Permanently keeping the 1MB (anti-spam) restriction is a great idea ...

[coins101]

For what it's worth: 

I'm the guy who went over the blockchain stuff in Satoshi's first cut of the bitcoin code.  Satoshi didn't have a 1MB limit in it. The limit was originally Hal Finney's idea.  Both Satoshi and I objected that it wouldn't scale at 1MB.  Hal was concerned about a potential DoS attack though, and after discussion, Satoshi agreed.  The 1MB limit was there by the time Bitcoin launched.  But all 3 of us agreed that 1MB had to be temporary because it would never scale.

Several attempted "abuses" of the blockchain under the 1MB limit have proved Hal right about needing the limit at least for launching purposes.  A lot of people wanted to piggyback extraneous information onto the blockchain, and before miners (and the community generally) realized that blockchain space was a valuable resource they would have allowed it.  The blockchain would probably be several times as big a download now if that limit hadn't been in place, because it would have a lot of random 1-satoshi transactions that exist only to encode information for altcoins etc.

At this point I don't think random schmoes who would allow just any transaction are getting a  lot of blocks. The people who have made a major investment in hashing power are doing the math to figure out which tx are worthwhile to include because block propagation time (and therefore the risk of orphan blocks) is proportional to block size. So at this point I think blockchain bloat as such is no longer likely to a problem, and the 1MB limit is no longer necessary.  It has been more-or-less replaced by a profitability limit that motivates people to not waste blockchain bandwidth, and miners are now reliably dropping transactions that don't pay fees. 

You were involved in Bitcoin at the time of launch?

[QuestionAuthority]

For what it's worth: 

I'm the guy who went over the blockchain stuff in Satoshi's first cut of the bitcoin code.  Satoshi didn't have a 1MB limit in it. The limit was originally Hal Finney's idea.  Both Satoshi and I objected that it wouldn't scale at 1MB.  Hal was concerned about a potential DoS attack though, and after discussion, Satoshi agreed.  The 1MB limit was there by the time Bitcoin launched.  But all 3 of us agreed that 1MB had to be temporary because it would never scale.

Several attempted "abuses" of the blockchain under the 1MB limit have proved Hal right about needing the limit at least for launching purposes.  A lot of people wanted to piggyback extraneous information onto the blockchain, and before miners (and the community generally) realized that blockchain space was a valuable resource they would have allowed it.  The blockchain would probably be several times as big a download now if that limit hadn't been in place, because it would have a lot of random 1-satoshi transactions that exist only to encode information for altcoins etc.

At this point I don't think random schmoes who would allow just any transaction are getting a  lot of blocks. The people who have made a major investment in hashing power are doing the math to figure out which tx are worthwhile to include because block propagation time (and therefore the risk of orphan blocks) is proportional to block size. So at this point I think blockchain bloat as such is no longer likely to a problem, and the 1MB limit is no longer necessary.  It has been more-or-less replaced by a profitability limit that motivates people to not waste blockchain bandwidth, and miners are now reliably dropping transactions that don't pay fees. 

You were involved in Bitcoin at the time of launch?

A lot of people don't know it but Cryddit is Ray Dillinger. He was one of the original testers of Bitcoin. He actually helped Hal Finney with some of the design. He was one of the original cypherpunks and is still hanging around as far as I know.

[walerikus]

For what it's worth: 

I'm the guy who went over the blockchain stuff in Satoshi's first cut of the bitcoin code.  Satoshi didn't have a 1MB limit in it. The limit was originally Hal Finney's idea.  Both Satoshi and I objected that it wouldn't scale at 1MB.  Hal was concerned about a potential DoS attack though, and after discussion, Satoshi agreed.  The 1MB limit was there by the time Bitcoin launched.  But all 3 of us agreed that 1MB had to be temporary because it would never scale.

Several attempted "abuses" of the blockchain under the 1MB limit have proved Hal right about needing the limit at least for launching purposes.  A lot of people wanted to piggyback extraneous information onto the blockchain, and before miners (and the community generally) realized that blockchain space was a valuable resource they would have allowed it.  The blockchain would probably be several times as big a download now if that limit hadn't been in place, because it would have a lot of random 1-satoshi transactions that exist only to encode information for altcoins etc.

At this point I don't think random schmoes who would allow just any transaction are getting a  lot of blocks. The people who have made a major investment in hashing power are doing the math to figure out which tx are worthwhile to include because block propagation time (and therefore the risk of orphan blocks) is proportional to block size. So at this point I think blockchain bloat as such is no longer likely to a problem, and the 1MB limit is no longer necessary.  It has been more-or-less replaced by a profitability limit that motivates people to not waste blockchain bandwidth, and miners are now reliably dropping transactions that don't pay fees. 

Is there a link to original post where Hal Finney and Satoshi discuss the block size limit and DoS attacks?

[DooMAD]

I'm the guy who went over the blockchain stuff in Satoshi's first cut of the bitcoin code.  Satoshi didn't have a 1MB limit in it. The limit was originally Hal Finney's idea.  Both Satoshi and I objected that it wouldn't scale at 1MB.  Hal was concerned about a potential DoS attack though, and after discussion, Satoshi agreed.  The 1MB limit was there by the time Bitcoin launched.  But all 3 of us agreed that 1MB had to be temporary because it would never scale.

Is there a link to original post where Hal Finney and Satoshi discuss the block size limit and DoS attacks?

The forum didn't exist when that conversation was happening.  I've always assumed these discussions were via email or some other medium.  There aren't any transcripts that I'm aware of.

[gmaxwell]

The forum didn't exist when that conversation was happening.  I've always assumed these discussions were via email or some other medium.  There aren't any transcripts that I'm aware of.

Likely because those conversations didn't exist at all or at least not like described.  There is no particular reason to believe Cryddit was telling the truth, especially because a simple glance at the original release demonstrates that he was wrong about a lot.

See:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/e9v48b/how_can_sirius_claim_to_be_bitcoins_2nd_developer/falysvv/

and later down the thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/e9v48b/how_can_sirius_claim_to_be_bitcoins_2nd_developer/fam2aut/

[molecular]

For what it's worth:  

I'm the guy who went over the blockchain stuff in Satoshi's first cut of the bitcoin code.  Satoshi didn't have a 1MB limit in it. The limit was originally Hal Finney's idea.  Both Satoshi and I objected that it wouldn't scale at 1MB.  Hal was concerned about a potential DoS attack though, and after discussion, Satoshi agreed.  The 1MB limit was there by the time Bitcoin launched.  But all 3 of us agreed that 1MB had to be temporary because it would never scale.

The bolded part (bolded by me) is simply not true.

Why you would assert such a thing I can only speculate (but wont). Maybe you can explain yourself?

The blocksize limit was introduced on July 15th 2010 in this commit: https://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/code/103#diff-3

The 1MB limit certainly wasn't there "by the time Bitcoin launched" unless you mean something other than Jan 2009 around when the first block was mined.

[tvbcof]

Common courtesy would indicate limiting necros' to situations where there is something new and/or worthwhile to say.  But since things are broken open...

I was very dubious about Bitcoin's potential early on mainly because I was NOT aware of the 1MB cap.  I think a lot of people were also not aware of this at the time.  DoS (of various sorts) were a minor one of three main concerns I had.  The other two were related to attacks based on bloat.  I only learned of the limit in the early phases of the blocksize wars as I recall, and breathed a huge sigh of relief when I did.

I have to laugh when I think back to Andresen and Hearn breathlessly crying that Bitcoin had only weeks to live without rolling back Satoshi's limit.  Not unlike Al Gore and Prince Chuck assuring us decades ago that the ice caps would melt within a decade and we were all going to die unless we shut down the global economy.  Forever.

The ice caps are still there, and a decade later I still pay $0.40 cents to move $1,000,000.40 worth of BTC around with minutes of waiting.  This while I can move exactly $0 around via US Bank because I do not possess a U.S. _cell_ phone number which is required by Zelle, and that which the bank put in after I split.  Only on a good day, and with a 3 week waiting period, can my friends make international wire transfers go through.  And they are limited to $20k.

The USD is collapsing against BTC in part because BTC it is quite good, but also because the USD sucks donkey for normal people.  The USD seems to work great for insiders and politicians laundering stolen funds (a-la the Ukraine operation) but it sucks to badly for to many people so I don't see much future for it.