not interested.

> paying most of the top developers

Why do you keep repeating this misinformation? As I pointed out, e.g. three of the top ten by commit activity work for blockstream (and all of us were founders of the company). This is not most.

> has people worried

Has pseudonomyous sock accounts on the Internet who appear to own not much (to zero) Bitcoins; worried, at least.

> modest on-chain scaling (which needs to happen eventually anyway)

I think all the engineers at blockstream that work on Bitcoin supported segwit which roughly doubles block transaction capacity. (in a backwards compatible while improving scalability, to keep the operating costs low).

> due to your funding from AXA

Pretty perplexing, AXA isn't even to be broken out in the reports I have (we have many investors). I've never even had a conversation with anyone from AXA myself.

It was my understanding that Gavin and Wladimir were part of the MIT Media Lab payroll.

> you never even care to ask about that

Honestly, I don't know where that would be public information to know to ask about it.

> to own not much (to zero) Bitcoins;

That is not the case. Most people who have been very vocal pushing for larger blocks have significant Bitcoin investments.

> segwit which roughly doubles block transaction capacity

This only happens if all wallets adopt it, which makes them write/fix their wallet software upstream. That takes time. It's not a quick enough solution for an urgent problem.

Last, if you're taking money from someone there is a conflict of interest there.

"It's hard to get a man to understand something if his job depends on him not understanding it" - Upton Sinclair

Large investors usually want something back for their investments. Maybe you don't know what that is right now, but it's legitimate for regular users to be weary of it.

> It was my understanding that Gavin and Wladimir were part of the MIT Media Lab payroll.

They aren't. The Digital Currency Inititive (DCI) != MIT. Rather, it's a separate entity that's effectively paying MIT for use of the MIT name and administrative infrastructure; we do not know who is actually funding DCI.

Thanks for clarifying. Perhaps the DCI could fund more developers.

https://www.media.mit.edu/research/highlights/media-lab-digi...

It's clearly part of MIT's infrastructure. What you're saying is that the money is not coming directly from MIT.

The money is not coming from MIT. (Though, if it were, I would expect the next complaint would be about the military funding it. :) )

https://medium.com/mit-media-lab-digital-currency-initiative...

"Together, we’ve raised $900,000. Donors include companies (BitFury, Bitmain, Chain, Circle and Nasdaq) and individuals (Jim Breyer, Jim Pallotta, Jeff Tarrant, Reid Hoffman and Fred Wilson)...while the funds will be limited to support Bitcoin protocol development, the donors do not have any influence over the developers."

Ah good, they finally published part of the list (I was discussing that with them in early march in person at MIT).

That said, I believe that list is incomplete.

> That is not the case. Most people who have been very vocal pushing for larger blocks have significant Bitcoin investments.

Some claim it, but like that guy pretending to be Bitcoin's creator. They fail to prove it. People opposing politically adjusting Bitcoin rules have proved that they own Bitcoin. http://bitcoinocracy.com/arguments/if-non-core-hard-fork-win...

> That takes time. It's not a quick enough solution for an urgent problem.

Wallets have already had half a year to catch up already, and you say it's urgent. You think a completely incompatible, forced, and highly controversial change that virtually all the engineers working on the system say is very risky would be faster? Besides, a few large producers of transactions upgrading would make room for others.

On the homepage,"I believe that If non-Core hard fork wins, major holders will sell BTC, driving price into the ground". That's the most small-block biased question I've ever seen. I wonder who owns that site; probably some small-block nutcase.

If we could vote in some other way to prove our funds outside of this site I will be glad to take part.

The site was created by a big-block "nutcase", presumably to demonstrate how the economic majority is in favor of bigger blocks. Unfortunately for him it demonstrated exactly the opposite.

Here he is advocating for increasing the blocksize limit to 8MB as soon as possible: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1238605.msg12897706#...

And here's his post announcing the launch of the service: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1133634

The site allows anyone to propose statements which all Bitcoin holders can then support or oppose by signing messages with their coins. The anti-small-block question wasn't written by the site owner, but is currently the most supported statement on the site.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com