Date: Wed, 22 May 2013 07:37:23 +0400
From: zooko <zooko@zooko.com>
To: Peter Vessenes <peter@coinlab.com>
Message-ID: <20130522033720.GE20236@zooko.com>
References: <20130519132359.GA12366@netbook.cypherspace.org>
	<CAMGNxUsGRyYWepSn4on+V9CJAj0J8oSXndo36OrrCyMhvKnoxA@mail.gmail.com>
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User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)
Cc: Bitcoin-Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] is there a way to do bitcoin-staging?
Precedence: list

Folks:

I'm very interested in this idea. I got really excited about it and started
trying to write up schemes to implement it. Like much of Bitcoin, it gets my
head spinning, but then it turns out I don't really understand it.

Because when my write-ups of implementations all turned to dust and ashes, then
I reconsidered, and I realized that I don't actually understand how the
proposed thing is different than testnet. The proposed difference seems to be
about assigning real value to the coins on this "beta bitcoin blockchain", but
that's mostly not up to developers, except possibly through some crazy scheme
which forces "beta bitcoins" to be exchangeable for real bitcoins... Actually,
no, not even then.

So I guess what is *really* exciting about this idea has nothing to do with
making the "beta" coins valuable nor with novel schemes for linking
semi-independent blockchains. What is really exciting about it is a shared
codebase that the Bitcoin core developers are (at least nominally) paying
attention to, and that you can play with on some public blockchain.

So if that's the right goal, then the solution is a branch or a fork on github,
and a name such as "bitcoin-next" or "bitcoin-staging" or whatever that confers
a certain aura of relevance.

And maybe some publicly celebrated list of the testnet blockchain forks which
have been inevitably created by this "bitcoin-next" codebase.

It would give people with the "better Bitcoin bug" (such as me) a common
codebase to aim pull requests at, and to fork on github.

Like Peter Vessenes says, this idea sounds like an alternative to "go do it on
an alt coin".

This feels different to me from the "go do it on an alt coin" idea, because I
suspect most bitcoin core devs aren't really paying that much attention to alt
coin. I know *I'm* not paying attention to them, because I'm already overloaded
with things to learn. Having to learn about alt coins in order to try to
communicate with bitcoin core devs that may or may not be really paying
attention to the alt coin sounds daunting.

Regards,

Zooko