Luke Dashjr SegWit, Bitcoin Independence Day – Bitcoin Magazine
In a year marked by pontificating about what it means to be a “Bitcoin maximalist,” the implosion of a number of centralized “crypto” projects and excommunication of self-interested Bitcoin influencersBitcoin Independence Day is worth celebrating more than ever.
The first Bitcoin Independence Day was scheduled for August 1, 2017, when Bitcoin users planned to distribute a software upgrade through a user-activated soft fork (UASF) via BIP148, which they hoped would mark a community-based victory over the years. Blocksize War by enabling SegWit. This was a change to Bitcoin’s transaction format that was supported by the Bitcoin community at large, but opposed by some major mining entities and other ecosystem startups who instead sought to impose a hard fork on the protocol to increase the block size limit.
The idea of celebrating 1 August BIP148 flag day as a public holiday was more or less meme’d into existence by Jan3 CEO Samson Mow, who was an outspoken advocate for the UASF. Bitcoin’s mining community capitulated in the days before this planned first Bitcoin Independence Day, signaling their support for BIP91 after the BIP148 UASF enforcing SegWit was already deployed and inevitable. SegWit was activated on the Bitcoin network on August 24, 2017.
The spirit of this original UASF rally makes the idea of Bitcoin Independence Day worth remembering, even five years later. Meanwhile, questions about how Bitcoin protocol changes should happen and the role of Bitcoin’s most prominent individuals in influencing its future remain very much unresolved to this day.
Looking back at SegWit with Luke Dashjr
To reflect on these questions as part of this year’s Bitcoin Independence Day, it may help to travel back to the beginning with someone who was there. Prominent Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr was one of the first to suggest the possibility of deploying SegWit as a soft fork.
Dashjr maintains the spirit that was so prominent during the Blocksize War. Most recently, it has meant speaking out against the Speedy Trial path for Taproot activation despite its general acceptance among much of Bitcoin’s technical community, pointing out that Quick trial method of activation ignored consensus developed around the BIP8 method for enabling soft forks.
“We learned some important lessons by enabling SegWit,” Dashjr recalled while reflecting on the process in an interview for this year’s Bitcoin Independence Day. “Unfortunately, it appears that some developers have not learned those lessons, and sought to repeat the same mistakes with Taproot, even going so far as to reject the community consensus around BIP8.”
Taproot may be seen as Bitcoin’s most significant protocol upgrade since SegWit, but its activation hardly tested the resolve of the Bitcoin community so viciously. The majority of Bitcoin hash rate contributors quickly signaled their support for the popular upgrade.
A “business entity vs. user” standoff never occurred around Taproot activation, and the truly existential questions of how consensus can be reached for changes to Bitcoin were not really answered. Indeed, Dashjr pointed out that, if anything, Bitcoin may now be in a worse position to resist the influence of centralized entities, such as those that supported SegWit2x.
“Since 2017, expectations for Bitcoin have grown, but unfortunately Bitcoin itself and the network have shrunk, making it much less secure and centralized on the border,” he said, pointing to data showing that the number of Bitcoin nodes has dropped from 200,000 in 2018 to fewer than 50,000 today. “But at the same time have need for Bitcoin has also grown considerably — I like to say ‘too important to allow to fail’ — and I believe it is crucial for the future of humanity to ensure its success despite these difficulties.”
Run your own node
As the bitcoin price has grown from around $4,400 in August 2017 to more than $20,000 today, it’s clear that the original Bitcoin Independence Day protected the protocol’s path to mass adoption. But the recent failure of centralized custody providers like Celsius shows that true Bitcoin independence is not growing at the same clip as this asset adoption.
“It’s not enough to get people to buy bitcoins, or for the price to go up,” as Dashjr put it. “All of Bitcoin’s advantages – including the security from outright theft and the 21 million BTC cap – stem from the assumption that the majority of the economy uses their own full nodes to verify payments to them. Centralized verification and third-party/custodial wallets are a bigger threat to Bitcoin than something else.”
Perhaps the biggest legacy of SegWit and the Blocksize War may be in the reminder that for Bitcoin to truly realize its promise, users must remain as fiercely independent as they proved to be in 2017.
“It was an important trial in Bitcoin’s history, for the community to overcome what amounted to a hostile takeover attempt by some powerful elites,” Dashjr recalled. “Had the UASF failed, it would probably have spelled the death of Bitcoin and the concept of decentralized currency as a whole. So an annual celebration like Bitcoin Independence Day seems very appropriate, and worth attending.”
