Bitcoin Forum

Mike Hearn has made it clear that he does not believe in the Consensus Building Process and is doing nothing to help in it's success. His suggestion seems to be to put in place a CENTRAL TRUSTED AUTHORITY who will make decisions for Bitcoin. To me, this goes against everything Bitcoin stands for and indicates that Hearn does not really understand the philosophy of consensus and decentralization that underlies Bitcoin.

www.seedsforchange.org.uk/consensus

The above site describes why democratic voting is inferior to a consensus based decision making model. With democratic voting you have winners and losers, with consensus everyone wins. There is compromise and all efforts are made to come up with the best decision that addresses everyone's concerns and everyone can live with.

With BIP69 miners voted with their coin base codes on every block they mined. Once 75% of votes in the past 1000 blocks were in support of BIP69 an alert was sent out suggesting that all miners, clients, wallets, etc switch to the BIP69 protocol or risk being left behind. Once 95% of the past 1000 blocks indicated support for BIP69 the new protocol was implemented and all blocks mined without the BIP69 update were rejected from that point on.

What is required for successful consensus decision making is a fluid flow of Proposals. The BIP should adapt to criticism and be amended to address critical concerns. Over time the "winner" will be the developer who was able to adapt his proposal to meet and address the concerns of everyone. 75% consensus results in an alert that the fork is about to occur and everyone should prepare. 95% the debate is over and the new BIP is implemented. Soon thereafter we should have 100% consensus.

This process can work and has worked in the past. We can tweak the percentages here and there, but what we require now is a CLEAR CONSENSUS BUILDING PROCESS, and Mike Hearn seems apposed to this. His suggestion is to insert a CENTRAL TRUSTED AUTHORITY, but I believe the Bitcoin Community can do better than that. I think we can make decisions in a DECENTRALIZED way and arrive at total agreement using the CONSENSUS DECISION MAKING PROCESS.

P.S. I am putting together a Open Letter to the Devs from The Bitcoin Community outlining an endorsement of any decision arrived at using the decentralized Consensus Decision Making Model. If you think you can help us write this letter please send me a PM.

Agree. The best would be that the developers took consensus as a number one priority, not being rigid in their own ideas.

I don't think that proposing such a contradictory process to bitcoin's concept is appealing and in general, positive. Why would this man look for a central authority to impose decisions rather than the network coming up to a consensus? That sounds a bit controlling for me.


Gavin was the lead dev before he left his post, but that doesn't mean that most of the technical issues and problems that bitcoin faced on the past were resolved only by the proposals of Gavin. It's like giving him all the credit while other developers spent and dedicated their time and effort to the project. This, I call, is BS.


Yes, there is no consensus building process that exists, but does this guy think that centralization would fix things and put things into its rightful and perfect state?

Consensus is great if all the participants have the same general goal.

It is impossible if the participants have significantly different and incompatible goals.

In that situation, the best you're going to get with your proposal is either:

Democracy with exile:  Anyone that refuses to accept a compromise that the majority of participants find reasonable is simply accused of making "it clear that he does not believe in the Consensus Building Process and is doing nothing to help in it's success" and is therefore exiled from participating in the process at all.  The process repeats until all those that disagree with the majority have been exiled.  The remaining (non-exiled) participants therefore have 100% consensus.

Stagnation: Those with different goals than the majority can simply refuse to accept any "compromise".  They can furthermore continuously propose "compromises" that are unacceptable to the majority of the participants. The decision making process gets help up indefinitely, and changes that most sensible people feel are important and urgent don't get implemented.

The "Central trusted authority", this is what the BTC Foundation was supposed to be. Most people don't want it anymore so we have to find how that new commanding group will be any different.

A good start to find a consensus would be to set a modest goal. Implementing changes one by one. Small steps by small steps.

Great. So how do I show my position on these issues since I'm not a miner and voting is so millennial, apparently. Or is it only consensus of the chosen few that live in the same village that's important?

The really interesting idea is:
If the devs find a method for every owner of a bitcoin client being able to show a preference of a number alternatives, they would have solved democracy and consensus.

Keep calm ... and wait FIAT collapse.  ::)

bitcoin owners could show a preference by signing a message with a bitcoin wallet, this msg would prove they own X amount of bitcoin and the message itself would be there vote.

I'm sorry but this exposes everyone to all kinds of security and privacy concerns and it is really not a good idea.

i don't see why, voting can be anonymous... all we would be aware of is some BTC address with 25K BTC signed a message saying "BIP100"

But there isn't a mechanism by which this could achieve anything. Stakeholders in the POS sense do not (and should not) have a vote in a POW system. This is what we signed up for when we became bitcoiners.....

Plus, what stops me from sending coins back and forth from an exchange to new addresses, which I would sign as if I were a "new" voter?

good catch, moving the coins would mean there vote is worth 0. periodically a computer would check all the signed messages and the current BTC balance in the signing address.

just because the system itself only cares about miners, this doesn't mean users opinion is irrelevant, minner might actuly look to see where economic marjory settles before casting their vote, after all the happier the user base is the more profit they can make with the BTC the mine.

Yeah, that's fair enough. Nothing wrong with voicing an opinion.

individual's opinion aren't as interesting as the opinion of everyone put together.
if 75% of poeple vote for 1 out of 3 seemingly equally valid BIPs you can bet your ass there is something special about that particular BIP.
if one person is making a lot of noise about his favored BIP it's not as convincing...

also lets consider whats we're seeing now miners are voting for BIP100 with a strong majority, BIP100 give miners more power so of course they will tend to vote for this option. probably BTC votes would not show such a strong majority favoring BIP100.

I think giving devs this information ( what minner want, what Investors want, what Large bitcoin entities want) is absolutely critical for them to make the "best" decision.

what is the best decision if not one which satisfies as many poeple in the different groups?

Consensus worked for bitcoin back when everyone knew how the system worked. I'm not sure it's possible now, when people don't even understand core concepts.

are you crazy?
no democracy, no government that most of the people wants.

are you crazy?

there is a government its called gavain

oh wait no, now its called a handful of devs all in disagreement.

its silly to think someone would bother to vote if he didn't even bother to understand core concepts, if all this pointless Discussion on bitcointalk.org proves anything, it is that poeple understand the fundamentals pretty darn well...

Most Bitcoins are sitting on cold storage or paper wallet, it is a security risk anytime you access them.

One of the core principles behind bitcoin is that nodes express their acceptance of a new block by mining on top of it and the longest chain composed of valid transactions is Bitcoin. By making it easier for everyone to express their acceptance of a potential change, we are making it easier for the network to come to consensus and roll out changes according to the original design of Bitcoin, while limiting potential forks created when changes are implemented without knowing whether or not the changes will be accepted by the network.

imagine the mess we would be in if XT gained 35% of hash rate power.... that shit NEEDS to be avoided at all cost.

Good points. You can never totally get rid of bad actors that intentionally disturb the decisoin making process

There could be ways to reward the consensus building and punish the opposite. For example, the community first makes several consensus candidates, then holds 3 rounds of opinion poll. Everyone's opinion has a weight factor, if one's opinion is not the major consensus, next time his opinion will have a much less weight, like 50%, if he's opinion is with the majority, he will regain his 100% weight. By this means, those who constantly going against the majority will have less and less influence on the final decision

So when you know that your opinion is against the major consensus, it is time to rethink why there are so many people supporting the major consensus and adjust your position accordingly. The basic principle is that consensus have the highest priority, the participants gains most when they join the major consensus

I'm not talking about "bad actors".  The fact that someone has a different goal than you doesn't necessarily mean that your goal is "good" and theirs is "bad".

The point is that a "Consensus Building Process" can't work if participants goals don't align, especially if the participants are passionate about their goals.

Sure you can reduce the influence that you allow to those that disagree with the majority, but that isn't "consensus", that's "majority wins" democracy. It's just another form of "exile".  Instead of immediately rejecting their input, you slowly remove their input until their input becomes meaningless.

If consensus isn't working toward realizing their goal maybe they need to double-check their priorities and either a. compromise or b. exit and create a group of like-minded people.

Free market still operates in consensus-style decision making and if someone is convinced that their goals is more valuable then others they should absolutely leave it to the market to decide. One should be careful though about the means by which they introduce their different proposal as it could cost them greatly if people start discerning hidden motives and intentions not properly disclaimed.

This sort of sounds like the politics of a democracy. If you are in the minority, you may want to rethink your desires and adjust you plan accordingly.

The Social consensus, which we need 'discussion among developers to indicate that most people agree with a particular plan'.

Consensus sounds like a great idea, but may not always work. Democracy may not work either. A dictatorship, benevolent or malevolent, can make things happen very quickly and win a game in the right circumstances. One of those circumstances might be if a democracy or consensus is stuck in minutia, missing a bigger picture, while a dictatorship conceives and idea and quickly executes it overtaking both consensus and democracy.

I hope that Bitcoin can find consensus, but will settle for democracy. I do not want dictatorship. Certainly more than one dictatorship with concepts already.

Agreed, but infinity is a very large number. FIAT really can go on a very long time.

Democracy is dictatorship by the majority.

The rest of your concerns are absolutely valid and amount to what Hayek referred to as the "Road to Serfdom"

You may be right. This is the first I've seen the idea of consensus on a political/government scale, and need to consider it more, especially in light of the power of technology. However, my first gut reaction is that consensus is not possible. I see two immediate concerns:

1) No two people think 100% alike, and the minority in a consensus must concede to the majority anyhow. I think maybe a democracy is more honest in that an actual vote takes place. Vote can be traded, based on importance. Hence, politics come in to play. (Yuck, but reality).

2) If one person refuses to a consensus, either the rest of the consensus moves on without them (in which we are back to a dictatorship  by democracy), or consensus never occurs and a decision is not made. This can work for a while, but evolution does not stop.



Ultimately, the beauty of Bitcoin is the open source nature and the ability for anyone to use it how they please. What I have realized is that the ability to freely pick and choose your money is more important than ever. Any impediment to currency exchange and transmission, no matter what form it takes, is an assault on human rights and dignity.

Bitcoin is a Democracy by definition. or maybe more of a "Democracy with exile"

what is bitcoin?
Nodes express their acceptance of a new block by mining on top of it and the longest chain composed of valid transactions is Bitcoin.

there you go the bitcoin = whatever the majority of hashing power believes is bitcoin.

You are ignoring one aspect which is vital to consensus: reputation. The major difference between democracy and consensus is that not all votes are equal. Some vetos weight more than others.

An outlier willing to use his veto to stop progress needs to consider the strenght of his reputation and the validity of his arguments. If both are poor you are correct that consensus might move against him and that is perfectly normal. If that person is being intellectually honest she might realize the need to compromise on what might not have been the best idea in the first place or effectively exile himself from the decision process.

Now of course reputations are built and destroyed all the time. In that sense consensus has a very meritocratic aspect to it.

 :D

What a twisted idea.

So if "the majority of hashing power", say, 55%, starts mining Kanyecoin rather than Bitcoin than it becomes Bitcoin?

i think the point would not be to necessary achieve 100% consensus but to strive for it. with a simple majority wins system you don't get both side to try comparmize or try to think of alt solutions which satisfy everyone. so it might not be possible to really achieve consensus but its important to TRY to reach a consensus.

says satoshi

it really has to be a fork of bitcoin with the majority of hashing power, but you get the idea.

 :o

No.

Bitcoin is defined by the consensus rules defined in the software the nodes run. Not what some miners decides to mine...

what no

i'm telling you what the  "consensus rules" are,
Nodes express their acceptance of a new block by mining on top of it and the longest chain composed of valid transactions is Bitcoin.
this is from the white paper. and it wouldn't make any sense any other way.

That is a common misconception of what actually happens. Here:


Your welcome.

so you agree with me.

 the longest chain composed of valid transactions is Bitcoin.

 8) oh ya



litecoin didn't fork from bitcoin
litecoin's CODE was a bitcoin fork
Big difference.
bitcoin XT attempted to fork from bitcoin.
to call it a fork it needs to include the blockchain up until the fork

First of all congratulations for your initiative. But today i have read an open letter from the developers. So they had anticipated you. You can again write your letter and this will be a sign that the devs are going in the right direction. And secondly congratulations again for the position you take. It is true and I agree with you. Bitcoin need consensus to go ahead. the devs must discuss with each other and arrive one consensus. Democracy maybe can became after.

Bitcoin has evolved since the whitepaper was written.  It gives a good introduction to the overall concepts, but the whitepaper gets many of the details wrong.

I think in this case, you are mistaken.  At the moment, the majority of the economic power is in agreement with the hashpower.  Perhaps this will always be true, but it doesn't have to be.

Imagine for a moment a case where 53% of the hash power chooses a particular set of consensus rules, and 47% chooses a different set of consensus rules.  Imagine that these consensus rules are such that neither side sees any of the other side's blocks as valid.  Now imagine that 98% of the users (merchants, consumers, charities, etc) all choose to use the same consensus rules as the 47% of the miners.  Which is the "real bitcoin?  I think that most people would say that the 47% fork is the "Real" bitcoin since that is what nearly everyone is using as bitcoin.  The fact that 53% of the miners have chosen to contribute their hashpower to some other chain doesn't really matter.

Now, there are some market forces in play that make this scenario VERY unlikely.  Since most people are using the 47% fork, it will be difficult for the miners on the 53% fork to find anyone that wants to buy the coins they are mining.  This will significantly reduce their ability to sell their coins and pay for their operating costs.  Therefore, there will be significant financial pressure on them to switch back to mining on the other fork.

This is what is meant when people talk about the "majority of the economic power". There is enough financial pressure on miners that they will tend to follow the desires of the economic power.  Therefore, in reality it is the economic power that decides which is the "real" bitcoin, and not the miners.

This state can't really persist, though.  The chain that only has 2% of the users behind it will rapidly lose value (assuming people can trade between chains), miners will then stop mining it, and it will be orphaned by the longer chain.  So I think you two are saying nearly the same thing. 

Perhaps, but unless I'm mistaken, adamstgBit seems to be implying that the miners can (without the consent of the economic power) choose and force a set of protocol rules on the users.  That the miners will get to choose which fork is "bitcoin", and that anyone that wants to use "bitcoin" will have to use the fork that the majority of the miners choose.

I'm saying that's backwards.  The economic power gets to choose a set of protocol rules, and the miners that wish to be profitable have to use the fork that the economic power chooses.

You are correct in that we are both saying that vast majority of the miners (those that wish to mine profitably) end up mining the "real bitcoin", but I think he and I are disagreeing on which is the cause and which is the effect.

I haven't read the whole thread yet, but I have to point some things out.

I live in a country, where politics follows a consensus path, I even have some Power Point slides from some University Courses about Politics in Austria, where the word consensus is all over the place. So, I know, what consensus means in reality. It does not mean, that everybody wins. It often means nothing is happening at all(there are some reforms, which are talked about for at least 10 years even when the matter is urgent).
It also often means, that a bad compromise is made, nobody is really happy about.

I am not promoting any other kind of decision making, but the whole cheering about, how great a consensus based model is, is just purely naive, I live with the downsides of it since I am born.

At the risk of having to put the "chicken wire" up, I'd respectfully suggest that Mike Hearn totally understands "the philosophy of consensus and decentralization" and it's the OP of this thread who doesn't.

For a start, there are only 2 forms of "consensus" in cryptocurrency that matter:

[1] - mining consensus (decides what code gets accepted onto the network)

[2] - market consensus (decides what the result is worth)

That's it.

Bitcoin is an open source project and open source specifically implies diversity - not consensus. In other words, developers are free to create, promote and implement diverging versions of the codebase and have the stakeholder consensus mechanism (above) arbitrate amongst their offerings.

The idea of "developer consensus" alluded to in this thread by the OP is not a consensus at all but a cartel.

It appears to me that Mike Hearn understands this and the OP does not.

I disagree with your thoughts on Bitcoin and this being how open source projects work.  I've heard this argument many times and I disagree with it in this case.  The reason is simple.  

What Mike is doing isn't simply taking the code and making his changes and then releasing it on his own.  He is attempting to hijack control of the Bitcoin blockchain with his implementation.  He could have gone about releasing his altcoin like everyone else and starting a new blockchain with the Bitcoin code he took and altered like everyone else before him.  Trying to simply make himself the new Satoshi so he can make the rules as he sees fit is a dangerous precedent and I don't think it should be supported by anyone.  He's attempting a hostile takeover of a multi-billion dollar economy that was billed as being decentralized and providing freedom.

I don't think "my way -- exponential scaling -- or the highway" is an acceptable approach. Cutting Core developers out the picture entirely and including only those who share this limiting view of what bitcoin is... this is not something I can support.

You dont want democracy? Who do you think you are? A dictator?

Relevant consensus tool:

http://coin-vote.com/poll/55e8a33299baadff0a34acb7

Please spare us the melodrama.

Neither MH nor any other developer are in any position to hijack anything. If he was, the entire Bitcoin economy wouldn't be worth the price of a couple of asics.

Whats happening with the divergent developer agendas is consistent with the principle of the technology - why else do you think a mining majority is required for adoption of revisions ? Developer consensus is not, was never, and never will be something that investors can implicitly expect. You can't accuse someone of attempting to "hijack" the blockchain just because they are in a minority of the developer population who have commit access. Thats ludicrous because it would imply that the commercial, investor and mining community is not at liberty to adopt a revision that doesn't have majority developer support. You're basically making the rules up as you go along.

The consensus in bitcoin is by mining majority, not developer majority. Live with it.

So, instead of Mike Hearn becoming "the new Satoshi so he can make the rules as he sees fit", you prefer that Wladimir van der Laan remain "the new Satoshi so he can make the rules as he sees fit".

Meh. Six-of-one, half-a-dozen of another. Different words to say the same thing. You aren't changing the concept, just which name you're currently willing to accept in the position.  Either way you have a single person with their hands on the reigns of "a multi-billion dollar economy that was billed as being decentralized and providing freedom."

Maybe I should fork my own software that builds on the Bitcoin blockchain and then I can become "the new Satoshi so I can make the rules as I sees fit".  I'll implement ONLY the 8 MB increase when/if the XT change triggers and none of Mike's other changes (including skipping the "double every 2 years" change). I won't place any votes for XT and I'll report exactly the same as Core.  That way users can continue to support the Core rules, but they won't initially be left behind if the majority join the XT bandwagon.  It'll take some of the power away from Mike, and if enough people choose to switch to my implementation after XT triggers, then perhaps it'll put pressure on Mike to remove some of the more controversial stuff from his implementation.

i agree, hashing power will fallow economic power and not the other way around.

in this particular case tho i was stating that bitcoin is a sort of "democracy" by definition, because bitcoin is whatever majority of users ( hashing power or BTC hodlers ) think it is.

brg444 and I were having a torllishous discussion. lol

ya but miners have always mined whatever the devs tell them to mine....

had all the dev been in agreement with 8MB from  the start miners would have upgraded no questions asked, like every other BIP that has come b4 this one.

in reality no one group "controls it."

miner, investors, large bitcoin entities (Exchanges, etc.. ),  devs,  all have alot of influence.

these groups are all dependent on one another , "control" is hard to pin point.

i'm going to build a website where we can watch in real time, the blocklimit debate destroy bitcoin, by quantifying the level of disagreement among these groups.    8)

I'm not talking about the right or wrong of each proposal, by bad I mean someone intentionally disrupt the consensus building process, e.g. insists on his own idea without making effort to modify it or make some compromise to reach consensus

In consensus decision making model, anything that is against the consensus building is negative, the correctness of each proposal itself is irrelevant. We suppose that each proposal is correct from its specific viewing angle, but since the community as a whole must move forward, all of the proposal must be evaluated and eventually merged towards one direction which best present the overall direction

In a centralized democracy system, the minority will have to accept the rule that winners make. But in a decentralized consensus system you always have the right to leave and play your own game. If you think you are right and the rest 90% is wrong, you can just fork your own coin and make your own exchange and start to persuade merchants to accept your coin, etc...

But you might find out that doing so will be extremely difficult without the support from majority of the community, your altcoin most likely will be buried among thousands of other coins and make no sense. So when you make a decision, you will also weigh the value of community support, and since you will get maximum community support when your proposal are not refused by the majority, your proposal will be more cooperative instead of competitive

Everyone needs to be open to suggestions, some are just simply deeply fixed in their predetermined ideas.

yes you can say any group has control from a certain perspective, all are dependent on each other.

Out of interest, how do you objectively define which party has "intentionally disrupted" the consensus, or even what the consensus was ?

If two developers launch a code revision and three refuse to endorse it, how do you determine which is the "disrupting" group ? By pure majority ? Does that mean that if one person changes their mind, the other group is now the disruptive element by definition ?

This is just crazy logic because the reality is that in open source there is no such thing as "consensus" in the general case because in theory the code is open to everybody for forking. You might only have one fork available or you might have multiple. If it's the latter then the network reaches a consensus about which fork to adopt but it's amongst the NETWORK PARTICIPANTS that the consensus resides because the concept has a formal and objective definition in that context. It is a non-existent concept in the context of the developer community other than as a loose agreement to refrain from creating multiple forks which, as we've seen, isn't worth the paper it's not written on.

Otherwise good idea, but BIP 101 doesn't skip every two years. It grows linearly between the checkpoints. http://imgur.com/a/VFNT9

I'm all for more options, just in case Mike does something reckless. He seems so eager to implement stuff, that I'm not sure if everything is well thought out. (and Wladimir seems to be the opposite of that). Too bad Gavin got enough of being a maintainer, I think he fit that role well.

I love the fact that I still learn new stuff about bitcoin even after years of reading about it and participating in discussions.

I was about to correct you, and when I went to quote BIP101:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0101.mediawiki

I noticed the very next sentence that I somehow managed to overlook every other time until now:


Until now, I've only quickly skimmed over BIP101 to get a general idea of what it is suggesting.  This new knowledge has motivated me to carefully read through the entire thing and read up a bit more on other writings about it.  Thanks for pointing out my misunderstanding.

Clearly my idea of creating a fork of Core/XT that joins the XT network on the trigger, but freezes at 8 MB blocks wouldn't work.  It would have to accept the slowly growing blocks at least until it had support of the majority of the economic power in the system.

This is interesting but it seems like people have incentive not to risk making a mistake with their private keys by not voting at all, and also even if everyone did vote, the more wealth equals more votes which I'm not sure is a great thing, but perhaps a necessary evil to endure.

The people who hold the most stake in bitcoin have the most weight in a decision about bitcoin. Seems to hold water.

I agree.  Hence why I've said since the beginning that XT was DOA.  Get emotional about it if you want to.

Via this tool Satoshi Nakamoto's vote would have a lot of weight and other very rich Bitcoin Whales would have incentive not to vote because anytime you access your private keys there are risks involved.

not if you know how to do it properly, it really isn't that difficult. but you're right not everyone would vote, i'd be surprised to see more than 1% of bitcoins vote, but 100,000BTC+ voting is a lot better then a poll on bitcointalk.org.

all you have to do to sign a msg with 0 risk is to sign the message on a permanently-air-gapped PC.
poeple have all kinds of different solutions to securing their bitcoin, most popular is paper wallet.
a simple HTML page with some JS could be made, so that all they need to do is,
1) save and run this html doc on a permanently-air-gapped PC
2) plug in there private key
3) select their vote and push "sign message" button
4) save the resulting message.
5) send that message to this coin-vote.com app.

5-10mins of work.

i wonder if trezor HD wallet can sign messages, that would be another very secure way of doing it.

Thanks for your comments BitProdigy! I have no argument with your points here.  Indeed, a coin-vote is weighted by coin ownership, not because it's my opinion that this is what the people want, it's just how it works.  Also it requires caring enough to go and make an ECDSA signature, that is also just how it works.      

It is of course possible to be as paranoid and secure with your private keys as you like, as adamstgBit points out, just as when spending bitcoin.  

For another example, if you wish to declare your support for BIP -001, you need to sign the string "How-should-bitcoin-be-sca-BIP--001---b327d7b79e70eeb".  

You could print that out, take the paper into your hardened Faraday Cage bunker through the airlock (which is built to ensure no robotic insects enter with you), start up your raspberry PI in there and use your choice of signed / vetted software to generate the signature with your 10000 BTC address.  Then, print out the signature and carry it back out through the airlock.  Once back outside of the Faraday cage you can post your signature here to the forum using a stranger's mobile phone and we'll enter the vote into the coin-vote database for you.    

    

The consensus comes from majority of the community members, not only programmers. Miners, exchanges, payment processors, merchants, investors, speculators, they are all the community member, and they all have different influences on the ecosystem

Programmers are the one that write the consensus into the code. At the beginning of the bitcoin, it worth nothing,  programmers have large influence on its development. But at later stage, many people joined the ecosystem and built it up from all the other area, then these stake holders' involvement and contribution give them more incentive to care about the development of bitcoin

Indeed in open source you can always fork the code and implement your idea, but if you don't have the support from all the other participants in the ecosystem, you are going back to where bitcoin stands 5 years ago

People who strongly support bitcoins are mostly libertarian style entrepreneurs that can make individual judgement, they typically have certain degree of IT and finance competence, would objectively evaluate core dev's proposal. In this case the debate of the block size is more about the social and financial impact instead of a technical issue. I think many of them are more experienced in those area than programmers

Have you noticed that most of the miners switched to support BIP 100? I guess this is because BIP 100 give them more right of decision in the future, so from their point of view this is definitely better than give the decision making power to Gavin. You can see that everyone here is a wolf on the blockchain  ;D

By the way, I'm seeing rising interest of a flex cap which only raises the block size when fee collected in each block is higher than block reward

interesting idea. but to up the 1MB limit, we need fees at ~0.0125BTC ( ~2.5$ ) if you assume 2000tx (~1MB worth) per block.

that a pretty high fee! so much for "virtual free transactions."

and at that point a shit load of TX wouldnt happen on the network, this method would very quickly make bitcoin no able to handle micropayments.

maybe if fee where >1BTC the limit would be pushed up would be more reasonable.

Ok then maybe 0.1 block reward is better. Block reward will cut by half next year, so eventually fee will rise pass block reward, it is just a matter of time.

Another concern: Block reward halving every 4 years is very drastic. When the block reward get enough small, more and more miners will be shut down, since it does not give miners enough incentive to mine when majority of coins were mined

Since early days of mining, many miners were incentivized to acquire a big enough pie of the total coin supply: "If I get hold of xxx% of the total money supply, then one day if bitcoin economy grow to xxxxx trillion dollar, I will have xxx% of this whole economy". But after mining reward cut by half several times, this incentive will not hold, so it is important to have decent fee income to keep the miners on board. I guess at 6.25 btc block reward the fee could be getting close to block reward

You are aware that a majority of transactions involving Bitcoin already occur off-chain?

its not so much the amount of BTC the block reward has that is the incentive to mine as it is the $ value that BTC amount represents. so we'd need to see price double every 4 years to keep miners happy i guess. sounds resnable.

for miners to get the most out of the fee's, they should try and target a fee where 80% of current transactions would be willing to pay. you dont want fee's to high, and you don't want them too low, a fee where 80% of poeple agree with ensures the "price is right". so take the avg TX size ( i guess this would be like 0.1BTC??? )  assume 80% of people are willing to pay no more than 1%, and you get a fee of 0.001BTC ~23cents.

sounds about right.

full 1MB blocks would give them 2BTC
full 8MB blocks would give them 16BTC

conclusion,
the flex cap should only raise the block size when fee collected in each block is higher than :
 (avg_TX_size_BTC * 0.01 * num_max_tx_pre_block)BTC

this idea is pretty cool because its allows miners to collect more fee's based on supply and demand ( available space on each block ) and at the same time we can put a cap on how much they can use this excuse to up the fee.

some really indepth evaluation as to what the MAX fee should be before block limit is raised should be thought up tho.

this formula needs to consider what the network will need in $ terms to securely sustain itself solely on fees in the future.

maybe all this can help solve the question of how big a block should be to strike the right balance between keeping mining affordable and decentralized, and at the same time provide a low cost TXs

block limit debate now boils down to: how much mining centralization should we allow in the name of cheep transactions.

IMO it should cost ~5cents and mining should be allowed to be as centralized as needed to provide 5cent fees.

so i'm now thinking only up the limit when tx fee is (some crazy formula that allows for a MAX fee of 5-10cents)

this is annoyingly interesting wasting alot of time here lately  ;D.

imagine this the limit is raised and suddenly TX fees come down do 1cent pre TX, maybe the block size should be set lower in that case so that fees are 5cents again.

difficulty is retargeted to keep blocks coming out at ~10min intervals
block size is retargeted to keep TX cost at ~5cents.

Booya, we've solved it call the devs!
lmao

determining the block size by targeting a tx fee limit is the most fucktarded idea I've come accross with so far.

but yes by all means, call the devs!!

The dollar value is irrelevant. This is like buying Alaska several centuries ago, you get a big share of the total available land on the earth, but maybe that land is not used for a long time

Bitcoin is like land, you can not imagine what kind of value would grow out of it, the only thing for sure is that the supply is limited, so many miners are rushing to reserve their share before something big happens

Reaching consensus requires finding a common ground.

In the case of a block size increase that common ground becomes the interests of Bitcoin (as a whole), but not the interests of its different parties, which often conflict with each other.

In order to agree on that one thing, we need to look at how Bitcoin started and how it gained value, what purposes different parameters of the system serve and how Bitcoin stands against the competition in the foreseeable future.

So, basically, consensus is not about differences of opinions and voting, but rather about finding a single underlying truth, sticking to it and understanding that benefiting Bitcoin (by agreeing) will actually benefit all of the parties involved.

Bitcoin shows us that being able to negotiate on complex issues and acting in goodwill is actually a mathematical necessity for progress and evolution.

The coin vote thing is a double edged sword. It can seem a good idea but let's be serious, anyone with an agenda and a lot of money would be able to single handedly decide the fate of Bitcoin by buying a lot of coins and voting with them.

Thanks for your reply.  You have a point.  However consider that such a person with an agenda could also for a similar price "decide the fate of bitcoin" by using those coins to DDOS the network, or using them to buy asics to attack the network, or otherwise (buy off pool operators, form standing army, who knows).  

It is also worth pointing out that buying half the bitcoins will cost you A LOT more than a billion USD.  My guess is the figure would be more like a trillion, but even then you might not get to 7million BTC.  A lot of hodlers are of the "come get these private keys out of the clenched fist of my corpse or don't get them at all" variety.  Others are of the "I laugh at any number of USD" variety.    

It's also worth noting that even with a huge stake demonstrating their opinion, it doesn't mean bitcoin will comply with said opinion.  

we need also democracy for good sakes a idea into the best position to be able to be voted in order to the followers to be able not to be nervouse and kill of bad consequence world without the good ideas to capitalize

unrestrained democracy is the same as mob rule and it has failed throughout history and would leave Bitcoin vulnerable to the whims of public opinion.

The U.S. for example is a democratic Republic not a pure democracy. Be careful what you wish for, a true democracy would leave Bitcoin vulnerable to fear mongering politicians being able to influence the Bitcoin protocol. What if Trump claimed Bitcoin was being used by illegal immigrants   :D

It would be a dangerous world for Bitcon if this guys  ::) vote had the same weight and power as a vote from one of the core developers. Voting by coins owned is also dangerous as it leaves the few with the most coins in control of Bitcoin. The exchanges which have Bitcoin on deposit would have the ability to control Bitcoin, also Satoshi could come back and rule Bitcoin with an iron fist with his coins.

A vote is in no way dangerous, it is simply an opinion poll.  A coin-vote is a verifiable opinion poll, nothing more.  To algorithmically decide life and death based on the results of one of these polls, sure that would be dangerous.  But nobody suggested that. 

Our Coin-vote project is just an easy way for people to register their opinion.  Somebody could do the same with dpaste really, just that tallying them would be more of a pain.  How is that dangerous? 

https://i.imgur.com/H5v2OMz.png