The idea of temporarily renting hash-power and paying a premium for the service seems to have only one goal in mind that is to skew miners' voting process in favor of the highest bidder. In the long run it is not sustainable (unless the payer has an ability to print banknotes; oh wait.. they do!), so it's usually done when the ecosystem is facing the situation when a certain important decision needs to be made (like raising or not raising the block size limit).

People who understand Bitcoin and have long-term investments in mining business should be very careful selling their votes in the system to a particularly motivated third-party whose interests may not be in-line with long-term survivability of Bitcoin as a sustainable and open network. Yes, many things can be bought these days, but it's up to us as a thoughtful and responsible community to decide if Bitcoin Core values eventually end up with a price tag on it. Trust cannot be bought, only earned and Nothing Else Matters.

Ok, I guess, we all know by now what Peter R's role in all of this is.
I mean, the connection there is pretty clear!


NiceHash for a Nice-pile-of-Cash!
A market for selling your votes... beautiful!

If miners are smart enough (as they should be for they have long-term investments to return) they need to orient themselves in the direction mostly aligned with the interests of Bitcoin users (or the actual majority thereof). If enough Bitcoin users understand the values that Bitcoin brings to the table, they should enforce that part of the consensus rules which allows them to keep participating in the consensus process. In the end of the day it all translates into keeping the costs of blockchain validation sustainable over the long term.

Weighting in on the limit, leveraging and balancing,
is what people need to educate themselves to do,
if they are to keep the consensus rules to themselves.

Bitcoin is a simple machine, but it works in a mysterious ways!

So, what really happens if Mike doesn't (H)earn?

Well, if you've been paying attention to those disc covers I linked to in the post earlier and the ones just recently in my post above, you will begin seeing the big picture!

It turns out that "dj (B)A-BACK" and "Lightning (Networks err...) Records" (records is what networks are dealing with anyways) might wanna take the lead and save the "Blue Planet". Now, I didn't know that Adam was a dj (I mean, who could of guessed), but considering his CEO position, he may as well be fairly suitable for this role.

I guess, we should all rally behind Adam's Back!

If Mike Hearn doesn't earn
he should let go of Gavin
and side with Will Learn!

(see? I'm getting better with those rhymes...)

Come On, guys, this is Bitcoin!!! I'm so in love!

What a nice, peaceful and colorful discussion here!


It would seem that temporary reversals in the network "data rate" growth are necessary steps intended to keep the validation costs sustainable (within a certain corridor) over the decades to come. We will have to accept whatever other effects come from it in order to preserve this one fundamental attribute of the system.


I agree with this, though I would consider the "data rate" to be more vulnerable characteristic of the network than "storage costs", due to the fact that some ISPs might (and do) impose "total bandwidth caps per month" limitations having direct impact on running a full node continuously, while storage devices can be accumulated without any limit.

Regarding the Blockstream and subordinate chains I would give them a benefit of a doubt, simply because I haven't been following the developments there and cannot properly assess the proposals on their technical merit at the moment. On the other hand, if the protocol begins "endorsing" the accumulation of unlimited amounts of bitcoins in third-party services (subordinate chains), while the bandwidth in the main chain remains limited and the costs high, the situation might produce what I call systemic risks and can severely shatter the trust for the whole solution.

I think, Paul Sztorc mentioned in his "Measuring Decentralization" article something about custodial periods of about a week for bitcoins to be locked to a particular side chain, maybe that would work or maybe it will become cost prohibitive, hard to predict at the moment. But regardless of the above, it's pretty clear that the main chain needs to remain sustainable (cost-wise) over the long periods of time and we have to accept whatever other effects this particular attribute brings.

I'm glad that you're supporting the current 1MB limit to stay long enough, so do I.

The 8MB number comes from the idea that changes in the consensus rules need to be rare and discreet, otherwise the internal competition in the system would tear the whole idea of consensus apart fairly quickly. From that perspective the limit needs to be high enough for us not to bother changing it again for a long period of time and at the same time be able to counter potential external competition in this space. But because the new limit is so high compared to the current one we need to be careful with the appropriate timing for the change to take effect.


8MB is indeed more of a throughput suggestion than anything else. There are concerns about super-linearity property of block verification time (meaning that single 8MB block might take longer to verify than 8x1MB blocks), so those need to be taken into account when the actual solution is going to be implemented.

Fee market is another interesting aspect of the system as the competition is supposed to prevent the economic pressure from building up too high, but the network effect and the costs to switch should work in favor of keeping each particular system pressurized. In the idealistic scenario that I keep in mind a few healthy coins representing the core values of the original idea might work as cylinders in the combustion engine, where each system is pressurized to the max at different moments in time and decides to raise its bandwidth target before the pressure leaves to another one. We will see how much of that actually manifests.

I appreciate your attention to details for I value that just as well.

My username suggests the next bandwidth target for the idea of a static limit on block size, but doesn't hint at the time when the adjustment needs to be made. I argued against many other more sophisticated scalability proposals with mathematical rigor, but it was when I found myself defending the future limit against the current one, that I realized the obvious contradiction in my line of thinking.

Finding the appropriate moment in time for the transition would become the most challenging and interesting part of Bitcoin's evolutionary path.

In the early stages the system had very little mass and inertia, thus Satoshi could easily tweak a few parameters here and there without everyone being concerned. The 1MB limit was placed 5 years ago, became part of the consensus rules and hasn't been touched since then. Only now we begin talking about it in a serious way.


It does. If the current limit is removed before it becomes effective, then the new one doesn't make any sense, we can just as well throw it away. But that would definitely affect network's long-term characteristics (like costs to entry into validation) and make its evolutionary dynamics so much less predictable. If we are to agree on the new limit we must let the current one hold long enough and prove itself in action.


Yes, we haven't gone through this yet. The part of the cycle when the system is operating under the economic pressure is absolutely necessary, as Bitcoin needs to demonstrate that the validation costs can temporarily go down in order for the idea of freely accessible blockchain to be sustainable over the decades to come. If Bitcoin cannot show this, then any even remotely successful crypto-currency would be destined to eventually centralize and lose its original core values.

There must be a force in the economic system which can weight in on the limit and defend it at all costs as it's supposed to represent their interests. We are talking about the Bitcoin users here and we stand united.

The only thing that forces us to come together and consider changing the rules is "static" limit on block size, but only when enough pressure begins building up. With the curve in BIP101 there will never be a distinct point in time that would trigger us to consider deviating from that schedule. The blockchain will slowly but surely be sliding away and eventually get locked up in those large data-centers under the premise of "national security", that's where Bitcoin as we know it would end.

But, as it stands now, even 8MB blocks might be risky at the moment as we may lose significant amounts of full nodes and then decisions of changing the "consensus" rules will be made without the actual users of the network. Economic pressure is a good thing, we should be welcoming it as there is a need to test this aspect of the system and see what other effects come into play and how the whole ecosystem reacts to this.

1) "nothing hard". Oh, "You Don't Know!" how hard it is to build the excessive hash-power that controls the coins emission schedule and secures the network at the same time. It takes a lot of time and there has to be a very good reason to even begin thinking about trying to duplicate that.

2) "nothing magical". There sure has been a whole lot of "magical smoke" floating around this forum in recent months as the beam of "cluons" is getting stronger than ever.

3) Trust is indeed "hard to gain", that's why Bitcoin is not in position to make some stupid moves without careful considerations of their potential impact on the future of the whole crypto-currency idea.

4) Moving to "something else" is just fine, I'm also watching this space from many different perspectives and consider a healthy competitive environment as a positive thing in general.

5) Of course, I do! And you too "Just Watch!"

Taking responsibility for your own future implies that you do care about the long term impact of your choices and actions. I know, we all grew up in this consumerist mindset and are not used to things like Bitcoin, so we are still projecting the old thinking onto this new technology. But I'm glad that many now realize that this "Game" is "Just A Lil Bit" different and being conscious and responsible is "How We Do".

Moving to the next (good) blockchain might prove to be difficult as PoW systems are extremely hard to duplicate in order for them to remain secure and independent from each other. We only have a few decent ones to play with and losing the most prominent example and the pioneer of that technology may have devastating effects on the whole crypto-verse in general. I would rather have another similar system make a risky move and experiment, while Bitcoin enjoys its heavyweight champion position and the sense of stability and trust that comes along with it. The leader only responds when being challenged in its area of expertise.

Hey, guys, Shopping is easier done with those plastic VISA cards, they work pretty good, you should try! Users of independent and autonomous Bitcoin network carry both costs: (1) transacting on the blockchain and (2) maintaining its operation. We carry both and it's the sole purpose of Bitcoin existing. This is how real world operates: VISA for shopping, Bitcoin for taking responsibility for your own future.

Awesome stuff! Liked this part the most:
"When the bogon encounters its antiparticle, the cluon, they mutually annihilate each other, releasing magic smoke!"

(without an "M" there your voice is so much Loude'r, Lauda!)

I got to agree with this. I'm glad that many (me included) are slowly but inevitably converging to the same conclusions. There are million ways to change Bitcoin and only one way to keep it chugging along as it has been for many years now. If there is much disagreement and heated debates about the change then most likely we are solving the problem that doesn't exist yet and instead certain interests of various internal parties come into play.

Bitcoin needs to demonstrate that blockchain validation costs can temporarily go down for it to become sustainable for the decades to come, while at same time providing a test playground for potential fee market to develop to see if enough economic pressure can be maintained by the first mover advantage and the network effect that comes with it.

The limit will have to be raised at some point along the way in order to keep Bitcoin's single transparent unified ledger strong and competitive, because only one blockchain can properly sit in a balance of PoWer that exists on the "Blue Planet" today. For as long as Bitcoin remains an open and sustainable network its future will be bright!

What I've learned from this is that XT nodes are masking themselves as Core to avoid DOS attacks.
We need Core nodes to pretend they are XT to counter that! Oh, wait... No!

The above only demonstrates that Bitcoin consensus rules need to be rigid and simple so that everyone involved could just remember them and be able to verify if the need arises. A static limit on block size held for a certain (long enough) period of time satisfies that condition in the best possible way.

I also believe that Bitcoin's ledger needs to remain transparent and traceable to prevent corruption and illegal activity on all levels (including that of ruling elites), this should be done in a decentralized way, though an exact solution isn't fairly clear at the moment. It won't solve the problem completely as other competing solutions will provide better anonymity options, but the main monetary backbone for the society needs to be clear.

To put it simply, Bitcoin is an inclusive technology not exclusive and therefore governments will be involved in this one way or another as it is a PoWer play for them. What's important is that the network rules are enforced by the majority of its users and not a small group of select few. The current static limit of 1MB needs to prove itself in action and serve this purpose in order for Bitcoin to be sustainable over the long periods of time and maintain its value.

Sir, your XTanic W(REKT)D!

Haha!

XTanic hit an iCE'brg and got sunk!  

Look at it this way.
You are holding a key(1) from the treasure(2), would you give it away for a candy(3)?

(1) key - limit on block size
(2) treasure - permissionless access to blockchain
(3) candy - promise of future profits

There must be a mechanism (an incentive even) in the economic system that preserves the costs of validating the rules from ballooning into outer space. The limit on block size is that mechanism, but only if enough Bitcoin users weight in on it with their mass (it's in their best interests and the forum's logo at the top-right corner suggests that we should).

If the costs rise at first, then stagnate for a while, then rise again, it means that they are cumulatively still rising in the long run. Bitcoin needs to demonstrate that the costs of validating the blockchain can actually shrink and decline over time if this idea is going to sustain itself for decades. The only measure that can achieve this result is a static limit on block size being active and effective for a certain period of time. We are only approaching this part of the cycle.

The quote by Satoshi in your signature also hints in the same direction.
Leveraging and balancing is what we need to master if we are to succeed in this game.

This is not a drill!

The economic pressure is coming... We need reinforcements in the outer shell...
Those 1MB full nodes at home may suffer... I repeat, they may get pushed out!

Buckle up, gentlemen(d), you're in the game!

Fork it, we brake for nobody!

Keep firing, assholes!