{"id":23971,"date":"2017-04-22T19:12:06","date_gmt":"2017-04-22T19:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe64f00e26c3"},"modified":"2017-04-22T19:12:06","modified_gmt":"2017-04-22T19:12:06","slug":"electrum-developer-thomas-voegtlin-bitcoin-unlimited-not-good-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/technical\/electrum-developer-thomas-voegtlin-bitcoin-unlimited-not-good-idea","title":{"rendered":"Electrum Developer Thomas Voegtlin: Bitcoin Unlimited Is Not a Good Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On the most recent episode of \u201cEpicenter,\u201d<\/a> co-hosts Brian Fabian Crain and S\u00e9bastien Couture interviewed Thomas Voegtlin, a developer of the bitcoin wallet Electrum<\/a>. During the interview, Voegtlin shared his thoughts on Bitcoin Unlimited<\/a>, an alternative to Bitcoin Core<\/a> that is best known for a feature<\/a> allowing miners and full nodes to set a locally acceptable block<\/a> size limit.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think [Bitcoin Unlimited] is a good idea,\u201d Voegtlin said during the interview. \u201cIt\u2019s really a big change; it\u2019s a change in the structure of power in Bitcoin. It\u2019s a very risky hard fork<\/a>.\u201d He went on to suggest that since the recent AsicBoost scandal<\/a>, \u201ca lot of people have changed their mind on this\u201d and no longer support Bitcoin Unlimited.<\/p>\n

Voegtlin went on to explain his view that Bitcoin Unlimited would give more power to miners and how the software client has diverged greatly from Bitcoin Core. The Electrum developer also touched on the similarities between the Bitcoin and Litecoin<\/a> codebases.<\/p>\n

More Power for Bitcoin Miners?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although Voegtlin claimed Bitcoin Unlimited is not much of a topic of discussion anymore, he also pointed out that a large percentage of the network hashrate (around 39 percent at the time of this writing<\/a>) is still signaling support for the alternative software client.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are in a situation where miners have a lot of power, and they seem to want more,\u201d Voegtlin said of the support of Bitcoin Unlimited among miners. \u201cThat\u2019s the point of Bitcoin Unlimited: the miners decide to change the rules whenever they want, and the only requirement is that they are followed by other miners.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voegtlin went on to note that he\u2019s unsure how many of the miners signaling support for Bitcoin Unlimited really want any of the changes implemented in the alternative software client to activate on the Bitcoin network. \u201cThey are signaling their opposition to [Segregated Witness<\/a>],\u201d Voegtlin said.<\/p>\n

In regard to miners\u2019 reasoning for rejecting Segregated Witness (SegWit), Voegtlin pointed to the recent AsicBoost revelations involving Bitmain<\/a> as a theory.<\/p>\n

Later, Voegtlin pointed to miners wanting to see more transactions processed on chain rather than through off-chain channels, such as the lightning network<\/a>, as another plausible theory. \u201cBut today it\u2019s impossible to put numbers on that,\u201d Voegtlin added. \u201cIt\u2019s not possible to quantify this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bitcoin Unlimited Has Completely Diverged from Bitcoin Core<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another issue Voegtlin sees with Bitcoin Unlimited is that it has completely diverged from the Bitcoin Core codebase.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team of developers that are behind Bitcoin Unlimited actually did not create a patch of the project, but they forked it a long time ago,\u201d explained Voegtlin. \u201cThe version of Bitcoin that they maintain is now completely different. They have diverged, which is not a good idea.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it\u2019s a good idea to fork the project if you want to replace the developers, if you want to fire them,\u201d Voegtlin added.<\/p>\n

In Voegtlin\u2019s view, the developers behind Bitcoin Unlimited should have created a simple patch and rebased it on top of the Bitcoin Core codebase after each new release.<\/p>\n

Similarities Between the Bitcoin and Litecoin Codebases<\/strong><\/p>\n

Near the end of the interview, Voegtlin pointed out that the Bitcoin and Litecoin codebases are very similar. It is partially for this reason that others, such as Bloq Co-Founder Jeff Garzik and Coinbase Director of Engineering Charlie Lee, have noted that Litecoin could provide a valuable test environment for SegWit and the lightning network.<\/p>\n

\u201cLitecoin is very close to Bitcoin; the changes are very small,\u201d Voegtlin explained. \u201cIt\u2019s not like Bitcoin Unlimited, who decided to drop the project and discard all of the new developments from the [Bitcoin] Core developers. Litecoin is just a small patch over Bitcoin, so the developments that are made for Litecoin can benefit Bitcoin.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On the most recent episode of \u201cEpicenter,\u201d co-hosts Brian Fabian Crain and S\u00e9bastien Couture interviewed Thomas Voegtlin, a developer of the bitcoin wallet Electrum. During the interview, Voegtlin shared his thoughts on Bitcoin Unlimited, an alternative to Bitcoin Core that is best known for a feature allowing miners and full nodes to set a locally […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3445,"featured_media":23972,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[3568,1662,1811,3482,163],"class_list":{"0":"post-23971","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technical","8":"tag-bitcoin-unlimited","9":"tag-block-size","10":"tag-electrum","11":"tag-ltb","12":"tag-wallets"},"author_data":{"id":3445,"name":"Kyle Torpey","nicename":"kyle-torpey","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/kyle-torpey-promo-image-96x96.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/electrum-developer-thomas-voegtlin-bitcoin-unlimited-is-not-a-good-idea.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3445"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}