Core Devs: Communication has improved, thank you. Two more moves, and the civil war may end.

Over the past week, Core has shown a marked improvement in its communication with the community. Creation of BitcoinCore.org was appropraite. Setting up the official twitter account was smart. Encouraging discussion in bitcoincore.slack.com has been excellent. And most recently, Core's post here was very helpful - well-written and informative.

A sincere thank you to Core for demonstrating improvement in this area. Keep it up.

Upon this momentum, may I now offer the following humble suggestion: with two more moves, Core can end the civil war.

This suggestion is based on discussions with various parties over the past two weeks. Anything less than both is unlikely to settle the issue in any meaningful way. That suggestions are being given to Core, as opposed to Core's opponents, is not an indication that Core is "primarily at fault" or that it's Core's sole responsibility to fix things. Rather, it is because Core has the power and position to effect meaningful change, in my opinion.

Move 1) Core clearly commits to a hard fork block size increase, by adding it to its formal roadmap. The specific plan should probably be the 2-4-8 plan, as proposed initially by Adam Back, and which achieved widespread consensus after the scaling conferences. The time to add it to the roadmap is now, and the time to execute the HF should then, within reason, be up to Core's stewardship. This needn't interfere with, and is certainly not a replacement for, the much beloved SegWit.

Move 2) Core formally, publicly, and clearly denounces the censorship that has plagued community discussion, and should apologize for not having done so earlier. Core is not responsible for the censorship, but stood silently by as it happened, allowing widespread mistrust to grow out of control.

If Core can gather the consensus among its members to take these two steps, and can do so with professionalism, humility, and a sincere desire to move forward and help the community heal, then I believe it will.

This would be a victory for the major factions of this divisive issue. We could then all get back to building. There are so many battles ahead to fight against the real enemy. This one, against each other, needs to end.

And please, above all, civility in these discussions is paramount. To Core - thank you for the work you have done, and continue to do. I think you'll find many allies if you take the above to heart.

Submitted January 27, 2016 at 06:13AM by evoorhees http://bit.ly/1K9hbJC