Bitcoin Blocksize Debate to Continue at DevCore with Garzik, Andresen, Antonopoulos and others

Bitcoin luminaries Gavin Andresen, Andreas Antonopoulos, Matt Corallo, Jeff Garzik, Charlie Lee, Greg Maxwell, and Michael Perklin are among the speakers appearing at this Friday’s DevCore conference at Draper University in San Mateo, California.

Organized by the Bitcoin Foundation, the conference is principally designed to be a learning and development experience for new developers in the space. Those developers who are interested can also receive accreditation as a Certified Bitcoin Professional from the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium (C4).

“It’s very important to increase knowledge about development in Bitcoin, now more than ever,” Executive Director Bruce Fenton told Bitcoin Magazine, “The aim of DevCore is to help develop developers and to increase overall knowledge about Bitcoin Core and the important work that is being done.”

Education and development aside, its hard to imagine that the blocksize debate won’t come up or even dominate some of the conference discussions.

The Bitcoin block size debate about how the Bitcoin network can support increased transactions without compromising the original values of decentralization and democratic control, has dominated forums, chat rooms and social media for months now.

“Given the timing and importance of the blocksize discussion we will discuss that as well, although it’s not the primary focus of the meeting,” Fenton said.

For those following the debate, it’s not so much whether to increase the blocksize anymore, but by what method and by how much. At least six possible alternative solutions are now on the table as outlined here.

Jeff Garzik, one of the Bitcoin Core early developers has been an active participant in the debate and has proposed BIP 102, a patch to Bitcoin software that would use a hard fork to raise the block size limit to 2 MB.

He sees the conference as not just a day to revisit the block size debate but also to catch up with other developers and reassess where the Bitcoin movement is heading.

“I’m looking forward to discussing current and future issues regarding Bitcoin development, including block size and other hot topics,” Garzik told Bitcoin Magazine.

Certified Bitcoin Professional accreditation will be available

C4, the CryptoCurrency Certification Consortium is a nonprofit organization that provides certifications to professionals who perform cryptocurrency-related services.

C4 is holding two workshops at DevCore – one led by Andreas Antonopoulos and C4 President Michael Perklin will outline the specifics of their CryptoCurrency Security Standard program.

The other workshop will give attendees the opportunity to write the CCSS exam so they can walk away from DevCore as an accredited Certified Bitcoin Professional. When asked about the block size debate, Perklin said:

“The biggest hurdle facing the bitcoin ecosystem is the lack of technical expertise in dealing with cryptocurrencies. The last two DevCore workshops have been successful in tackling this problem, and the upcoming DevCore San Francisco will be no different.

“The last two DevCores provided attendees with real-world skills that are relevant for anyone looking to develop blockchain applications. DevCore San Francisco will be no different. I look forward to training attendees in the CCSS so that their companies are protected against bitcoin hacks like the ones we’ve heard about recently in the news.”

Andreas Antonopoulos has been taking a balanced approach to the debate, saying on Twitter, “Diversity is good and bitcoin is resilient. Consensus will converge on the correct answer.”

Other speakers at the workshop include Matt Corallo, a longtime Bitcoin developer who is pioneering work on sidechains; Gavin Andresen, an original Bitcoin Core developer and chief scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation; and Charlie Lee, creator of Litecoin and currently Director of Engineering at Coinbase.

Two of the speakers – Greg Maxwell and Charlie Lee were signatories to the “Open Letter to the Bitcoin Community from the Developers” published recently here.

The conference is from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Draper University, Menlo Park, California. For more information check here.

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