And the hits keep coming for the dangerous experiment of maintaining artificially constrained blocks. From 2009-14 Bitcoin functioned with no effective block size limit and mining decentralization post-ASIC was improving. Now, in 2015, that this latent piece of software is allowed to take effect the unintended consequences rear up:
(my bold emphasis below)

But now we fear that the economy will be forced to because of a refusal to scale the main chain.  Given a choice between no business at all and a dangerous "idiots" move, companies will pick the "idiot" move and hope for the best.


OK now we are yelling.  The Bitcoin blockchain was never intended to permanently remain at a max size of 1MB.  Tons of historical posts show this and show that Satoshi and others of that time were fully cognizant of the partial centralization that might ensue (e.g. full nodes are not practical at home and must move to the cloud).  I do not need to repeat these. 

So if you want a small-sized chain, why don't you create a sidechain with a low block limit?


Is there ANYONE out there who is:
1. not a miner
2. does not have mining investments
3. is not affiliated with Blockstrem
And
4. wants to keep the block size at 1MB?

OUR CURRENT ALTERNATIVES SUCK
I refer to our conversation / information alternatives: /r/bitcoin, mailing lists, and chatrooms. They don’t work and their problems will deepen as BTC becomes more popular and more valuable (threatening).

The Basics

Let’s breeze through the currently known problems with the alternatives, mainly r/bitcoin: that those who seek expertise can’t validate (or even identify) what they read, those with expertise report frustration at having their views de-emphasized or misrepresented, bias goes undetected (or over-detected), conversations are duplicated (or misplaced), falling signal-to-noise ratios invite a septic futility into each stultified conversation. Almost no one is polite, and, in fact, everyone generally behaves in a way that would drive off any Thinking Person (but if they weren’t so critical, things might even be worse).

The Do-er Alone Learneth

OK, let’s take it to the next level. After all, this is the governance of Bitcoin we’re talking about.

On the subreddit/mailing-list a few people write, and many people read.

Socrates
The (spoken) thoughts of Socrates on the written word are worth mentioning:

“For this invention [writing] … You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise. … He who thinks, then, that he has left behind him any art in writing, and he who receives it in the belief that anything in writing will be clear and certain, would be an utterly simple person, and in truth ignorant of the prophecy of Ammon, if he thinks written words are of any use except to remind him-who-knows the matter about which they are written.” –(Socrates, Phaedrus 274c-275b, emphasis added)

Occasionally, reddit is used to enable a dialogue (the “AMA”). In such cases, everyone who asked a question would probably merit Socrates’ approval. On mailing lists, the Q&A are seemingly the only relevant sections of the entire discussion (other than to state mind-numbing tautologies like “we must be careful” or “Bitcoin won’t scale the way it is configured right now”).

My personal opinion is that, from the entire blocksize “discussion” thus far, I have (reliably) learned almost nothing. If anything, I have only learned about who, individually, I dislike (which does not really help with the underlying blocksize question). The state of the debate seems to reflect no technical info whatsoever, instead merely the ratio of BigBlock-Users (users who pay transaction fees, but do not run nodes) to SmallBlock-Users (those who run full nodes, but do not pay transaction fees), and who was friends with who before the conversation started.

The Internet is Not Representative

Haven’t you noticed a big difference between arguments experienced in real life, and arguments experienced on the internet? While the real-life arguments ultimately produce the phenomenon of “agreement”, netizens seem more contentious.

InternetWrong

I think that this is because of “free exit”: those who learn the answer leave the conversation (and do so without altering the conversation’s state: no having to admit that they were wrong, no feeling obligated to go back and convince others, etc). Say a website has 10,000,000 viewers, of which 5,000 agree with a given statement, and 5 disagree. What will the public see in the comments section? 1 principal dissenter arguing with 1 principal endorser (9,999,998 free-exits)…until? If one arguer drops out, another is likely to take his place. Observers will have no easy way to tell when (if) the debate has concluded, or what the conclusion was. On the internet, no one can tell how many people agree with something.

....

For example, almost every technical person has given up on Proof of Stake, to the point where it is openly laughed at and ridiculed at conferences. But you wouldn’t know it from The Internet, where it seems like “pro-PoS” and “anti-PoS” are each one of two equally-endorsed points of view. The technical elite are simply tired of repeating themselves.

Yet the voice of The Market speaks tirelessly. The PoS holdouts struggle to obtain 1/250th of Bitcoin’s marketcap, and –even more telling for an upstart– command almost none of the space’s VC funding / capital investment. They consistently lose to completely-valueless Copycoins like Litecoin and Dogecoin.

It sounds like you agree they do have a conflict of interest.  

I too believe they are being genuine in their concerns; and I believe they really think that increasing the block size limit would be bad.  I disagree with them, but I don't think they have malicious intentions.  

They do have a conflict of interest though.  And it's not even a big deal provided they openly acknowledge that fact!

i've already gone over this a dozen times for you.  the financial arrangements are totally different.

Well, if something like sidechains.pdf was going to be published in a journal, I think it would be fitting to include a statement, after Acknowledgments and before References, that read something like:

Conflict of Interest

Several of the authors of this paper are co-founders of a for-profit company whose business model relates to off-chain transaction solutions.


I see this as standard practice.  It doesn't mean their opinion isn't valid.  It just let's people see more of the picture.  

that's the stupidest characterization of what i said.  you clearly don't get it.

why don't you answer his question?  we all are interested in how you view the world.

What actually happened is that when Blockstream was announced multiple noted that it created the appearance of a potential conflict of interest.

Instead of acknowledging this potential (fairly standard practice in many business situations!), the Blockstream founders took the bizarre route of denying even the possibility of a conflict of interest.

Right.  There's two things to consider:

(1) Does someone have a conflict of interest?

(2) Is that person acting upon his conflict of interest or is his opinion biased by his conflict of interest?

Granted, we don't know to what extent (2) holds for anyone at Blockstream.  But the answer to (1) is clearly "yes."  Would you agree?

On the topic of "what is a conflict of interest," I think this explanation (from a high impact factor academic journal) is good:


As an example, let's say I had a company (perhaps that was still in stealth mode) that performed the service, similar to what BlockCypher does, of calculating "confidence factors" for 0-confirm transactions.  

Now let's imagine I write an academic paper that presents data on double-spend statistics and shows how one can use network heuristics to reliably accept 0-confirm transactions for certain business models.  

What I present in the paper may be entirely factual and unbiased, but I still have a conflict of interest and I should declare that fact to the public.  A conflict of interest is not, in and of itself, a bad thing.  In fact, since we're imagining I'm in the business, I'm probably pretty knowledgeable on the topic!  Nonetheless, I should still be transparent and allow others to assess the results and any biases I may have for themselves.  

brg444 jumping to rektless conclusions again.  i actually have a response i have yet to use to eragmus. 

conflict of interest

n. a situation in which a person has a duty to more than one person or organization, but cannot do justice to the actual or potentially adverse interests of both parties. This includes when an individual's personal interests or concerns are inconsistent with the best for a customer, or when a public official's personal interests are contrary to his/her loyalty to public business. An attorney, an accountant, a business adviser or realtor cannot represent two parties in a dispute and must avoid even the appearance of conflict. He/she may not join with a client in business without making full disclosure of his/her potential conflicts, he/she must avoid commingling funds with the client, and never, never take a position adverse to the customer.

nice try noob.

you're another example of a shit thrower.  never provide any technical discussion or insight.  

in case you'd like to go back and review all my technical posts, including those in direct discussion with nullc, like with the UTXO and CNB stuff.  he actually tried to obfuscate and i've documented where he contradicts himself about UTXO being in RAM.  Peter R also proved with statistical significance my hunch that the defensive 0 tx blocks were indeed coming within a minute of full blocks.  it also appears i was right about those defensive blocks coming in the presence of bloated mempools.  i was in fact documenting these 0 tx blocks weeks before the spam attack as something strange happening.  i also think i'm right that the spammers are attacking as we've gotten close to filling blocks with real demand so as to disrupt new and existing users.  the attacks will continue to try and hinder that growth.  i've filled these pages with real technical and interpretive discussion about what's actually going on yet what do we get from idiots like you?  nothing.  nothing insightful except ad hominem attacks.  

brg444, you're useless.  admit it.  just like during the SC debate, you're contributing nothing.  nothing at all except trolling.

Luke-Jr:(it's ironic but true that Mike Hearn has written two changes in Bitcoin Core, and both of them introduced serious bugs..)

when Mycelium, just a few days ago, invoked a fee bidding mechanism in their wallet, you were the first shill to jump up and down and scream "see fee mkt!"  now that they blow up, you throw them under the bus.  your sort of behavior is simply indicative of someone shilling for Blockstream while throwing shit all over the wall hoping something sticks.

Yes, hence no one is supporting 1MB blocks forever.

Not quite.

There are numerous reports suggesting that even if Greece and the Eurozone were to strike a bailout deal (which btw is not guaranteed even after the package terms are approve by Greek congress) it could take at least a month before banks re-open.

good to see we have made some ground and are all in agreement on the other half of the sentence.