Barry’s Silbert’s New York Agreement (NYA) has received fresh criticism in the form of a dedicated blog post from Bitcoin core developer Luke-jr.
The post appeared the day before SegWit2x - the code to bring about the roadmap agreed upon at Silbert’s New York meeting - entered beta phase.
“4–8MB block sizes are not sane. Even 1MB blocks are already clearly dangerous to Bitcoin,” he commented on Bitcoin’s future with SegWit2x.
“I cannot foresee myself consenting to the hardfork proposal under almost any circumstances, except perhaps with a softfork to limit the size to something reasonable.”
Adding the whole SegWit2x phenomenon was a “distraction from the upcoming BIP148 softfork, which is already irreversibly deployed to the network,” Luke-jr is another high-profile source of criticism against the increasingly popular scaling solution.
Silbert had faced an uphill struggle from the beginning, as even participants in the meeting, specifically Roger Ver subsequently began showing signs of a U-turn.
In an explanatory aside, Luke-jr was careful to note that any scheming behind SegWit2x would likely begin and end with NYA participant Bitmain, rather than Silbert or another party.
“I don’t mean to imply that all the participants to the NYA have this goal [distraction from BIP148] in mind! But rather that the design of SegWit2x is such that it fits this purpose,” he concluded.
“Bitmain may very well have done this intentionally, but it seems unlikely anyone else intended it.”
The post sparked a lengthy debate on Twitter, with the developer rebuffing multiple retaliations from online commentators.