Why i will support bigger blocks - and you should too

[chek2fire]

nice move to suicide.. . They are lunatics or they have gain so much money that they dont care.. I dont know why they cant see the storm coming..

[BitUsher]

give one good reason and why we must give such power to only one person?? What is this?? We all think that bitcoin is a decentralized system and not a system with a central ruler. Why we must change this??

Then underlying assumption that now gavin and hearn are becoming "the rulers of bitcoin" is not true.
The Bitcoin core team consists of EVERYBODY INCLUDING Gavin and so on. The have been discussing for 3 Years now without coming to a solution!! All they do is make an workable suggestion and put it to vote. If 75% agree than this solution is accepted, till the next solution comes. This solution can not be forever simply because 8MB will not be enough for eternity.

AFTER the vote in my world should this should happen: ALL Programmers from core the ones for it and against it come back together (after a couple of beers maybe) continue to work TOGETHER - democracy has decided.

If this is not happening the problem is NOT that Andresen made a suggestion which came to vote, but the ability of the programmers to work in a team. It is a big threat for bitcoin if the core programmers discuss for 3 years and don't come to a solution - it shows that this super consensus oriented culture is not able to adapt to real world conditions. Remember in Evolution its: adapt or die....

Andresen is just showing a way out of this stalemate and with setting the barrier to 75% he shows that he is O.K. with the fact that his suggestion might be rejected...
 

75% is a very low threshold. 95% is the normal threshold for non-controversial soft forks.
Your post appears to suggest that their has been a scalability stalemate for 3 years. In reality there have been great improvements and optimizations in the codebase over the years specifically to address scalability all of which have been done together through consensus as a team. XT marks a point where philosophical and technical differences between 2 of the developers diverged from most of the other developers contributing and working as a team far enough where they created their own repository to bypass working through the normal consensus procedures in core.

The one good thing about XT is that is forcing all the other core devs to focus on coming up with more sophisticated and better solutions to compete with XT.

[omahapoker]

First of all, if miners can chose not to include transactions now, what will stop them from not including spam transactions in bigger blocks?

Second, what will stop them from not including transactions that do not have sufficient fees?

Third, could you imagine how well Visa would be used if you were told you could only swipe your card three or four times a day and not in the same hour?

People who are screaming to not raise the block size cap now, will be the first to complain when their transactions don't fit on blocks anymore and they have to take a number and wait.

Where does it say miners can now drop transactions with XT? as far as I know miners don't have any say on this, it's all in the protocol and the consensus algorithm, not some miner's will to say this transaction goes through and this doesn't that would indeed suck.

Ok maybe I'm wrong. But I was of the understanding that miners have always had the choice to not include transactions in blocks.

This incidentally keeps the freedom of bitcoin free. Nobody is putting restrictions one way or another.

You are right with your understanding. That is why some miners chose to create 1 Transaction blocks. And this block only is the 25 Bitcoin reward for finding the block. They don't want to include other transactions because they want their block small. By doing so they get a small advantage in propagation. Saying that, even when they might have found the block a short time after another miner, they could still outperfom that block and orphan him.

So yes, miners have the full power over which transactions they want to include. You only can hope that another miner includes you when you did not get included because a miner doesn't want your transaction to be included.

[LiteCoinGuy]

give one good reason and why we must give such power to only one person?? What is this?? We all think that bitcoin is a decentralized system and not a system with a central ruler. Why we must change this??

Then underlying assumption that now gavin and hearn are becoming "the rulers of bitcoin" is not true.
The Bitcoin core team consists of EVERYBODY INCLUDING Gavin and so on. The have been discussing for 3 Years now without coming to a solution!! All they do is make an workable suggestion and put it to vote. If 75% agree than this solution is accepted, till the next solution comes. This solution can not be forever simply because 8MB will not be enough for eternity.

AFTER the vote in my world should this should happen: ALL Programmers from core the ones for it and against it come back together (after a couple of beers maybe) continue to work TOGETHER - democracy has decided.

If this is not happening the problem is NOT that Andresen made a suggestion which came to vote, but the ability of the programmers to work in a team. It is a big threat for bitcoin if the core programmers discuss for 3 years and don't come to a solution - it shows that this super consensus oriented culture is not able to adapt to real world conditions. Remember in Evolution its: adapt or die....

Andresen is just showing a way out of this stalemate and with setting the barrier to 75% he shows that he is O.K. with the fact that his suggestion might be rejected...
 

75% is a very low threshold. 95% is the normal threshold for non-controversial soft forks.
Your post appears to suggest that their has been a scalability stalemate for 3 years. In reality there have been great improvements and optimizations in the codebase over the years specifically to address scalability all of which have been done together through consensus as a team. XT marks a point where philosophical and technical differences between 2 of the developers diverged from most of the other developers contributing and working as a team far enough where they created their own repository to bypass working through the normal consensus procedures in core.

The one good thing about XT is that is forcing all the other core devs to focus on coming up with more sophisticated and better solutions to compete with XT.

yes i think that is true. hopefully they will make a decision in the nexts months. some competition could be good at this point.

[CounterEntropy]

75-80% of the hashpower worldwide is for bigger blocks = XT (because there is no other solution at the moment)

This is a highly incorrect and misleading statement. There are many proposals that are supporting bigger blocks, but not the XT way.

i. BIP 100 by Jeff Garzik

ii. BIP 103 by Peter Wuille

iii. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1154536.0 (probably the best one)

I would request you to update OP with these info as well. XT's fundamental document BIP 101 has not taken into account the market pressure. According to the following graph, there is still time left for saturation.

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

[omahapoker]

that is somehow true but when you only have two choices 1 MB or 8 MB and you have to choose (because time is running out), i would take 8MB (so XT sry).

i would like to have 8 MB with core but that is not possible.

Please explain what you mean by "time is running out"?

we already hit that 1 MB limit in a small stresstest. you need time to distribute the new software. it takes months before enough people have updated their software.

when we see an influx of millions of new people, you cant begin with this rollout. you have to be prepared because otherwise transactions will stuck (cost alot!). this is the reason of the XT release.

i would like to see another solution too but 3-4 devs are against all blocksize-changes.

So you want to fork just because we reached the limit one or two times last month?
Take a look at this chart pal: https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size

I guess because of this image:

You see... even when we let it run with 1MB block, at the end of 2016 we will met the dead end of the 1MB block size. Blocks will be full, bitcoin will become an expensive transaction system or useless because risky when you have to fear your transaction doesn't go through.

[omahapoker]

that is somehow true but when you only have two choices 1 MB or 8 MB and you have to choose (because time is running out), i would take 8MB (so XT sry).

i would like to have 8 MB with core but that is not possible.

Please explain what you mean by "time is running out"?

we already hit that 1 MB limit in a small stresstest. you need time to distribute the new software. it takes months before enough people have updated their software.

when we see an influx of millions of new people, you cant begin with this rollout. you have to be prepared because otherwise transactions will stuck (cost alot!). this is the reason of the XT release.

i would like to see another solution too but 3-4 devs are against all blocksize-changes.

So you want to fork just because we reached the limit one or two times last month?
Take a look at this chart pal: https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size

The reason why the big-blockians are calling for an increase in early 2016 is that at the current pace, the network will get saturated in mid-2016, and "traffic jams" will become a recurrent "feature". They claim (and I fully agree) that such state will be disastrous for bitcoin. Thus, that proposal is the same thing as denying the increase: it will result in saturation and traffic jams by mid-2016.

The Blockstream devs openly want that to happen because they believe that a "fee market" is necessary and will somehow make bitcoin better, and that the traffic must be prevented from growing. Delaying the increase until 2017 will lead to that.

Before all it will lead to people using the blockstream lightning network. Which translates to income to those owning it. Well played Sir, i would say. Make bitcoin unuseable and provide the alternative.

Korruption...

[chek2fire]

yeah and for that crap argument is better to give all the power for developing bitcoin to one person. One man to rule a p2p system.. Wake up! Are you blind?

[omahapoker]

Since off chain transactions are more centralized then using the bitcoin blockchain directly, like Coinbase for example. It would be better if everyone could take advantage from the transparency and security that the Bitcoin blockchain provides instead of being “forced” to use third parties.

No one is being forced to use alternative parties. You can use the blockchain but if blocks are full it will come with a fee.
I'm perfectly fine with that because that's how the system is supposed to work.
Haven't you people heard of the expression "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch"?

We can't have "free" transactions. That doesn't work.
There would be no incentive to mine and secure the blockchain.

Go use paypal if you dont know the difference.

I'm not shocked by your knowledge of bitcoin in general at all. I've seen most bitcoinXT bashers are at the same level of intelligence.

Don't you have any better argument than that?
I'm not shocked, pal.

Go use PayPal because I have heard they don't have any fees. 

At the momet i tend to think your username really matches you.

So you think no one is forced to use paypal... let's bitcoin becoming a new mastercard. Fees have to be paid after all. You know all the the hungry employees of mastercard have to get a filled stomach. Only... bitcoin does not have employees, it has computers. And when these computers need to become more cost effective and more cheap then this is the step to do. Not wanting to have everything like it is and making bitcoin broken on the way because... we want to earn the same even with block halving.

I don't even know what you want from bitcoin. It sounds like you completely not get what bitcoins advantages are.

[LiteCoinGuy]

75-80% of the hashpower worldwide is for bigger blocks = XT (because there is no other solution at the moment)

This is a highly incorrect and misleading statement. There are many proposals that are supporting bigger blocks, but not the XT way.

i. BIP 100 by Jeff Garzik

ii. BIP 103 by Peter Wuille

iii. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1154536.0 (probably the best one)

I would request you to update OP with these info as well. XT's fundamental document BIP 101 has not taken into account the market pressure. According to the following graph, there is still time left for saturation.

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

i support BIP 101 - which is nearly the same as XT. but there is no consensus about BIP 101 at the moment, so i support XT.

time is running out in 2016:

[BNO]

75% is a very low threshold. 95% is the normal threshold for non-controversial soft forks.

This shows this "super-consensus" oriented thinking which will the gravestone of bitcoin.
In a real existing democracy there is nothing like 95% approval rate. This are childish fantasies from people who don't have experience about how democracies work. No democracy in the world has approval rates over 90%. This kind of rates you only get in a stalineque dictarship like the beloved Führer of North Korea has.

Think about it this way: making the barrier high for changes means you are not evolving fast, you just the same all the time.
You think amazon of 1998 would have become amazon of today if 95% of the developers would have had to agree on every little change - i can hardly imagine that..

In my opinion 75% is much to high either you should change it to 51%. Many decision - important decision - are made in democracies around the world every day and the usually don't have approval rates of even 75%, let alone 95% (which is purely theoretical).

The thing is this: if the simple majority of hashing power is malcious bitcoin is screwed anyway, what good is it then to insist that a protocoll change needs more than that?

And for me the biggest threat for bitcoin is not that it changes - it has to change to evolve - it is that it's not changing fast enough...

[slaveforanunnak1]

I will NEVER join XT! I would rather run core with 10% of the hashing power and I'll wait for more confirmations!
 

[DooMAD]

yeah and for that crap argument is better to give all the power for developing bitcoin to one person. One man to rule a p2p system.. Wake up! Are you blind?

If the network does agree that larger blocks are the way forward, there's nothing to stop the Core team from releasing a Core client supporting larger blocks and continuing to develop.  It doesn't "give all the power to one person" because anyone can create their own client.  Likewise, if the network doesn't agree to larger blocks, it doesn't "give all the power" to the core developers either.  Developers are not an authority.  They can certainly give advice with their technical experience, but they can't force changes on a network that doesn't agree.  The network would continue to function if there were 500 different developers with 500 different Bitcoin clients as long as those clients can all follow the same blockchain. 

Developers do not have power.  Those securing the network make the decisions.

[bitcoinmasterlord]

Are the core devs even doing anything about this?  Or is Gavin the only one being pro active?  Is the core devs policy to wait until the mempool is permanently backlogged then rush out a fix?

FUD.

How about you read BIP100 and BIP102 before spreading wrong information around here. People tend to take it seriously without doing their own research. Essentially the core developers are also planing to increase the limit however their approach is different and not related to XT.
As I've stated this multiple times: supporting bigger blocks does not necessarily mean that you support XT. I for one, support bigger blocks but do not support XT nor Mike Hearn at all and neither should you.

BIP 100:

Protocol changes proposed:
Hard fork to remove 1MB block size limit.
Simultaneously, add a new soft fork limit of 2MB.
Schedule the hard fork on testnet for September 1, 2015.
Schedule the hard fork on bitcoin main chain for December 11, 2015.
Default miner block size becomes 1MB (easily changeable by miner at any time, as today).
Changing the 2MB limit is accomplished in a manner similar to BIP 34, a one­way lock­in upgrade with a 12,000 block (3 month) threshold.

Nice of you to delete my answer and replace it with "FUD.". I really had to check if i wrote this.

And what do you say? I never said that all developers want no blocksize rise. I consider the 2MB solution nonsense since it will bring nothing than a short timeout until the next fork has to be done.

And for what reason? Right, to hold the fees high.

Sorry but that is no solution to me. Telling me that this opinion is fud is so... stupid.

Though maybe you mixed me with someone other. I for one know that developers are divided and yes, you don't need to support XT to support a blocksize raise. Though i want real solutions. Not something that will bitcoin make less useable only to see that the users go to some altcoin that is developed by some of the core devs.

Maybe you should start to know what others think before assuming you know it and attacking them because of your wrong assumptions.

[chek2fire]

If you dont like how bitcoin works and it decentralized system and if you want to give the rule power to only one person why you dont create an altcoin and isntead of that you try to hijack Bitcoin?

[bitcoinmasterlord]

Bitcoin without a block size limit could handle everything. Only because this limit was implemented we became problems. We easily could fight the "bloating" by implementing output related fees.

According to the chart there is still a limit when block size reaches 8GB, so it still doesn't scale...

Right. It doesn't scale. That's why i'm for a complete drop of the limit. It was considered temporary anyway to restrict the grow of the blockchain in the beginning.

And you can see that the spam problem is there with a limit. It was not there when the limit was far away. So there is no reason that then suddenly spam would create huge blocks. No reason for a spammer to do that.

So you are saying Bitcoin doesn't work now? I wonder who is spreading the FUD now?

What are you speaking about? Where did i wrote something like that? You were the one who claimed we would need an additional network so that bitcoin could become a high fee transaction system. I would not be surprised if you actually would be one of these devs with goal conflict.

I believe that if there is demand for more transactions the market will find a way to deal with it. Either by a increase of fees or something like the lightning network.
I never said "we need the lightning network". 

Right. The market over all found already a solution. Mastercard, Visa and so all are expensive so people switch to bitcoin.

So now you come and explain, "Let's make bitcoin expensive. People will find an alternative." Surely that is a clever plan.

You said this:

So we need to wait for a third party network to make bitcoin work. Seriously? 

I interpret that as you don't think Bitcoin is working properly now?

You interprete wrong. You claim that the fee for bitcoin transactions need to be so high that people start to use other solutions. So for you bitcoin is not the solution. It only will work with altcoins that fix it.

Why using privately run third party solutions when we have the original. Only because some greedy persons want to break bitcoin for their own good doesn't mean that all bitcoiners will support them.

And about massive block chain grow do you speak? You speak like the blocks are full constantly. They aren't. And spamming only works because the fees are increasing then. So how do you get the idea that there would be an uncontrolled grow without a block size limit? Where should that come from suddenly?

I never claimed that the blocks will be full constantly, but obviously the block chain will increase in size since people will be able to make transactions without fees.

And? I do those transactions all the time. Does this lead to no fees happening on the network anymore? Surely not.

Maybe the market don't want to be forced using lightning networks?

And this adaption... it has led to enough confusion already. Didn't you read all the threads about newbies and even established members that got their transaction stuck because of spamming suddenly started? That surely will help bitcoin adoption.

About the options... that's mostly right. We often enough only have the choice to use the less worst option. Because the best option, that you think it is, doesn't have the needed support yet.

If you don't like the lightning network feel free to deveolpe a better alternative. The market won't force you to use lightning network.
And people complaining about transactions getting stuck don't know how bitcoin works - they are under the impression that they should be able to use bitcoin without any fees.
Fortunately it seems like they have adapted and increased their fees since I don't see any people complaining now.

I don't have an aversion against the lightning network. I have an aversion when the owners of that network try to make bitcoin worse only to make users switch to the lightning network. And momentarely it looks like that.

And NO, i got transactions stuck too. Only because i did not notice that the spammers started again. And you very well still can be caught when you send your transaction in the wrong moment. Then how well will you think about that fast transaction system that lets your transaction hang in the air for days?

And no, they don't complain anymore because the spam attacks stopped for now.

By the way... you contradict yourself. In your race to get your confirmation through you will always have losers when the blocks are full. Someone will always have the transaction with the smallest fee. Even when the fee is high really.

And only because you can send zero fee transactions doesn't mean that you will do that all the time or that everyone wants to max out that system. The reality proofs already that this is not the case.

[chek2fire]

and who he think he is this guy Gavin and he want this power for himself. Is nothing anymore for bitcoin and bitcoin can survive without him. I think he has bid idea for himself

[hdbuck]

fuck you oliver janssens aka litecoinguy.
go crawl back in that pityful foundation you waited so long to get a seat at.

and kiss fuck hearn and the crappy lighthouse business you are doing together.
lol yet another sketchy fundraising website.
and hearn ripped you off how much again to 'finance' this shit?


ps: trying to erase your racist BS too uh..

http://reason.com/blog/2013/09/25/belgian-racist-uses-spurious-copyright-c

https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=olivier+janssens

[bitcoinmasterlord]

Why would users care if their transacations went over the blockchain or not? All they want is to transfer money.

*lol* That's one of the funniest statements you gave in this thread. Sure, we only want to transfer money, let's use paypal or western union maybe. I think you don't get it. Bitcoin is the currency and i don't think that the majority of bitcoins want bitcoin to be split into a bitcoin high amount transfer system and some altcoin bum amount transfer system.

I don't think you understand what I'm getting at. Of course it's in the users best interest to use Bitcoin over fiat. But how many users know that?
What you want is mass adoption right? Do you think everyone is aware of the dangers of FIAT?
Fact is most users don't care and "they just want to transfer money" they don't know the difference between FIAT and Bitcoin.

But why do you write that? Yes, most aren't aware. But bitcoin will become used more and more when people realize it's usefullness. That doesn't mean that we should give up and make bitcoin something different.

Bitcoin will get used more and more.

And this 1MB blocksize is even a risk preventing that. Imagine amazon would tomorrow directly accept bitcoins. Big marketing involved. You know what happens? Bitcoin will be killed. The blocksize limit will make it useless. And all the interested persons will spread the hate about money they "lost". The low speed and nothing works.

No, bitcoin NEEDS to be prepared for new users and transactions.

And why do we need to increase transacations to increase mining fees? When we could just increase the fees?

I think the greed is speaking out of you clearly. Just increase the fee... it doesn't matter what effect that has on bitcoin adoption. Guess it would be great for the lightning network owners... higher fee means more customers and that means more earnings for the ligthning network owners.

Well, i'm glad we aren't all lightning network owners.

Higher fees doesn't automatically mean higher profits for lightning network.
There are other side chains. Change tip being one example. And as I have said before there is nothing stopping you or anyone else from creating a alternative to the lightning network.

But a big chunk will flow in that direction for sure. I mean they created that network to take away transactions from bitcoin.

Again... i don't have anything against that network. Only that some people with might, remind me on politics, have their own agenda and seem to make it bad for us.

*lol* You speak like you never used fiat. Yes, you can use fiat without fees. And yes, bitcoin started to replace a good chunk of it.

Naming legitimate transactions spam is ridiculous. But i think i won't get emotional. Your interests shine through pretty clearly.

Fiat without fees? Ever heard of inflation?

Inflation is practically a fee on holding it. Not on spending it. If you spend all your fiat then you don't pay a fee anymore or at all.

[BNO]

Ars Technica reveals the cleary shady motivations of people AGAINST XT:
http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/08/op-ed-why-is-bitcoin-forking/