Samson Mow, the COO of BTCC, has completed his AMA on 8btc. Samson has faced all the harsh questions raised and said BU is “awful” and he supports onchain Scaling.

To know how Samson Mow has been challenged , Please see As a Chinese Mining Pool Owner, Why I am a Hardcore Opponent to SegWit

Now Let’s see Mow’s answers :

Q: How do you comment on BU?

A: For BU, I think it’s indeed an awful software. Actually it’s just a redesign based on Bitcoin Core as 99% of the codes are still those of Bitcoin Core. BU just has made some tiny changes. In developing BU, there are serval bugs in BU but they claim these bugs are just bugs from Bitcoin Core itself. Members from Core can tell the so called “bugs from Bitcoin Core itself” are simply caused by BU’s developers. BU is bad at coding and BU has not been through thorough tests. Many coders including Chinese and Westerners all thought BU’s codes are bad.

Besides, BU team actually has achieved nothing till now. If we say Bitcoin is a Ferrari with 100 Core members maintaining it, then BU team simply don’t know what a Ferrari is. BU only repairs bikes or even bikes are beyond their ability. All of these are because BU never has created or maintained any crypto currency. They even have never released any altcoin. I would rather believe in MaidSafeCoin or Dash’s teams than believe in BU.

Furthermore. BU changed the bitcoin’s rule of “ consensus-based principle”. BU is not based on consensus. Bitcoin’s rules are not made for mining but for users to decide the blocksize based on consensus. In order to gain support, BU now suddenly say bitcoin is created for mining, which is actually not even the thought of the developers of BU. Developers(of BU) also said they need to make some changes to conform to the consensus-based principle of bitcoin.

BU is just a form of political maneuvering that is being taken advantage of, just like Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Classic. Those who support BU are actually not all for BU. The want to achieve their ulterior motives by supporting BU, say they want to scale blocksize, to alienate Core team or they just want to prove they are correct. Their reasons for supporting BU are all far-fetched or wrong.

(from ID Bitcoiners) Q :Does BTCC support onchain scaling ?

Yes, BTCC support onchain scaling.:)

We support any plan of scaling both on and off chain as long as they are safe and have been under thorough tests. SegeWit in essence is onchain scaling as it can make the block size bigger and enlarge the effective capacity of the blockchain for bitcoins.

Many people still think SW is not onchain scaling. But in fact SW is the fastest scaling onchain plan till now. Most of the people within the community oppose a hasty hard-fork; If we can reach consensus on SW, then we can achieve onchain scaling in several months, making it a reality to have bigger blocksize and capacity for more transactions.

Q:BTCC supports SW as mining pool(miners) or as an exchange.

A: we support SW as believe it can improve bitcoin and enlarge the capacity of block, making outstanding technologies like lighting possible. This will bring an all win situation for bitcoin’s traders, miners, buyers or holders. We have made the supportive decision based on our analysis of it and its future potential.

Q: under what circumstances will BTCC give up running a bitcoin app in production with activated SW soft-fork?

I don’t think I have any reason to give up SegeWit till now as it will bring many improvements to bitcoin. It fixes bitcoin’s malleability. If SW is activated, the use of lightening network becomes possible. So from technical angle, I will not give up SW.

But there are also chances for us to give up SW. Like if other mining pools give us pressure then we may make concessions. If the activation phase of SW comes to an end, then we might also give up SW. But in general, till now I do not see any reason not to support SW. SW is a technical progress instead of a political fight. It should not be affected by others’ emotion or preferences. SW is a technical changes of bitcoin’s the core codes.

If political fight in the bitcoin community results in joint pressure mounting to us, I would say this is not the situation we want to see. We need to make decisions based on the pros and cons of the SW, and on the consensus of the Core’s team members as Core’s members are all excellent programmers. These coders spent a lot of time considering the situation to explore the best scaling solution to fix problems that most of the ordinary people feel hard to understand. If others’ pressure makes us unable to run SW or we press others to run SW, the situation will be bad. I think every should make decisions based on the pros and cons of technicals.

Currently there are many rumors and misgiving within Chinese community. Many people are maligning SW. Like some people are claiming Core will change the POW into PoS; SW is poison; SW is not onchain scaling, or the lighting network will carve up miners’ benefits…all of these are rumors without any source. SW is indeed onchain scaling. Except BU, no developer or engineer would say SW is not onchain sacling.

Q: Won’t BTCC follow the 2015 Beijing Pool Declaration and 2016 Hong Kong Consensus anymore?

A: This seems to be a question of common concerns. I would like to reply in details. Wish it can be clearer for all.

For 2015 Beijng Mining Pool Declaration, there is a long story behind it. You can’t say what happed a year ago equally applies in today’s situation as both internet world and crypto area are evolving fast. The Consensus was actually response to Bitcoin XT, when Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn firstly incited political fight within bitcoin community which has been witnessed by many mining pools.

At that time. Mike and Gavin tried to contact us quite frequently. They lobbied us and wanted us to use their Bitcoin XT. They said it can scale the blocksize into a 20MB one. They said the block was going to be full and actions must be taken. It’s until now that we are aware that it’s natural for the block to be full. If there is no full block, then there is no profits for the miners. The block space must maintain its scarcity to be valuable. But at that time we were not familiar with technical stuff and didn’t know how capable the Mike and Gavin were. We just knew 20MB was really bigger than 1MB and many other mining pools also felt the need to act so we were also a bit worried. But after some consideration, we believe to have 8MB block size was rather safe. To scale to 8 MB is referred to the Bitcoin XT’s plan of scaling to 20MB. We even didn’t intend to scale to 8MB blocksize. After the Beijing conference, Bitcoin XT distorted our intention by saying that our roadmap is to scale from 8MB to 8GB size. Many mining pools felt they were betrayed.

I don’t think that anyone should be required to conform to the 2015 Beijing Mining Pool Consensus. If it’s a must for everyone to conform to it, then BU should not have gained any support since we just need to scale to 8MB.

For 2016 Hong Kong consensus, it was actually the response to Bitcoin Classic. Bitcoin Classics misled us by saying that all people were supportive of them. Actually everyone at that time believed other people all support Bitcoin Classics so it turned out all people were for Bitcoin Classics. In was in the context that we held that Hong Kong Conference. The consensus stated that Core would write hard-fork codes. So many people thought it was an agreement between BTCC and Core. But actually the consensus was a response for Bitcoin Classic. There were 5 Core members at the site and they signed the consensus. But Bitcoin Core is neither a company nor an organization. It’s only some individuals and companies who support the development of Bitcoin Core. No one can compel Bitcoin Core to do anything and Core will not compel others to do anything. either. This is just the feature of bitcoin. Bitcoin is alive. It’s not a company which can post something on its official site. Likely, Bitcoin Core’s software will not update automatically. (Apple and Microsoft will send you a new version and you have to update). The update of Bitcoin Core is out of your free choices and you can also downgrade the system.

In fact, there are others things in Hong Kong consensus that have not been followed like Core hasn’t completed the development of SW in time. But this just proved their prudence. They will not accept a SW without thorough and sound tests. We have made some mistakes during the Hong Kong Consensus period. We were not familiar with the development of bitcoins. We have kept on learning and improving these years.

Actually Core team indeed has written the hard-fork codes which are published in BIP draft. To seem please find:https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2016-February/012377.html https://petertodd.org/2016/hardforks-after-the-segwit-blocksize-increase https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2016-February/012342.htmlhttps://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2016-December/013332.html

In the conference in San Francisco this summer, Core has displayed these codes but the community didn’t give many responses. Core members are trying their best to write code and the process is continuing. They can’t compel the Core to publish the hard-fork publicly as it requires the consensus within the whole Core members. There is no leader in Core.

Core also release 0.13, a version without SW for those who wants the most updated technique but are not willing to use SW. This version contains the most updated techniques like Schnorr signing.

Q: Does BTCC have any contingency plan for any bug which has been discussed on reddit?

Reddit is only a platform for people to share news or discuss anything. The so-called bug discussed on /r/btc are only the random guess by those who do not know technical stuff.

If you really want to discuss bug issues of SW, please subscribe Bitcoin Core’s email and go to their IRC chatting room. That’s where bug issue should be discussed effectively. Core has all of the communication records of Slack, IRC and subscription list published on the internet, though people won’t go there and see. People like to go to reddit. Reddit is not for technical discussion. It’s for…catfight. These so-called bugs have already been discussed between core members. It is because of these discussions of bugs’ elimination and tests that SW has come out later than expected, Core wants to provide reliable and bug-free codes to support its 11 billion USD worth industry of bitcoin.

Now we look at BU, it hasn’t had many test reports. Actually Core has reported bugs of BU and BU didn’t give any response.

Activity of BU on GitHub

Activity of Core GitHub

Core has done many tests and they even found bugs of library used by C++.https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/507145d78595e052ce13368e122f72c85093992chttps://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/9229

Q: Dose BTTC support that 1M blocksize should remain so permanently or believe it should be scaled at a proper time in the future?

It is a misunderstanding commonly seen in Chinese community that Core wants the block size to remain 1MB forever.

Core’s road map is just hard fork. But optimization should proceed the hard-fork. Core never said they will hold IMB block size permanently. We don’t want a block with only 1MB size, either. But If bitcoin doesn’t possess the feature of decentralization, then bitcoin is useless. It would be something like a database. Thus the smaller the blocksize is, the better bitcoin is as everyone can run it. You can’t just take care of yourself. A hard disk may be extremely expensive for the poor people. Since those who boast bigger size do not represent all the community, what we could do is to lower the threshold as possibly as we can.

Many people may never involve themselves in Ethereum community. We wanted to run our ETC mining pool but we have encountered many problems only because the block size is too big. You can’t only envision inserting the blocksize in a disk without considering communication, synchronization and orphanage rate. Scaling is not that easy. What many people do not understand is that scaling shouldn’t be done without due consideration. If we put all the date from google and YouTube in everyone’s computer like ledgers of blockchain, then to double the data of Google and YouTube means to double the data of everyone. This will lead to an increasing pressure of the whole network. You have to pay the price for scaling. Those who think the costs are nothing for them simply can not represent everyone.

SW indeed will scale the blocksize and Core team have some techniques for omptimization like the Schnorr signing. Schnorr can compress the transactions of 16MB into a 1MB block under perfect condition. Now the theoretical size is to compress 4MB data into a 1MB blocksize. There are many other methods to make 1MB size block size handle more data. But if needed, we can scale the blocksize into 2MB.

Added: Core team is highly transparent. All their meetings are available on the internet. See https://bitcoincore.org/en/meetings/

Q: Has BTCC Pool’s support of SW gained understanding and support from miners in your pool? In another way, has BTCC pool explained pros and cons of various options? Any relevant explanatory information can be shared to other pools for reference?

A: we have a professional management team for mining pools and we have maintained active communication with them. Last week I just went to Chengdu of Sichuan Province to meet miners there. We have explained the benefits of SW to the miners of Chengdu and they expressed their supportive attitude. BTCC indeed will explain to our miners the pros and cons of different scaling plans. In the meantime, we also provide reference documents on our Weibo and Wechat to miners, traders and bitcoins fans. We invited one Lightening founder to Shanghai for a meeting with friends in Shanghai. Next week (11th NOV), We will also invite some Core members to be in Shanghai to discuss SW with friends present. We have provided the information of Bitcoin, SW and scaling plans to not only miners and but all users of BTCC.

Q: Has BTCC pool done extensive test on 0.13.1 SegWit code? Can you release test report?

A: Sure. Thorough tests need to be done. In early April 2016, Core has contacted China’s miners including BTCC, F2Pool, AntPool BW to test SW on SegNet; In later April our pool has mined the blocks containing SW transactions; In May, mining pools including BW all completed the tests of SegNet and they have mined SW block; in October, BTCC began to test Bitcoin Core 0.13.1 and the improvements of 0.13.1 has begun since; 18th Oct, the vote of SW officially kicks off. Sorry I don’t have test files for you. But till now, judging from the mining pool’s operation, everything is fine.

The AMA is conducted in Chinese.

Knowing that this AMA really matters for the both Chinese and Western community to know the ideas and thoughts of others, we have tried our best to keep the original meaning and tones in plain English. In should be noted the stance of the AMA is only of Samson Mow and not necessarily of 8btc.

To see the original Chinese AMA text,

Go directly to the thread:

http://8btc.com/thread-42814-1-1.html