that bitcoin magazine stacy soapie is out with a long piece set in 2011 when kai's report of of course 1st got involved in bitcoin we started discussing decline at the time the market cap was 20000000 dollars of it going so that's very sweet and that the articles called the battle for p 2 s. 8 the untold story of the 1st big queen war p t s h means pay to script hast and you see me in there like i'm your top he isn't there and of course he was our 1st guest now he's our 2nd guess after john mitchell honest to be interviewed about decline early in 2011 so people read so welcome to the show yeah thanks for having me and looking forward to chatting about the history of the projects definitely know you guys were there for some of it hopefully this article will bring some new insights to people who are there and who aren't there yet today we are 20202021 everybody thinks they're

a bit coin expert and o.j. but because i nearly didn't survive to make these 2017 days let's discuss the 1st war of 2011 at the time there were lots of bad press about stolen wallets and multi-state that sure could be the answer but 1st explain gavin andresen and hausa toshi had just handed off the lead of the project to him yeah sure so the story of the untold story of the 1st big one war you know takes place in the early days of decline as you alluded to a lot of people who are just coming to quit may not be aware you know because as a software project it's been managed in different ways over the years and they quite itself it is open source code that is managed collectively by any one of the interest in that so now the story kicks off with you know so she as we now know left the big project a new heir apparent stepped up and gavin andresen who many people might not know today i was very form of her early decline development he started the. but he in

a lot of ways to find how we know and think about developments today in terms of how it works and the story chronicles really the 1st attempts of this developer band to change to quite right that is i think one of the things that remains interesting about bitcoin to everyone both the newcomers and people here is that you know this is a global money and you know the ability to change the rules and how that dynamic takes place remains i think one of the great mysteries of the project right if you have been around for a long time i think. you know there's a lot to learn about the subject and a lot to explore and i think that's what the article really sets out to do and hopefully does you know big question right now if we kind of think of it as a front here that people are staking their claim to the pieces of bitcoin the you know individuals the toshi say but also like the ideological space and what declawing is and this is been a battle from day one right like what is between and here you're talking about the

very earliest like when the west was won were settled in america you had the natives there you had the cowboys you had the gun slingers you had the pioneers you had you know all sorts of people the sheriffs all the early. people out there you know it's pretty wild out there right it wasn't like an easy locate it wasn't easy to settle the west it wasn't an easy thing and the same thing with bitcoin i think so let's go over it like how what was learned in this when they were gavin andresen said ok let's we have to that we're getting so much bad press because of everybody's while it's being hacked so let's fix this with multi segued this was something that was already in the code and that's the toshi had mentioned before he left but here gavin had a solution and he wanted to just push it through so what happened what did the other developers do and how did that change what bitcoin is today yeah that's a great grandson op. so i guess i'll start in saying that as you said you know

because it is something that that humanity is discovering right it's an innovation there's nothing like it before it's the 1st global money that has ever been powered by software so i think the story really gives a good snapshot of how those early developers came to understand decline right i think we have this idea that even say that the queen is something that's well understood or was well understood when it was founded but that is not the case so again this article i think is insight into how big one was shaped as a philosophy and technology where we get to see the people who we think of today as the you know great visionaries of big point really grappling with the underlying questions about how it should be formed right what does what are the ethics that should be required in managing a global money system that should be open to anyone how do you express those ideals and code and a process around code that isn't just you know that is still open of participation right so you also get examples of you know how you get how these early views were

shaped what they were you get to see how they're different from how we talk about because and today we get clarity on the specific people that contributed to that story and i think evidence of their specific contributions which today might be inaccessible right it might be hard to figure out who contributed what ideas to pick one and i think this article does a lot of exhibition to give some new detail on that so pete lay out how it changes happen in bit going who gets to decide when it's alter what does opcode mean in this context so yeah i would say that. the process by which big point changes is again still one of these mysteries of the project and something we're trying to understand today people who are here to be quiet may hear that there is a coming up grade called taproot right so this is a again a proposal the developers have made to improve decline but still there's a process by which that needs to be rolled out because again going back to decline being a philosophy and a software project it's very important that changes are. made according to you know

in ways that support the values of the project as a whole so you get to see and this article of p. 2 sh that the 1st upgrade to be quiet and it was really breaking a lot of bones in this process right we didn't really understand how big point upgrades should be done today there's a lot more understanding but that is something that we're still just beginning to understand so again the story the 1st upgrade that was done by a collaborative group of developers they wanted to make a small change the code right they found that there is this great new technology the same while it's lets you have multiple keys to make wine while many people use that today it turns out those addresses are really long they're like 70 characters as opposed 30 characters simple technology fix let's make them shorter but the big client software is not designed in such a way where where that kind of easy fix. can just be rolled out because again the nature of global consensus is that everyone running the software that's what gives decline its value that's what makes it a project it is so if you are even

a well intentioned elevator who wants to upgrade the code in fact what you're doing is you're changing the code right you might be introducing something that breaks the rules that everyone who runs the software has agreed to so essentially you know we have this idea that developers can make changes to code or propose changes to the code but they're not necessarily the ones who maybe get to decide right so the people running the computers the power the network alternately it is you know with come to believe that it is their ability to make that decision that you know truly differentiates pick one and i think you see with this early on that you know there are multiple stakeholders of the network and there are miners there are individuals who runs her own nodes and again this is really just kind of the beginning of understanding that you know you can make changes the big points off where they need to be accepted by this global network and this global network is made of multiple constituents who may not have the same incentives they may not agree they may not want to make certain changes and again the great drama unfolds. and still unfolding

because about how this process should take place a couple of people also involved aside from. it is also a mere toc he and luke dashon are in this kind of war intersects kaiser report because i mean attack it was the 2nd person we had on after john the tone to talk about because in that going back to the early early years and the problem the multi-city and the petition had been laid out by said so gavin for falls ill and then his eagerness to implement the fix to the stone a lot meet resistance from the other developers and as you point out. so my question is really you know when i look at an open source project like linux right you've got a benevolent dictator linus to revolt and everything kind of flows through him but that's not because he's open source but you've got this consensus algorithm which brings in all the nodes so how would you contrast the linux compared to pick coin as an open source project so because it was definitely developed in the lineage of

open source projects and because of that when it was early on in the projects history they followed those conventional models so as you mention when x. is accepted in or was accepted in open source that you generally have a founder or creator who is in doubt with certain rights to make decisions about software actually after all it's their intellectual creation and seen as the people who are joining you know they are users of the project and they are contributing to it they're seen as you know being more net to this leader figure right so if they call and you have an early strong leader figure and to toshi you have you know he disappears over time for reasons to still unclear and we have a new group that emerges and we have a developer gavin andresen who kind of claims the mantle and takes over this authority position right so i think what you see in the story mentioned dasher and we're talkie you know begin to question this idea of whether a project like big quien is undermined by this idea that open source projects have a dictator or developer that that sort of sets the tone or. you know decide for or

for the group because again with a coin you are trying to create an open and global money system and. you know people began to see it having a dictator or single developer deciding decisions or just having more weight and decisions and other than other people as something that broke the ethics of that project right it wasn't online but i think here and this article you can see that that was just being articulated it wasn't really articulated very well and it took a long time for the developers who are contributing because it's a big way themselves to really understand right because it was the way open source projects were managed and i think with big wind we now know that there are drawbacks to that and one of the biggest drawbacks is that it undermines the goals of the project by having a dictator because after all as luke asher says in a piece you know why not use u.s.d. if you have a monarchy or currency or a currency that is led by some sort of figure how does it make it different from a government currency and i think what you can see here that's really interesting

is the developers really stumbling on these core questions today that seems obvious right you might look at that point and say you know it's a non-governmental currency it's a non-governmental money that's obviously the core value proposition even to those who are most familiar with the code back in the day it was something that's of time all right let me take a break and when we come back more with pete risk his excellent article which i recommend everybody read the battle for p. 2 s. h. the untold story of the 1st coin war don't go away. so what we've got to do is identify the threats that we have it's crazy going for indication of let it be an arms race is on both ends very dry. to follow the only

closely i'm going to exist i don't see how that strategy will be successful very critical time time to sit down and talk. this is nothing like football. that's not a money spinner but it is expensive. mended some dangerous . tennis is on the speedway. and they have no brakes that's an. insult to the club some beautiful. place.

welcome back to kaiser report stacey this is a fascinating conversation this guy paid resurrected his homework right you know we left off talking about dasher and the friend of kaiser report here talkie and how they basically stood up to gavin andresen everybody was ready to introduce this fork to the code and suddenly 1st it was like i'm here talking is like wait let's think about this this is a $20000000.00 project we can't just change things like that we're south of quaint now and dasher had his own ideas and it became a very contentious issue but how did this notion of now that we're quite familiar with but at that point came in the introduction of the notion of a soft fork and getting minors to start signaling support for either one of the answers so walk us through that sure yeah i think it's important to understand that

a big point as a project that technology in the philosophy that we know today didn't really emerge simultaneously right and there are a lot of different factors that contributed to how we think about it today that weren't immediately obvious to people or early on so you mention hard for extra software chs right and i think there's a lot of people that even question whether peach was edge the door we're talking about here is the 1st software upgrade i think it's can it's unknown today were it remains a matter of deliberation whether such as he himself instituted hard forks or soft forks and the difference there again is that you know hard for what you're doing is you're breaking the compatibility of the software for all the individuals running clients on their computers so maybe to back up a little further i think the big question philosophy as emerged i want to stink of on this point spread from other cryptic currency projects and i like to sum up how i think about decline philosophy today and this does touch on the hard work and software alignment that you know because it really is a sovereign money system that's aspiration it's to be equal and competitive against

and to succeed against government currencies there's the idea that no to some. who is running a version of that software is sovereign rights the re you express your sovereignty is that you run a node and i think 3rd and this is kind of most important where the developers came in is that over time they began to see soft forks rather hard forks as necessary to supporting that sovereignty of the nose of the users and the goal of the network right because if you are making a decision to introduce an incompatible software you are men then making the decision to kind of break the sovereignty of the individuals who opted into the network and they get the thinking there is that someone who is opting into big why and they're making a choice right and if you are disenfranchising them from that work by taking away their rights to run that node it's seen as you're making a decision that would put their point within the same design scheme as a government currency so i think just keeping all that in mind at this point in time the developers really are grappling with that idea of hard forks and software expert on a technical level right there asking ok can we do this so it the other old clients

can run the software does everybody have to upgrade the same time because again the nature of global consensus is global money is that the every computer running the software rules that's what makes they coined the technical for how it is right that is a global money system that is the product of all these of these nos operating simultaneously and running the rules of the software rights of you are going to make a change even a well intentioned one we mentioned here that you know this change is really simple right we just want to make a 70 character address 30 characters so that everybody can use these safer wallets but again you know these are the things that they learned along the way is that these simple changes of them make one aren't so simple there are many network effects when you think about introducing a change to a large network so as the big calling protocol spun up and the early developers were on it there was this question about is this really as decentralized as we think it is and i think. guys like

a meritocracy pushed for this idea that the natural bias for the protocol is toward decentralization and as a result we have what we have today which is this factor of the protocol that is the centralization that gives it its toughness is hardness and it's attracting a lot of institutional money but another buzzword if you want to call it that we hear so say with recording is immutability. and what you're describing here are a bunch of software engineers writing code. and it seems like the opposite of immutability seems like it's being mutated it's mutability right but that this is kind of a subtle point the reason why it's important is because probably the number one criticism here from money managers agustín be say is that they'll say well that 21000000 point cap can be altered it's not it's not finite because look you've got all these code writers involved and they're changing the protocol dot dot dot and then make a lot of money form comments at that but nevertheless that gain some traction out

there in the media land so how do you walk people through this point that for example 21000000 quaint gap is immutable i think is not the way i would describe it but but how would you describe it. sure i mean i think this article in and again you know based on primary resource you know citations from the manga stick around r c get a good grade in this case we really look to day by day for the messages amongst the developers you know for a period of about 6 months and around 2011 i would say that anybody who is wondering about how declines code should be changed or can it be changed should really take a look at this period in the lessons learned from it because what you'll find is that while it's very easy to make technical suggestions for big code records code it is very hard to convince a distributed network made up of thousands of individual people and actors to simultaneously all make the same change right that's something that you can ask

yourself with you know big questions coming up grade right now tapper today. this is something that largely the whole network agrees is good we still haven't seen a lot of development or activity you know to bring it live and i think that again. is supposed to be hard to change this article provides a lot of evidence that when the developers have even a glora julie agreed that there is a good change it is still very hard for them to change to quiet because they are not the ones who are making this decision right again they point is a. introduces this idea within it you call it governance right where sometimes majority is not going to fits everybody or nobody this idea of consensus right and i think it's something that we don't understand i say we have just again the quote is an innovation nothing like it has ever existed before so it's important i think to excavate these events and really look at what happened because there are no historical analogs right there are no there's no past history were tried to upgrade a software network that was attempting to be a global money that nobody owns or manages right and i think if you look at this

event you'll find a lot of allegations the idea that this one is very hard to change even when most people within that system agree and i think that you know it's significantly undermines the point they largely uninformed point that people make again because it's quote unquote code it should be a easy to change well you know it's one quote code but the money itself is defined by an entire system of people following the rules and enforcing the rules of the software and they're no let's talk a little bit more about some of the confusion that the mainstream has and what this law this period of time that you're talking about this 1st big question war really reveals is that they always say well there's like a 1000 other coins right there's a 1000 all the coins are 2000 or 300-5000 who knows how many all coins but this whole process of how slow and painful consensus is and as you say like with this small relatively small example you know you had which led to that toxic situation whereby 8 people like amir tuckey are no longer involved in between greg

maxwell no longer involved a big plane gavin injuries the no longer involved in big quite so lot of the a lot of the core devs end up rage quitting. and it's really slow process to introduce any changes and that has led to things like theory i'm bursting out because vitale didn't want to wait for smart contracts to be able to be introduced to be going with the you know they are going to be they are being implemented on pick one. but it took longer than he was ready for the same thing with all sorts of things like taproot or other other coins that emerged to because they couldn't wait for the core devs the big point so this is that are all those things all of the coins and any of the coins that like launch based on we you know bit quaint should have this like taproot and this was going to be the coin that our middle wimble or things like that like all of those bitcoin will eventually have all that is

necessary yeah i think there is some of what you're saying as you know because it is one of a number of predicaments yes but it is still unique and distinctive among those from a currencies for the reasons that you just mentioned they point has made choices about how its development should be aligned with its philosophy that i think are still obscured to the developers of other crypto currencies and i think as someone who you know my background is i was a journalist right i was editor for quite as for many years produce the space with objectivity and in many cases you know was confronted with the rise of cryptocurrency is right there being more than just because when i started writing and reporting on that point and 2013 there was only by coin and there were thousands of other coins i think what we're seeing now that is that a lot of the other currencies that evolve they don't really have meaningful criticisms of decline and in part because the people who founded them or who marketed them or joined them they don't really have the understanding of declines code and philosophy and technology to really have

a meaningful contribution there and i would say that's true in all cases but i think i go back to what i said there where quite as one of a number of increasingly increasingly appears distinctive and unique among cryptocurrency is in part of that is you know the developers have made certain choices we have the collective group of people who use big made certain choices we haven't always been great about communicating those choices and i think it's still hard for people new coming to big point to you know get up to speed in terms of the . thinking because again a lot of this seems so obvious on 1st glance right you know this whole story 15 page story about all the strife about changing decline again a simple change 70 character address want to make it 30 characters this will give everybody the ability to use multiple keys to secure their wallets you know you can't really have a change that smaller or that more people agree to but again you know with fake when you sacrifice that technological speed you know and i think this gets me into

as quote innovation right what is an innovation you know these are just changes right and everybody has to agree to the changes and the resistance of big point to change is part of what makes us strong because i think we're finding over time is that it's not undermined as easily it's not subverted as easily and it's able to withstand you know these great offenses and assaults and for people who haven't been in the industry for a long time you know speaking as someone who has been and that's one of the things that's so immediately obvious to me that it's very hard to communicate other people right is that i've seen big and are so much in terms of you know emotional attacks like you know personal attacks you mentioned that you know some of these developers who are associate with the project well part of it is because they've tried to you know and worse changes are in action isn't because of that the community has not agreed to and this played out over years right we watch people yell at each other at conferences and that it's that you know i think it's that strength that or the you know the strength of arguments and they quite right i think ultimately you know

if we look at what point is a psychologist and a philosophy and it's it's very hard and right i don't see that other cryptocurrency is the really gone through that process they haven't really experienced hardship they haven't experienced frustration and ultimately maybe this is a bit of my far personal inclination but i think i put more trust in decline over time because of that you say quote it's hard to change now let's talk about that for a 2nd and flippin philosophical and ethical questions because. it seems that one thing that big. is that chains cannot be brought about by coercion and violence and that's unique because all of the fia money as paul krugman at the new york times says the us dollars backed by men with guns with big case you need to the census and it has to appeal to a logic of that consensus not coercion and a logic to scale amongst thousands is

a lot different then an invading army trying to convert a country to accept u.s. dollars with missiles and tanks your thoughts. certainly i think that is the aspiration of the big crime project and one of its key differentiators now versus the current fiat's of some i would challenge you to read the article and see if that is the conclusion that they come away with i think you know and be quite fast there are some more nuanced situations that occurred co-write the battles for p 2 s told story the 1st bit coin of war by pete rizzo it's a must read thanks for being a kaiser report thank you all right that's going to do it for this edition of kaiser report with may max kaiser stay here but like to thank our guest pete reza next time by all. americans love by and homed.

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