This blocksize increase effort is to support the interests of the merchant service companies, Circle et. al.  I sympathize with their plight, but Bitcoin is not made for these first.  Bitcoin is for everyone.  There are parts of the planet (some of which have the greatest need for Bitcoin) that have very limited bandwidth today and can be expected to not see rapid improvement.

We do need a path forward.  We need a way to scale up.  What I can't abide is the notion of picking a number based on historical data, extrapolating, and applying it to the future.  Whatever we guess, we are guaranteed to be wrong.  Its wrong now, (and since we are not facing any imminent existential crisis) unless we can do better than still being wrong, we aren't ready to contemplate hard forks.

Isn't it worth it to the future generations of Bitcoiners to get this right?  At the moment we have the luxury of time, and we have other developments that will further mitigate this issue are coming to give us even more time.

So... Either let the large(ish) companies that are pushing for this (through TBF) make the best use of this time to give us a path forward that will be a lasting one... or wait until the decentralized brains come up with something more future proof than a guess based on historical data.

Essentially... good work Gavin, for raising the issue and making a proposal, but more research is needed.  I have faith that you'll be able to win me over on this (as well as the others opposing it in its current form).  Its just not there yet.  I don't know the answer, and I don't think anyone else does yet, but with all of us working toward it (again thanks to you for raising the issue), we may find it.

We need to be better than the Central Bankers who get together with their economic advisers and pick numbers arbitrarily.  We need automated future-proof solutions written into open protocols that will still be working when we are long dead.  It is our responsibility being alive and here now at the beginning, to see it done right.  To do less than our best is shameful.

I'm going to have to polish up my renaissance patter if I am going to ascend to the role of court jester...

The cost is not that significant.  Heck, the whole BTC market cap is not that significant.

If there were 6 GB block size bloat per hour?
A financial attack could do this independently.
Miners could do this free-ish.
Small miners would fail, as would all hobby miners.

Full nodes would become centralized, increased 51% risks, etc.
These are just the obvious.  No more decentralisation for Bitcoin.

video with Ben Lawski
http://www.bloomberg.com/video/benjamin-lawsky-we-can-police-bitcoin-aZCPkB8PSdSPVzaeZFME~g.html

Bloomberg just talked about Darkwallet.

Yes, it would take forever.

Yes, most of those sentences are wrong, overstated, speaking for others not yourself, and without basis.
It rhetoric.
I'll give you that one though.

Yes, the future is going to be weird...

But these guys don't need technology, and they aren't nation states.
You know they used to catapult diseased animals and dead people over castle walls?
They aren't interested in stopping the spread of it either.  God will sort it out.
There are a lot of crazies out there.


There is a lot of current effort into controlling the reservoir of infection, which is good because it is uncontrolled currently.  Awareness is the best defense.

I have a lot of bitcoin stuff.
Tshirts from most of the conferences from the last few years, button, hats stickers, the Key Chain is made by a friend of mine.
One of the other catchy ones is the Bitcoin Specie.  I keep a few in my pocket and when I pull out my change there they are.   Cashiers are very likely to ask, they deal with money all day long.

Cashiers also make great local bitcoiners.  With their managers permission they can put up a little Bitcoin Accepted here sign in front of their register, take your bitcoin and drop their own money in the till.  Makes a little profit for them too.

This is our biggest untapped adoption expansion IMHO, the independant cashier.  When the manager realizes that they get more business because of that cashier, The manager is happy, the cashier gets promoted, gets attention, it spreads organically.

This is a wonderful experience that I repeat as often as I can.  I tend to wear some bitcoin bling most of the time.  A key chain, a pin, something.
I get a question about it from a stranger.  Rather than answer, I offer to show them.

"Do you have a phone?  A smart phone?"

And it goes from there.  5 minutes later, they have some bitcoin, and something to show off to their friends.
They are hooked.

QFT
Lets use measurement and math over extrapolations where possible,  Balance the risk to decentralization vs making it easier for transaction volume in favor of decentralization.  It is difficult to recover from centralizing effects.
If block bloat by conspiring miners is a concern then there can be growth caps on top of a dynamic scalability protocol too.

We have no crystal ball to tell us the future.  All we know is that we don't know.

And I'll just leave this here:
http://xkcd.com/605/

Not just the first app, the foundation app.

Did you grab up any swaps?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-09-29/venezuela-5-3-billion-bond-default-anxiety-eases-andes-credit.html

Nothing like a little systemic risk to pad the portfolio.


The USA may get blamed for this, because of our ending QE.  Weird, but possible.
Being only slightly fiscally responsible makes the horribly irresponsible look that much worse, and they are at the tipping point.
Dollar strength, exports inflation.

No surveillance is needed.  We may be swirling around in one of the internet's weirder backwaters, but this is a post on the public internet, right?
http://www.news.com.au/world/middle-east/islamic-state-jihadists-may-infect-themselves-to-spread-ebola-in-the-west/story-fnh81ifq-1227085919151

Unlike paper money, you can't get ebola from receiving bitcoin transactions over the internet.

That is nothing like Gavin's proposal for good reasons.  To answer your question of What would also happen if the block size were increased to 1 GB tomorrow is the introduction of new attack vectors, which if exploited would require intervention to resolve by miners, and development. 
It is not enough to design something that works, we must also design so that it does not become more fragile.

Why not strive for a dynamic limit that prevents the need for future hard forks over the same issue?
Gavin's proposal is "the simplest that could possibly work".

I'll argue that it is just too simple, and too inflexible.

This proposal may be opening Bitcoin to new types of coin killing attacks by assuming that anti-spam fees will always be sufficient to prevent bloating attacks.   Consider that the entire value of all bitcoin is currently less than 1/10th of the worlds currently richest man, and that man has spoken publicly against bitcoin?  When you include wealthy institutions and even governments within the potential threat vector, the risks may become more apparent.  We can not assume Bitcoin's success, and then predicate decisions necessary for that success, on that success having been already accomplished.

If Bitcoin has to change due to a crisis, it ought at least be made better... so that the crisis need not be revisited.  (Hard forks get progressively more challenging in the future).  Design for the next 100s of years, not for the next bubble.  Fix it right, and we fix it once.

Designs ought to have safeguards to avoid unintended consequences and the ability to adjust as circumstances change.
My suggestion is that perhaps we can do better than to simply assume an infinite extrapolation, when there exists a means to measure and respond to the actual needs as they may exist in the future, within the block chain.

50% may be too much in some years, too little in others.  The proposal is needlessly inflexible and assumes too much (an indefinate extrapolation of network resource).  Picking the inflating percentage numbers out of a hat by a small group is what CENTRAL BANKERS do, this is not Satoshi's Bitcoin.

I'm not convinced a crisis necessitating a hard fork is at hand, but I am sure that the initial proposal is not the answer to it.  I look forward to its revision and refinement.  

They're in there too.

If there is an issue which is close to your heart and you want to increase your votepower in order to grant your vote greater weight, doing so also supports development and is encouraged, up to the 1000 votepower limit (1000XMR).

This is a bit of a proxy for an anti-doxxing Satoshi Nakamoto legal fund.
In truth, it is more an attack fund.

By making it expensive for "News" organizations to chase, and attempt to exploit, the Satoshi Nakamoto identity, ought they be induced to act more responsibly? 

This is striking in self defense.  It is an attack on a predator's claw, to disable it after it draws blood.

http://www.newsweeklied.com/about/

Check your assumptions.

1) We don't know what the future networks will look like.
2) Commodity prices do go to zero for periods of time.  Sometimes they rot in silos, and cost money to dispose of them (negative worth).

Great, we agree on all of this.

Here is where it jumps the tracks.  
Your thoughts, and my thoughts aren't going to answer this.  
Math will.  It is not about opinion, it is about measurement and calculation.  Picking 50% out of a hat is hubris, and you know it in your heart.
Justify it, show your work, or it can not be taken seriously.  Looking forward to your follow-up, and its analysis, economists sure, but lets have game theory analysis as well as an analysis of new risks.

Strawmen, will make you look stupid and petty.  Play well with the other scientists please?  If this was your best and final offer, you needn't bother responding.  I don't know the answer, but so far we haven't seen it in sufficient detail to end dialog and discovery.

Not to belabor it, but the obvious difference is the 50 BTC folks were going against Satoshi's design, whereas those following 50% love-it-or-leave-it fork would be going against Satoshi's design.  If we need a hard fork, we do it right so that it need not be repeated.

Your proposal started a dialog that may bring a good result.  
The first effort isn't that end result.  If we think we got it perfect on a first guess, our minds are closed to learning and consensus.


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