so core devs control all the nodes and miners now  Core devs control the code that ~85% of the network nodes elect to run. This is presently Bitcoin's greatest point of centralization. Bitcoin is a decentralized protocol. What you're saying is 100% irrelevant to that. I'm not opposed to any number of people or groups forking the code -- hell, that's what most altcoins are. But the idea of "centralization" is being used as a red herring here. Whether or not the development process is centralized has absolutely no bearing on whether the protocol is centralized -- that is what's important. +1 Anyone is free to submit a pull request to core, that's all that matters. |
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so core devs control all the nodes and miners now Core devs control the code that ~85% of the network nodes elect to run. This is presently Bitcoin's greatest point of centralization.  How many time do you need it pointed out that this little chart is bullshit. No one's stopping anyone from creating other implementations. In fact, there are multiple existing implementations and client versions. The problem is limited resources. I don't see any hordes of developers stepping forward to support these implementation? Be careful what you wish for though... the guys at Ethereum can probably tell you all about the "joys" of different implementations of critical consensus code. |
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Hey BJA, when did you become such a pessimist? I use to enjoy reading your posts.
Maybe when he realized he has no clue about even the most basic aspects of bitcoin  |
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If nothing else, lowering the consensus threshold to 75% in his fork caused Gavin's credibility to plummet in my eyes. I don't like to use polemic words like "coup" but it isn't entirely inappropriate. The intent, of course, was to push a controversial hard fork with as little difficulty as possible in the face of considerable opposition.
It might be hard to get much more than 75% given the fact that the core devs all work for blockstream and couldn't come to a consensus for scaling bitcoin on chain, even after several years of discussion. so core devs control all the nodes and miners now |
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Proof is in the pudding at this point. XT coup was not enough for you? |
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Well yeah. Blockchains are great. 7 TPS not so much. Maybe we can get our hands on some space from these blockchains? Do you know what they're going for? |
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The current price of bitcoin is based largely on expectations of future growth. Choke off that growth and I suspect a large portion of its current valuation will evaporate.
Doesn't that imply that the priority is maintaining bitcoin as a payment system? Or rather, that the only way towards "future growth" is with low fees/fast confirms? It seems that the digital gold crowd doesn't necessarily see things that way. I, for one, don't see the payment protocol as the primary value; it is wholly secondary to that of decentralized store of value. I can't imagine how this would positively affect price. primary value or not, price WILL be affected. at this point if devs don't fix the TPS limit ( bumping the block size limit slightly is a fine solution for now), i'm stepping out, not because it would imply bitcoin will never be a payment system, but because I will no longer trust the dev team to make smart decisions, or make any hard decisions at all for that matter, and would deem bitcoin's development process borken. but i am confident they will up the TPS limit in some form or another in due time. I guess I take the opposite approach. If the devs were to implement something so reckless as BIP101 (as an example), my confidence in bitcoin would be crushed and I would largely exit my investment position. At least, I would never transact on the XT chain -- outside of double spending  -- should a valid chain coexist with it. Many don't realize it, but the robust, secure system that we have now, the consensus on the protocol that exists now -- these are the priorities. When it comes to "the dev team mak[ing] smart decisions," I hope that whatever populist arguments and arbitrary timelines that segments of the community produce are tertiary to those concerns. Conceding to those largely arbitrary and tertiary concerns would indicate to me that the development process is broken. this is perfect example of ivory tower thinking. No, it's called a meritocracy. Of course it doesn't work like democracy hence why you are so butthurt because you'd like to be able to pretend that everyone has equal weight in these decisions. Matter of fact is they don't. its ivory tower thinking plain and simple. in reality the system would be no less robust & secure should the the limit be bumped to 2MB or even 8MB, MAYBE at 32MB your arguments would START to make SOME sense beyond ideological interest. Do you possess any technical credentials that can support this statement or should we just trust your gut? |
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The current price of bitcoin is based largely on expectations of future growth. Choke off that growth and I suspect a large portion of its current valuation will evaporate.
Doesn't that imply that the priority is maintaining bitcoin as a payment system? Or rather, that the only way towards "future growth" is with low fees/fast confirms? It seems that the digital gold crowd doesn't necessarily see things that way. I, for one, don't see the payment protocol as the primary value; it is wholly secondary to that of decentralized store of value. I can't imagine how this would positively affect price. primary value or not, price WILL be affected. at this point if devs don't fix the TPS limit ( bumping the block size limit slightly is a fine solution for now), i'm stepping out, not because it would imply bitcoin will never be a payment system, but because I will no longer trust the dev team to make smart decisions, or make any hard decisions at all for that matter, and would deem bitcoin's development process borken. but i am confident they will up the TPS limit in some form or another in due time. I guess I take the opposite approach. If the devs were to implement something so reckless as BIP101 (as an example), my confidence in bitcoin would be crushed and I would largely exit my investment position. At least, I would never transact on the XT chain -- outside of double spending -- should a valid chain coexist with it. Many don't realize it, but the robust, secure system that we have now, the consensus on the protocol that exists now -- these are the priorities. When it comes to "the dev team mak[ing] smart decisions," I hope that whatever populist arguments and arbitrary timelines that segments of the community produce are tertiary to those concerns. Conceding to those largely arbitrary and tertiary concerns would indicate to me that the development process is broken. this is perfect example of ivory tower thinking. No, it's called a meritocracy. Of course it doesn't work like democracy hence why you are so butthurt because you'd like to be able to pretend that everyone has equal weight in these decisions. Matter of fact is they don't. |
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Regarding the third point, for bitcoin to be an analog to gold we must keep in mind that gold is universally known and valued. If bitcoin prematurely choked off its own growth and abandoned efforts to mainstream it, I suspect it would slowly wither and die as competing altcoins rose to take its place as an everyday, mainstream cryptocurrency.
The current price of bitcoin is based largely on expectations of future growth. Choke off that growth and I suspect a large portion of its current valuation will evaporate.
It is also important that you reconsider this myth that capping Bitcoin's transactions is a cap on its userbase.
Bitcoin, as is, can provide a refuge for the wealth of ANY person on the planet. It can currently accommodate an infinite amount of capital.
The distinction is important because reality shows us that actual Bitcoin users are by and large not much interested in transacting or spending their coins. A great majority of the coins in existence have been and should continue to sit pretty in their cold wallets for years to come.
Why should we expect this to be different for future users? If you believe, much like I do, that the next trove of adopters is likely to be institutional investors with an interest in Bitcoin as a commodity/asset then why should we be worried so much with the system's transactions throughput? Do you expect the Winklevies to go on a shopping frenzy with their 100,000 coins? The analogy with gold is tired but it remains true: it should be expect that most bitcoins in circulation will be stored in digital vaults and shall remain untouched for a long period of time.
All of this is to say that you should stop focusing on "mainstream" users and what you assume their interest in Bitcoin will be. We should expect these to be last in line in your mass adoption scenario.
You make a valid point that a large number of users can still adopt bitcoin IF the transaction velocity of the money supply remains low enough. But this doesn't address my point that gold has a high value in part because everyone values it. To get to that point I think the average person needs to have some kind of tangible contact with bitcoin, obtaining and using it at least occasionally. And that would mean that mainstreaming of bitcoin as a payment processing system has to come first. The digital gold function (with the implication of high value) would derive from that success, IMHO. I don't see how that is true. In fact I'm quite certain a majority of the biggest bitcoin owners have never really bothered using it as transactional currency aside from for some niche use case or outright curiosity. Don't forget that we are not targetting the "average person". They are not the ones that will bring value to Bitcoin. The digital gold function, as a store of wealth, is the primary natural function of Bitcoin. It is the first step toward any considerable rise in its currency application. http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/the-two-ideologies-in-bitcoin/ |
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pps: peter r is one helluva shady character.
Can confirm; hellashady. You like to debate with devs that are well known and identified in the community if not directly criticize them yet there is nothing we know about you. If you really stand for your words, prove your identity, your references, your curriculum vitae and any information that are relevant for taking you seriously. Else you're just a shady "let's kill bitcoin core" anon that words spew (and fancy graphs) should be taken with much caution, if not completely ignored Which they are anyway, besides from that little fools army (probably half faked too - just look at the number of noobs accounts that instantly popped up here and there exclusively shilling for XT in august) you Gavin et al. have managed to brainwash with your mainstream socialist garbage. PS: Can't wait on how you'll elude my question tho: who da friggin fuck are you? You were against Gavin who was the main maintainer of the bitcoin github until recently! You perfectly fit in the category that you just stated. If you stand for your words prove your identity, your references, your curriculum vitae and any information that might be relevant for taking you seriously. Oh wait! You will not do that. Everything that you stated about Gavin while he was the single maintainer of the bitcoin github should be erased/ignored! Gavin has been compromised and brighter minds have long realized it. Sorry you were late to the party. |
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No one has real data to show that a higher block limit = more fees overall for miners, it is simply a misunderstanding of how transaction fees work in real life.
Here is real data that shows that over the last five years, higher block sizes = more fees overall for miners.  , this is what I mean by people fundamentally misunderstand the issue… What are you talking about? Block size has unquestionably changed (increased) over the last 5 years. The increase in the block size--such that it's now approaching the anti-spam limit--is what has precipitated this debate. Peter your chart is misguiding obviously as it shows an increase in transactions, not block size, all happening under the same limit. The increase in fees paid is a result of more transactions, not bigger blocks. There's nothing "misguiding" about that chart. It clearly demonstrates that more transactions equals more fees collected. That's why we should alter the blocksize limit to allow more transactions. If we don't raise the cap, the only way for revenues to continue to rise is to raise the fee itself. But if that gets prohibitively expensive for the average user, they'll simply transact on another chain and miners will get less revenue than they would with a larger blocksize limit. Forcing an unnatural fee market will not help scalability and will deter new users. A cautious, responsible and preferably (IMO) flexible increase that keeps centralisation to an absolute minimum is the best way forward. The only people still denying that are the ones who envision Bitcoin as an exclusive little club for the wealthy and frankly I can't wait to leave all those people behind. Mere capacity is not the only concern. And reducing the complexity of a fee market to being "unnatural" and "will not help scalability," or assuming that it is necessarily a deterrent to adoption -- I don't buy it. I'm not convinced by your sectarian perspective, either. Where did I say it was the " only" concern? I clearly said: "A cautious, responsible and preferably (IMO) flexible increase that keeps centralisation to an absolute minimum". I've taken on board the considerations of maintaining a sufficiently decentralised system. I recognise the importance of that, but there is still a balance to be struck against capacity. I've made -numerous- attempts to be reasonable and discuss solutions that would strike a balance that doesn't result in any reckless increases in blocksize, but it's like banging my head against a wall because certain people won't budge. They genuinely believe that capacity isn't an issue and the only concern is centralisation. I'm tired of it. So if I'm displaying a "sectarian perspective", that's where it's come from. Too many MP fanboys spouting too much MP guff. And to further clarify, I'm not ruling out fee markets altogether, I just don't think we should hit a solid wall and ramp the fees up too quickly as a result. Yet another reason why I've been pushing for a dynamic limit like BIP106 (but with alterations to the doubling/halving bit as that seems excessive). Something like this seems perfectly reasonable, or perhaps my (even more conservative) adjustment described here. How about we eliminate centralization risks forever and still serve your demand for capacity? https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg07937.html |
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The current price of bitcoin is based largely on expectations of future growth. Choke off that growth and I suspect a large portion of its current valuation will evaporate.
Doesn't that imply that the priority is maintaining bitcoin as a payment system? Or rather, that the only way towards "future growth" is with low fees/fast confirms? It seems that the digital gold crowd doesn't necessarily see things that way. I, for one, don't see the payment protocol as the primary value; it is wholly secondary to that of decentralized store of value. I can't imagine how this would positively affect price. primary value or not, price WILL be affected. at this point if devs don't fix the TPS limit ( bumping the block size limit slightly is a fine solution for now), i'm stepping out, not because it would imply bitcoin will never be a payment system, but because I will no longer trust the dev team to make smart decisions, or make any hard decisions at all for that matter, and would deem bitcoin's development process borken. but i am confident they will up the TPS limit in some form or another in due time. I'm certain it will have a considerable positive effect on the price as it demonstrates that no amount of corporate and political interests can change Bitcoin. The TPS limit has existed since you started using Bitcoin Adam, you have been sold a lie that we are under urgency to change it. There actually is none. Our primary focus should be on maintaining the security and decentralization and not fold under pressure from some startups that want to fill the blockchain with useless transactions. Bitcoin's immediate future growth, as far as price is concerned, can only come from its attribute as a tradeable commodity. People will continue to spend fiat as long as governments insist on printing them. That's called Gresham's law. No amount of VC-backed billion dollars "entrepreneurship" is going to take Bitcoin mainstream to the consumer retail segment until several years. Even the smartest actors in this industry have already figured it out (see Vinny Lingham's most recent comments). As such, the blockchain will continue to see marginal use as a transactional currency apart from some niche use cases. |
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Regarding the third point, for bitcoin to be an analog to gold we must keep in mind that gold is universally known and valued. If bitcoin prematurely choked off its own growth and abandoned efforts to mainstream it, I suspect it would slowly wither and die as competing altcoins rose to take its place as an everyday, mainstream cryptocurrency.
The current price of bitcoin is based largely on expectations of future growth. Choke off that growth and I suspect a large portion of its current valuation will evaporate.
It is also important that you reconsider this myth that capping Bitcoin's transactions is a cap on its userbase.
Bitcoin, as is, can provide a refuge for the wealth of ANY person on the planet. It can currently accommodate an infinite amount of capital.
The distinction is important because reality shows us that actual Bitcoin users are by and large not much interested in transacting or spending their coins. A great majority of the coins in existence have been and should continue to sit pretty in their cold wallets for years to come.
Why should we expect this to be different for future users? If you believe, much like I do, that the next trove of adopters is likely to be institutional investors with an interest in Bitcoin as a commodity/asset then why should we be worried so much with the system's transactions throughput? Do you expect the Winklevies to go on a shopping frenzy with their 100,000 coins? The analogy with gold is tired but it remains true: it should be expect that most bitcoins in circulation will be stored in digital vaults and shall remain untouched for a long period of time.
All of this is to say that you should stop focusing on "mainstream" users and what you assume their interest in Bitcoin will be. We should expect these to be last in line in your mass adoption scenario.
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No one has real data to show that a higher block limit = more fees overall for miners, it is simply a misunderstanding of how transaction fees work in real life.
Here is real data that shows that over the last five years, higher block sizes = more fees overall for miners. , this is what I mean by people fundamentally misunderstand the issue… What are you talking about? Block size has unquestionably changed (increased) over the last 5 years. The increase in the block size--such that it's now approaching the anti-spam limit--is what has precipitated this debate. Peter your chart is misguiding obviously as it shows an increase in transactions, not block size, all happening under the same limit. The increase in fees paid is a result of more transactions, not bigger blocks. There's nothing "misguiding" about that chart. It clearly demonstrates that more transactions equals more fees collected. That's why we should alter the blocksize limit to allow more transactions. If we don't raise the cap, the only way for revenues to continue to rise is to raise the fee itself. But if that gets prohibitively expensive for the average user, they'll simply transact on another chain and miners will get less revenue than they would with a larger blocksize limit. Forcing an unnatural fee market will not help scalability and will deter new users. A cautious, responsible and preferably (IMO) flexible increase that keeps centralisation to an absolute minimum is the best way forward. The only people still denying that are the ones who envision Bitcoin as an exclusive little club for the wealthy and frankly I can't wait to leave all those people behind. The wealthy will continue to rule Bitcoin and there is no amount of "new users" tears that will change this. The average user' seat in the block, if he chooses not to claim it, will be taken by anyone willing to pay the cost. It is quite simple: the capital demand for censorship-resistance, at whatever price, is above and beyond any demand for cheap transactions. Simply said: the movement of capital around the world is not handicapped by cost but by political friction. The world will not be made wealthier from cheaper transactions but from breaking the shackles of governments power over money. Once you can understand this aspect of the economy maybe you will come to peace with reality. |
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Why exactly will they get orphaned? I consider this statement unfounded, because nowadays miners are able to propagate blocks between themselves in constant time (generally) with help of Matt Corallo's relay network. In turn, the nodes don't have this privilege, so we better have some testing, I guess.
Ok, there are finally some good points here! We definitely need some testing. But if the "constant propagation time" for miners is true, why Chinese are then worried about the bandwidth with their 8MB figure? What would prevent implementing the relay network for other full nodes and what was the rationale for not doing so in the first place? The thing about the relay network is that it depends on miners behaving cooperatively. On the other hand, some game-theoretical research (e.g. selfish mining paper) suggests that this is not necessarily the most rational approach. So, my point is that we must be very careful about changing these constants. I'd rather go with 2MB first, not 8MB, and then re-evaluate. I also thought about more conservative approach first, but then quickly realized that being over-protective would necessitate having this discussion (about the limit increase) more often than we want it to be. In the extreme case, we will be constantly debating the issue and not let the actual limit to solidify in order for it to have any effect, which at the same time would distract us from doing any other positive and creative things in the ecosystem. If 8MB is considered unsafe, then we should look at how competition is currently surviving with higher limits (not blocks though). Of course, the counter argument in this case will be that their market cap and importance are less than that of Bitcoin and therefore there are no incentives to disturb the network by storming it with bigger blocks. It's still somewhat uncertain, but if we demonstrate that we can agree on a single number and move forward, then the positive momentum in the ecosystem might encourage other players (like bandwidth-limited Chinese miners) to protect the network from bloating too fast by building on top of blocks that are not bigger than 2MB, for example. That's the scenario I keep in mind when talking about 8MB limit. I think if we succeed with 2MB, and it goes smoothly, the next time will be much easier, because it won't be uncharted territory. If that's deemed too conservative, we could do 2-4-8 programmed instead with doubling every 2 years. After all, we can alwasy soft-fork to lower limit, though I think it's inelegant. We need no more than 2 years to solve the issue forever. By then hopefully payment channels should be integrated in most wallets and easily accessible. Their use will be a no-brainer for the user as they will be considerably faster, cheaper and generally more efficient. All the noobs now are scared because there is no immediate and obvious alternative for them to use to buy candies. When we feed these shiny new toys to the reddit crowd I expect they stop pouting and shut up. |
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No one has real data to show that a higher block limit = more fees overall for miners, it is simply a misunderstanding of how transaction fees work in real life.
Here is real data that shows that over the last five years, higher block sizes = more fees overall for miners. , this is what I mean by people fundamentally misunderstand the issue… What are you talking about? Block size has unquestionably changed (increased) over the last 5 years. The increase in the block size--such that it's now approaching the anti-spam limit--is what has precipitated this debate. Peter your chart is misguiding obviously as it shows an increase in transactions, not block size, all happening under the same limit. The increase in fees paid is a result of more transactions, not bigger blocks. |
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The trouble with most of these bets (which have been ubiquitous as long as I've been around) is that it is extraordinarily labor intensive to prepare the terms and definitions. For instance, there is a very good chance that within a year there will be a >1MB block on 'the longest proof-of-work chain'. But which chain is 'the'.
Clearly the longest proof-of-work chain built from Bitcoin's Genesis Block. The terms and definitions are trivially simple. It's not simple at all of the blockchain forks because different groups consider different blocks to be 'valid.' This is a very real possibility and within this timeframe. Regardless of anyone's definition of validity, one chain will be longer than the rest (it will contain more cumulative work). I am betting that this (longest) chain will contain a block greater than 1 MB in size by this time next year. There is no ambiguity in that definition. While I'm not on Peter R's side in the XT debate, he's correct about this. The terms of this potential "bet" are clear. In any case, even if there were some ambiguity, that's one reason there's a neutral third party in a 2-of-3 multisig. Now for something completely different. Consider this modified version of "the bet": Peter R and anti-Peter R each put 1 BTC into a 2-of-3 multisig with a neutral third party. One year from now, the 2 BTC are paid out to Peter R on every chain that has had a block over 1MB. The 2 BTC are paid out to anti-Peter R on every chain that has not had a block over 1MB. This would actually give people a way to trade potential coins on potential multiple forks before the potential forks actually occur. It's a little surprising there aren't services offering something like this, given how adamant many people on different sides seem to be. One example which is classic is that big who-ha about 'block will fill and we are all going to die so we have to do something by {magic date}. The artifacts of this one continue to linger which is why we still see people who should know better and who were not taken for a ride by the XT/BIP101 attack continue to feel a subconscious need to 'do something'. Even if it makes no sense (e.g., a paltry 1x block size increase which will do absolutely zilch over what we have at 1MB.) The manipulation of the herd through psychological means is a high art and science and is extremely well developed by 2015. Good reference post by Peter Wuille: http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-June/009098.htmlI do, however, fundamentally disagree that a fear for a change in economics should be considered to necessitate larger blocks. If it is, and there is consensus that we should adapt to it, then there is effectively no limit going forward. This is similar to how Congress voting to increase the copyright term retroactively from time to time is really no different from having an infinite copyright term in the first place. This scares me. Word. |
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I moved about 10% of my total wealth into Bitcoin; wise or stupid is yet to be determined. I went in assuming a significant chance of the whole thing going to zero.
If the transaction rate grows then the current 1MB block size will eventually force higher fees; so? Oh, I know, if the fees get too high then Bitcoin loses one of the advantages it has over other systems. So? ... Oh, I know, Bitcoin fails. So? I knew that was a risk going in. So? I go on less cruises in the future. So? My kids get less inheritance. So? ...
I happen to work in the computer industry. As such the challenge in front of me often is to get systems to handle more and more workload. To this part of me it is obvious we will eventually need a larger block size. Apparently there is a 32MB limit buried in some library. I recommend jumping to that limit as soon as is reasonable; keeping fees low. Moreover we need to get to work on overcoming that limit. Btw, if the workload isn't there then the blocks won't be large; I think some folks miss this point. It seems some folks wrongly fear every block will be huge. Using the block size to resist spam is a case of using the wrong tool. Anyone with a network link that can't keep up; too bad. Anyone with a lack of storage; too bad; although pruning would be just delightful. Anyone with a lack of processing power; too bad.
In between these extreme positions (how can one guy see both sides?) are the fancy approaches. Whatever. Enjoy. I do run a full node and would be interested in having the option for getting paid for the services I provide. Miners get paid; why can't full node operators get paid?
Bottom line; let the debate continue. If no change comes then we will live with higher fees. So? ...
I suggest you consider this proposal by Adam Back if you haven't: https://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg07937.htmlI suggest we consider all options and vote! never gonna happen |
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