The Extended Extension Block Story
We’ve all read how Andrew Lee presented the Extension Block Story. It’s a fun story, but there seems to be some crucial stuff that’s being left out.
Lets start with how it was presented:
Instead of using the normal channels of communications for proposals (mailing list, talking to other devs getting feedback,…), they immediately went to the press. This is not the way Bitcoin development works, it annoyed the dev community, but they’re a young, new development team so I’m sure they just wanted some PR time and come out as “saviors of Bitcoin”.
The first image comparing Segwit and the other proposals already contained false information that up to this day they flat out refused to correct:
Obviously as everyone knows: Segwit IS indeed a block size increase.
More remarks from me about that post you can find here, which oddly enough didn’t get recommended by Andrew Lee, but toxic comments about Greg Maxwell on that article did.
The Part of the story that was conveniently left out:
The team had a trip to China in February, before the timeline of the story starts, where they met with Bitmain and other companies.
Jack Liao and another direct source mentioned that the idea of extension blocks was fed to the BCoin team by Bitmain.(confirmed by Lightninasic twice) Micree, Bitmain’s Co-CEO, also said that “The solution of extension blocks is beautiful from a technical view.” back in February. Bitmain had to be aware that it wouldn’t break their ASICBoost and that it would take many months, maybe even a year of extra stalling and, obviously, profit before a project like that would actually be properly peer reviewed and tested.
The Bcoin team made it sound like they came up with the idea of Extension blocks, this wouldn’t matter much under normal circumstances, however given the facts from the ASICBoost story, it does become a significant factor if it was being fed to them by Bitmain.
Note: After the ASICBoost story came out, they changed the code so the BCoin implemention would also break ASICBoost. This implementation however is far from ready and would take a year before it would be ready for production. Jihan hasn’t commented on the project after they “fixed” it.
It doesn’t end there though, Samson Mow actually released the news first about BCoin’s implementation. He tweeted this before the proposal was released and before the media articles were pushed out:
After this Purse/BCoin quickly released their medium post.
Samson Mow corrected his tweet:
Jihan Wu replied:
Notice the “Bitmain” part and the“yet”.
Andrew Lee posted the story I mentioned at the start of the article with a very interesting part:
So even after multiple people, including myself, have asked them if they received funding from the Bitcoin Develpment Grant, they only mentioned Bitmain directly.
After days of asking questions to Jihan Wu, Andrew Lee and even Roger Ver, no one has commented on the very easy question: “Did BCoin get money from Bitmain/Roger Ver’s Bitcoin Development Grant?”
*crickets*
The problem with the Bitcoin Development Grant, besides that it’s being funded by Roger and Jihan, is that they don’t want to disclose who they gave funding to. In an old article from January we can see that they handed out 3 grants so far.
Last minute edit: Just got some screenshots from a wechat group discussing the financials:
If someone asks you point blank: “Did you receive money from person X or company Y?” It really isn’t that difficult to answer it.
This could’ve all been manipulation from one side and the BCoin could’ve been totally unaware, however I think it’s odd when you don’t answer easy questions.
The 2 people who happen to be in charge of the Bitcoin Development Grant and can give out grants at their own disclosure immediately supported the proposal without having the time to properly check the code:
PS: If you enjoyed reading this feel free to donate something at 1FMy1kpeCY7BESwUaVcM5XAy1bmaWJaXKv. With the previous donations my wife was able to buy toys for 7 children in an orphanage for Christmas. Everything is greatly appreciated, but I don’t do it for the money. Sometimes I get asked by people how they can donate :).
