Given the current crisis in Ethereum Classic about the creation of a parallel Ethereum Classic Improvement Proposal process (ECIP) called Ethereum Classic Labs Improvement Proposal process (ECLIP) by ETC Labs Core, one of the main development companies in the ecosystem, it was consulted with some Bitcoin developers and notable Bitcoiners what was their opinion if an analogous situation happened with the Bitcoin Improvement Proposal process (BIP).
This is a recap of the conversation on Twitter:
Donald McIntyre: Hi @NickSzabo4, @eric_lombrozo, @LukeDashjr, @pierre_rochard, @nic__carter, et al, if Blockstream were to create their own Blockstream Bitcoin Improvement Proposal process (BBIP) would that be ok in Bitcoin? What do you think about this?: https://etherplan.com/2019/05/17/why-ethereum-classic-needs-a-single-and-unified-improvement-proposal-process-ecip/7574/
Pierre Rochard: Bitcoin is permissionless, so yes that would be ok. Would it get traction and efficacy? Personally imho I would predict not, for all sorts of different reasons
Donald McIntyre: “Bitcoin is permissionless, so yes that would be ok” yes that’s the argument ETC Labs is using. Opponents, including myself, don’t deny that, but reject the attempt to control protocol development by one corporate entity.
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Eric Lombrozo: There’s nothing to stop them from doing it if they want. I would probably discourage people from using corporate-centric processes for protocol standardization, as it is just inviting capture. But people are free to run whatever software they want.
Donald McIntyre: “But people are free to run whatever software they want” yes, i guess the last layer of defense is what are the rules that are actually adopted by miners and node operators
Eric Lombrozo: Some people might gravitate towards a more corporate-centric protocol standardization process, but I don’t think the heart of the movement will. Better for them to fork off early so as to not continue to distract those who have a longer term vision.
Eric Lombrozo: Also, note that I am not opposed to corporate-centric processes in general. But when it comes to protocol standardization I strongly believe in interoperability. Even more so when it comes to currency.
Donald McIntyre: What is meant by “interoperability” here? public chain to public chain? private chain to public chain? other, something else?
Donald McIntyre: As an organizational description of ETC, there are 3 companies that maintained nodes, there are no nodes maintained by volunteers as in BTC however, until recently they all followed the specs of yellow paper and ECIPs to build their clients (there’s no ‘reference client’ in ETC)
Donald McIntyre: Now, one of the companies decided to create its own ECIP channel and ignore the rest of the community, including the Github repo and the ECIP process…the main argument is “we don’t want to depend on the community, they can follow us if they want”: https://github.com/etclabscore/ECLIPs/pull/2#pullrequestreview-202791681
Donald McIntyre: So, there is more at the meta level, a capture power play the normal ethos of “permissionless” and “anyone can fork”, even though true, are serving the attacker
Eric Lombrozo: If people really want to fork, you have no realistic way to stop them from doing so. The real question is whether their fork will gain any traction.
Donald McIntyre: “you have no realistic way to stop them from doing so” [thumbs up] [thumbs up] [thumbs up]
Hanakookie: There is no way to stop a fork. ETC can do what they want. And if those companies feel they don’t need support from their community they are doomed anyway.
Donald McIntyre: [thumbs up] [thumbs up] [thumbs up]
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Luke Dashjr: They kind of already did (BOLTs). It’s somewhat frustrating.
Eric Lombrozo: FWIW, I would consider consensus-level changes to be of special significance. I agree that a more unified standards process is desirable, but at higher levels of the network stack there’s less concern for strict compatibility.
Luke Dashjr: Not saying it’s the end of the world, just kindof rude at least.
Omar Shibli: Yeah like W3C, IETF.. world class asset deserves world class structured organization, I’m bit radical pardon me, just a silly idea, my two satoshis.
Omar Shibli: Open participation, radical public transparency of course.
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As per Bitcoiners consulted that participated with likes, Nic Carter liked Eric Lombrozo’s first statement and Nick Szabo liked all of Eric Lombrozo’s statements.
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