Bitcoin Core Dev Jeff Garzik: Softforks Are a Rule by a Tiny Elite

Jeff Garzik, a core bitcoin developer who previously worked as Principal Software Engineer at RedHat before leaving to work full time on bitcoin development, stated in a public video that softforks are a rule by a ‘tiny, few technocratic elite.’
The talk addressed the downsides of segwit ‘since only the upsides are promoted heavily,’ by firstly arguing that repeated soft forks are repeated collusion.
Garzik states:
‘Repeated softforks are repeated agreements, a positive collusion, of these tiny few, to change the rules that the entire network is locked in.’
Garzik states that node operators and businesses do not opt-in to a soft-fork, instead, the entire network is locked in as only miners need to upgrade. Non-upgraded nodes are left with lower security, according to Garzik, and they further need to trust miners and mining pools, undermining bitcoin’s trustlessness.

This post was published at Crypto Coins News on 08/09/2016.