Sat Nov 07, 2015 6:38 pm

Hi Marshall. Thanks for doing this AMA. I'm not sure if it is still ongoing, but I'll try to get my question in anyway!



You said (I'm paraphrasing) that you would like to minimize your exposure to risk, and thus not upgrade if you don't absolutely have to. I can understand that. How does that relate to BIP101 (or Bitcoin XT, but going by your responses you would prefer the big block patch)? If miners and exchanges are switching over to BIP101 you would be at risk of mining blocks on the shortest chain. The network forks only with >75% of participants on it. How are you minimizing risk by not adding BIP101? (Maybe not now, but when other miners and exchanges and merchants do this)? To me, minimizing risk in this scenario would be to run the code that can immediately take advantage of both possible scenarios and not code that breaks in one scenario?



Currently, it would appear you have all the time to rigorously test the system and it's stability with the BIP101 patch applied. Going by your comments, you would much rather prefer that to a hastily enforced change that could happen if the network switches over.



(For this question, you can read BIP101 to mean any bigger block solution that has an implementation in code).



Assuming that you prefer a solution other than BIP101 - what would be your motivation? I believe other BIPs for larger blocks are technically much more difficult and thus increase your risk. They have no code yet, which increases your risk. They have not been tested as thoroughly yet, which increases your risk. Yet you seem to prefer BIP100, which by my understanding is higher risk (although it does give miners more power). How do you consolidate your desire to avert risk with the desire to support a higher-risk bigger block solution?



Thanks!