Ballot box (based on public domain image at [1])

This isn't going to be a very long article. I'll just share some thoughts and opinions with you. Feel free to disagree in the comments, I welcome debate!

Ever since the "Bitcoin Core problem" which we faced from 2014-2017, and which prompted the creation of Bitcoin Cash through a hard fork, we have known a few things.

Bitcoin miners and exchanges really don't want to be in the limelight, but they have a very strong incentive to keep Bitcoin working well as a payment system (otherwise BCH wouldn't exist and would not be here still, 2+ years after). This means they necessarily ARE involved in decisions - even if you don't see or hear them in Bitcoin Cash most of the time right now. With very few exceptions, they are the silent executive powers that shape decision making. When it appears that a development team is in charge, it is good to remember that this isn't really the case - behind it are miners and exchanges which have much more of a say in what happens finally. (*) The "Bitcoin Core" style of governance, if facilitated by miners because of (1), usually manifests as a team that considers itself as the "reference client" in charge of technical decisions.

It is at minimum a huge warning sign of potential protocol capture.

Sooner or later, it may result in outright anti-competitive behavior (cough, "Hong Kong Consensus", cough).

Eventually it may result in currency splits (**) through further hard forks as people are always likely to disagree on governance or technical issues and there is a party which considers itself the central arbiter. Competition is good, even among development teams. It leads to better products.

Enabling competition is what motivates people to step up with their ideas and prototypes.

Stifling competition results in a monoculture that can easily stagnate.

Looking at the roadmap and the competition out there in the cryptocurrency field, it's clear Bitcoin Cash as a protocol is not yet at a stage where it has the luxury to stagnate.

We need massive on-chain scaling improvements (from megabytes to gigabytes to terabyte), fractional satoshis, future-proofing of the cryptography against quantum computer attacks, perhaps stronger privacy through extensions etc. I'm sure many of you could add interesting thing to the list.

With that in mind, Bitcoin Cash got off to a good start with several active client development teams, and has stayed relatively decentralized in that regard. But of late it seems that the benefits of healthy competition might have started to slip peoples' minds, at least in some quarters.

Miners and exchanges who have acted and spoken out in favor of a decentralized protocol development ecosystem, seem to have retreated behind the curtain, with their actions and intentions becoming less transparent.

I want to put up a central thesis here that retreating into the shadows is the option which leads to (2) - the Bitcoin Core problem, and is exactly what miners and exchanges in Bitcoin Cash should be trying to avoid, if they want to lower the risk of future currency splits. The risk is always there, but everyone's actions can raise or lower it.

There is no getting around the fact that miners are responsible for the decisions implemented on the chain.

Whether one boils it down to them "voting" by running a particular piece of software, or "voting" in another way to determine which direction the system as a whole should take, they still exercise their power and I'd like to see anyone argue that this would make a material difference in how they are treated by the regulators to which they are subject in their various countries.

Choosing to come into the light with respect to the process of reaching consensus on the protocol's future, instead of putting up a "front" in the form of a "reference client" team to take the attention and heat away from their (miner + exchanges) choices, will give more confidence to users and potential users of Bitcoin Cash that would like to see and trust that decisions are reached in a way that is understandable and accountable.

We've had the opposite with Bitcoin Core and the corporations that pulled the strings for a long time, ultimately leading to nearly a wasted decade where Bitcoin could have, and should have, been vastly improved and gained the use of and trust by more people.

To miners, exchanges, payment processors and wallets that pull weight: Think about it, and speak out about what you think is best for Bitcoin Cash.

Footnotes:

(*) With the exception of unintentional development screw-ups which are a manageable risk.

(**) While there isn't something wrong in itself with a fair currency split over a feature or even political/governance controversy, it needs to be said that this potential of splitting resides in a field of tension where one (negative) pole is the harm to network effect and community coherence, whereas the other (positive) pole is is being able to escape/survive capture and also to try out multiple evolutionary paths through market competition, without disenfranchising existing currency holders.

Usually coin holders would have to take an active decision to sell one side of a fork split. If they take no action, they hold equal "shares" in either side. The exception is where they have their coins locked up in custody and the custodian takes a decision with which they might not agree - this is still their responsibility though since the protocol doesn't force anyone to use third parties.

Image credit:

[1] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:France_vote.JPG (public domain)