Bitcoin Forum

Preamble you can skip if you want: I'm as guilty as many on both sides of snarky, smart-arse comments but tonight I just spent a very enjoyable hour (doing a face-to-face trade) with two who hold different opinions than me. I think we all learned something and I'm confident we all had more respect for the legitimacy of holding a different view from ourselves.

My primary point is that a technical expertise does not make one an economics expert and therefore there's a danger in trusting the technical experts to make the decisions that risk what has proven to work thus far i.e. enough space to accommodate almost all transactions.

I wanted, since visiting Sudan in the mid nineties, a currency that would protect people in countries from government actions that truly screw them over such as the monthly doubling the money supply to pay the army (that doubled the price of everything on the day the army was paid).
I had figured out in the years after that public key cryptography might be the basis of an independent currency and was hoping someone smarter than me might figure it out. But even though I was kinda expecting it I was still blown away by the elegance of Satoshi's solution.

One of the exciting things was that the same currency served the needs of so many different groups of people including: the Austrians / gold-bug types, libertarians / ancaps and others including me who see value in an incorruptible currency, people screwed by high remittance fees or by gov't restrictions of internal or international currency transfer, the unbanked who are cut off from financial services most here take for granted, its use for contracts such as with Factom - even those, such as me - who liked to give small amounts away* or raise intrigue with shopkeepers, restaurant owners by offering physical (or later wallet app) bitcoins for my meal etc. etc. The fact that there were, in addition, so many use cases that we could not even imagine what they might be was just mind-blowing for me.

The failure to do something about the transaction bottleneck before it started to nudge fees up and (and/or cause delays orders of magnitude higher than before) is and will continue to have an impact. This isn't about laying blame today. I think it's fair to say all stakeholders (in the wider use of the term) including developers, miners, other users and moderators jointly - if not equally - have to-date failed to make a change a user can use today.
I am looking forward to seeing 2nd layer off-chain solutions bringing all kinds of new use cases. I also mourn the loss of the use of the blockchain for the other use cases as their viability is eroded to nothing by fees and delays.

As I see it, those whose judgement on Bitcoin's future has apparently earned the respect of the majority on this sub due to their technical merit, have a plan that accepts the loss of the multitude of use cases (on-chain) as a price worth paying to have Bitcoin be as strong as possible for the three use cases they deem worthy: censorship-resistant-currency, store-of-value, settlement-layer.

If this argument continues to prevent the increase of the block-size limit, as much as I'd like to see them proven wrong, I genuinely hope that Bitcoin will continue to be of value to enough for merely those three use cases to survive and to thrive. The fact is we don't know. Nobody can know. The combination of use cases and unlimited potential use cases was what got us to where we are today. How long can we chip away at the other use cases and still have something that holds value? Maybe indefinitely? It depends entirely on the faith and the preparedness of those who stay in to pull us out of whatever next big dip is. It is still a significantly inflationary currency and the higher up the price goes, with more coming on board at higher prices, the further it has to fall. And we ought not forget it is not the only player in the crypto space.

From what I understand of 2nd layer channels, they're not going to serve the Sudanese and those in the many countries where the spread of mobile telephony means they could potentially exchange what for us are small amounts to protect themselves. My hope is that Bitcoin can still do this - as I believe was the vision of Satoshi and as I understand some with a much better technical understanding than me (GA, for one) believe is still possible.

But if it's not Bitcoin, I'm kinda hoping for the sake of what it once was that it survives and continues to reward those who believed in it but more importantly, if it's not Bitcoin, I'm really hoping another currency will take up the baton for those who most need use of this technology - and if that is at the cost of Bitcoin falling by the wayside, so be it. We - jointly, as a whole community - will only have ourselves to blame.

*Those many, many 25mBTC paper wallets I gave away may, unless their owners figure it out soon, be sums that are forever not be economically viable to move.

It's very simple


There is more than one way to increase on-chain capacity. Scaling is the best way. Blocksize increases do not scale.


So, blocksize increase are the worst way to increase capacity. It's simple, but not smart. Scaling is better. It's sometimes simple, sometimes complex, and always smart.

Thank you.

Would you elaborate please what you mean by 'it doesn't scale'?

I believe I am more open to put the politics to one side and to be persuaded that the Core roadmap has more merit than my ideas*

Rather than just asking, I just brushed up on the arguments according to https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy but I'm still not sure I know what you mean.

I recollect talk of a technical issue that, as things stand, means an increased block size causes a disproportionately high demand on bandwidth. Is it this you're referring to? Or maybe that given the potential demand, there's no way the blockchain would suffice on its own, thereby requiring off-chain scaling? Or something else?

On the first, even with my low technical understanding, I can see that there would be sense in addressing this prior to increasing the block size. However, on technical issues, I look to see to others whose judgement I trust who have better understanding - such as Gavin & Mike - and on this I don't recollect this issue as being seen as a big problem.

On potential demand, I have no argument with the blockchain not being able to hold it all in the long term. It could, however, hold more and I am given to understand that technical minds outside of Core see very little risk in increasing current capacity, allowing continuity of the growth as we've experienced so far whilst allowing time for technology, ideas and development to continue.

If it is something else you mean, I'm genuinely interested.

Whilst I have given my current responses to my two guesses as to what you meant, it doesn't mean I'm dismissive of what you write. Responding as I have helps air and articulate where I'm at at the moment whilst keeping the door open to being persuaded otherwise.

Thanks again Carlton Banks :)

* this very same post got shadowbanned on r/bitcoin within 10 mins (https://www.ceddit.com/r/Bitcoin/new/) but despite this, though disappointed, I'm not angry and not deterred in pursuing the most reasoned conclusion of which I'm capable, whatever that may be.

https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/631ffe/pools_that_block_litecoin_development/dfr3weo/

Focus on this specific post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/litecoin/comments/631ffe/pools_that_block_litecoin_development/dfsd1yp/

PoW has nothing to do with blocksize.

ASICS have no hard drive. they never touch the blockchain or validate transactions.
all they receive is a 256bit hash and a few rules to comply too (difficulty)

a 0.000250mb block and a 0.999750mb block send the exact same amount of data to a PoW asic,

arguments that PoW cant scale is a fake narrative just to try making sheep think its ok to ruin security purely for the sake of greedy people thinking they can get some free bitcoins from running a node in their basement

dont beleive me..
unscrew an ASIC and look for a hard drive

Dude you really don't understand the math of propagation. That is an idiotic claim.

Without verification of transactions in the prior block, PoW can't be safely devoted to mining the next block.

Scaling of block size is all about the fact that all miners have to verify all transactions. Which intimately tied to PoW.

If miners start trusting other miners by reputation instead of verifying, then you no longer need PoW. You can based the consensus proof-of-maximum-trust, i.e. trust is centralization.

the propagation is a different matter that has nothing to do with PoW

validating transactions and making a hash, and transmitting a block to other nodes is the same if it was PoW or PoS

the actual work of PoW and PoS is a separate thing.

once PoW has a solution. the new hash is added to the block data. and funnily enough to check that the PoW solution (hash with so many 000 at the start) actually takes less milliseconds to verify than it does to chck signatures of 'stake' holders block header data.

again the Proof_of_..
and the tx data inside a block are 2 separate things

By example let's say we increase the blocksize from 1MB to 2MB, that's increasing the average amount of transactions from 300,000 per day to 600,000 per day.

So, 1MB:300,000, 2MB:600,000.

And that's the same ratio, for 1MB or 2MB. i.e. 1:3 is exactly equivalent to 2:6

So that's not scaling, the scale is identical. All blocksize increases do to change the capacity is that they change the amount of resources the Bitcoin network uses at the exact same scale, no matter how much the blocksize changes.



I actually agreed with Gavin (but not Mike) on his 2015 ideas to improve Bitcoin's transaction capacity, except for 1 very crucial point.

Gavin had all the right ideas, except he wanted to schedule the changes in the wrong order. He wanted to increase the blocksize 1st, then bring in the changes that counter-balance the impact of blocksize increases after that. Which is odd, but Gavin expressed it pretty much that way, perhaps without even realising the logical inconsistency. He's since gone full retard though, advocating BU's aggressive destruction of the Bitcoin Core blockchain, which was particularly appalling coming from someone who made good contributions to Bitcoin in the past (and also from someone who claimed to be in favour of the free market/open competition).

validating data..
no matter what, takes time agreed.
but the bit after validation... whther its PoW PoS or whatever doesnt change if its 0.000250byte block or a 2gb block.
the hash that needs to be signed or SHA'd is the same length and takes the same time no matter what size the block is

That is incorrect.

Block size increases, exponentially increase hashrate wastage due to exponential orphan rate increase.

It doesn't scale because the frictional costs of raising the block size are exponentially bad.

Have you guys ever looked at the equation for orphan rate. It relates block size to block period in an exponential relationship.

No. Propagation of data. And the equation of orphan rate applies. And different miners see a different orphan rate. This is what causes centralization and impacts scaling.

doesnt matter if its PoS or PoW.
the orphan rate due to block data is a separate thing.

infact by costing so much electric. pools are probably going to do a better job at validating the data before creating a has that needs to be SHA'd ..
compared to a block that just needs to be signed thus decreasing orphan risk because they know how much work is involved in securing the data

oh. and here is the fnny part

if you have a block with 10 transactions or 1000 transactions. does not mean the PoW difficulty changes or the amount of hashes needed.

"centralisation"??

hmm 2013.. blocks 0.5mb ... 5 pools
2017 blocks 0.999mb... 20+pools

goodluck in your research

p.s
i do like how you now stepped aside the PoW statement.
and are now trying to meander it to being about tx validation.

EG
if PoW algo was to change. and only PoW was to change
if it took 2 sconds to validate tx data before
it will take 2 seconds to validate tx data after.

the PoW is not about tx data. is about the block hash's security lock that comes AFTER tx validation.

and that security lock is always going to be based on a 256bit piece of data no matter how many tx's are included or not.

---

anyway to gt to the OP's opinion
LN has a niche for some people that do spend more than once a week, such as faucet raiders, gamblers etc. but LN requires a deposit and eventual withdrawal (2 onchain tx's) by which due to uncertainty of how often some people wish to spend bitcoin would not want to waste 2 tx's to lock funds into a contract they may not use for that fortnight.

yes LN can have a 1 year contract. but then there is the issue of. can people predict their spending habits of a year to know how much to put in at the start. can they really trust having their whole hoard locked in for a year.
there are actual issues with LN.
such as address-reuse signing and blackmail, CSV changebacks etc. which is where even LN devs have suggested only use $60 amounts with ~2week contracts.

Thanks for the responses to-date. Plenty food for thought for me to sleep on. I'll respond to the extent I understand and am capable of coherently expressing my thoughts tomorrow.

Pools can be a Sybil attack from the same whale miners.

You are writing a lot of nonsense and I am not going to waste my time.


PoW difficulty has nothing to do what we are discussing.

You are not competent for me to have a discussion with.


There was no meandering. I stated the relevant facts. You are meandering into incoherent nonsense.

Why are you against segwit though, which will directly help the problem. Even if it doesnt solve it, it will still help it.

then miners like antpool must be stupid, seeing how they signaling for a straight block size increase without knowing this or maybe what you are saying it's not 100% correct or partially missing something

no one still have correctly explained without flaming and be pretentious, why simply increase the block size MB do not scale, unless "scale" doesn't simply mean having more transaction per second

I'll answer this one first but I'm aware of the risk that more than one aspect of my response may trigger a derailing of the thread into something which was deliberately de-emphesised in my OP. So I'll request restraint here!

To be clear, I did not state I am against segwit.

I have my concerns based on technical objections I've heard for which I've not seen responses that satisfy me. However this may simply be down to the following phenomenon: that it's often easier to follow and to be convinced by the reasoning of an objection than to follow and to be convinced by what for experts may be a satisfactory response but not for me - not because of a potential weakness in the argument but because its following requires a deeper technological understanding than I possess. I realise this response opens a whole can of worms but my request here is that you accept the openness of my expression of where I am with it and not jump on the fact of my not being convinced to turn this into something else! The context is the OP please?

One of the things I'm trying to overcome when it comes to Core and Segwit is my negative emotional response to it. How do I put this?! The culture into which segwit was born is one of high toxicity. If I were to trace back to one root cause for that I'd say - in the context of my experience real face-to-face contact last night - that we are soooooooo much more likely in written discussions to assume bad faith, stupidity, corruption etc. and to respond accordingly with accusations and insults in we are in real-life conversation. I think if most of the debate had happened by the presentation of ideas followed by meetups of small groups to discuss them, we - and Bitcoin - would be in a veeery different place by now.

We saw a culture within Core (since before it was known by that name) that made some prior key contributors and respected figures in the community feel they were too at odds with where it was going that they no longer had a part in it. And I get the impression it was a small number of  convinced, possibly stubborn individuals who determined the current direction Core (it's much easier for someone passionate for the general cause and for contributing by coding to select project areas that are less controversial with the core strong-arm).

We have the possibly irreparable schism in the community which I see largely due to a choice made and followed to this day of taking a particular definition of an altcoin and using it to prevent open, balanced discussion about possible ways forward (says I, hoping my tangential reference is clear enough to make my point whilst being obscure enough for it not to derail the topic). Part of me screams that I simply don't want to see those who played a part (or who failed to take a stand) succeed - and a truly unreasonable side of me even says: '...even at the cost of the failure of Bitcoin'!

Another unhelpful human trait in this regard is the contrast between true experts in any field being quietly confident and happy to explain to those who are open to their ideas v. those who falsely believe they are experts who have an apparent need to shout loudest, to be confrontational, to accuse etc. Guess which group has the biggest influence on the directions of forums such as here and Reddit? Related to this, but I think slightly different, is another human trait - the gap between our belief of the absent or tiny role of emotion in our apparently reasoned arguments versus the actual role of emotion in those same arguments. So whilst my current quest includes trying to disentangle the merits of Core and segwit from my emotional response to them, I'm not asking here to be convinced of segwit right now. I'm asking that the points I raise in the OP to be addressed - I'm looking for things that will help me be able to see past those - and then, possibly to look at segwit differently in time.

The time taken to process a block doesn't increase linearly with the size, it's quadratic.
If you double the blocksize, you multiply the time taken to process it by 4.
It gets very slow very quickly.

Carlton Banks did explain to my satisfaction what he meant by it. If I understood him correctly, another way I'd describe it is if you change the scale of a map you get a lot more area shown for each increment increased. According to Carlton Banks's argument, this means at best, we get 'only' double transaction volume by doubling the block chain. For (I'll avoid the word scaling) increasing the potential transaction throughput to a number that would satisfy potential demand, we need something that does more than linear growth.

From the other heated argument above I can see there may be a reasonable case to be made that you don't even get 1-1 (throughput / blocksize) which if true, makes it even more important to find longer-term solutions - of which segwit may be one.

However, not everything has to be addressed at once and to me - as to Gavin and others - 'kicking the can down the road' by having an increase that would have prevented us from getting to what we have today - a currency dropping off on-chain use cases by the day. To this day I fail to see how it can be worth risking the totally unknown consequences of the presently worsening situation - deliberately letting it get to the stage of a ceiling-hit-forced-fee-market - in order to 'encourage' or speed up the development of second-tier solutions.

Talking of Gavin, I omitted your references to 'flaming and pretentious' and dismiss the oft-repeated 'Gavin [having gone] full retard' as an example of some of the phenomena I talk about in the last post. I'm trying to put such statements to one side and not let it colour my preparedness to listen to the reasoned arguments people who are saying such things are making. At the risk of sounding patronising, I suggest others participating here do likewise.

Thank you. I appreciate the simplicity in the what you say  - and if this is true because of something that could be addressed such that it isn't the case, then it is what I was referring to - which, for some reason, doesn't appear to be on the wiki list of big-block objections.

But apart from the possibility that this can be somehow addressed, given hashing difficulty will adjust to accommodate increases in time, is the problem with 'time taken to process by 4'  that it becomes a race, not just of hashing power, but of the processing required before hashing can commence? Could you link me to a reference that discusses this matter (preferably one where counterarguments can also be voiced and considered).

Sorry I didn't mean that it takes 4 times longer to mine. I mean when a block propagates through the network, every node needs to download, verify and then save it. The verification part is what takes longer (and also I suppose downloading and writing the block to disk would take longer too).

Only for those transactions with have multiple inputs or outputs. So in the real world the validation time for a doubling in blocksize is going to be somewhere between 2 - 4 times longer. The more fragmented the UTXO set, the more it will tend towards the upper bound. And since even using big UTXO's to spend non UTXO amounts requires 1 input and 2 outputs, it is likely that it will be far higher than the lower bound.
The question is how much modern CPU's can cope with it, versus the miners risking of getting a block orphaned due to the validation time delay in releasing a block. So far miners have gone from 0.25MB, to 0.5MB, to 0.75MB to 1MB and coped. Now they can't go to 1.25MB because of an original anti-spam limit intention.

After reading above comment, this is about CPU validation time of transactions that are included in a block, and has nothing to do with hashing power.

Forgive me for a rather cynical criticism of your big-block position.

By keeping blocksize small, we limit the blockchain to a high value settlement layer. Small payments can be made through the Lightning Network.
By keeping blocksize small, the fees for moving transactions on the blockchain escalates. This wipes out users of small UTXO's. Only large value BTC holders will be able to open and close a Lightning Network channel.
By keeping blocksize small, we have wiped out the savings of small users. These users are now completely excluded from opening and closing lightning network channels.
To enable small users to use the Lightning Network, we will have to introduce a BTC derivative token which is backed by a big BTC holders reserves.

Yes, that's a good way of re-stating what I mean when I say "Blocksize increases do not change the scale".



No.

Do not attempt to police my language. There is nothing wrong with describing foolish ideas as foolish, irrespective of the connotations the descriptions carry.

Gavin's original 2015 plan was foolish, but only because he decided to execute the steps in the wrong (i.e. reverse) order. His advocacy of attacking Bitcoin Core's blockchain was both foolish and reckless, and I absolutely reserve the right to denigrate that behaviour in any way I see fit.

How dare you solicit opinions, only to dismiss well-founded and demonstrated criticism as unimportant. Foolishness is foolish, recklessness is reckless. And really, Andresen was also suggesting to use overwhelming hashing power, in other words brute force, to destroy the Bitcoin project and replace it entirely with a different design of the Bitcoin software that he others favour, when there is nothing wrong with hard-forking amicably and non-destructively.

Calling that retarded is charitable, it's actually vindictive. Would you prefer that I said Gavin Andresen has behaved nastily, vindictively and duplicitiously (it's all dressed up as "I'm only trying to help") ?

Who are you to police the way I express these observable facts in respect of Gavin Andresen's recent despicable behaviour?

Thank you for the clarification - and I appreciate the manner with which you stated it.


That was absolutely not my intention and I apologise if it came over that way. What I was attempting - and have clearly failed - to accomplish was to keep the tone of the discussion as per my OP subject. Had this conversation happened between us in person, had you mentioned Gavin 'going full retard' with a few others in the room listening, participating, I may - seeing what's to be seen in your face and demeanour when talking, hearing the tone of your voice etc. - have responded with different words or in a manner that I doubt very much would have resulted in a verbal outburst such that you just wrote.

Whatever you think, I don't think speaking in this manner of someone nor speaking in the way in which you've now responded is helpful. I am not a moderator. I have no control over anything anyone may wish to say. I certainly would never wish to imply for a fraction of a second that I don't absolutely respect yours and everybody's rights to express whatever they wish.

I did not say it was unimportant. I was merely attempting to keep the tone of the conversation to that which I find most constructive.

and I will defend your right to say whatever you want in whichever way you want wherever you want (within reason). I will also defend my right to request, at least in this thread that we keep things civil and, even if by implication that we drop the ad homs. I won't either apologise for responding to something I find to be unhelpful accordingly - even if I'm wrong and Gavin actually is...... (not that I agree with you).

And I'm trying to draw attention to the fundamental and important distinction between saying something is foolish and calling someone a fool - or worse.

I'm not so interested in what's right or wrong at this stage in this context but of what's helpful in having any hope in having this conversation move towards a resolution rather than the community and the demise of the first mover.

I can follow that argument, and may agree that, all things considered, he may have been advocating for a sequence that would make more sense otherwise.

However, neither you nor I are privy to all the considerations, circumstances, understanding, even over-riding life paradigm, that Gavin did at the time. I'm happy with 'I disagree' or 'having done as much research and study as I can to understand things to the extent I do, I can see no circumstance in which what Gavin advocated makes sense' - I've made a similar statement in this thread myself about something else.

I think going as far as to say 'I'm right' is unhelpful.
Taking it to 'He's wrong' is less helpful.
Taking it to 'he must be stupid, corrupt, etc.' is less helpful.
Taking it to 'he's an absolute *Y(^&^&&**&' is less helpful.
(and not that you said this but just to complete this list)...
Taking it 'this person still has respect for him therefore he / she must also be wrong, stupid, corrupt, an absolute *Y(^&^&&**&' is less helpful still - and it is this last one that appears to be dominating most of the Reddit Bitcoin-related subreddits.

I was hoping for better than that if only in this particular thread. And to be fair, to a significant a large extent I am being rewarded - from yourself included.

Thank you, I can more-or-less follow that and it makes sense to me. I'm hoping, though I can't entirely trust myself on this, that that is more because I follow the reasoning in your logic than that I'm agreeing because we're in agreement of the harmfulness of the current block-size limit!

I'm not seeing this as cynical at all. I'm pleased you've expressed this point as succinctly as you have. It is my position too and I'm failing at present to see flaws in this reasoning.

At the risk of being cynical myself, if we follow this through, the wiping out of the savings of small users reduces the usable currency so in a kind-of parallel to the argument small-blockers make about big miners using orphaning to push out small miners, what we have here going on right now is big hodlers gradually seeing the usable coin further reduce from 21 million (minus yet-to-be-mined, minus losses). In practical terms, losses through wiped-out savings are have the same impact on value (by reducing available coin) as losses through private-key loss. So it is in the interest of substantial hodlers that the advocates of high on-chain transaction fees continue to get their way - providing of course, that restricting the use cases to three as per Core-plan (please see OP) doesn't cause the collapse of Bitcoin altogether.

Unfortunately, I get the impression there's a not insubstantial number of hodlers of reasonable sums in the 'f*** you, I'm all right Jack' subset of ancaps / libertarians / gold-bugs. This could - and may already - be influencing the failure for this to have moved forward for so long.

I'd take such polls with a little pinch of salt:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1852232.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1726836.0

So around 30% own more than 21 BTC, and 46% own less than 1 BTC. Don't forget to add a bit of pepper too!

and yet segwit is the same argument at best. and even worse realistically

4mb weight but only AT BEST 2x tx capacity growth.
and thats at best because it only works if people actually move funds to segwit keypairs

thus segwit is not even a proper scaling thing, even if you ignore that its a one time gesture because you cant re-segwit a segwit

---

secondly the real data behind sgwits new 'limits'
is
AT BEST 2.1mb for 2.1x capacity
so ignoring the existance of limits. segwit
1mb full data: 1x capacity
is the same as
2.1mb full data:2.1 capacity.

but we all know segwit is not about capacity and wont even get to the 2.1mb:2.1capacity 'hope' because that involves everyone using segwit keys
(the entire 46 million UTXO being on segwit keys and no one using native keys)

its also reliant on no one spamming the block. which carlton himself has revealed new spam attack vectors. and segwit has not prevented old spam attack vectors. segwit has just offered people a new keypair to voluntarily disarm itself from performing particular attacks, which malicious users will not voluntarily disarm themselves from.

the real funny part is the whole quadratics tx validations speed debate is about

a tx with ~4000 sigops. take 10 seconds
a tx with >20000 sigops takes 11 minutes.
https://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=522

yet.

core v0.12 maxTXsigops limit=4000ops
core v0.14 maxTXsigops limit=16000ops

meaning native key malicious users can cause tx validation speeds to be more annoying, not less
also

core v0.12 maxBLOCKsigops limit=20000ops
core v0.14 maxBLOCKsigops limit=80000ops

meaning native key malicious users can cause tx validation speeds to be more annoying, AND they can fill a block with just 5 bloated txsigops of the limits. preventing any other tx getting in.

what should have been done is
core v0.14 maxTXsigops limit=2000ops
core v0.14 maxBLOCKsigops limit=80000ops

thus both bring the tx validating speed down to a few seconds at most AND making it require 40tx malicious tx's to fill a block.

my personal opinion is why does anyone need/deserve 20% of a block for 1tx. its mindboggling

Miners are not stupid they are doing it deliberately because they are scared that SegWit+LN will cause them to lose profits.
Current status quo is great for all miners, high fees and total impasse of the situation will cause them to collect the fees for long time.
Eventually they move on, but not before earning shit ton of BTC from fees. They love fees.

Also what BW Pool is thinking signalling 8MB blocks?

There is a wedge that is being driven into the heart of bitcoin.  Anyone that tries to empathize with either side of that wedge is accused of supporting that side and of being against the opposite.  I've been accused of being a "big blocker", because I empathize with those that see merit in Unlimited.  I've been accused of being a Blockstream shill, because I empathize with those that see merit in Core.

The reality is that Bitcoin is a consensus system.  If the vast majority are happy with a particular implementation, then that implementation IS bitcoin and WILL succeed.  If that majority shrinks too much, it's not the fault of the people that are unhappy with the changes, and its not the fault of the people that want the changes.  The system starts to fail simply because people are too focused on "us vs. them" mentality, accusations, insults, fear, uncertainty, doubt, and belittling.  The system starts to fail because not enough people are focused on education, and discussion.

If Unlimited or SegWit fails, it isn't because it is an inferior solution, it's because the loudest supporters did everything they could to alienate those that didn't deify and blindly follow their side. You can't win consensus by telling your opponents off.

If Unlimited or SegWit succeeds, it isn't because it's a superior solution, it's because enough supporters finally realized that they needed to drown out the trolls and attack dogs on their own side with enough cooperation, empathy, and education to win over hearts and minds.

This isn't a technical problem, and it isn't a war.  This isn't going to be solved with a newer better technical solution, and it isn't going to be won by beating opponents into submission. It's going to be solved with consensus forming, or it's going to rip the bitcoin concept apart at the seams.

No you will not.

The only way to limit me to your personal definition of "reasonable" free speech is to sew my mouth shut with a needle and thread.

Do not even suggest that free speech requires some arbitrator to decide on what is "reasonable" or "responsible" to define limits to that which is by definition unlimited. You are not responsible for my speech, you are responsible for your own. You will do very well to respect those boundaries, lest you manoeuvre yourself towards defining limits to your concept of "free" speech again

Non-contentious speech has never required protecting. Controversial speech is the only form of speech that needs the principle of free speech for it's protection. Your hypocritical and contradictory attack against the principles of free-speech, which you have cleverly disguised as a defence of free-speech, deserve just as fierce a denigration as Gavin Andresen's conceited attacks on Bitcoin's principles.


Don't do it again




Who is making ad hominem statements? Provide evidence

It's very simple, Gavin Andresen has made several public statements of his views on changing Bitcoin's transaction capacity that were objectively foolish.


That was all I said, and strike me with your "reasonable" free-speech stick if you dislike the way I expressed that fact.

Ad hominem arguments are not arguments at all, there is no component of ad homs that serves as justification for the label used as an ad hominem, it is a non argument that attacks an individual's character, and not the substance of what they are communicating.


I have provided full and reasoned arguments for why Gavin Andresen's arguments are foolish. I did not call the man a fool, he most certainly is not a fool.




If you're not interested in what's right or wrong, and only want a discussion where an agreement is reached, then you inherently misunderstand the debate.


This is not, and never has been, an argument about increasing capacity at a better scale, or about "which blocksize". If you do not understand that at this stage, you are at a disadvantage to make meaningful commentary in your own thread.




What mitigating circumstances from Gavin Andresen's life, exterior to the debate, can excuse him from making foolish or dangerous public statements?

Is it not your entire position that personal characteristics are not important, and that the substance of what that person says is all that's pertinent? Except, apparently, when it's convenient for you to argue the antithesis of your ostensible principles



What is the purpose of this text?

You are implying you do not speak in respect of a specific person or any specific dialogue in this thread, and yet you feel the need to spend 8 lines talking about no-one in respect of something that didn't happen? All except you are saying this specifically in reply to me? ???


You are the only person perpetrating ad hominem attacks (and deviously constructed as such), strawman arguments and attacks against free speech in a thread which you created yourself with the expressed (and self-contradicted) purpose to establish a high quality of debate.


There's a word for someone who behaves that way. I don't need to say it, I'm sure people who understand the form of bad faith you are exhibiting have thought of this word themselves long before this point.

Bingo - also remember that technical experts often have diminished social skills because they don't interact face to face. They engage in childish one-upmanship and penis-size wars from behind a keyboard. They live in a world where tech is God, and increasingly ignore the practical uses of bitcoin.  At this point the technical experts at Core have pretty much disappeared even from discussions on the forum. They demonstrate no leadership at all. Calls for Lightning are becoming increasingly hollow. Proposals being floated like UASF (User activated soft fork) and changing the POW (!) show their increasing desperation, and simply increase the velocity of Core's loss of credibility (even though Core is not overtly supporting those proposals, they're also not dismissing them out of hand as they should). Of course Core lives in constant fear that Unlimited will ursurp their role as custodians of bitcoin code - this would be the ultimate blow to their egos. Core likely won't ever give up on Segwit and roll back the code, because Blockstream's $75 million investment depends on it and the subsequent implementation of Lightning. They will go to the grave together.

Remember that there are many possible paths that the majority can choose - two years from now "bitcoin development" may be only the stuff of internet archives. Personally I'm OK with core version 0.12 (no Segwit, 1MB blocks) if that's the only thing we can agree on. Whoever was flooding the mempool last month has stopped (I have my theories), and transactions are flowing fine now. Bitcoin adoption is stagnating, which is sad, but it doesn't mean the end of the technology.


Peer-to-peer trustless systems have inherent limitations: each node only has the ability to process X transactions per second using Y network capacity and Z storage space. In this case, the bitcoin network's capacity has been artifically limited by 1MB blocksize before other technical limits were hit. Some argue that XYZ limits wouldn't have been hit due to a blocksize increase, and that clinging to the blocksize limit is an attempt to sell 2nd layer solutions.  Regardless of the motivation, the blocksize limit has unquestionably reduced the speed, utility, and credibility of the bitcoin network, all while increasing the cost, and Core has been completely ignoring this trend for years!

PS I don't recommend engaging with Carlton if you're looking for productive dialogue... just saying

It seems everyone else has lost interest in this thread otherwise I'd be tempted to simply ignore this response. But seeing as there's no discussion to derail by pursuing it...

I have to say I'm beginning to suspect you're having me on here. You're not seriously as outraged as you make out are you - because I criticised your reference to Gavin Anderson, saying that I wouldn't respond to it - or some such?


Oh yes I will (sorry, I can't think of anything more appropriate than a pantomime response to that one)!

Melodrama aside, you are correct with respect to my only being responsible for my own speech. I have no interest whatsoever in limiting your speech to whatever 'my personal definition of reasonable'. The 'within reason' qualifier was simply an acknowledgement to what I tend to agree are sensible limits to free speech as exemplified by Wendell Holmes Jr's 'shouting fire in a crowded theatre'. I was not referring to what you say in this thread or on this or any forum. I don't know of any clearer way I could say that I accept and would not wish to impinge or restrict in any way your freedom of speech.

Regarding this thread, I had merely expressed a preference for the tone here and after your Gavin reference, I had implied that in my opinion you had not respected that and that I would not respond to itf. You jumped on your high horse. I accepted that and said you're welcome to say what you want. I was just politely asking - from the top - that opinions here be expressed in a much narrower format than free speech allows. I requested that, you chose otherwise. So be it. I'm not offended. I haven't a clue what you're so hot under the collar about!


Yes, absolutely. Here at least we are both on the same page, if only you could see that!

Oh my, and don't you love it when you believe that's happened because you can feel self-righteous in going off the handle and laying into those who offend you so!
Look Carlton, Please go back and read it again. If you take away your apparent misinterpretation of my 'within reason' and accept I was talking about principle (seeing as that was the direction you'd gone in), not about whatever you may choose to say in the thread I'd started (the moderators would jump in and intervene LOOOOONG before I'd say anything here 'should not be said'. The rest was just an expression of a preference. And if you understand free speech as well as you believe you do, you'll realise I do have a right to express a preference.

Get a grip! Who do you think you are, my mother?!!

Are you seriously trying to claim here that saying that someone has 'gone full retard' is not an attack on a person but on the substance of his argument?

At this point, I think we've gone past any hope of you and I deriving any benefit from taking this further. I haven't yet, but seeing as you went to the trouble of writing the rest, I will at least respect that and read it and give it consideration - but I won't respond because I believe by now it's a waste both of your time and mine.

I'll wish you the best.

The original and best canard that is always invoked by those that wish to suppress the "free" in  "free speech"


1. Theatres are private property. Free speech does not apply on private property, the proprietor may rightfully eject anyone they deem to

I could stop there, because that's the literal No.1 killer blow to this statist idiocy, but I love deconstructing this nonsense non-argument


The patrons of any theatre have common sense on their side if someone were to falsely shout "fire"

2. Theater's are dark, on account of their evening schedule. Even with the lights up they are difficult to keep well lit, as theatres are typically rather spacious. Fires are highly visible in dark places, because of how bright they are in contrast to the darkness.

3. The dulling of one sense (i.e absence of light in the theater) tends to enhance the perception of other senses. Other patrons may well smell the smoke before a fire becomes visible enough to see.


There are no limits to free speech. The "shouting fire in a crowded space argument" argument doesn't cut it. If danger to others were justification for limiting free-speech, censoring the blocksize debate would have been accepted a long, long time ago (although false accusations of censoring that debate are still used as anti-Bitcointalk propaganda even today)

Ah, thanks for this - I thought I was going mad for a moment. Glad it's not just me! I have to say I haven't hung out round these parts for a couple of years (since the politically-motivated 'moderation' got out of hand) so I don't really know who is who. Funnily enough, I only posted this here because after having written it and posted it on r/bitcoin it lasted about three likes and ten minutes before being removed so I thought I'd try here. No point in posting it in /rbc because I'd just get choruses of 'yeah, they're all corrupt and blah blah'. Not saying they're not right, but not helpful to me in trying to really be as open as I can to arguments from any side.

I hear you - and I think stating some of the things in this way may not be conducive to bringing the debate back to economic and technical considerations. There may be an element of the lack of social skills with some technical experts, but I don't think to generalise about Core that way is likely to get the people you might most need to hear your arguments to listen.

Only last night was I wondering whether Core would consider rolling back segwit if it doesn't get accepted within the year. But my fear is there is so much pride at stake - too many egos to be bruised by stepping back and acknowledging the other side might have had a point that the extremes on both sides may prefer to see the ship go down than to climb down. On Blockstream (at least you didn't go the whole Axa / Bildaberg), whilst there is a possibility there may be influence, first, I'm not convinced it's substantial, second, there's no need to go there to make constructive arguments against the block-size limit and third, again, it really doesn't help! For any Core contributors who have been convinced by the technical merits of the path they've taken, these kinds of accusations just sound ludicrous and those making them will be dismissed and any valid points they have will be lost. It's the same as the r/Bitcoin Core fanbois assuming and accusing anyone who is not in full agreement with them of being paid by Ver. Sometimes it seems like the whole community (if I may borrow Carlton's phrase) has gone 'full retard'! 'It's too late for compromise' is just a way of justifying a refusal to listen and to engage without sounding like a five-year-old. But I'm beginning to think if we picture stubborn five-year-olds refusing point blank to listen to anyone and sticking to what they want irrespective of anyone and everything, that's closer to what's going on here than most would like to acknowledge.

Thank you for saying this. It needs to be heard more often from 'our' side of the debate. What the first 'natural' bottlenecks would have been and when they might have begun to have an impact is a matter of educated (or not-so-educated) guesswork. But there is no doubt it would - and will if we get past the present impasse.

One of the most frustrating aspects to me are the economic illiterate arguments that this forced 'fee market' is a positive thing. It is economic rent and from Adam Smith, those who get it know that it is crippling to an economy - as it is increasingly crippling to the economy as we feel its impact.

I don't think that's fair. Many have been engaged in the debate for a long time. But here's how I see it: when a small number refused to consider they may not be seeing the whole picture, that they may be mistaken in their view, when that stubbornness resulted in the loss to the project of some sharp minds such that they could steer the rest of the contributors to do things their way, there was a high likelihood we'd get to the split community we have today. Add to that the campaign to control the narrative and stifle discontent and I'd say it was almost inevitable we'd reach here.

That may well be so. Except in this instance, as you can not but understand by now, I wasn't was I? Whether the original misunderstanding was genuine or not, by now you're just being obtuse, riding that horse high, and proclaiming to the world how you know better than everybody else what free speech means.

OK, so we've discovered I have a different theoretical opinion than you on the limitations (or lack thereof) of free speech. But given your insistence that it does not apply in a theatre because it is private, how on earth does can you genuinely believe it has any bearing on my choice to ignore - and to declare that I ignore - something you wrote that - as I saw it - was not in line with the spirit of what I was intending by instigating this particular thread?

I think I'll hand you the award of thread de-railer and leave it at that.

You apparently are limiting "2nd layers" to lightning-network-like "payment channels" proposals. LN would be available in the whole world, also in Sudan, because it's not limited to a geographic region. But you are right that for a person with a unstable Internet connection LN comes with certain risks (the counterparty could try to scam you reverting to an older channel state while you're not connected).

But there are other ideas like sidechains/drivechains and extension blocks that don't have this problem. They preserve the "blockchain transaction paradigm" in the sense that there is no third party involved. Drivechains are "pegged altcoins" that are meant to be secured by the same miners than the main chain via merged mining; miners would also be the entity that decide if coins can be transferred back to the main chain (in my understanding, that's the hard problem of sidechains). As sidechains are independent blockchains, there can be a large number of them working in parallel.

I prefer these solutions for the scaling problem, and LN for small microtransactions like the coffee at Room77 (or in a Sudanese bar) ;)

We're well past the phase of "trying to get the right people to listen"...  We've been in the "looking for new competent leadership" phase for over a year.


I think you can rest assured that pride is less of a factor than $75 mil in Blockstream investment. Not to mention all of the money Blockstream plans to make off spinoff services and products... it's a fact that they MUST have Segwit adopted to move forward.  I don't think it's a conspiracy theory to assert that a business will try anything and everything to secure profits.

People who are brainwashed by the Core "teamspeak" are beyond hope - there's no point in trying to argue with them. They're a funny bunch - seemingly so idealistic about open source development and democracy, yet so utterly clueless to the people investing millions and their shifting alliances, and quietly pulling the levers of power. I just finished up a thread with a low-level Core dev who proclaimed vehemently that "nobody leads core". He seemed to believe that the roadmap was collectively drawn up and voted on, and he stated that Blockstream has no influence on Core development!

Isn't it a fallacy to assume that Ver is the only opposition to Core? I'm really not captivated by either team right now. I'll keep running a 0.12 node for the next ten years if I nothing better comes along...


Andreas Antonopolous did a great speech on scaling, drawing on 20 years of internet history. Basically he says that the Internet never scales because every time it increases capacity, people add new services that use it all up. Basically he says that you just keep trying to scale and failing - not everything works exactly right, and that's OK.

It's absolutely the worst thing in the bitcoin ecosystem right now. Rick Valkvinge called Core "the Soviet Politburo" https://falkvinge.net/2017/01/26/impressions-satoshi-roundtable-iii/ (https://falkvinge.net/2017/01/26/impressions-satoshi-roundtable-iii/) LOL. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”


You are aware that the lead developer of Core quit because he couldn't increase the blocksize (Andresen)? And that 2 prominent devs were run out/quit in disgust due to the hardline on blocksize (Garzik/Hearn)? This all happened several YEARS ago! The fact that we're all still here bitching about this is mind-boggling!

Thank you for your thoughts.
I wasn't intending to limit my considerations in that manner though that may be simply because I'm not familiar enough with the other proposals currently under consideration / development.
A potential vulnerability of LN for theft / fraud was not what I had in mind, rather the risk for anyone getting involved with bitcoins with small amounts being at risk of never being able to move them because of fees. If the likelihood is in creasing that the failure of the community to come to a consensus will lead to no change - or a change that does not allow fees to return to something that allowed for a multitude of use cases - then I need to be thinking differently about the use case I had in mind that brought me to Bitcoin in the first place.

Because if fees are on their way up by another order of magnitude or two then we should be warning poorer people with fiat-abusing governments to hold out until 2nd tier technologies are mature and available - and to live with the hyperinflation in the meantime. Because buying on-chain bitcoins in small amounts carries a significant risk they'll never be able to spend them - or that they'll lose such a high proportion in fees to move it off-chain that they would have been better off sticking with the abused fiat!

These sound promising in that respect. And as for the 'problem' of a dependency on miners to transfer back, as Andreas Antonopolous says, it's not a choice of having everything on the chain or not, it's whether we want the 2nd tier to be private databases such as Coinbase's or something something that is decentralised. And I'd much rather trust a miner (who has an enormous amount at stake in the success of the Bitcoin space) than 'banks'.

Then let's hope for - and work towards - a day where you and I can meet up in a coffee bar in Khartoum, paying for it with a bitcoin-pegged whatever (or with bitcoin itself - who knows)! I said to myself as we took off from there (in 1996) that I would be back one day when they have governance that does not tear the country apart and that its people are free to build lives for themselves and for their families. Currency is just one piece of that jigsaw. The country has since split (North and South) so the killings are not as bad as they were but most of us have heard of the Darfour camps and have an image of depravity even if many aren't aware of where it is and the causes of the problems.

However, I live in hope and part of my motivation in engaging in conversation that often seems to be a total waste of everybody's time is the hope that between us, we can make something happen that has Bitcoin - or something, anything - that can at least solve the currency abuse aspect and see what part that may have in moving towards resolving the other stuff.

If LN requires such a stable internet connection that people require redundant connections, uninterruptible power supplies, backup generators etc, then it is clear that opening and closing an LN channel is not intended for the average user. They won't be able to move their small amounts of BTC on-chain anyway. It leads me back to my thoughts that an LN becomes a banking network, with big BTC holders operating as bankers with reserves, and users transaction in BTC derivative tokens backed by those reserves.

Thank you for your thoughts.


I hear what you're saying about the potentially corrosive influence of money in conflict-of-interest scenarios - and I am prepared to accept that, to a certain extent, that's what this is. And if it is the case, then it needs for some people to be ensuring this aspect isn't brushed under the carpet.

However, what is as far as I can see not helping at all is that the fact that it may be so is used to dismiss otherwise reasonable-sounding arguments.  Exactly the same happens with the other side dismissing arguments because of the assumption those making them are funded by Ver / Jihan.

The way I'm experiencing soooooo many exchanges is that they typically go like this:

commenter 1: 'I believe this particular aspect of your pro-segwit / anti-segwit argument is weak because...'
commenter 2: 'No, I disagree because [technical-sounding] reason'
commenter 1: 'I am familiar with that argument but disagree because...'
commenter 2: 'Yeah, but you're only saying that because you're corrupted by Blockstream / Ver.'
commenter 1: takes the bait, gets annoyed
commenter 2: ups the insults, proclaims massive generalisations about 'the other side'
End of discussion, nothing achieved!

This, or variations upon it (for segwit, read big blocks, BU, Core, EC etc. etc.) happen hundreds of times a day and it achieves nothing other than to further polarise and deepen the schism in the community.

Regarding the history, how this all came about. I was deliberately vague and circumspect in my response here for obvious reasons. Funnily enough, just after that, I had an interesting read that rings true to me - even if it overemphasises some aspects and ignores others. http://bitsonline.com/war-message-board-bitcoin-unlimited/

This is where I disagree. If we dismiss a whole group as 'beyond hope' rather than engaging where we can on aspects with which we agree and disagree - and to make a reasonable attempt to assume that they do have the best interests of Bitcoin in mind (even if it's not true) - we may have some hope of begining to reverse the polarisation. If reasonable discourse with a massive bunch of people who have a significant stake in the project is 'beyond hope' then I fear the whole project may be 'beyond hope'!

The size of the "teamspeak" group diminishes every day. First off, their team is failing and has no leadership. What leadership they do have is engaged in a pathetic propaganda war. Just yesterday Core (specifically, GMaxwell) launched another FUD campaign about "ZOMG Bitmain covert ASICboost exploit violates patent and broken by Segwit" - total crap.

Have you noticed my username? I was a core fanboi too. I thought Gavin was a douche for forking Classic. About a year ago I started doing my own research and stopped consuming the spoon-fed core party line. That's part of the reason I post in these threads.

I don't believe we need to reverse polarisation. Every day that passes, more people start to wake up and see the elephant in the room. And remember, Unlimited likely won't be adopted and there won't be a hard fork. We just need to focus on sane upgrades to bitcoin that MAKE IT WORK AGAIN, without any complicated technical debt-laden soft forks.

Bigger blocks isn't a scaling paradigm, at all.


Where is the technical discussion in this thread that is ostensibly concerned with a technical issue?


I've regularly made this point, backed with actual reasoning, and not the political mud-slinging you are all practicing in this thread.




And I've yet to experience a single refutation of the point: you cannot claim that bigger blocks are a scaling solution, when it's easily demonstrable that only capacity increases can be achieved, at precisely the same scale, irrespective of how much blockspace is added.

The wilful refusal to refute that arguments by any big-blocks advocate speaks volumes: it cannot be refuted.

I can empathise with a lot of this. However, for clarification, when you say bitcoin won't hard fork, do you mean it either will not change, or any change will be a planned consensus change (e.g. a new active hard fork where the old fork is left dead and checkpointed to prevent chain reorg)?
So far lack of consensus as protected bitcoin as is, despite plenty of Mutually Assured Destruction threats rhetoric.

And let's not forget the fantasy land rhetoric you're all espousing also (aside from d5000).


Where is your evidence that a majority of Bitcoin uses have been crying out for bigger-blocks for years and years, as you continue to state? (both explicitly and by implication)


No different to the other big-blocks loud mouths, you're all seeming to present yoursleves talking about it on this forum (and rBTC, lol) as that evidence.



Explain this: why, when 2MB increases were proposed by 2 external dev teams in 2 separate hard fork both rejected? Why has Bitcoin Unlimited's blocksize based consensus voting "solution" fork-coup now been rejected the same way? Why is the balance of big-blockers so disproportionately high on forums in comparison to the decision taken by the aggregation of actual players in the Bitcoin economy?





Both this point (bigger blocks fork-coups rejected three times by BTC community), and the fact that bigger blocks is not a scaling paradigm are highly pertinent answers to the question this thread poses. Will you tackle them, where other big-blockers could not?

Okay C Banks, perhaps we should define what a scale is.


So scaling by increasing block size that allow for an increase is transaction capacity at the same measurement of transaction space efficiency is going up the same scale, using the same scale of measurement.

Efficiency improvements to allow more transactions per block is changing the way a scale is measured.

Whilst there are ways to improve space transaction efficiency (e.g. schnorr signatures), other desirables such as privacy may be a hindrance to transaction space efficiency too.

Okay then, let's put aside that the word "scaling" has 3 meanings in English, and you've decided to choose the 1 single definition that suits the big blocks argument.


Using your preferred definition, scaling is a terrible idea, period. It increases the capacity, while adding the same amount of resources to the burden the Bitcoin network must bear. 1MB in increased "scaling", as you are erroneously using the word, adds 300,000 transactions per day, however many times you add an extra 1MB to the blocksize. The ratio of increase is identical, al the way up the "scale", as you are using the word. A linear, x=y relationship.


Increasing the efficiency of how the transactions are stored is far preferable. Blockspace resources are used less within the same blockspace, as each transaction is smaller, taking up less blockspace, and allowing for more transacitons within the same amount of blockspace.

None of the problems associated with blocksize increases can happen that way, and all of the benefits (which, of course, is actually just 1 benefit: more transaction capacity). And further, blockspace efficiency increases come with even more benefits: smaller transactions can propagate across the network quicker, attack vectors can be disarmed, additional cryptographic features can be added with new signature types, changes can be made to improve the time it takes for initial download of the blockchain. The full list of possible additional benefits from changing the transaction format is too long to mention (and I doubt I could think of them all from the top of my head right now anyway).



Now, I asked for technical arguments, not semantic arguments. You can play with the definitions of words to suit your non-arguments all you like, but can you actually tackle the actual argument I am positing using technical analysis? You failed to do so. By all means, I am interested in real arguments, bring them.

I'm still waiting.

Simple block size capacity increase is simpler now, and we know what happens to the system when the demand exceeds supply. and it is not appealing to the user.

I'd agree that more compact transactions are a better solution. This however is more difficult to implement because of the protocol in use. It's obviously easier to implement some features on a new coin than to try and retrofit it to an existing one.

I did ask in another thread (perhaps you missed it) how this could be implemented. Would it require a hard fork or a soft fork?

No proof for this.

Demand has been exceeding supply due to a confluence of factors not determined by the demand coming from genuine economic activity, everyone is more than familiar with the provenance of spam attacks on the blockchain by now.



Further, your suggestion is based on a fallacious premise from the outset.

Demand must outstrip supply in order that the economic incentives for miners to compete to include transactions in their blocks is established. Users won't actively compete for fees when blocks are not full, and miners in turn will not compete for fees if the difference in profit margin between ignoring tx fees and including them is too small.

You're entirely wrong, therefore. Blocks must be full, so that the healthy incentives of both users and miners to compete in a real transaction market place are maintained, otherwise miners are in too powerful a position to decide whether to include transactions and which transactions to include. Profit motive should determine which transactions are included, not arbitrary whimsy.



Most are hard forks. No different to blocksize increases, "simple" blocksize increases (as you put it) require hard forks too (but maybe some of the transaction efficiency improvements could be programmed as soft forks, as I said, there are many possible ways to improve transaction space efficiency, or on-chain scaling as it should really be called).


So, I'm actually satisfying the title of the thread. Where is the OP, who deigned to be interested in the discussion that they proposed, and that I am tackling?

Is it for the system to designate what spam is? High fee paying spam which is disruptive is expensive to maintain. Low fee paying spam can be dealt with by dynamically by raising the minimum fee required to allow a transaction on the network when the transaction pool grows.

No blocks don't need to be full to create a fee market. A miner has to risk the block creation time of including a transaction against the risk of that block being orphaned due to a near simultaneous block generation event. Miners can create dynamically sized blocks based on the size of the transaction pool, and artificially delaying lower fee paying transactions compared to its broadcasting time depending on demand levels.

Full blocks fuck up the system beyond belief creating a never ending fee race between users. Zero confirmation economic risk is changed from the disadvantaged double spend attack to one of a never confirming transaction which can easily be double spent due to forgetful transaction pools and selective node transaction relay.

Block limit was not put in the white paper because it fucks the system up causing people to come up with solutions for problems they have created. See above.

Well, for now, situation has relaxed a bit (http://bitcoinfees.21.co/) (as of now, you could get confirmed a transaction fast with as low as 20 satoshi/byte, for a standard transaction that would be less than 0.0001 BTC). If people would start paying lower fees for non-urgent transactions then I think we could be again at November/December 2016 fee levels for a while while there are no spam attacks.

But until Segwit is not activated, perhaps an altcoin like LTC or ETH is not a bad option to start to save low amounts. I think both are solid blockchains and will be there for a while. On the downside, they are even more volatile than BTC, so I would only recommend them for short-term storing of value (e.g. remittances) and not as a vehicle for long-term saving.


No, it's not that extreme, but LN requires the client checking the state of a channel every couple of days or so to avoid the counterparty to revert to a previous state (to be able to "punish" a scammer). In the scenario the OP would like to see more use of BTC (poor people in economically unstable countries) I can imagine LN to be a risky option because people could be weeks or months without a good Internet connection. For these use cases, I think a method without timelocks (CSV/CLTV) would be preferrable.

Sorry that was Pure Speculation on my part - I don't think Unlimited will get sufficient hash power to hard fork, and I don't expect Core to roll back Segwit and all the other stuff they've built on top of it. If there is a hard fork to 2 or 4MB blocks, it'll be in more than a year.  If the community gets behind Classic, I suppose it could be raised from the dead. Just my thoughts.