Two days ago Vlad Zamfir published an essay arguing that existing governance mechanisms in crypto are dangerous and that we should move toward a system that makes it easier to intervene in the operation of crypto networks. I see a strong correspondence between Vlad’s objections to existing crypto governance and…

Edited January 16 at noon PST to add the section “The meaning of ‘money’”, change some wording, and add an appendix. Examining a Conspiracy Theory about Satoshi’s Intent Dan Hedl recently published a popular tweetstorm in which he lays out a comprehensive theory of why we should think that Satoshi intended Bitcoin more as a store of…

François Chollet recently published an essay arguing that an artificial intelligence explosion (in which an AI rapidly becomes far more powerful than humans) is impossible. Below I’ll describe why I found many of his arguments unconvincing. Does “general intelligence” exist? there is no such thing as “general” intelligence. On an abstract level, we know…

A more up to date version of this FAQ can now be found here. Why does this FAQ exist? There are two main theories of how upgrades to Bitcoin should be decided upon: Market Governance (sometimes called Market Consensus) and Near-Unanimous Social Consensus Governance. It is impossible to understand Bitcoin’s block size debate or the…

Imagine asking Bitcoin Core developers the following question: If we could somehow increase the block size to a level that would keep transaction capacity above demand for two years, in a way that was safe for decentralization during this period, would you be in favor of doing so? How do…

This article was edited and expanded on February 10th, 2016 There is a misconception in the Bitcoin community that the Core roadmap for how Bitcoin should scale is based almost entirely on the technical judgment of the Bitcoin Core developers. While the Core roadmap does draw heavily on the substantial…

Last week in a (publicly logged) IRC channel, someone asked one of those most prominent Bitcoin Core developers the following question: “Are you arguing ‘fee pressure is good’ and therefore small blocks and zero growth are desirable?” The reply was: “Fee pressure is an intentional part of the system design…