Bitcoin Forum

After Gavin Andresen’s proposal to increase Bitcoin block size to 20 MB, chief scientist posted a new blogpost.

In it, Andresen spared himself from discussing the technical aspects of his proposal but moderately focused on the inconsistencies within the Core Bitcoin project. He feared that the lack of consensus over the Bitcoin’s proposed block size is leading its development to a fancy stage, known as “Analysis Paralysis”.

Prior to introducing us to this term, Andresen openly recognized the criticism made by a section of Bitcoin community — regarding the lack of proper research and testing into the economic implications and security of the proposal. He however also recognized that the fear of tackling these challenges are also slowing down the Bitcoin development en masse.

“I’m convinced the uncertainty over when or if this will be resolved is harming Bitcoin,” Andresen added. “If somebody can point me at a successful software technology that went through years and years of debate and research and was not deployed until it was perfect I’d change my mind – the example that immediately comes to my mind is Project Xanadu versus the Internet.”

He is clearly trying to win back the community’s trust. Well, The community, has responded positively to his new and calmer approach — and have asked him to go ahead with the fork.

“I say just release the updated version with an increased block size, and see how many people update it,” one of the users commented. “It’s a voluntary choice to update. That’s the vote.”

I'm sure one section of the community asked him to go ahead, but I'm also sure another section will continue to vocally demand he does not go ahead. I don't believe the whole community will ever reach consensus over the idea, and yes, the debate is probably damaging Bitcoin.

The weirdos who fantasise about charging 0.1 BTC tx fees when the blocks fill up will quickly be left to play amongst themselves once every right thinking person fucks Bitcoin off and shops elsewhere.

You can never please everyone. The people they should be thinking of are the ones who are yet to arrive. That means keeping usage realistically priced and not pandering to the warped purists.

Just increase the block size already.

In the end, we will eventually need to increase the block size if Bitcoin continues growing.
How this is done, however, is up to debate. It can either be done instantly at a set time, or gradually over time.
Alternatively, the time between blocks could be reduced, also allowing for a higher transaction capacity.
Regardless of the final resolution, these debates are important to ensure that Bitcoin can continue to evolve safely.

Just release GavinCoin as an altcoin and let it stand or fall on its own merit already.


Satoshi created Bitcoin to destroy the TBTF vampire/zombie banks, not replace Visa:


Satoshi did not inscribe anything like this in Genesis:



To quote the great davout,


Bitcoin is a r3VOLution being fought for financial freedom, not a point of sale gimmick to better enable smartphone coffee purchases.

Just don't give a fuck.
Buy alts. Bitcoins' marketcap is too high with these kind of problems!

There is no scalability issue because we already have at this very moment more than enough blockchains to provide as many txs as the world needs.
This whole debate was an epic strategic misconduct, it shows what greed is able to do to people and it leads to cannibalism inside bitcoin. Abandon ship! A greed-motivated proposal of large implications about a non-existant problem has put bitcoin in misfavour.
The cap is too high! Andresen needs a little shitcoin to play with not this big ship. And he'll get a shitcoin smaller than Litecoin to "rival visa" but nobody will care.

Don Quichotte fighting the windmills of scalability

http://www.mainlesson.com/books/baldwin/quixote/zpage080.gif

Yes he did, the link below shows the genesis block transaction, and you can see the embedded message at the bottom of the page below CoinBase. The blockchain.info website automatically decodes it.

https://blockchain.info/tx/4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b?show_adv=true

CoinBase
04ffff001d0104455468652054696d65732030332f4a616e2f32303039204368616e63656c6c6f7 2206f6e206272696e6b206f66207365636f6e64206261696c6f757420666f722062616e6b73
(decoded) ��
EThe Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

Did you for some strange reason read my post from bottom to top?

If you include the context, and read in the normal top to bottom manner, you may be less confused:

The gist of that is that the peons will have to go to centralised services for the honour of participating in Bitcoin usage. Transparent or not, doesn't that  shit somewhat all over the entire idea of it?

Sorry, I skipped almost your entire post and just read the bit about Satoshi. I got it completely out of context .

The gist is that "peons" just use dogecoin to buy their chewgum, mate... no centralized service needed. In case you want every chewgum transaction on the blockchain then bitcoin itself will become a "central service" and thus loose most of its value anyways because ... well, without decentralisation it's worthless ...

With how Andresen opened and conducted this debate he has shown himself to be unfit for the job imo. His "visa rivalery" was more important to him than "consensus and decentralisation" which shows he doesn't even understand the basic concepts.

And again: the "problem" he tries to solve doesn't even exist!

First of all, "sane and non-inflationary financial institutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain" are nothing to sniff at, much less gloss over with a dismissive catch-all generic term like "transparent."

"The entire idea" of Bitcoin is to shit all over the BIS and its constituent taxpayer-subsidized TBTF vampire/zombie banks.

Everyone (except Babylon Banksters) benefits from that, as interest rates will return to normal and wars of aggression cannot be financed with debt slavery.

If peons don't want to use off-(Bitcoin)-chain services to buy their peon treats, they may use directly any number of on-(altcoin)-chain alternatives.

It is still important to preserve equality of opportunity however, so that even peons may elect be their own banker when they need to buy a house, start a business, or pass on an inheritance.

'A purely peer to peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution'

The very first sentence of the Bitcoin white paper.

And slightly further down.

'What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.'

It may be a tad idealistic, a lot of folks are too dumb or lazy to think through what it entails and act on it, but that's the core of the whole thing.

There is a real possibility of having to appease some paranoid asshole in order to gain access to blockchain usage in the future, Coinbase offers countless examples of that happening right now.

In what possible way is this a good outcome for anyone?

"The node count is far more important than the blocksize."
Andresen does not agree on this. He needs to step down imo cuz he lost the way.

The decnetralisation of the network has priority over max txs. Not because i want it that way but because bitcoin doesn't have any value at all without defensibility and decentralisation.
Decentralisation is the holy grail which Andresen suggested to neglect for the benefit of chewgum transactions.

Yes, it says "one party to another" but not 'every party to all others.'

Some parties' payments are worthy to be allowed onto Satoshi's blockchain, but most of them are not.

For the rest, there exist thanks to Bitcoin's example plenty of other alternative blockchains, as well as off-chain payment aggregators/processors.

Like cypherdoc, your error is to confuse the equality of (Bitcoin) opportunity Satoshi created with the equality of (cryptocash) outcome provided by altcoins, sidechains, Lightning, etc.

Well said.

Andresen represents the interests of the Sand Hill Road crowd and their Deep State handlers.  This is textbook "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish."

The Sand Hill Road crowd and their Deep State handlers are perfectly comfortable with the status quo.

For all their trendy paeans to disruption, they are extremely cozy with the TBTF vampire/zombie banks Satoshi created Bitcoin to kill.

They don't like the idea of anything displacing TPTB, to put it mildly.

But they love the idea of suborning Bitcoin into a point-of-sale gimmick with a chance of collecting rent in the manner of Visa and Mastercard.

I told you in the 20MB fork discussion Vertcoin would moon because of this. Look where we are now. Keep listening to the 20MB fanboys and your bitcoins will loose all value. Vertcoin is up 2000% last 90 days. I've been correct.

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:9gThlUg-Zu0J:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php%3Ftopic%3D941331.2710%3Bimode+&cd

Funny how Andresen creates this Paralysis situation and then dares to complain about it. That guy isn't right in the head, i can tell you that.

agree wholeheartedly

For what its worth, I agree with all your posts on this thread.

So what youre saying is theres no such thing as having upgraded wallets to hold and handle 20 mb?

We dont have the current problem. I thought its like 300 kb per transaction or less.

What if they fork it, and the majority decides to stick with the original Bitcoin? What then?

Alts, sidechains and 'bitcoin banks' are all more vulnerable to either being wiped out or having gatekeepers deciding whether you're worthy than a fully functioning Bitcoin blockchain that's readily accessible to all.  

There's no way I'd want to have to pay 1 BTC in fees for the honour of converting that to Doge so I can buy a car. Equally if I decide I want to pay a large Ukrainian to shove a lawnmower up my arse I don't want Coinbase stopping me from doing it because it makes them look bad.

I don't get what the benefits of your scenario are.

What i'm saying is that 20MB blocks will come at a cost and that cost will not outweigh the benefits. Totally not.
We are looking at:
-HUGE blockchain - too large for 90% of people to store. You will be dependant on central services for your txs. Less accessibiltiy.
-Sync problems
-No incentive for miners to mine after blockrewards go down. Fees are needed for network security.
-Even lesser nodes, more central mining

on top of that: cannibalism because some powerful people within bitcoin community who do not agree will attack the Gavincoin on all levels.

VTC offers a counterargument with preventing asics at all costs and having a more decentral network with more nodes. That's why it has a future. This rise was predictable.
Got a problem? Sweet, i buy the solution ;)
Handsome profits there.



Merge mining with the btc network makes alts less vulnerable to attacks and secure enough for smaller money. That comes without gatekeepers and they won't be whiped out. I think a decentral bitcoin mining many merge mined chains is longterm sustainable.

More centralised mining and blockchain bloat for btc won't be such an intelligent solution compared to that.
Merged mined altchains provide as much space as you need for small "peon" txs.
And the good thing is: we don't even need this annoying discussion for that or any changes to bitcoin. It's all plug and play. Code is written already. Coins exist aswell.
And there is no need to endanger the network or community consensus for that and open a can of worms with that how Andresen tries to do.



There is no way you wold ever pay such high fees because of the free  market effect. It regulates itself. Tx fees will rise to a certain point at which microtransactions will be uneconomical and will move to altchains for economical reasons (lower txs) which in turn lowers fees for btc txs again.
It is selfregulating much like the difficulty.

Txs will be what people are willing to pay to use "Bitcoin" instead of an altchain. I think that'll be somewhere between 1cent and 2dollar depending on several things.

-------

currently you see another  interesting free market effect with loans for margin traders on poloniex for example. "Demand and supply" aplies and this priciple always works. It will work for tx fees aswell.
We don't need central planning and "seasonal adjustements" in Bitcoin because the free market effect can govern price of coins, rates of loans, it can govern difficulty and it will also be able to govern tx fees if that makes sense?

IMO, major mining pools and mining farms will not upgrade until there are too many transactions being queued for too long

And even so, they will first try to throw away those transactions that do not pay a fee, and then use a fee structure to decide the priority of transactions, or do dynamic transaction allocation. There are still lot's of tools to use

This follows the old rule of complex system: As long as it works, don't fix it

Maybe Gavin is right, he can see the future in advance, much earlier than anyone else. But as long as majority of miners don't see that, they will not welcome changes that might risk their investment

Then have them read this: https://medium.com/@octskyward/crash-landing-f5cc19908e32

But but but...

The spook-backed VC princelings won't invite Lady Bitcoin to the Los Altos Debutante Ball if she doesn't signal her obsequience by accommodating their desire to shove every transaction possible into her blockchain, as soon as possible.

Lady Bitcoin needs to put out for the frat bros, or she might become unpopular.

If the cool kids don't let her sit at their table, she will have no life and die an old unloved cat lady.

/every GavinCoin apologist ever

2.7 tx per second seems like a perfectly sane limit for a global value storage and transaction system.

And when all these new uppity establishment types give up on the system, we can safely trade our tokens back and forth with the other 10k users in the world.

After all, the few thousand full bitcoin nodes are really constrained with storage and traffic as it stands, bottlenecking things for a few mBTC in fees sounds perfect for our current place in the coin distribution.

It might even be fantastic for our altcoin holdings.

Bro, it's not about what "the establishement" wishes, it's about what's technically the best solution to ensure longterm sustainability and operationability.
Nobody gives a fuck about "the establishement". They can launch their altcoin shitcoin and see how that goes down the drain because it's not sustainable longterm.

This debate is a technical one and not a political or marketing thing. What the non-technical uppity ones want is of no interest. If they want it bad they can launch an alt any day.

Said "paralysis" was created because this debate has not been solely technical. From a technical standpoint it's a bad idea, not necessary atm and better solutions can be explored. Nothing about this debate was academic. So this paralysis is rooted in that. It's about the tech and not about the wishes of some prices and princesses in their ivory castles. Because these assholes go later: "oops, we fucked it up. Didn't see that coming. Ok, let's move on now. We didn't need it anyways." and go "trololololo"

Every debate to its root is political, since that involves decision making, and the decision is affected by each participant's different view

Unfortunately there is no one have the overview of the world: Gavin is good at computer and network, but he has shown lack of competence in business and economy. From merchant and miner's point of view, the stability and credibility of bitcoin is most important, that requires as little change as possible

When everyone is facing the same problem, it is much easier to reach consensus, so just let those blocks fill up and see what will happen

Nonsense.

Good luck wiping out LTC/DOGE/VIA's Scrypt-secured merged-mined blockchains.

Good luck wiping out botnet-backed ASIC resistant XPM and XMR.

And who are these "gatekeepers?"

Can coblee confiscate my LTC?  How is Sunny King going to veto my XPM and PPC tx?

Will TacoTime declare me persona non grata and banish me from using XMR?

You Bitcoin Maximalist Monopolists are very paranoid and apparently enjoy drowning in oceans of self-imposed FUD.   :D

You yourself advocate going through financial institutions and offchain processors. These already exist and they're already shutting people down who might make them look bad in the eyes of The Man.

Bitcoin existed long before CoinBase, and it will still exist long after fiat exchanges are obsolete.

It's not a simple as "voluntary choice to use the XT client is the vote".
If you are using for example Bitpay for work related stuff, and Bitpay moves to XT, you'll be forced to use XT to keep using their services.
And it will be a mess, imagine half of big companies like Bigpay move to XT, and a lot of other companies stay with Core.
Every company out there supporting BTC will be forced to take the huge 50% gamble of staying Core or going XT, and one of the 2 chains will for sure suffer from some sort of crash. You are forcing legit big companies to take a gamble with this.

Nobody knows for sure what it's best for Bitcoin in the long run, and Gavin sees it just as an experiment, likely HIS experiment. The only value Bitcoin has for him is the paycheck he receives, so if his moves damage Bitcoin it's not a problem for him, it's just that, just an experiment.

He has done more for the bitcoin community than you. Your achievements include trolling a bitcoin forum extolling the virtues of altcoins.

Gimme a break.

From what i've understood, what we know for a fact is something has to to be done.
20MB fork = risk
Staying the way we are until 2016+ = risk
So pick your poison.

Yes, Gavin has done a lot to embrace, extend, and extinguish Bitcoin.

What has MP ever done?  I mean, besides maintain a hack-free online exchange and rescue OpenBSD?

btw it's a good idea