Discussions on shortening block time have caused widespread concern in the BCH community. On this issue, I think:
Zero confirmation is very important for the development of BCH. We should fully support the technologies that improve zero-confirmation security. However, in some important application cases, such as exchange funding, more than one confirmation is still needed within a few years. At present, the user experience of BCH’s confirmation is very bad, which is very unfavorable for the fierce competition in the cryptocurrency market in recent years. If you do not get enough market share, BCH's long-term advantage will also lose the opportunity to show. Therefore, it is recommended to shorten the block time.
This view represents the opinions of the majority in the Chinese community who have experienced the scaling debate and the hash war. In fact, the Chinese community has been discussing this issue since the end of 2017. After a year and a half, especially after the hash war, supporters have grown and become consensus among senior members, and most of the opponents have turned to BSV because they Believe in CSW, against all kinds of changes. [1]
Even in the Chinese community, many BCH supporters who entered the community after the hash War did not support shortening the block time. They also believed that the 10-minute block was more in line with the original bitcoin. In contrast, the supporters for shortening block time in Chinese community are concern more about market and user needs than nominal orthodoxy.
About half a year ago, I also communicated with the developers on this issue. Combined with the discussion results of the Chinese community and the opinions of the developers, I wrote a proposal to discuss the reasons, possible impacts and some objections for shortening block time. (https://medium.com/@ChangyongLiu/proposal-to-shorten-the-block-time-of-bch-1d7e8e897497)
The main opinions of developers were four points:
- The current development focus is on improving zero-confirmation. Security;
- shortening block time will affect block size, block reward, time lock, etc., which will be very complicated to deal with;
- need more clear case to explain the need to shorten block time;
- English community don’t support to shorten block time.
At the same time, another Chinese community member posted the suggestion on r/btc. I showed my support and linked the article in the post. (https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/ad3uer/be_strongly_against_reducing_block_time_from_10/eddvv7m/?context=3)At that time, the English community did not support this proposal. The post were subjected to fierce opposition.
It has been more than a year since the Chinese community discussed this issue to the majority reached the consensus. We don't think we can rush to shorten the block time. We need more time to communicate and think. Therefore, the Chinese community has suspended the promotion of shortening block time for half a year.
Recently, due to price fluctuations and hash fluctuations, the BCH's confirmation waiting time fluctuated greatly, often encountering an acknowledgement waiting time of more than one hour. For users who are waiting for funding in exchanges, the experience is very bad. Moreover, we are often asked: "BCH has not had a new block for an hour, has it been attacked again?" Some senior members of the community are also losing patience. They can’t understand that such urgent improvements have not received enough attention. I am also very worried about this, so I summarized the recent problems and specific cases, and posted on r/btc again, suggesting to shorten the block time. ( https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/cfu99n/the_block_time_of_bch_should_be_shorten建议缩短bch出块时间/)
After a few days of discussion, I was very happy to see that although some people still regard the proposal as an attack on BCH, there are already more people who can seriously discuss the proposal to shorten the block time. There have also been progresses in the communicate with the developers. Many people have already seen that the cases of one more confirmation are still in existence. The bad experience of confirmation does affect the competitiveness of BCH. Some discussions have gradually delved into the details. This is very gratifying.
However, we also see that there is not enough consensus to shorten the block time. At least the complicated impact of shortening the block time needs to be carefully evaluated and tested. The technical difficulty, workload and the scare of developing resources should also be carefully considered. It is not excluded that the result of the final evaluation is that the shortening of the block time is not feasible, or that zero confirmation of the increase in safety can cause almost all of the cases of confirmation to be replaced by zero confirmation. In this case, giving up the shortening of the block time will become a consensus.
The discussion can reach the current state, recognizing that at least there is still a need to shorten the block time in the near future, and began to seriously discuss, I personally think that I have achieved the purpose of my proposal. What is needed next is more communication and collaboration. In fact, through this discussion, the communication between Chinese and English communities has improved a lot, and more smooth communication channels are being established, which is beneficial to the development of BCH.
In the relevant discussions, some people tried to take the opportunity to split the Chinese and English communities, and even predicted the new division of BCH, and brought me a hat to try to conspiracy to split the community. I think they are either overly sensitive or support core or bsv. I don't want to spend time in more argument about these. There are many positive things that we need to do.
In fact, there has been a consensus among Chinese community members who support the shortening of block time: “Reducing block time is only a suggestion for improvement. The premise of implementation is to form a community consensus and will not lead to any split. If the consensus is not reached, it can be put on hold. And continue to evaluate and discuss."
Among the various cryptocurrencies, the scaling debate and the hash war had leaded the BCH community to be a more mature decentralized community. I think we have the patience to reach consensus, but also very firmly identify all kinds of real attacks, and resolutely fight back, just like we did during the hash war.
I personally specialize in economic and market analysis, not good at technology and development. In this discussion, I have done what I can do. Looking at the current situation, I think it should be put on hold for a while and wait for the community consensus. I also call on more capable community members to do more detailed assessments, analysis or testing. I will also try to make efforts in this regard.
Thank you all.
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[1] After the BSV split, I did a small survey on whether to support the shortening of block time in the two most popular WeChat groups in the Chinese community (BCH Bees and BCH 100 Club). Among them, the BCH Bees group with BSV supporters removed, the support rate was 83.8%, and only 2.7% opposed. Among the BCH 100 Club that retained some of the BSV supporters, the support rate was 82%, but the opponents reached 13.7%. Of the two groups, 48.7% and 39.7% were previously opposed to shortening the block time and later turned into support.
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