Anti-fork guys: What is YOUR proposal?

[ArticMine]

Does it now make sense why Gavin picked 20 MB? He did the math, something the proponents of keeping the 1 MB blocksize limit have simply chosen not to do.

Can you do the math on how much bigger the already bloated blockchain will become? Its size is already impractical for a new user who just wants to use BTC to get around having to use PayPal, Western Union etc.

You will be encouraging reliance on centralization if you increase the limit. Lets face it: bitcoin will never come close to being as fast or convenient as a credit or debit card. There are some niches where it will continue to be an improvement upon pre-existing payment methods, but making the blockchain potentially 20x larger in size is just dumb.

Why not a 5-fold increase to 5mb first instead of going straight for the 20x increase?

A 5-fold increase would have been appropriate in 2013. One of the reasons that people use SPV Bitcoin wallets is because many people use mobile devices that are so heavily infected with DRM that one cannot run a full Bitcoin client. IOS being the perfect example, since Apple uses DRM to censor Bitcoin until early 2014. The device may be perfectly capable and have the CPU, memory, storage bandwith etc to run Bitcoin but the DRM prevents it. This is a serious centralization problem but it has nothing to do blocksize limits.  For example one cannot run a full Bitcoin client on Windows 8.1 RT regardless of the capabilities of the device or the blocksize because the DRM in the device censors it.

The key to decentralization in Bitcoin is to make sure that the enthusiast / hobbyist can run a full Bitcoin node using hardware and software that person controls.

Bitcoin easily beat a credit card or debit card for transaction where 1) The parties are not in each other's presence (so cash is not an option) 2) Either the sender cannot get a credit / debit card or the receiver does not have a merchant account. This is a huge market that furthermore cannot be served by the likes of Coinbase. Those transactions have to be on the blockchain.

Edit: Storage is even less of an issue than bandwidth.  My .bitcoin directory is 37GB. 20x this becomes 740 GB. One can now easily purchase 4TB and 8TB drives. In the horizon there are 10TB+ SSD drives etc. It is the same issue as with bandwidth. One simple cannot in perpetuity constrain  Bitcoin to current technology.

[nutildah]

The key to decentralization in Bitcoin is to make sure that the enthusiast / hobbyist can run a full Bitcoin node using hardware and software that person controls.

Yes, which becomes less and less possible the bigger the blockchain becomes. So why jump straight to a 20-fold increase in potential blockchain size?

Bitcoin easily beat a credit card or debit card for transaction where 1) The parties are not in each other's presence (so cash is not an option) 2) Either the sender cannot get a credit / debit card or the reciver does not have a merchant account. This is a huge market that furthermore cannot be served by the likes of Coinbase. Those transactions have to be on the blockchain.

Nope, not in terms of speed. There's no faster payment method than swiping a credit card. Unless you decrease block lengths, bitcoin transactions will not catch up.

[nutildah]

To answer OP's question, Meni Rosenfeld just published this post today. Definitely worth a read, especially if you consider yourself a pro:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1078521.0

[ArticMine]

The key to decentralization in Bitcoin is to make sure that the enthusiast / hobbyist can run a full Bitcoin node using hardware and software that person controls.

Yes, which becomes less and less possible the bigger the blockchain becomes. So why jump straight to a 20-fold increase in potential blockchain size?

Bitcoin easily beat a credit card or debit card for transaction where 1) The parties are not in each other's presence (so cash is not an option) 2) Either the sender cannot get a credit / debit card or the reciver does not have a merchant account. This is a huge market that furthermore cannot be served by the likes of Coinbase. Those transactions have to be on the blockchain.

Nope, not in terms of speed. There's no faster payment method than swiping a credit card. Unless you decrease block lengths, bitcoin transactions will not catch up.

I disagree the fastest in person payment method is cash. Chip and pin credit card transactions and debit card transactions are way slower. Tap credit card payment methods approach cash in speed but then the merchant accepts the "stolen credit card risk" which is worse than a 0 confirmation XBT transaction. Have you ever been to a restaurant with a group of say 20 people are paying the bill with debit? I have and it can easily take 20 min to an hour. Enough for up to six XBT confirmations on the blockchain.

[Unbelive]

I'm anti fork an my proposal is to just fire Gavin and be happy thereafter.
And he should take his fanclub with him!

Exactly this is what OP is saying.

You are against why? And what is your solution then to solve the problem?

None at all? Then leave to decide to those that have them.

[nutildah]

I disagree the fastest in person payment method is cash.

LOL I agree. I forgot about that one.

[Stephen Gornick]

There's about 3.2 billion reasons why a larger block altenative isn't already launched.  The assumption is that this change to the protocol should be accepted by existing Bitcoin users, miners, exchanges, wallets, etc. and thus the $3.2 market cap would transfer in its entirety to the hardfork side.     But this Bitcoin-XT (specifically, the change to support larger blocks) should simply be considered as being a new coin -- one with initial distribution (premine) such that 1 UTXO exists in the new coin for each UTXO that existed in Bitcoin at the time of the hard fork.

The only way for the new coin to have any chance of having an impact is if it captures all the existing traction and momentum that Bitcoin has received to-date.

Sure, that's a lofty goal.   Essentially, those pushing this new coin (BTX) want to gamble with our bitcoins (BTCs).

Maybe the solution is to simply treat this new coin  .... as a new coin, difficulty 1, and no premine.

[MicroGuy]

I think it's important to consider who Satoshi entrusted with the Alert Keys. Basically, he was giving Gavin his full endorsement with that gesture.

Gavin is like our Scotty, he's in charge of the Bitcoin engine room. Allow him to do his job and everything will be fine.

[celestio]

I think it's important to consider who Satoshi entrusted with the Alert Keys. Basically, he was giving Gavin his full endorsement with that gesture.

Gavin is like our Scotty, he's in charge of the Bitcoin engine room. Allow him to do his job and everything will be fine.

Decentralization>Centralization. There should be a team making decisions, not a sole person.

[MicroGuy]

I think it's important to consider who Satoshi entrusted with the Alert Keys. Basically, he was giving Gavin his full endorsement with that gesture.

Gavin is like our Scotty, he's in charge of the Bitcoin engine room. Allow him to do his job and everything will be fine.

Decentralization>Centralization. There should be a team making decisions, not a sole person.

The only way to make Bitcoin purely decentralized would be to integrate a client voting mechanism. The system now requires a trusted developer with veto power.

[tokeweed]

I'm not anti nor pro the change.  But I think if block size stays the same, off chain transactions might help with scalability.  Not to mention the blockchain's growing size.  

I guess it's also time to look at other technologies like Ripple or OT...  Just my 2c.

[Amph]

I think it's important to consider who Satoshi entrusted with the Alert Keys. Basically, he was giving Gavin his full endorsement with that gesture.

Gavin is like our Scotty, he's in charge of the Bitcoin engine room. Allow him to do his job and everything will be fine.

Decentralization>Centralization. There should be a team making decisions, not a sole person.

how is having a team less centralized than having one dev? i still see it as a centralized, banks are centralized but they are not controlled by one user...

[7venCodes]

Long term, 20MB isn't going to be anywhere near enough block space to encompass full consumer adoption. This wont be the only fork in the road...I see 2-3 more by 2020.

[ebliever]

Regarding the OP...Easy.. Make users increase their transaction fee to compete to be one of the few who get into the next block (priority goes to the highest transaction fees).  

Exactly. Jack up the price on a product, throttle it's capacity, and let the competition pass it. A great way to kill bitcoin.

[Muhammed Zakir]

Why do you guys go aginst this fork?

Bear in mind 20mb is a LIMIT. We are not anywhere near having enough transaction demand to fill 20mb blocks anytime soon.

But even if we hit 20mb tomorrow (won't happen), anyone can run a full node in pruning node, in which case old data is deleted and all you need is the UTXO set + a bit. So that's one or two gigabytes, hardly a big deal.

[neurotypical]

Regarding the OP...Easy.. Make users increase their transaction fee to compete to be one of the few who get into the next block (priority goes to the highest transaction fees).  That way, not only does the little guy get to keep his node (when he would have had to shut it down due to increased expenses following this centralization hard fork), but he might be able to make money mining again as the transaction fees increase making it valuable for the little guy to mine (just like he used to do back in the glory days of bitcoin).  But that solution (among many others I have brought up) brings decentralization back into bitcoin (and we want that), but since we are not in control here, then we will not get what we want (profitable mining again for the little guy).  Instead we will receive centralization.

Of course, my simple and elegant solution is not the best for the Gavinode, and therefore will not be implemented.  All we can do as bitcoin holders is sit and watch as our monetary system becomes more centralized with each and every (TPS increase for your "benefit") hard fork.  There is value in the bitcoin transactions, but it is not for you to be able to mine.  By keeping the transaction fees low (more TPS but cheap transactions instead of fewer expensive transactions), Gavin ensures that only the big miners can compete for fees and block rewards, and therefore all mining profits must go to the Gavinode:

It's not decentralised or even democratic. And it will even less be so if people switch to Gavins' fork.

If PEOPLE choose to run nodes on XT, then XT will be the strongest chain. If people stick with Core, core will continue being the main chain. That's all. The devs can do whatever. At the end of the day, Bitcoin is nothing without the people running nodes. The people will decide what solution they prefer.

How many actual people (or humans) are left running full nodes currently?  I thought that only large ASIC/server farms were doing that now.  This proposal centralizes bitcoin even more because it makes it more expensive to run a node meaning that it favors the large mining cartels.  This is a centralization coup to control all the future development.  If Gavin can get the big boys to switch, then he controls the network, because it would obviously be easier to get them to switch again next time.  Because with each centralization fork (TPS scalability increase), there will be fewer and fewer nodes to convince to switch protocols each time until there is just one giant GVINODE!!!  At that point, the only person he has to convince to make a change to the protocol will be himself, which is incidentally the way BitShares works for every user (not just the king).  Every user has to convince themselves what fork they want to support, then they vote their conscious, and the blockchain counts the votes and instantly implements the consensus.

Gavin is not just promoting his proposed bill, he is fast tracking it through Congress and will sign it into law weather you like it or not.  He controls the protocol that mints your money.  Of course he would not be so audacious as to raise the 21 million coin limit today, but when he controls the Gavinode, then pure power is just a mouse click away.

Wow....first the TPP, then the Freedom Act, now the Gavinode.

Is bitcoin more centralized today than it was 2 years ago?  We continue down this path toward centralization for the perceived benefit of "scalability"

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-02/americas-biggest-secret-wikileaks-raising-100000-reward-leaks-tpp

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-02/freedom-1-0-surveillance-state-maybe-senate-passes-un-amended-usa-freedom-act-bill

The battle for decentralization is never ending.  Good thing that we live in a community where our voices are heard and our votes are counted!

"Making the protocol process transactions with the largest fees first" is a fair solution that maintains our decentralization, however, we do not have any control over what developments will occur to our bitcoin protocol now, and will only have less control over our money in the future.  Is this what Satoshi envisioned?

There are many political bitcoin laws that can be passed to bring back the glory days of decentralized and profitable mining for all, but these laws will not be passed because we cannot vote for them.

Yes I am against this proposed centralization fork because I don't mind bitcoin being digital gold (valuable and costing a few cents extra to transmit).  Let another coin be the highly circulated silver digital currency used for microtransactions.  I go for the gold!

Gold is not good for microtransactions, but it is the best store of wealth.  Unless we adopt a more radical hard fork, then we cannot have both:

Of course we could have our cake and eat it too.  This is 2015, and it is more than possible, it is proven (but that would mean that we would have to become more wealthy than we were at the bitcoin peak in 2013)(and by the looks of it, nobody here likes money or wants to get rich and quit their day jobs):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1078009.0;all

Upping the transaction fees has a backslash: It will centralize Bitcoin in the sense of it will become a more and more elitist payment system as fees goes up, to the point only the wealthy can use it, when in fact Bitcoin is at it's best when operating in severely impoverished countries without banking infrastructures. You don't want to make the fees higher because those people would really suffer from it even if for us is not that much.

[fatguyyyyy]

Right now Bitcoin works fine .. if it's working, don't f*k with it

[DooMAD]

Upping the transaction fees has a backslash: It will centralize Bitcoin in the sense of it will become a more and more elitist payment system as fees goes up, to the point only the wealthy can use it, when in fact Bitcoin is at it's best when operating in severely impoverished countries without banking infrastructures. You don't want to make the fees higher because those people would really suffer from it even if for us is not that much.

Indeed, this is why the anti-fork crowd are campaigning so hard.  That's exactly what they want.  Guaranteed security for the whales, but any users making smaller transactions are forced to introduce risk, either by being forced off-chain, or gambling that the fee they've elected to include is sufficient to make it into the next block once they start to fill up.  All those greedy one-percenter-wanabees are welcome to stay behind if they like.  The masses won't support a system that doesn't support them, so it stands to reason that the outcome of a fork is highly likely (if not inevitable, perhaps).  The fork ensures that fees remain reasonably small (but may still increase slightly), while still maintaining a healthy income for miners.  It also ensures that we stay true to our current ethos that Bitcoin is open to anyone to use and take part, not restricted to the wealthy and privileged.  The only people who are genuinely afraid of allowing the market to make its own decision, are the ones campaigning against the fork and for purely selfish reasons. 

[SaltySpitoon]

I still haven't figured out why there is even an opposition. How much larger to increase the blocksize is certainly open for debate, but it is undeniable that at this point, it does need to happen, be it to 2mb or 20mb. Gavin's point of increasing straight to 20mb is so that they won't have to go through this again next year when 2mb is getting near its cap, which is understandable, but I'm sure there would be a way to start off at 2mb or whatever and increase it automatically at set blocks.

The "I'm only against this because I don't like how Gavin is going about this" is annoying. I'm not a Gavin fanboi, I just support whoever is right at the moment. If you work with a team of people who are unwilling to work with you, and you feel strongly enough that you won't drop the issue, you do what Gavin is doing. Who cares if a dev team has 1 person or 30 people, as long as Bitcoin users decide what fork to use, it isn't centralization. A fork wouldn't even be needed if everyone just started working on a workable compromise.

Bloat isn't the issue here, bandwidth could be an issue at 20mb, but again, the dev team could work out some feasible increase to satisfy everyone. There are already measures against dust transactions, such as minimum transaction sizes and transactions fees and such. If you don't want to fork the chain, you need to smoothly roll into the changes. If too much time is spent arguing, and we hit the 1mb cap before a fork is unavoidable.

[ArticMine]

Bandwidth has followed Nielsen's law http://www.nngroup.com/articles/law-of-bandwidth/ of 50% growth per year. If one starts with 1 MB at the start of 2009 then the equivalent amount in mid 2016 is 21 MB. What is needed is not just an increase to 20 MB but also an ongoing increase at a rate that is a significant fraction of 50%. I understand that Gavin was talking around 20% annual compound rate of increase.