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Core Bitcoin Devs Leave Project, Create New Currency Called Decred (softpedia.com)

Posted by timothy on from the tough-row-to-hoe dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Core developers in the Bitcoin project have left and started a new currency called Decred. Developers are citing a lack of transparency and a conflict of interests between the group that funds the actual Bitcoin software development, and the decisions taken inside the project. Jacob Yocom-Piatt, CEO at Company 0, who has funded development of Bitcoin since early 2013: "This is in part due to a lack of mechanisms and pathways for funding development work directly from the community, and as a result Bitcoin development is funded by external entities that create conflicts of interest between the developers and the representative power of the community that uses Bitcoin."

24 of 122 comments (clear)

  1. Translation: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "We can't make any more money off Bitcoin, so we decided to create our own currency."

    1. Re:Translation: by R3d+M3rcury · · Score: 2

      "...and we're using it for hookers and blackjack."

    2. Re:Translation: by bazorg · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's sad but these days the business model seems to revolve around selling tech companies, not selling the output of said tech companies.

    3. Re:Translation: by MrBingoBoingo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Incredibly misleading title. These devs made a Go alternative implementation of bitcoind. This is danger of taking press release titles at face value.

    4. Re:Translation: by unixisc · · Score: 2

      Incredibly misleading title. These devs made a Go alternative implementation of bitcoind. This is danger of taking press release titles at face value.

      bitcoind? Is that yet another thing that could be bundled in w/ systemd? Maybe THAT will gain systemd some supporters - the ability to mint money from having it

    5. Re:Translation: by F.Ultra · · Score: 2

      Many daemons end with the letter d liike httpd, bind, ntpd and so on.

    6. Re:Translation: by AK+Marc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      and bitcoin is inherently bad for the environment. The processing needed to create new coins and the constant drain to process transactions is a massive waste of resources. Better would be a government run crypto currency, where the wallet was no less secure than bitcoin, but the coin generation was centralized and done in a way that didn't require increasing processing power. Yes, I know the supporters like that it's a deflationary currency out of the control of a government, but that's also one of the things that will prevent it from being used as a primary currency.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
  2. Forking is normal by gavron · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's how open-source projects handle differences in philosophy, transparency, coding direction, etc.

    Reserving billions of dollars worth of digital coin for yourself isn't.

    let's see if they do a better job than Bitcoin in this regard.
    *or dogecoin or the various other derivatives*

    E

    1. Re:Forking is normal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This isn't a fork. It's a pre-mined altcoin which is not made by Bitcoin Coin developers. It claims to be written by the makers of btcsuite, which has nothing to do with Core. That's if you trust this rather anonymous landing page.

    2. Re:Forking is normal by dbIII · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It didn't "work", it hasn't even had as much penetration as some offline pyramid schemes (eg. that one that took in Albania - yes not even as big as a the Albanian economy).
      Instead of having a fake crypto-currency with just the crypto we need something backed by some sort of assets so it can actually be a currency. A promise of value from some recluse with a fake name is only of worth to people who will trust just about anything. There's no point pretending it's like the stuff in the fictional "cryptonomicon" without the gold, some asset or some actual productive entity behind it. A "fiat" currency depends on someone that can be trusted, who has a lot of assets AND a major income stream giving a promise. Thus not something that works for Zimbabwe and not something that works for a recluse with a fake name on the internet.

    3. Re:Forking is normal by yo303 · · Score: 2

      Well, no. The Albanian schemes were around $1.2 billion, while Bitcoin is $6.7B. You are right though that the Albanian economy as a whole is bigger than Bitcoin now. Still $50 million is traded daily in Bitcoin.

  3. Not Bitcoin Core Developers by phantomcircuit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    To avoid any confusion it should be clear that these are the developers of btcd not bitcoin core. As far as I know the only bitcoin core developer working on an altcoin is gavin andresen.

    1. Re: Not Bitcoin Core Developers by radiumsoup · · Score: 4, Insightful

      this. and also, the linked article is just a press release disguised as a story, quoting only the subject of the article without any independant analysis or rebuttal of any kind

    2. Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers by mrlibertarian · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As far as I know the only bitcoin core developer working on an altcoin is gavin andresen.

      BitcoinXT is not an altcoin; it's an attempt to increase the bitcoin blocksize. It does not change any bitcoin rules unless 75% of the hashing power is running it. BitcoinXT has not been widely adopted yet, but Coinbase just started running it in production, so it will be interesting to see if others follow their lead. But calling it an altcoin will only add to, rather than avoid, confusion. In fact, some moderators are actively censoring discussion of BitcoinXT on the most popular bitcoin reddit board, and they are trying to justify this censorship by calling BitcoinXT an altcoin. So, calling BitcoinXT an "altcoin" is a very contentious issue right now.

    3. Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers by mrlibertarian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So, in 2013, when the developers switched from BerkeleyDB to LevelDB and accidentally caused a fork between the miners running bitcoind 0.8 and the miners running bitcoind 0.7, which one was the alternate crypto currency? 0.7 or 0.8? 0.8 had more hashing power behind it, but the developers chose 0.7. What if the developers had chosen 0.8, instead? Would you say that an altcoin was adopted in 2013 if that had happened, since it doesn't matter how many people join in? What if people abandon bitcoin at some point and switch to litecoin? I suppose we could also call that 'switching to an altcoin'. Is it okay to use the exact same terminology to discuss such radically different situations?

    4. Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      You've really got two distinct points of contention at play: some people say 'altcoin' when they mean anything that isn't bitcoin-with-the-annointed-blockchain. Others say 'altcoin' when they mean something based on an algorithm with substantially different characteristics(eg. the scrypt vs. SHA-256 divide between bitcoin and litecoin) or markedly different rules aimed at achieving some very different outcome as a currency/meme/ponzi scheme(eg. dogecoin).

      Then, you have the better informed but far less disinterested people who have a stake, sometimes a considerable one, in 'coins' tied to some particular blockchain, specialized hardware tied to some particular algorithm, or both; and are much less likely to be confused, or speaking in broad strokes; but much more likely to have a personal financial stake in rubbishing whatever they don't have a position in as a filthy, illegitimate, 'altcoin' that is heading nowhere fast, unlike the Real Thing.

      I don't know how the numbers break down between mere internet pedants and people with nontrivial money on the line; but(especially with all the cryptocurrencies in a rather larval and volatile state), competitive hyping and dismissal of assorted different flavors is by no means a disinterested activity. Some people will argue about it forever, for free, because that's how people on the internet are(says the slashdot poster); but some of the people hyping or attempting to discredit almost certainly have a horse in the race(and, unlike the same game with speculative stocks, it's probably all legal).

    5. Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers by mrlibertarian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      some people say 'altcoin' when they mean anything that isn't bitcoin-with-the-annointed-blockchain.

      You are correct that some people are advancing this definition, but I do not consider it to be an honest definition; instead, I consider it to be an attempt to conflate two clearly distinct concepts: A competing bitcoin client that would fork the blockchain and an altcoin. The only reason some people are attempting to conflate these concepts is so that they can pretend that censoring discussion of BitcoinXT on a bitcoin message board is not really censorship, but simply the removal of off-topic, altcoin discussion.

    6. Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Informative

      To avoid any confusion it should be clear that these are the developers of btcd not bitcoin core. As far as I know the only bitcoin core developer working on an altcoin is gavin andresen.

      This is exactly the kind of manipulative nonsense that has been infuriating developers and driving them away from Bitcoin.

      "phantomcircuit" is Patrick Strateman, an employee of a company called Blockstream. Blockstream employs many of the developers who work on Bitcoin Core, which is the de-facto standard node implementation, descended from the original code written by Satoshi. When Satoshi left, he handed the project on to a guy named Gavin Andresen.

      Gavin later handed on the project again to another guy, and under that guys non-existent leadership (he rarely if ever even posts to his own developer mailing list) the project started making decisions that upset many people, most notably, they decided that the block chain should retain a hard-coded limit on block sizes that was originally put in as a temporary hack, with the result that the block chain is currently full - Bitcoin cannot process any more transactions/second than it presently does and payments have started to break as a result.

      So Gavin and myself created a fork of Core called XT to give people and miners the option that Bitcoin Core had decided to refuse them. It is exactly the same software as Core, but with extra patches that cause it to cast a vote for raising the limit. If 75% of blocks vote for the increase, then blocks can get bigger after that point.

      Unfortunately, Blockstream and Bitcoin Core developers do not believe the user community should have a choice. So they decided to claim that Bitcoin XT is "not bitcoin" or put another way, any source fork that they disagree with "isn't bitcoin", even if it uses the same block chain, sends the same coins, speaks the same protocol and from the users perspective is indistinguishable from Core. They have decided that more or less any bullshit is acceptable in order to bring about what they want - a project that is theoretically open source, but which cannot actually be forked. These tactics include DDoS attacks on any computer that runs XT and extensive censorship of community forums and websites.

      The comment I'm replying to is a classic example of this kind of BS in action. Strateman says he wants to "avoid confusion" and then immediately claims Gavin isn't working on Bitcoin anymore, even though in fact Gavin has only ever worked on Bitcoin and has never worked on an alt coin.

      When the Decred guys talk about "governance issues", that's a polite way of saying that people like phantomcircuit and his employers have gone crazy and can't be trusted anymore.

    7. Re:Not Bitcoin Core Developers by IamTheRealMike · · Score: 5, Informative

      But Gavin has never worked on any alt coin at all. That's my point.

      The definition of "alt coin" is literally an alternative coin made by creating a separate block chain. Alt coins have their own transactions, their own network, their own value and their own currency symbol. They may be based on the same code as Bitcoin or might have a different codebase, but they are not the same currency.

      Redefining widely used terms is a classic propaganda technique (hence "newspeak" in 1984) and Blockstream/Bitcoin Core guys have become devils for it. Other than trying to define a patchset on top of Bitcoin Core as an "alt coin" because they disagree with it, they've also attempted to redefine the meaning of "SPV wallet" to claim no such things exist, despite the fact that the term has been used for years and the top mobile wallets on both Android and iOS describe themselves as being SPV wallets.

  4. Title is Misleading by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This is not an exodus of core developers from the Bitcoin project. This is a small group of developers, some of whom have contributed to Bitcoin, who are creating a new cryptocurrency to address some of the governance problems cryptocurrency projects have faced. "Decred" stands for "decentralized credits" and will employ both Proof of Work and Proof of Stake in a novel way to secure the blockchain while avoiding centralization pressures.

    1. Re:Title is Misleading by penguinoid · · Score: 2

      Am I the only one who thinks the name has a subtle reminder of words like discredit? "de" is a bad prefix for "decentralized", IMO.

      --
      Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
    2. Re:Title is Misleading by stephanruby · · Score: 2

      Am I the only one who thinks the name has a subtle reminder of words like discredit? "de" is a bad prefix for "decentralized", IMO.

      It's a bad name, yes, but it's not like they had the desire to jump TLDs, nor had the million dollars necessary to buy d3c3ntr8l1zed.org or decreed.org or decrud.org.

      Until they become multi-millionaires of their own, decred.org will have to do.

  5. Re:PoS + PoW? by drnb · · Score: 2

    The following is oversimplified ...

    In Proof-Of-Work the blockchain is updated by those doing work to solve computationally hard problems, the more work you do the more likely you are to be the one updating the blockchain; and in Proof-Of-Stake the blockchain is updated by those who own coins, the more coins you own the more likely you are to be the one updating the blockchain.

  6. if only there were a p2p micropayment system by SuperBanana · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is in part due to a lack of mechanisms and pathways for funding development work directly from the community

    Someone should come up with a system to send other people money, even in small amounts.

    --
    Please help metamoderate.