For some time now, some people have thought the Bitcoin Core development team is too conservative and too concerned with technical failures to take action to improve the ability of the network to grow, but after the collapse of the DAO, two Ethereum blockchains are operating, lending more credence to bitcoin’s approach.
In a report, Joe Colangelo, executive director of Consumers’ Research, said he thinks the result “completely vindicates” the path Bitcoin Core has chosen. He said the conservative nature of the team developing it has given him and others confidence in rules that make bitcoin so important. “The intransigence of the bitcoin development community is a feature, not a bug. If it’s this hard to raise the block size, that 21m limit for bitcoin looks rock solid,” he said in the report.
Late in July, the development community behind Ethereum went ahead with a decision to push a change to its blockchain that got back investor losses in the DOA. In order for this to happen, all participants in Ethereum had to adopt the new version of the blockchain’s history, one in which the stolen funds were moved to a new wallet created for investors. It was an emergency measure prompted by a need to stop the bad guys from stealing funds. Bitcoin Core, which is made up of a volunteer development community that works on the code, turned down calls to implement a hard fork that would boost the block size. Its members have favored incremental solutions, which prompted some to say they are too conservative.
Industry observer Chris DeRose said in the report that bitcoin’s success is due to the development team, who he said is “decoupled from short-term speculative incentives”.
“The bitcoin leadership model seems much better geared towards more prudent management of actual users’ macroeconomic issues, despite the oftentimes horrendously loud interests of short-term speculators,” he said in the report.
We’re always on the lookout for opportunities to partner with innovators and disruptors.
Learn More