This is a statement from Vinny Lingham he made in a little twitter debate I had with him recently. I think it pretty much sums up, what probably most of the signers of the "Barry Silbert Agreement" think.

I'm posting this not to attack anyone, but because I think it expresses a fundamental misconception. Discussing that misconception might hopefully help to get beyond the current division.

I realize that it might be way to late for that but it's certainly worth a try. I'm sure, there are still some reasonable people out there.

So lets take a quick look at where we are standing right now and how we got here.

Everyone is sick and tired of the scaling debate and the current dead lock since quite a while already. One side has taken matters into their own hands and decided to force-activate segwit via UASF (BIP148) on August 1st. The other side is very much worried about the chaos, confusion and possibly long lasting network split a UASF might cause and is "trying to force a resolution other than UASF".

The important takeaway is, as many people have pointed out already, that Everyone wants segwit. There is literally no one left opposing it. Not even Jihan.

Sure, communication could have been better in the past and lack of it is certainly one of the reasons we got here, but who is to blame? Core because they haven't reached out to miners and the industry or miners and the industry for not reaching out to core? Does it really matter? Blaming each other is futile and I'm sure everyone can agree that core improved their communication efforts tremendously. If major industry players spend a few bucks to hire a representative to keep up to date with protocol development and make sure their concerns will be addressed early on, things could improve even further.

Anyway, it's impossible to make past mistakes disapear. We can only try to learn and avoid repeating them.

So how can we get out of this mess and why is there such a fundamental misconception in the industry regarding a UASF? Vinny calls it "a threat to the security of the network" and the Barry Silber Agreement a "counter response".

This is a fundamentally flawed assessment. A UASF is not a threat to the security of the network! It is a last resort strategy to deal with uncooperative miners. The UASF is attempting to do what everyone wants anyway: activate segwit in a timely manner. What are users supposed to do, Vinny? Watch the miners playing games with the network? A UASF is the only option left, besides changing PoW!

A UASF is not a threat to the security of the network as long as it is trying to activate a feature everyone want's anyway. It only becomes a security problem if people try to fight it and "force a resolution other than UASF" just for the sake of it!

So why is the industry doing exactly that? It doesn't make any sense!

Right now there are only two options left to avoid major disruption:

• Get miners to activate segwit before August 1st

• support the UASF

Let's get together and chose a path forward!