James OB spitting the hard truths on twitter. I agree with everything he says here: https://x.com/jamesob/status/1857049961235403101

No idea how this will turn out. For most questions it's not that hard to get an idea of what the future will bring based on incentive analysis and historical precedent. I don't know of a good historical analog for the successful transition from benevolent dictator to anarcho-consensus. If anyone out there does know of one it could be *very* fruitful to share with the right people. Something to keep in the back of your mind. Where my bitcoin anthropologists at?

My gut tells me that we will continue to thrash on the soft fork question with no meaningful progress until the scaling pains or some other problem grows to crisis level. This is a very clear historical precedent. After the crisis is widely acknowledged we'll select a new hierarchy of leaders to push through an engineering fix.

This will probably bring about another schism in the bitcoin community. I suspect we'll need to fork off Saylor and Blackrock. Honestly, good riddance. These fat cats were never cypherpunks and they never will be. But with them goes the promise of unlimited price appreciation with no effort. You'll still need to work a day job to grow your savings.

I think the pleb ossifiers are directionally correct, but I think their specific concerns are misplaced. They are right about proceeding cautiously. We're only gonna get one chance to displace fiat. We can't afford to fuck this up. But I think they take this anxiety towards change and put it all on the risks they can see and understand and take direct action on: soft fork activation attempts from within the bitcoin community. It's a whole lot easier to stall something than to push it through and acting in any capacity makes you feel accomplished, even if you are pulling in the wrong direction.

In my opinion, premature ossification is a much bigger problem. The risk is that bitcoin achieves far less than it's full potential. We get there through inaction. There is a massive pot in the center of this poker table. We need to ante up to stay in the game. We need to take measured, intelligent risks to win. But it's not a poker game, we're actually betting on the course of human civilization.

Personally, I think attempting any soft fork under the current level of mining pool centralization is an unacceptable risk. One reason I decided to work on this problem.

Another reason is that mining software has been long neglected. Historically, the smartest and most ideologically motivated devs are attracted to other layers of the stack. I know because I feel this pull as well. This is why we've got free, private, decentralized, self-hostable, cypherpunk software for nodes and wallets, but not for mining.

Things are turning around thanks to the hard work of a small group of engineers. Sv2 is complete and SRI is nearly production ready. I am extremely grateful to be in a position to stand on the shoulders of these giants. But I don't see a compelling story for small miners to run this software and build their own block templates. It's not enough to get hobbyists on board; in order to win this fight we need to make decentralized mining more profitable than centralized alternatives.

Braidpool is another very promising project. I hope they succeed. A decentralized monolithic mining pool would be metal as fuck but I fear that even with Braidpool we're still stuck in the local maximum of monolithic mining pools.

I smell opportunity. I see a path to fix big problems in bitcoin by focusing on the neglected layers of the stack. I think we can decentralize mining with new ideas and architectures that bring unstoppable cypherpunk energy to the space. If successful, the fruits of this labor will unleash a tsunami of innovation and human productivity. I'm ready to go surfing. 🏄

My secret hope is that solving a big existential risk that everyone can see and understand might be the psychological victory we need to head off a greater conflict in the future. If we get most of the pleb ossifiers on board, we won't need to fork off the fat cats. With overwhelming consensus they will see the shift in the weather and get with the program to protect their vast wealth. Sun Tzu said to always leave a path for your opponent to retreat. I think this wisdom is directly applicable here.

We can show the ossifiers that they were right to be cautious, vanquish an existential threat to bitcoin, and, if we act skillfully and with emotional intelligence, we can redirect their attention to the next looming crisis: scaling trustless self custody to every human being.

I don't know how to do this. It's a social influence game, which is an area I have always intentionally avoided. This is a nascent idea. I'm still turning it over in my head. Maybe some of y'all have a good perspective to share or can take this idea and run with it. Let me know what you think.