"They [Core/Blockstream] fear a hard fork will remove them from their dominant position." ... "Hard forks are 'dangerous' because they put the market in charge, and the market might vote against '[the] experts' [at Core/Blockstream]" - /u/ForkiusMaximus
The soft-fork deployment of SegWit is a political decision which is overriding the technical wisdom that this should only be done via hard-fork.
Defending the political strategy requires tortuous positions on the block limit such as asserting that Back's 2-4-8 is OK, but Classic's 2 is not.
– u/solex1
Hard forks are "dangerous" because they put the market in charge, and the market might vote against "us experts" [at Core/Blockstream].
They [Core/Blockstream] backed themselves into a corner with hard fork fear mongering, to the extent they're willing to push something ten times more risky as a soft fork just to avoid the precedent of a painless hard fork.
Because painless hard forks mean the block size would probably rapidly be raised to 8 MB and their [Core/Blockstream's] sidechain subsidy would be gone.
If they [Core/Blockstream] lose their status as "reference" implementation they lose the inertia effects that make it so much easier for them to push through everything as a soft fork. Use it or lose it, as they say.
The incentive is for the dominant team to try to do everything by soft forks so as to avoid a market referendum on their implementation.
XT messed with this, BU really threatened to make mincemeat of it, and for now it is Classic that is actually delivering the blow.
They [Core/Blockstream] will bleat and bray about hardforks to get as many people as possible scared of them, but it is only they who are scared.
They [Core/Blockstream] fear a hard fork will remove them from their dominant position.
Posted Jan 31, 2016, 1:50 AM UTC