Dashpay Magazine: Lack of Consensus Leads to Bitcoin Hardfork Proposal

After an incredible sequence of the event following the Ethereum hard fork, a proposal to do same for the mother of all cryptocurrencies has begun. The continuous debate over the increase of Bitcoin’s blockchain size has left a minority of the community dissatisfied leading to a suggested hard fork has been announced on the r/BTCfork subreddit.

r/BTCFork as the name implies is a subreddit set up to discuss the possibility of a hard fork of the Bitcoin network due to never ending block size debate that has done more harm than good according to the proposers of the hard fork.

The primary cause of the block size debate has been the lack of a decentralized consensus with the privilege of deciding the future of Bitcoin placed in the hands of a selected few. This is what has brought together like-minded people in the Bitcoin community to split the network giving investors the power to decide according to the introductory post on r/BTCfork.

“We are bringing together like-minded people to work on this hard fork split of the network to allow the market to decide on how bitcoin should move forward rather than a very small group of developers and miners.”
This will have a negative impact on the world’s first cryptocurrency just like it did on Ethereum which led to the rise of Ethereum Classic further splitting the strength of the once vibrant Bitcoin alternative.

The hard fork practically means a division of mining capacity for a venture that has become less lucrative following the latest halving and a possible reduction of nodes which has already begun due to lack of incentives. The hard fork might not gain support from China; Bitcoin’s mining powerhouse due to their involvement in the current development direction of Bitcoin, the fork can still occur without Chinese miners support due to the decentralized nature of the Bitcoin network.

The latest event has raised the question over a lack of a decentralized consensus model across the cryptocurrency landscape especially in Bitcoin and the adverse effects it continues to have on cryptocurrencies brightest prospects. Despite the general decay in cryptocurrency governance, Bitcoin-based alternative Dash has changed the face of governance in the digital currency world forever.

Dash Doubled Its Block Size in Less Than A Day

While celebrating its second anniversary earlier this year, a poll was held between stakeholders of the digital currency to determine if a block size increase from 1 MB to 2 MB was needed or not. Unlike the never ending nature of the Bitcoin block size debate the Dash community reached an agreement in a day through it Decentralized Governance By Blockchain (DGBB) model.

The process was pretty simple and smooth for lack of a better adjective; a proposal was made via the Dash Budget System which was described as development that would increase Dash’s transaction per second than that of Bitcoin’s to up to nearly 28 transactions per second by the lead project developer Evan Duffield:

“With the current 1MB block size limit, we have approximately 4x the capacity of the Bitcoin project in transactions per second capability, due to the 2.5-minute block spacing and a current 1MB blocksize. With our current limitations, our network could theoretically allow nearly 28 transactions per second. We propose a change to a 2MB block size limitation, allowing up to 56 transactions per second. This will allow the currency to grow to approximately 8x the current transactional capacity of the Bitcoin project. It is important to plan for the long-term success of the network and future adoption, by making this change we will be ready to scale and also give ourselves ample time to continue research and development to look for additional ways to improve efficiencies of the network.”

During a 24hour period stakeholders of the currency who earned their voting power by running incentivised full nodes to support network voted for the proposal creating a consensus community-wide.

The DGBB model gives a decentralized option for the governance and development of Dash by allocating 10% of all block rewards to a budget system which is managed by Masternode operators who are also given incentives for running full nodes and active participation in the development of the project.

The current happenings in the cryptocurrency world has shown the importance a decentralized governance model and how such infrastructure can contribute the growth of a currency. Dash 10-month-old budget system continues to be the foundation of its development and threatens the legitimacy of existing models.

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Written by Elisha | http://dashpaymagazine.com/index.php/2016/08/03/lack-consensus-leads-bitcoin-hardfork-proposal/