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So what do you think about my theory, while about 80% of the bitcoin community vote yes for bigger blocksize, some bitcoin core devs won´t .
source: http://www.poll-maker.com/results233857xDa614c79-9#tab-2

Core Developer Gregory Maxwell, Pieter Wuille, Matt Corallo and Luke Dashjr are involved in the company Blockstream, source: https://www.blockstream.com/team/
They got a $21M seed round, source: http://blockstream.com/2014/11/17/blockstream-closes-21m-seed-round/

Their opinion about bigger blocksize:

Gregory Maxwell
Current Affiliations: Blockstream
Bitcoin core: top 20 core developer by # of commits. Has commit access.
Comments: http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34090559/

Pieter Wuille
Current Affiliations: Blockstream
Bitcoin core: top 5 core developer by # of commits. Has commit access.
Comments: http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg07466.html

Matt Corallo
Current Affiliations: Blockstream
Bitcoin Core : top 10 core developer by # of commits
Comments: http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34090292/

Luke Dashjr
Current Affiliations: Eligius Mining Pool
Bitcoin Core: top 10 core developer by # of commits
Comments: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/34y48z/mike_hearn_the_capacity_cliff_and_why_we_cant_use/cqzadpn

They want Blockstream being successful and are already working with the lightning network, which provides an alternative for scaling the blocksize:
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/20618/blockstream-starts-development-lightning-network/
About lighning network: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zVzw912wPo

Maybe they are financially motivated to not increasing the blocksize. Gregory Maxwell, Pieter Wuille, Matt Corallo annd Luke Dashjr doesn´t want bigger blocksize because they want to be successful with their Blockstream company which is about sidechains, source: https://www.blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf

Nothing against Blockstream, but prevent bigger blocksize to force the bitcoin community using Blockstream, respective sidechains might be a big reason why this gentlemens stand against bigger blocksize, isn´t it?

I hope someone more technical can schedule on my theory.

Well, now this is an interesting theory.  If it is true it shows a significant conflict of interest by the people that oppose a bigger block size.  I am not technically versed enough to make 100% sense of this but what does everyone else think?

This warrants more community investigation, and should we find it to be true, we boycott Blockstream and go with the 20MB increase.

this is why it's better to have only one dev in charge of a project, other should be only auxiliary dev nothing else, after all this started with one man only(we presume)

and it's strange that they(all four) are against the 20MB for the same reason, are they partnered together or something?

If even a tiny bit true - very serious indeed.  Can't Gavin just comment?  Someone else? 

The "in house" fighting is going to kill the coin. How does that saying go... Too many cooks spoils the broth?

It is time for Satoshi to step out of the darkness and to have his/her/their say.... Just a shove in the right direction.  :o

The current Core developers seem to have lost the plot. {Big head syndrome and self interest, has become more important than the chicken laying the golden eggs}

A very sad situation for the Bitcoin community.  :( :( :( 

I'm 100% with Gavin in any decision he makes. But we've actually started making progress in countries where Bitcoin was once illegal, how do we rebuild these achievements and what will the ultimate consequence be for Bitcoin & XT?

If we use the sidechains without increasing the block size in BTC, the sidechains will also fill up our disk.

This does appear to be a potential conflict of interest.
One approach is to make the Bitcoin blocksize larger and adapt it through a fork to process more transactions by itself.

The other is to implement Bitcoin features through the use of sidechains but keep the max size the same for now in effect creating a system of Altcoins that are perfectly intergrated with Bitcoin also known as sidechains and thus becoming a true part of Bitcoin.

If this becomes a question of Bitcoin development then discussion should be moved towards what the majority of users would prefer to have, one option would be to fork with the potential to improve Bitcoin through intergration into sidechains or to fork and increase the blocksize for now, my main question is why a bigger transaction size would interfere with the blockstream idea in the first place and why both couldn't be done in one fork.
__

"The implementation of lightning networks would also require appropriate tweaks to Bitcoin core. Some developers have noted that there is a certain degree of affinity between sidechains and lightning networks.

The deployment of sidechains interoperable with Bitcoin requires the implementation of suitable hooks in Bitcoin Core. That will inevitably take some time, but it’s worth noting that some Blockstream team members are also Bitcoin Core developers.

The Bitcoin Sidechains paper envisages an ecosystem of “sidechains” separate from the main Bitcoin blockchain but interoperable with it. A sidechain can carry bitcoin as currency, in which case users will be able to seamlessly transfer bitcoin between the sidechain and the main blockchain. At the same time, the sidechain can implement changes from Bitcoin Core. For example, a sidechain can implement more powerful scripting features or more watertight privacy.

“Other approaches seek to modify Bitcoin protocols in various ways,” wrote Robert McGrath. “For example, Sidechains aim to create alternative blockchains hanging off the main blockchain, which would help limit the costs of the main blockchain. Another variant is the Lightning network, which aims to allow some transactions to be performed “on the side,” and on send the results to the main blockchain.”

___

We can have a network of arbitrarily complicated transactions, such that they aren’t on the blockchain (and thus are fast, cheap and extremely scalable), but at every point are ready to be dropped onto the blockchain for resolution if there’s a problem,” he said. “This is genuinely revolutionary.”

__



If I read the above quote correctly Eastwind it would send a message to the Blockchain but the sidechain would have its own client and do the work external to the main chain in most cases, instead we would see a shift of weight in the sense that Bitcoin is used as a ledger to track and record transactions with complex instruments moved off the blockchain with the results recorded on the main ledger. It also would be  possible  to have merged mining supplement Bitcoin fees and blocks based on the presumption that Sidechains have their own value in and of themselves.

In other words an interesting article when you consider some of the implications of it.
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/20618/blockstream-starts-development-lightning-network/

Of course, makes all sense in the world. But in the end what matters isn't the "community consensus" (which isn't).
When it comes down to it what matters who's in control of the bitcoin.org domain and the sourceforge project page.

This is strange. They work on the same project but they don't necessarily agree on everything. If you look at the bitcoin source users, you will see there are many people active in the bitcoin source code.

One dev in charge of a project doesn't generally work, because another dev would simply start a fork.

Having read the opinions of the four Blockstream developers in the OP, I feel it wouldn't be difficult to reach an agreement on 2 MB blocks in the near future. Maybe it is also possible to agree on 4 MB blocks.

It would be great if the key core developers sign a public manifesto on these terms. Most of us would definitely follow.

blockstream proposes to make a bitcoin with dozens of other altcoins joined to one ledger..

in short if you have bitcoin with 21mill limit and you join another ledger (fixed to it) the limit is now way more than 21mill available coins on that single ledger

... say goodby to the 21million cap of the single ledger..
.. say goodbye to rarity
.. say goodbye to the whole purpose of "bitcoin value"

oh and when adding 10altcoins to the ledger..
.. say hello to atleast a 10x drop in bitcoin value
.. say hello to lukejr, gmaxwll, wuille's premines causing a bigger drop after the rarity drop when they sell their premine
.. say hello to a <$1 bitcoin value

It is a valid theory and one that can explain why this debate is going nowhere.

did satoshi predicted sidechain( one could say yes because they are much different than altcoin), but i wanted to know what he thought about it, if there is a quote around maybe...

I trust Greg Maxwell far more than Gavin Andresen. Gavin has proven to be nothing more than the token paid dev of Bitcoin big business. The only reason Maxwell has been pushing side chains (if you follow the arguments from the beginning) is because they would allow needed features without bastardizing the original design of Bitcoin. If you're going to change something as fundamental to the original design of Bitcoin as block size why don't you just increase the max coins above 21m or lock the mining reward at 50 coins? The only way to change a basic core design feature of Bitcoin is to admit that the design is flawed. If that's the case then design a new coin that's not flawed, implement all of the corrections you want to the new coin and end this failed experiment. To me this argument is no different than PoW vs PoS. You can't fix that midstream. You need to start over.

there are 3 theories of blockstream

1. it is its own ledger cloning bitcoin tx by tx with altcoins added to the same ledger to allow decentralized exchanging without a central server
(demythed because it will be centralized server based)

2. it is altering bitcoins own ledger to incorporate altcoins aswell

3. is is a mysql centralised server (much like cryptsy, btc-e and other exchanges)

the only way to expand bitcoin would be option 2 as the others are just meanderings waffles hidden behind the existent systems known as exchanges. so on the bases of expanding bitcoins own ledger rather than converting people to use a different ledger (blockstream). i see nothing beneficial that blockstream can offer that is not in existence today

You theory makes sense. It's quite valid and could explain a lot of what is happening in this decision making process.

Better comments here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/37vg8y/is_the_blockstream_company_the_reason_why_4_core/

We don't know if satoshi was a group or a single man.
In any case, where the hell is satoshi? come back man, we need your opinion now more than ever. I hope his accounts didn't got hacked along with his gmx address...

One people to decided the whole future about bitcoin fork? Not even in a dream that people will accept this. Satoshi could be the only one for this because he is the original creator of this and he knows what the best for this now or in the future, but for now we need a team of core developer for it to decide what the best for it

If he/she/they still has the keys the the earliest blocks he/she/they could sign a message saying which devs plans he/she/they prefers, if any. Alternatively he might have a separate solution that nobody else has thought of yet. However, I thought he suggested increasing the block size if became necessary in the future.

But the 1MB limit wasn't part of the original design.  Here (https://blog.bitcoinfoundation.org/a-scalability-roadmap/), Gavin explains:

Thanks for the explanations on the details of this.  I may not understand exactly how this stuff works but I can make sense of it without being able to code it.  I wonder if anyone involved cares to make a statement here?  Somehow I doubt they will bu tit would be nice.  This is a serious accusation, something that could end careers.

Make all the corrections to a new Bitcoin and use that one. Their are enough potential and known problems with Bitcoin to start over instead of continuing to patch on top of a patch of poorly written original code. If you read the entire article even Gavin said these changes won't be trivial. If you're going to quote something quote Satoshi saying the blocksize needs to be changed in this way. If I believe Gavin is relaying Satoshi's ideas correctly, then the problem was DDoSing the system. That's impossible with the 7tps rate but will that problem return when the blocksize increases?

Since when did it become some sort of "sin" to correct flaws? Why don't we "question authority" and fix this thing.

Fix which problem? Just this one or should we correct the other issues with this fork too. I am questioning Gavin's authority. Why should he decide alone?

Op's proposition is an ad hominem attempt to occlude the valid objections against Gavin's and Hearn's "rush-it-now" blocksize increase.

People should read and think:

https://medium.com/@allenpiscitello/there-is-no-crisis-20b58e14b09c

As a long term observer I think it almost certain that a more accurate valid question would be:

  "Is the increased block size method of scaling the reason why 4 core developers and many others have joined Blockstream."

Speaking for myself, I would bet my bottom dollar bitcoin on Maxwell, Back, etc vs. Hearn and Andresen.  That is to say, if the value base for a fork (be it Gavincoin or other) were taken from the existing blockchain, and if there were a 'forced spend', I would do so on an effort spearheaded by the blockstream guys.  I'd just sell is Hearndresen's fork required that and take whatever fiat I could get and move on.

Ideally, of course, nobody would require a forced spend, or if they did it would be after their solution was well established and proven.  It is the case that a forced spend could clean up some cruft and allow a more realistic, forward-thinking, and decentralization friendly solution to go.  It is also true that a new alt could be created but in that case the boot-strapping issue comes to into play more.  Maxwell et-al have the credibility to possibly pull it off however.  That's my own persona read of course.

Satoshi said it can be phased in at a predefined block number far in the future. By the time we reach that block most people will be running the new clients.

Thanks for the research. I couldn't find it. If this would also make Satoshi's storehouse of coins worthless I'd be all for it. That way he can't decide to cash out in the future and crash Bitcoin.

nice.  thats a great way to push this change.  promise to wipe out the top addresses of the bitcoin rich. 

Let's seriously think about this for a moment. Gavin, in his infinite weirdness, is afraid for Bitcoin's future success. He's running around like chicken little screaming that the sky is falling if we don't increase the blocksize but isn't concerned at all that one guy with a vendetta or possibly a gun to his head could destroy Bitcoin overnight. If this fork is that important then let's make it even more so - invalidate Satoshi's coins in the process and secure Bitcoin's future permanently.

LOL if you don't think people would attack Satoshi for being "out of touch" with Bitcoin as it exists now if his "shove in the right direction" didn't align with their personal agenda for Bitcoin.  For large amount of users (and miners, and Bitcoin services), ideology is irrelevant and their primary concern is whether any changes increase or decrease the chances of them making a significant profit in the short-term future.  Whether Bitcoin is going to be around in 20 years, much less 50 or 80, is utterly irrelevant to them and always has been.

I found this earlier:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1075510.0

It is in the press release section.  It is a thread about an interview with Gavin and he talks about the 20mb size and other related things.  I think everyone should listen to this it might help to put things into perspective.

It makes no sense to reduce it to some sort of conspiracy theory.
The lightning network has positive features and negative ones, the 20MB increase has positive and negative ones as well.
Ideally, we would need boot.

That's possible with the recent hack. I don't think Satoshi will be back on this board, for two reasons: 1) he owns a lot of bitcoins  2) not everyone may like the bitcoin project

Satoshi has the power of consensus. If Satoshi said "lets stay with 1MB" everyone would see it as the right thing. Same for 20MB.

Where was the consensus to lower the blocks from 32MB to 1MB?

No, it won't return. Your first post is wrong. The block size isn't something fundamental to Bitcoin while the number of coins and block generation time are.
The block size was changed previously, however it was lowered because there was too much headroom and people could try DDoSing because the network was unable to handle 30MB blocks now.
Gavin's initial calculations are flawed, hence the 20MB fork is FUD.

I've also learned this just recently: It should be 8MB (with corrected calculations), and DDoS isn't really possible at that block size. If I'm correct Luke (?) and Maxwell said that because of the increase they would not be able to run nodes anymore due to their internet. They've concluded from this that the majority won't be able to run nodes either. This is also wrong. There are plenty of places that offer sufficient internet speeds for 8MB blocks. Although their argument is also invalid due to the progressing block size. We might hit 8(originally 20)MB blocks in 2016, or in 2026/2xxx. Nobody can really know when.

I see a lot of people mentioning Satoshi. Please stop. He had ideas however his implementations weren't great (one could say that they weren't even good). He did not code Bitcoin properly as the initial code was quite a mess. Obviously he didn't foresee sidechains, neither did anyone if you back up 5 or more years (prior to Bitcoin). I'm more interested in the actual disadvantages of the lightning network. If there are none, why aren't we proceeding in that direction?
However I do not see much wrong in increasing the block size to let's say 4MB. That would be some sort of compromise for Gavin and the other developers which would also give the whole network more time for better solutions.  

When this Bitcoin shit was pitched to me almost five years ago I was led to believe that it was about empowering people, about change, about moving away from the tight controls of big business and Wall Street, about true financial freedom and liberty. I bought the propaganda hook, line and sinker. The more I watch issues like this unfold the more I realize what a complete crock of shit that was. What you have is a small group of developers that are more interested in the concerns of big business than making Bitcoin usable for the little guy. Bitcoin has become the most centralized service I can imagine. Development can be controlled by one guy. Mining is concentrating more and more every day into the hands of people the community doesn't know or communicate with. Exchanges are complying with more regulations and gathering more data on Bitcoin users than banks do for fiat. The private exchange of coins between individuals (like on LBC) is stagnant because of the fear of arrest.

This issue isn't even about moving the blocksize. It's about power and control. Everyone knows that moving the blocksize won't be necessary for a long time. With sidechains it may not be necessary at all or it may be able to happen very gradually over a period of 40 years. I hope no one is living so deep in the emerald forest with the elves that you've deluded yourselves into believing that Bitcoin will come close to the volume of EFT/ACH within the next 30-40 years. The problems being solved currently by development are not the most critical immediate issues. They're the ones that require the least effort to repair and still there's no consensus. When are we going to work on pruning the blockchain?

Finally some common sense! Gavin needs to admit and push the 8MB blocks and Maxwell must let go of the centralization fear and accept that Bitcoin can run ok for now with less than 5k nodes. Consensus achieved! I hope the involved parties are reading this or they are notified somehow. I would like to hear their opinion on this.

Yeah, I don't get whe people do those critics when even satoshi pointed out from the begining that mining would end up done by professionals and not amateurs on their computers except for the very begining. He also doesn't are about equality of distributed BTC.

No. His fear is that some bad intended group will artificially create 20MB blocks and that the numbers of the total nodes will fall below 5k.

Gmaxwell is steering away from what Bitcoin was used for whilst gavin is trying to prolong the Bitcoin economy as well as allow merchants easier accessiblity. I'm with gavin on this

I'm glad you quoted him. I would never have seen his post as I put him on ignore long ago. I have no issue with mining being controlled by thousands of businesses worldwide. I've posted many times that I expect that to happen. People can't afford to do it anymore. What I see is a small handful of big farms controlling Bitcoin. That's very different. I have to believe I was misled by people on this forum long ago. I see Bitcoin just becoming a MasterCard and Visa competitor where development is eventually controlled by big business just like mining will be. A multitude of services built on differing blockchain technology that are proprietary and controlled by one business or another. What's so magical about that? You know MasterCard has a forum. I can't see spending much time there though. Satoshi lowered the blocksize for a reason and now it needs to be fixed for a different reason. The first reason was safety. The second reason is adoption and profit. They will eventually agree on 8mb and make the change. Every change they make from this point forward will be for business. Nothing we say here will effect that decision because the users don't really matter anyway.

This thread is just more propaganda and ad hominem by Gavin fanboys.

No rethorical trick is spared.

They want things to settle on their own when it comes to fees and 1MB blocks, but they wouldn't let things settle on their own with 8MB blocks. The only partially valid reason are increased bandwidth and storage costs. However this might be a problem of today if the blocks get filled instantly (which they won't), but in any case it won't be a problem of tomorrow.

Why wouldn't you be able to create 8MB blocks? Maybe the exact word for it shouldn't be creating. Also let's stop with the 20MB nonsense because this is false. Gavin made a mistake in his initial calculations. It has been correct to 8MB, so everyone please stop with the 20MB blocks.
You could fill up blocks with endless transactions although it is going to cost you (fees obviously). Although we hope that because a individual can't profit from wrecking Bitcoin (no economical sense), we can't rely on that. Some people are just evil within their core, and some will lose money if Bitcoin continues to grow. It is in their interest to try whatever they can to prevent Bitcoin from succeeding.


You should really stop wasting your time Mircea, as nobody cares about your consent. Protest all you want, your opinion does not and will not matter.

We always welcome your insight Mircea Popescu!


Amen to that!

I think some of the core devs involved in Blockstream must have interfered with the blocksize limit discussions. The inception of sidechains in Blockstream made the devs believe more strongly that sidechains are solutions to the blocksize limit.

I am sure those guys at Blockstream has worked out ways to solve the transactions limit problem and designed ways to add more features. While I would prefer bitcoin to be more loyal to the original design as much as possible.

Sadly I wouldn't be holding my breath for this if I where you.

You know, having to correct people is getting tiring at times.
Why would you post such nonsense as claiming that side chains have no real benefits? How about actually doing proper research and backing up your words with technical analysis rather than just posting because of your signature campaign? I'm sorry for being so direct, but the number of people doing this is quite high. You are not ignored by DannyHamilton for no reason.

I'm going to disregard hidden agendas in this post, and I'm also going to shorten this as you should do your own research. What is the benefit of increasing the block size? The network will be able to process more transactions. What is the benefit of side chains? The network will be able to process more transactions. If we sum it up only to that point, disregarding the drawbacks of both, you can never state that side chains have no benefits unless you say the same for the block size increase.
It's quite obvious that both have drawbacks. 8MB blocks will definitely reduce the number of nodes if the blocks get filled more quickly that expected, even though storage and bandwidth are quite cheap today.
The drawback of side chains would be added complexity to the network, questionable security model that isn't clear yet in addition to potential issues that might occur with merged mining and all other risk associated with developing and running a new blockchain.



The conclusion that we draw here: Side chains are a very interesting technology that is in its concept stage. Many do not fully understand them or have a completely wrong understanding. This technology could potentially enable new things in Bitcoin. It will be possible to transfer assets from one chain to another and back (this is why it is called a two-way peg).

This might be a good place to start for people who aren't quite sure what the deal is with side chains:
http://gendal.me/2014/10/26/a-simple-explanation-of-bitcoin-sidechains/

OP brings up a good point - "Follow the money" is an important reminder when listening to the opinions of people in authority or deeply invested in something. If Blockstream has a vested interest in forcing transactions onto sidechains that they have a role in (and can profit from at our expense), it's hard to see how they could throw that away without a fight.

What I'm trying to state here that you and the majority of people are fueled by their signatures, even though they aren't probably going to admit this. My story has changed since I left Bit-X. People participating in campaigns are posting without doing proper or any research/information gathering. You've already put me in the same bag as you and the rest stating that I'm only posting for the payout (mine is fixed by the way) and that I'm ignored by Danny. You would know better if you actually looked at his list prior to making your post; located here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=973843.0 . You would know that I'm currently not in the list (I've been excluded for months).

Anyhow we should get back onto the topic itself; I'm hoping that you will understand/improve your habits.

You should not be posting about it if you don't properly understand it, aside from asking questions. You should definitely look at these links:
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/24549/how-is-a-side-chain-merging-back-to-bitcoin-chain-protected-against-double-spend
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/sidechains-bitcoin-2-0-revolution-highlights-reddit-ama/
http://insidebitcoins.com/news/gregory-maxwell-demo-sidechains-to-be-available-in-a-few-months/29531

As I've stated the technology is in the concept stage and we have yet to see in what way it will be implemented. Theoretically we can have a number of side chains however the main drawbacks (as previously stated) would be potential security flaws and added network complexity. I'm having a hard time finding a simple explanation of side chains that could be presented to the public as I lack the skills to make one myself.
The deal is that this would be like a secondary blockchain to Bitcoin. Basically what happens is that you transfer for example 1 BTC onto the side chain which would enable you to do transactions there. The side chain would create an equivalent number of bitcoins (in this case 1 BTC), which would be controlled by the user in the sidechain now while the original ones would be "immobilized" on the main blockchain. In order to bring them back to the main blockchain the user would have to create a special transaction where the coins (in this case 1 BTC) would disappear from the sidechain and become mobilized again on the blockchain.

I've already stated that this would add to the complexity which is also one of the main drawbacks. You can figure this out yourself if you read what I just wrote, however it might be possible to simplify it to some degree with the right software implementation. A side chain could be very beneficial as it can have all sorts of features that Bitcoin currently does not have. It could support fully anonymous and untraceable transactions, smart contracts and more.

Gavin made a mistake in his initial calculations by excluding upstream bandwidth (if I remember correctly). 8MB is actually what he is proposing so that should be somewhat acceptable to those that were complaining about potential bandwidth and storage issues.

I would be surprised by this were it not the same 'chief scientist' who was not paying attention to the UTXO size until it bit him in the ass...causing one more in a growing list of bizarre and incoherent blog posts.

Indeed nice find, really depresing in a way. Bitcoin should be above personal interest.

I am trying to post in FUD threads in the hope of calming everyone down.  I wish people would take the time to read up on the issue and realize that there really are two sides of the argument, and believe it or not both sides have merit.  Of course this conflict of interest makes it easy to choose sides.  Blockstream will generate income otherwise it would not be bankrolled with 21 mils.  Where will that money come from?  My guess is not thin air.

Well this is a tough one. I usually advise people not to make long term predictions as the chances of them being wrong are quite high (Andreas Antonopoulos mentioned this in some conference as far as I remember).
Honestly I can say that I do not know.
If I had to express my opinion on the matter right now I would say no. I'm expecting that we're going to start having full blocks sometime in 2016. Side chains are still in the concept stage and we're yet to see proper implementations. Even though they often a great potential, they are unexplored land. If it were up to me (at this point, 01/06/2015) I would increase the block size to either 4 or 8 MB (Gavin's proper calculations) which would give the network enough time before other solutions get developed such as side chains and the lightning network.


Unfortunately (coming back to my previous posts), there are hidden agendas and the money runs the show. My opinion to them is probably worthless.  :)

it cannot, you know, because money are involved, everything where money is involved, always end up like this, where everyone just look at his portfolio

you can't really blame them we are doing the same, but they at least care for other portfolio, seeing how they are in charge for the development...

Its not the same though.  This is more like Pete Rose betting against his team when he was coaching.  If I manage my portfolio, or come on here to post about an alt coin that I own, that is ok because it doesn't really matter.  In this case people are getting hurt financially because of this nonsense.  Look at the price drop in bitcoins recently.  I think it is because of fear of this mess.  And this mess wouldn't be a problem if the team didn't have a huge confict of interest.

You hit the nail on the head. That's really all I or probably most people care about. I'm afraid they are going to fuck with something and devalue the coins I'm holding. There are a lot of pretentious posers that come here to brag about how much they know about Bitcoin (as if that means a fucking thing in the real world). They study and research the issues but in the end they have no control whatsoever. I only know what I learned on this forum, reddit and a few others. My knowledge is limited but it's a hell of a lot more than you could ever expect a casual user of debit cards or credit cards to know about the way they work. What I do know is I'm afraid that they're going to fuck with Bitcoin so much that my coins will end up worthless before I can get my money out without a loss before I die.

I for one certainly hope that you do not lose the value of your coins.  This whole things is a tempest in a teapot that is threatening to break free and become a full fledged storm.  My hope is that more people will bother to read up on what is actually happening, and then as a result will calm down.  I will admit that I was a bit panicked when I first heard about this.  But then I went through the trouble to read up on the details in stead of getting my information from a bunch of noobies posting on the forums.

Yeah, we agree on this. I guess different people (including the current developers) see the situation differently. Some don't expect us to hit the limit anytime soon, and some want to let the market solve the situation (wrong). However we should actually try to prevent it from happening rather than applying fixes once it happens.
Even if we only increase the limit to 4MB it would still give us much more time than we previously would have had. The worst part of all of this is that it is going to negatively impact Bitcoin itself. We have already seen a minor decline in the price and the media is exaggerating that Bitcoin is going to die. This happens because we let Mircea and his band start threads that contain FUD.

It is always better to prevent a problem rather than fix it after the fact.  Unfortunately people tend to ignore things until they become a problem, rather than preventing them.

Mircea started making self modded threads and deleting my posts.  I was trying to explain things as they are and not as he says, lol.  I also link to this thread when I can because I feel that it is very important for the community to know about this stuff before they make a decision.  Who is this Mircea guy anyway, and why is he spreading such obvious nonsense?  Maybe he just wants to drive the price down so he can accumulate at a lower rate?

I'm very hopeful about the long term value of sidechains.... but also unconvinced they are going to work. I wish there was better information for the rest of us on sidechains, because I've been doing my own thinking about how I think a sidechain (or multiple chains bearing the same crypto) would work, and I'm having real trouble with it.

I think that until someone actually makes a crypto with sidechains, and it survives in the wild for a good while resisting hackers and real-world stresses, it's gong to be impossible to say for certain that it is ready for prime time. Especially not by a given drop-dead date. So for now Bitcoin needs to move forward without them.

This is what I've been talking about. Why would we deal with the problems when we can prevent them. Increasing the block size to 4 or 8MB would give the network more time before other solutions are ready.
I don't see a problem with this.

I've noticed that as well. He had already made 2 or 3 threads before, but it looks like he couldn't stand the opposing arguments. I didn't want to waste my time replying on that thread as it would probably get deleted anyways.
As for who he is:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=942404.0
http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/realwork/EXPORT/projects/bitcoin/wikipedia/Mircea%20Popescu%20-%20Wikipedia,%20the%20free%20encyclopedia.html

He actually threatened (over twitter) that he would kill Andreas Antonopoulos.

Bitcoin-XT is running, right now.  It's the same blockchain.  It doesn't create "XT coins".  The proposed code change would only take effect when 90% of blocks were compliant with the XT changes.  This is not the first time we've branched.  IMO, this is much ado about nothing.

For those who are new to things, note that the first >1mb block (or otherwise incompatible) block XT produces will release what I call 'XTaint' into the wild.  That would be the 25 block reward (the 'coinbase'.)

What a possessor of XTaint (or it's derivative) can do is to mix a little in to a spend to themselves.  The spend will be invalid on Core so their Core holdings are unimpacted, but will be valid on XT so they can run it right down to an exchange or pawn it off on some other XT user.

Of course the converse is also true.  Coretaint can be used by XT users in the same manner.  Choose your side wisely if you are going to play these games, or just sit on your hands for a (long-ish) while.

Likely many others will join in the games so thing become what I call a 'battle royal'.  The weaker ones (and maybe others) will employ various kinds of tricks such as analyzing alternate forks and artificially legalizing transactions tainted with other coinbase, or simply monitoring for spend activity on other chains and devaluing them.

Some chains might distribute some 'free taint' which _must_ be mixed into future spends.  Some might force deep storage to be dug out and re-spent for various reason.

Some chains might switch to merge mining in hopes of using the extreme sha256 for backing while hoping to protecting against POW attacks.  Some might tweak their POW to limit the danger.  Some will go temporarily or permanently central for oracle service to guard against attacks.

There will be exchanges where people can bet on outcomes and play the various spreads.  Even different spends within a chain will be valued differently depending on whether they are 'universal' or not.  Spends consisting only of coin prior to 'the event' will command a premium.  So long fungibility.

This, and likely countless things I've not thought of, are what lies inside Pandora's box,  The lid can be pried off by forking without decent consensus, but eventually it probably will be pried off anyway so it would not be fair to blame Gavin for the event but simply the timing thereof.  There is a lot of value in the blockchain and a lot of people trying to get that which currently is controlled by others, and a lot of others trying to protect what they have buried within.  It's going to be fun.

Obviously these are just my predictions.  But, FWIW, I predicted that BTC in the single digits could be a very good buy among other decent calls over the years.  I also predicted that UTXO's buried in the blockchain would retain a value (if not grow) in an event such as I've described, and that was one of my rationals for taking the position I did.

XT up and running.

I've come to despise the Bitcoin Core developer's obstructionist position, and have voted with my nodes.

Cheers!  Thanks so much for your vote.  Someday when I have a budget for it, and more technical ability, I hope to set up a node myself.  Of course by then there might not be any point to a small time home based node.  But sane people like you should help keep us safe from the recent insanity and nonsense.  Thanks!

Thanks for the links Lauda, I will have to read up on this guy.  He sounds like a real menace, threatening to kill people.  He might see a psychiatrist, they can help with that sort of thing.

i agree.  just to be sure we get most of them we should invalidate all of the coins till early 2012.

Everyone bitches about how horrible altcoins are because they're premined.  o_O

Do you kiss your mother with that mouth? How many coins does Satoshi have genius?

I can tell how incredibly stupid you are from looking at your post history but do you mean to tell me that you can't tell it's the same outcome. Someone that has the first million coins whether it's before or after launch - same outcome. Back on ignore for you - bye, bye.

simply put:

Satoshi Nakamoto - Bitcoin Whitepaper (http://"https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf")

This thread is very helpful.Didn't know that it existed before. Especially right now we should bump it up more often so that people who have no clue what is going on can study it. LaudaM has brought up some real good arguments why both sides might be important for Bitcoin's future, i.e. increasing the blocksize + sidechains.

It has been a while since this thread was posted in so it would be nice to hear about any changes and make sure people are aware of all areas of the debate.
Looking quickly just noticed a beta published on June 9 no update on the BIP proposal as far as I can tell at this time.
http://www.coindesk.com/blockstream-open-source-code-sidechains/
http://coinjournal.net/blockstreams-adam-back-describes-the-road-ahead-for-decentralized-sidechains/

The only people who could be against the block size limit increase/removal are the blind, the clueless, or bound to the success of another project.

To keep bitcoin decentralized and under control of nobody we must make it accessible to everyone. This means hundreds of transactions per second and 1 MB blocks can't handle this. Other solutions are proprietary.

Look at whos siding with Mircea now,.....

I must say the fear monger works wonder, it brainwashed some of the members on here to now go against what they said before this drama.

Love your signature line. lol

I really miss MPOE-PR. There are a lot of people working on Bitcoin code with less going for them than MP.

-Bump (don't forget to not forget)

Bump

No, it is not (answer to the title). SegWit will be deployed (hopefully) in the upcoming months and an increase of the blocksize in addition to that could possibly be too much ATM.

lauda your a segwit fanboy.. we know it you know it.. now move along

lets talk about the real bitcoin blockchain where signatures are checked and no funny business is going on for the benefit of the few little people..

i said last year 3 options of the direction blockstream could go.. and it seems they want to not increase the block size ever.. force people to use non signatured transactions. then bloat the blocks with 250bytes of data to hide the values spent of each transaction. so that eventually bitcoins blockchain will only hold 2000 tx a block or less of uncheckable data.. forcing people to not use bitcoins blockchain.. but blockstreams sql database known as liquid.

so you can keep pushing segwit all you like.. goodluck with it, see you when bitcoin is ruined

Wrong. So mentioning the planned features (signed by developers) makes me a fanboy (disregarding the fact that I did open a thread about it the day it was presented)?

I don't see anything here but speculative nonsense that is not really related to the thread. Core developers can't force anything upon the users, the users and the industry make the choices.

fact not fiction
1. blockstream devs have already partnered up with mining pools: eligius pool, and btcc.com..
2. blockstream devs have already partnered up with a few exchanges too: Bitfinex, BTCC, Kraken, Unocoin, and Xapo

and once people are told they cant have their bitfinex withdrawals as they are SW liquids and not normal pre 2016 bitcoin transactions.. people will be forced to upgrade just to get their money back. then non upgraded users want to cashout to a xapo card, guess what xapo prefers SW liquid transactions too
so in the end the users have little choice but to convert or be left behind

Even if 1% of all this is true, its not a good news. Everybody is yelling that they want things be decentralized but then dev it self is centralized. Whether you are for bigger or smaller blocks we need really independent devs or bitcoin will get screwed. If LN works for now I am happy but not having independent devs would be a disaster on long run.