it doesnt work like that.

imagine there are 5 people.
A says he can read one page of a book in a minute.
B says he can read 2 pages of a book in a minute.
C says he can read 16 pages of a book in a minute.
D says he can read 3 pages of a book in a minute.
E says he can read 5 pages of a book in a minute.

ok so. someone wants to ensure a fair system and although only person A is holding up the group a 20% risk of system error is risky. so only one page of a book is handed out in a minute to ensure everyone can handle whats been handed out.

later person A reveals he has lied to the group and can handle 2 pages a minute. so now 2 pages a minute can be handed out a minute because 100% of the group can handle it.

after a couple years person A learns to read a bit faster.. and 3 pages are handed out because the whole group can handle it..

so although the group can individually have their own preferences the person making the pages (blocks) only makes it at a rate the whole group as a whole can handle. which is usually help back by the ones with the lowest number..

core are holding it back.

just ask yourself what would happen if in 2013, core decided to have set the block limit at 0.5mb due to sipa's accidental bug when he swapped database types and cause a bit of orphan drama.

human memory is ok.. until you have a head injury and get amnesia.. and the hospital bills start piling up
human memory is ok.. until you get older and develop dementia/alzheimers.. and the hospital bills start piling up


cloud storage safe?
um.. have you seen the latest batch of nude celebs gathered from their cloud storage.

have you seen the us government send subpoena's to apple to crack and release some users cloud services.

never ever trust one method of storage, no matter how much you rely on it or think its secure

nope.

the blocksize option is not that bad. right now my client has a 2mb rule and is working fine. there are several hundred nodes with blocksize rules of over 1mb actually running right now on the network..

in 2009-2014. there were thousands of nodes with 1mb rule even when the blocks were only 0.5mb.. i know shocking right.. mindblowing thought that users can actually have a higher buffer set than what pools are producing. and doing it years before pools think the network can cope with it..
yes, mega brain fart explosion moment that decimates most of all the doomsdays rhetorics.

the funny part is that the node count can have the rule inplace before mining pools even decide to vote. the code has been available for implementations that are not core since last year. and it would only take a couple days for core to tweak their code too.. but they refuse as they fear the community will adopt it.. so their mindset is if you dont give the community caviar they will never ask for it next time they are spoonfed.

ofcourse mining pools wont move to bigger blocksizes unless majority of nodes can cope with it. which is why core wont offer it.
as for cores segwit. this doesnt need node implementation meaning the code that has a functioning wallet (not released yet(yep even 0.13.2 doesnt allow segwit transaction creation on mainnet)) is not released and wont be released until after activation, which means after activation there will be mad panic to download and peer review the code independently.

kind of backwards.. but hey. thats core.

1min?
those complaining about 10mins would complain about 1min

think about it, you are at a shop and someone swipes their touchless NFC debit card and is gone in 3 seconds. you are then there standing around. after 10 seconds you hear people tutting and whispering "why is he just standing there" by 30 seconds you see them looking at their watches and getting angry. by the 1minute mark your apologising for making them wait.

1minute and 10minutes wont help most situations people cry about..
onchain double spending needs to be fixed by not having invented things like the fee mechanism (causing possible reject by simply not paying adequate fee maliciously/intently) or making a second tx that diverts funds and then use RBF and CPFP to force your preferred tx through first. thus rejecting the other tx.


but now you are talking about middlemen managed services.. this is what offchain LN is. imagine coinbase you you set up a multisig together where coinbase cant move the funds without your permission and you cant move funds between them. yep it allows for faster transactions than the ones requiring confirmations.. but now your no longer in a permissionless position but instead a banking position.
also although you can 'trust' the funds instantly.. the true settlement lock will be longer than the 10 minutes. but hey if settling is of no concern, then go for it.. but you might aswell be using fiat too..

number one of the list is not a viable option..
it has many repercussions and changes many dynamics of bitcoin. its not part of the main debate. just scenario opinions and personal chitchat

number 2 can work once to stick ductape on the doomsday guys that throw randomly large numbers into the air that have not realistic rational reason to be concerned with in the next few years.

number 3 can work but more for the niche of day traders, facuet raiders, gamblers. not so useful for people that only buy one item a day/week/month.
also number 3's 'settlement' time becomes longer than 10 minutes. but atleast the 'trust' of instant acceptance is higher

funny part is by adding more double spend risk features like RBF and CPFP it has made 2017 more risky to accept a zero confirm.. not less risky. thus all that promise of segwit solving double spend risk has fallen flat

democratically 51% would be a win for one side with more votes.

but bitcoin blocks are not as strict as that.
because blocks are mined at a bit of luck.. so even at 51% 'hashrate' there is a luck swing of 10% based on actual blocks..

take the segwit miner vote

26% in red. (lets call that the ruling vote tally)
but there is a variance of +-10% in blue.


so even at 26% the votes are going from 18%-32%

so even if there was 51% scenario for something else.. one part of the day it will be 40 next 60 then 40 then 60.. so a rule has to be based over time.

next,, to make it a clear majority the rule needs to be higher than 51% to ensure the risk of orphans is not as much.
because at 51% it would chop off orphans eventually but literally every other block would get orphaned.

so a high majority =low orphan rate. ofcourse 100% is not realistic(the block luck game). and 51% is orphan hell some have said 75%.. but in the end 95% seemed a clear number that allowed some variance of luck while understanding it would be majority compliance to not cause much if any orphan issues

imagine the old priority mechanism
(total tx value*confirmations)/tx bytesize

where the total has to reach 57,600,000 to be 'priority'
eg a tx value of 100000000sats (1btc) that has been hoarded for 144confirms(a day) and was 250bytes
(100000000*144)/250=57,600,000 qualify
vs
a tx same value same bytes but only 1 confirm old
((100000000*1)/250)=400000 not qualify

a richer spender can have priority easily (someone with 144btc can qualify fee free) and respend every 10 minutes
((14400000000*1)/250)=57600000 qualify
where as someone with less than 1btc (0.1btc)
((10000000*1)/250)=40000 not qualify
and wont qualify unless their funds are really old(10 days)
((10000000*1440)/250)=57,600,000 qualify

hense why the old priority mechanism really didnt work well...

BUT
imagine we re-invented a fairer 'priority' mechanism that wasint biased between the rich vs poor
eg
((age/txbytes)*(blocksize/txbytes))

or there was an urgency metric added to the user priority
EG 2 people with same tx size and age. but one person doesnt care where other one does ((age/txbytes)*(blocksize/txbytes))+urgency

urgent ((144/250)*(1000000/250))+1=2305
not urgent ((144/250)*(1000000/250))+0=2304

the urgent one gets a slight better chance

then imagine the qualifier was based on mempool byte volume (demand) or some other reactive measure/metric

so here is the challenge.. sorry no prize or bounty.
lets see who can come up with a new 'priority' calculation and qualifier number that would prioritise those that need priority
you can use any metric you can think of that is available
blocksize
mempoolsize
transaction size
value
fee
confirms
user defined priority (urgent/not urgent)
etc.. you think of others

be creative
add, subtract, divide, multiple. to get some form of calculation thats more fair

from the miners point of view the transaction fee is not a main income for them. its just a bonus. the blockreward itself is their main income
we should not be entering a fee war right now. we should be expanding the block size to allow more transactions in.. fee's should be a gradual thing over DECADES not weeks/months

there are other ways to prioritise transactions based on code, without having to use fee's as the main decider.

holding the blocksize down while pushing the fee's up is not the fault of miners. its the dev's they want to make bitcoin useless to push people over to commercial services (LN) or commercial sidechains.

for instance we could put in a priority algo into the transaction (like the olden days had) but with a few more variables. such as stretching out the importance of the age of the coin. so that people cant spend it the moment its received (to avoid people respending to spam the network)
we can push the effect of how bloated a tx is, so that leaner transactions(less bytes) get more priority

yep Gmaxell (team leader of bitcoin core devs) loves his monero and his blockstream elements and his hyperledger sidechains.. more than he loves bitcoin.
yep Luke_jr (third in command bitcoin dev) loves his merge mind coins and is looking forward to merge mining side chains
yep Rusty Russel(5th in command bitcoin dev) loves his LN network that will be the swap mechanism between altcoins and bitcoin

mining is not the problem
the blocksize problem is due to developers refusing to even release code to allow the community to choose differing blocksize upgrade options, to get to a consensus for the network to upgrade naturally

p.s i got out of the mining game in 2013-2014

an ASIC miner has NO hard drive.
an ASIC miner does NOT store the blockchain
an ASIC miner is NOT affected by the blocksize in any way.
an ASIC miner just receives a hash.. (small string of text) and it processes that string of text using a puzzle to create another string of text

it does not matter how much data a block has, the hash an ASIC miner receives stays the same length.

do not blame the block size on miners!!

blame it on PEOPLE thinking that USERS NODES cannot cope. when in reality USER NODES can cope
blame it on PEOPLE stupidly thinking the block bloat needs to be gigabytes a day and terrabytes a month.

blame it on PEOPLE who ignore the rational consensus since last year that is 2-4mb a block .. no 80mb-100gb(fake irrational doomsdays)
yes that is right for the last year the compromise has been 2-4mb.. so will people stop the irrational random numbers needed tomorrow..

simple ID implants already exist.. look at the implants your pets have for IDChips

but if your talking about something like the movie 'in time


yes not something many would want

just call it what it really is... hyperledger.

dont be afraid to call it by its real name

if your using private keys. be warned.
the private key is only connected to one public key.

the wallet.dat only stores the private keys held BEFORE the backup

when you spend funds, most wallets make new random privkeys. so funds will move to NEW privkeys and those privkeys wont be on your OLD wallet.dat.

meaning you have to re backup your wallet.dat on a regular bases.

seeds however use a long entropy pass phrase and all keys are made from that one original passphrase. meaning all keys can be re-established by that seed.

its best to move over to seed based key storage if you are not in a mindset/desire to constantly back up the old style privkeys every time you spend

storing your seed in the cloud is a risk.
passwords will be weak.

if they were strong.. then the entropy would be huge and you would need to write down the password.
so ask yourself if you have to write down the password. then how is that any different than just writing the seed down on paper.

your reply might be that you want the seed in the cloud, so that if there was a house fire, the paper containing the seed which would burn wont be the only copy of the seed.
but now ask in that same house fire.. isnt your long entropy cloud password also burnt.. meaning you cant access the cloud.

secondly do you think the cloud service will be around in 5 years...(think about that)

the good thing about seeds is that they are separate words.
the best advice is to separate the words and have a cloud account using different cloud services for each word.

that way a hacker or inside man in the cloud hosting service has no access to the whole seed in one go
have the words on separate items around your house. like etch a word into the metal panel of your fridge/freezer etch another on the bottom side of your dinning room table, etc

and then have a puzzle/treasure map you create to know how to piece it together.

but going to these extremes are for those that hold/will hold enough funds worth worrying about

i get what your saying. but i see too man blog/facebook/reddit and other threads talking about bitcoin and then instead of saying about jobs, businesses, slling products/skills. all they mention bitcoin is good for is sigspamming for a few pennies to cash out.

we should mention faucets/sigs.. but not as a way of "earning" (AKA wage/income) but only as a way to get a free small amount to play and learn bitcoin.

my post was about how it should be mentioned

top of the list should be JOBS and BUSINESSES..

yet all i see is sig spamming, gambling and daytrading as peoples first thoughts on how to get bitcoin.. which is not what a true economy should concentrate on.

agreed with all you said, but to highlight one part.

but there is money to be made in manipulating the supply.
pump and dumpers make profits, while outsiders not involved can only react to the drama/crises such pump and dumps cause. but not benefit from it because they are on the outside.

bankers will profit from their hyperledger sidechains. its why they are doing it, they are the casino. and like gambling.. the house always wins

do not advertise signature campaigns as a way of earning bitcoin for free
do not advertise faucet raiding as a way of earning bitcoin for free

to earn bitcoins talk about GETTING A JOB
to earn bitcoins talk about STARTING A BUSINESS
to earn bitcoins talk about BUYING BITCOINS from fiat earnings

only mentions signature campaigns/faucet raiding as a means to gather a few small insignificant amounts to learn how to use bitcoin.

it has become a shame that many people dont see bitcoin as anything more then this forum.
it has become a shame that many people dont see bitcoin as anything more then getting free micro penny amounts for hours of labour
it has become a shame that many people dont see bitcoin as for what it truly is and can be in the real world

funny part is that when people talk about media coverage of bankers using blockchains. first they try to say fiat is bad. but then go and shout happily about how it will make them profits when bitcoins FIAT PRICE rises so they can exit bitcoin and return to fiat.(facepalm)

banks hyperledger sidechain announcements do not effect bitcoin. (the technology) as they are separate things. so if all you care about is fiat prices, your not only missing the purpose of bitcoin. but also the hyper inflation of fiat due to the bankers sidechain swap. meaning your not going to gain anything when $10,000 only buys you a loaf of bread.

the fiat price and bankers fiat games are meaningless, when you start to appreciate what bitcoin is really about

for noobs:
explaining bitcoin without buzzwords like
"decentralized cryptographic keypair secured peer to peer financial ledger"

and instead something like
payment system where your private key, which only you hold is your account

when explaining how:
instead of mentioning SHA, ecdsa, ripemd160, blockchains, PoW, port 8333, etc,etc,etc
explain it like you would explain writing a cheque.

putting in who the funds are going to and the amount. and where the payment already includes details of where the funds are coming from.
your private key is used to mix up the payment data to form a unique signature so that no one needs your private key. and the signature can can be verified by the data of where the funds came from. when its signed its as good as accepted though most merchants prefer to wait for the payment to clear first.
the payment then passes through thousands of random people that doublecheck it. and eventually a pool that batches the payments together into a block of data which is then finalised and locked into a long chain of blocks of payments which anyone can view, store and verify any/every payment/block

go about as deep as that. dont get too technical and dont try showing off use of buzzwords to sound smart.

after all do most people really know how cheque clearing houses work. or what visa does behind the scenes to communicate to banks. and if you started throwing out banking acronyms like RTGS or NEFT, CHAPS, ACH they wont be any the wiser in regards to how cheques/visa/wire transfers work.

the point is that the china central banks altcoin WILL BE THEIR FIAT

to citizens they wont see the difference at first. the banks will just swap their old database to a new database in very laymans terms. citizens wont notice the difference to how their bank balance is stored. as thats behind closed doors. but later they will start offering NFC smartwatches or  smartphone apps instead of debit cards/paper cash.

the benefit i can see is instead of card cloning and merchants storing card information. the hardware wallet(smartphone/watch/wristbands) just sends a signed tx to the merchant, making each transaction unique to that purchase. to avoid card cloning or merchant hacking. due to the fact a banking customer keeps the privkey safe in their own device.

the downside i can see is lose the device, lose access to your income and starve. in a utopian situation that was permissionless.. so to solve that, ofcourse the banks will have access to your key to 're-credit' you or give you a new device. making it still a permissioned/middleman payment system, meaning the system wont change much just the way a customer pays (NFC smartphone/watch instead of magnetic strip debit card or paper cash) will change