@pchandle
Disclaimer: I am not a Bitcoin.com or Read.cash supporter, I will explain my stance and reasoning in thorough detail below.
In general, I am all in for establishing - even with some amount of force used - standards that make it more convenient for the userbase to use a product.
The problem here is, that now, that I have understood herd the nature of the populace at large, I don’t think that will work.
The underlying base problem here (and also why @tom is right that we should establish the most used way, not the absolute best as a standard) is because the populace does not follow reason, logic, wisdom or any of such cruft. The people follow other people and especially they follow what leaders do or tell them to do.
This mechanic is precisely the mechanic that creates network effect thorough history.
The situation we are dealing with is that Bitcoin.com, together with read.cash/noise.case - the industry leaders [or herd’s alphas] right now, have already creatred a huge network effect for the 0 derivation path. And whether we like it or not, Bitcoin.com together with that other blog services create probably huge chunk (if not most) of the BCH network traffic right now.
So even if we try to push another derivation standard as default, unless we have a VERY good reason (like the old derivation is highly technically inferior or is a security risk), this is never going to work.
People won’t follow just because we tell them that “listen, this thing is reasonable, it works, it is better, you should do it”. This is not how life and mankind in general works. People will just keep using the established solution that has huge network effect and works for them. They will tell their friends and their friends will tell their friends, and the network effect will just keep increasing.
Unless there is an extremely good reason, pushing to standarize other derivation path than the most used one is just pointless waste of time that will ultimately fail.
Can you define the issue Bitcoin.com has caused (other than not following a earlier-decided-upon way of doing things). I mean we need to define what exactly does using that “bad” derivation path does to users.
Is there any inconvenience? Technical issues? Bugs? Technical Debt? Security issues? Please give me a very concrete answer, precisely what is the problem.
Well, that depends how you look at it. Either they have not followed a standard, or they created a new, better “standard” that is more convenient for the users, because most users right now use that standard - which created a network effect for that standard and that network effect will make it more convenient for most user to safely store their funds.
Of course, using known and established, and especially - tehcnically superior - standard is the best, most of the time.
But I don’t think this is the time.
Yeah, and this is where we failed. We created a (perhaps?) unnecessary complexity for users, assuming that BIP44/145 is not significantly technically better than 0.
Yeah, this is not going to work.
I will tell you why.
Bitcoin.com, together with read.cash / noise.cash most probably already have bigger userbase than the rest of the ecosystem combined. Crypto is already too complex for 95% of the populace as it is and they are not going to risk changing their established standard and hurting their userbase without a VERY good (“we should standarize for convenience” does not count) reason.
