#Blocksize Survey

[flix]

The Bitcoin Network will probably reach the 7 tps level in 2016 at current growth rates. With a maximum block size of 1MB this will force an increase in fees and stress the network, unless the rules are changed to allow larger blocks.

Here is a summary of several major proposals by the core developers on how to solve this issue:

For near-term increase:
Gavin Andresen: Currently favors "8MB very soon, then automatic double every two years till it hits 8GB in distant future", aka BIP101. Also finds Jeff Garzik's BIP100 (see below) acceptable.
[INTERVIEW] https://youtu.be/B8l11q9hsJM
Mike Hearn: Agrees with Gavin on BIP101. Currently working on implementing the increase in an alternative client, Bitcoin XT, to provide full node operators with a real choice.  
[INTERVIEW]  https://youtu.be/8JmvkyQyD8w
Jeff Garzik: Favors "8MB after miner negotiation and a delay period before enforcement, stepping up/down on maxblocksize possible after with similar miner voting, absolute upper limit for the hard fork at 32MB", aka BIP100. Also proposed "2MB immediately and nothing further", aka BIP102, as an emergency stopgap in case adoption takes off, fees ratchet up and the sudden ecosystem meltdown puts further growth in danger.

For very conservative increase:
Pieter Wuille: "First increase scheduled at 2017 (to ~1.04MB, I believe), then automatic increase some 17% per year till 2GB in distant future", aka "Draft BIP103" (nominally un-numbered).
Luke-jr: Finds Pieter's proposal an acceptable compromise, though generally favors smaller blocks, occasionally expressing views that even 1MB blocks are too big.

Against increase until "something X is implemented":
Adam Back: Proposed "Extension blocks", aka a sidechain-lite, that allows migration to bigger blocks with only a soft fork. Also favors only migrating when sidechain tech is ready, against hard-forks in general.
[PODCAST] http://a16z.com/2015/09/02/a16z-podcast-hard-forks-hard-choices-for-bitcoin/  [VID] https://youtu.be/wYHyR2E5Pic

Against increase in near-to-medium term future:
Gregory Maxwell: Against hard-forks in general, also against bigger blocks in the short-to-medium term future.
Mark Friedenbach: Against hard-forks in general, also against bigger blocks in the short-to-medium term future.

Staying neutral:
Wladimir J. van der Lann (Core lead dev): "You guys wake me up when you have a consensus, not gonna merge anything till then" (not actual words)

===================================================================================================

Positions of major miners, companies:                 http://blocksize.org/

Bitcoin Consensus Census               https://bitcoin.consider.it/

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[flix]

Of course the devs don't have the final word... many other stakeholders will get to vote on what actually happens, especially in a hard fork where any holder of BTC will get to choose sides. Miners, nodes, wallet providers, investors... all will have their say.

Still, a broad consensus is very desirable as a contested hard fork will cause a great deal of turmoil. A 50-50 Bitcoin civil war would be a horrible scenario, causing volatility and uncertainty for many months or even years.

With a bit of leadership and consensus among developers, it should be much easier to reach a meaningful (90%?) consensus in the Bitcoin community which makes the hard fork as smooth as possible.

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

Of course the devs don't have the final word... many other stakeholders will get to vote on what actually happens, especially in a hard fork where any holder of BTC will get to choose sides. Miners, nodes, wallet providers, investors... all will have their say.

Still, a broad consensus is very desirable as a contested hard fork will cause a great deal of turmoil. A 50-50 Bitcoin civil war would be a horrible scenario, causing volatility and uncertainty for many months or even years.

With a bit of leadership and consensus among developers, it should be much easier to reach a meaningful (90%?) consensus in the Bitcoin community which makes the hard fork as smooth as possible.

There's no civil war scenario, as long as the protocol works is all that matters, people can fight all they want. Maybe it will take a dead end scenario were we are pushed to do something to reach a consensus.

[mindrust]

I can do with any scenario, as long as everyone's opinion got considered. Because i am  someone who got no idea about the blocksize but also a true democrat who respects the others opinions.

[flix]

Of course the devs don't have the final word... many other stakeholders will get to vote on what actually happens, especially in a hard fork where any holder of BTC will get to choose sides. Miners, nodes, wallet providers, investors... all will have their say.

Still, a broad consensus is very desirable as a contested hard fork will cause a great deal of turmoil. A 50-50 Bitcoin civil war would be a horrible scenario, causing volatility and uncertainty for many months or even years.

With a bit of leadership and consensus among developers, it should be much easier to reach a meaningful (90%?) consensus in the Bitcoin community which makes the hard fork as smooth as possible.

There's no civil war scenario, as long as the protocol works is all that matters, people can fight all they want. Maybe it will take a dead end scenario were we are pushed to do something to reach a consensus.

Well... if we have a 50-50 split between Bitcoin and Bitcoin XT, or any other "small Bitcoin" vs "big Bitcoin"... and both currencies have enough traction there will be a period of time in which both coins fight for the Bitcoin name. Of course nobody is forced to choose sides... but keeping coins in the losing chain means a lot of lost value... also confusion among wallets, users and markets as to which Bitcoin they are using can lead to a lot of trouble. Much more than we have seen with soft forks in the past.

Whereas if there is consensus... it is just a matter of "everybody update their software" and trauma can be kept to a minimum.

[Lauda]

Before I could cast my vote, I needed to learn something new. This is the first time that I've heard about extension blocks, and I'm fairly interested because it only requires as soft fork. Adam kind of proposed one optional 10 MB (changeable) blockchain that synchronizes with the 1 MB blockchain (i.e "sidechain-lite"). However, Gavin has made a point that this might bring 'too much unnecessary complexity'. 10 MB extension blocks are pretty much as dangerous as 10 MB main blocks.
Pieter Wuillie and Luke-jr have weird mindsets. The network is now having trouble from time to time with the amount of transactions. How can 1 MB blocks be even too big?

From my perspective, even with sidechains/lightning network/something else there will come a time where 1 MB blocks are not enough. Forking in the future is a terrible idea. A increase should be done as soon as possible (after all negotiations, coding, testing, consensus have been dealt with) to leave room for the future. I hardly doubt that we can do any damage if we increase it to X amount.
Considering the proposals on the table I would say, BIP100 seems the most reasonable one.

[flix]

I don't think that it will be possible to do another hard fork in 2017 and beyond. Once Bitcoin reaches 30-50 million users (of which 3-5 million will be frequent users) hard forks will be almost impossible and solutions will need to be built on layers above the main Bitcoin protocol.

Because of this, I feel very strongly that any solution should be permanent. It should also be flexible enough to adapt to rapidly changing user growth. If Bitcoin adoption follows the Twitter pattern and goes from 30 to 300 million users in 4 years... the blocksize limit should automatically adjust.

The way that the difficulty mechanism has been able to adjust to multiple scenarios (slow growth, exponential growth, decline, medium growth) is IMHO the ideal to aim for with maxblocksize.  https://blockchain.info/charts/difficulty

Failing that, I would be happy with BIP100 or BIP101.

...but whatever happens, a 90% consensus among miners, exchanges and wallet providers is an absolute must-have. I don't want to have 2 types of Bitcoin in my wallets for any extended period of time.

[flix]

Another reason to do the fork soon, is that after the next reward halving (est.2017) it will be much harder to convince miners to accept low tx fees. Right now fees are a tiny part of their income compared to the 25BTC reward... in effect all BTC holders are currently paying miners via inflation. As new money creation declines, fees will have to pay for the network.

...but it is better for everyone if fees become a major source of income for miners at 50 million users and 1M daily txs than earlier. Scale must come first.

Social media companies (like Twitter and Facebook) that delayed revenue generation until they reached massive scale and network effects are a good example.

[Pk880058]

Another reason to do the fork soon, is that after the next reward halving (est.2017) it will be much harder to convince miners to accept low tx fees. Right now fees are a tiny part of their income compared to the 25BTC reward... in effect all BTC holders are currently paying miners via inflation. As new money creation declines, fees will have to pay for the network.

I think that the fees we give for transaction becomes the part of the pool's income and not of the miners.
Isn't that right?

[LiteCoinGuy]

BIP101. Gavin Andresen. Let us go.

(Jeffs idea is "just" a workaround.)

[flix]

BIP101. Gavin Andresen. Let us go.

(Jeffs idea is "just" a workaround.)

Sure, Jeff and Gavin are mostly in agreement anyway...

[Lauda]

BIP101. Gavin Andresen. Let us go.

(Jeffs idea is "just" a workaround.)

Sure, Jeff and Gavin are mostly in agreement anyway...

Actually it is not just a workaround. "miner negotiation and a delay period before enforcement" is actually very important one wants to get this done right and with consensus. If they want to force the blocksize increase, then we can just skip this part.
Either BIP100 or BIP101 would be a good place to start. The question is when?
The 2 MB proposal is BIP102 and should not be confused with BIP100.

[LiteCoinGuy]

BIP101. Gavin Andresen. Let us go.

(Jeffs idea is "just" a workaround.)

Sure, Jeff and Gavin are mostly in agreement anyway...

Actually it is not just a workaround. "miner negotiation and a delay period before enforcement" is actually very important one wants to get this done right and with consensus. If they want to force the blocksize increase, then we can just skip this part.
Either BIP100 or BIP101 would be a good place to start. The question is when?

thanks  . i thought that jeff made a proposal for  2 MB blocks just because we need more time.

iam still in favor with gavins vision.

[unamis76]

Was going to vote BIP 101, but since 2 options are allowed, voted 101 and 100. BIP101 is the best proposal, but it should adopt BIP100 block increase/decrease mechanism and final block size to be perfect.

Here's an interesting link I found on the issue.

[Kazimir]

Consensus is WAY more important than whatever particular solution it's gonna be.

Increasing blocksize now, increasing blocksize gradually over time in the near future, lowering the average block time, all fine with me. Bitcoin should remain functional like it has been the past 6.5 years.

[flix]

Consensus is WAY more important than whatever particular solution it's gonna be.

Increasing blocksize now, increasing blocksize gradually over time in the near future, lowering the average block time, all fine with me. Bitcoin should remain functional like it has been the past 6.5 years.

Agree completely. Any change must have overwhelming consensus.

But consensus can be built over time, and the way to do so is to have an extended and very public discussion of the issue. We still have at least 6 months before the problems become urgent. We should make the most of that time to get each dev to explain their position very clearly, including its consequences and meaning for the future of Bitcoin.

[Pain84]

Pieter Wuillie and Luke-jr have weird mindsets. The network is now having trouble from time to time with the amount of transactions. How can 1 MB blocks be even too big?

They consider it too big when viewing it from a decentralization point of view. Even at 1MB, mining is centralized, full node count continues to drop drastically every year, the recent fork revealed that majority of hashpower was SPV mining, meaning they were blindly building blocks without even checking if txns were valid! They consider decentralization the upmost important property of Bitcoin because that is the ONLY 1 thing that sets it apart from any other currency today. Their view is that once you lose decentralization, Bitcoin becomes just another currency, ie. vulnerable to manipulation, censorship, inflation like other currencies. With regards to too many txns for 1MB, they can all still work via offchain DBs like coinbase/changetip (just as much of the financial system functions today, only inter-bank settlements are cleared with the central bank) or more promisingly Lightning which has the added benefit of being trustless and instant confirmation.

In short, their view is that bitcoin should not risk decentralization to allow onchain txns for everyone and everything. All of that can be done on higher layers.

[Lauda]

They consider decentralization the upmost important property of Bitcoin because that is the ONLY 1 thing that sets it apart from any other currency today.
-snip-
In short, their view is that bitcoin should not risk decentralization to allow onchain txns for everyone and everything. All of that can be done on higher layers.

You're trying to tell me that Bitcoin is a decentralized, government issued currency?   Your post has too much wrong in it and I'm afraid that if we try to discuss it, we would start going off topic.
Mining won't be more centralized if the blocksize is 1, 2, 4, X MB. I just do not see the correlation there. The node count will increase once pruning is fully implemented, however the number of full nodes will be reduced.

Consensus is WAY more important than whatever particular solution it's gonna be.

Increasing blocksize now, increasing blocksize gradually over time in the near future, lowering the average block time, all fine with me. Bitcoin should remain functional like it has been the past 6.5 years.

People can be easily manipulated into consenting to the wrong solutions. I do agree that consensus is important, but not that much over a valid solution.

[flix]

With regards to too many txns for 1MB, they can all still work via offchain DBs like coinbase/changetip (just as much of the financial system functions today, only inter-bank settlements are cleared with the central bank) or more promisingly Lightning which has the added benefit of being trustless and instant confirmation.

In short, their view is that bitcoin should not risk decentralization to allow onchain txns for everyone and everything. All of that can be done on higher layers.

I agree that decentralisation is important.

I agree that not all transactions need to be on-chain. There are other solutions. (Although off-chain txs just move the centralisation elsewhere)

However there has to be a meaningful percentage of on-chain txs. Otherwise you lose all the advantages of keeping Bitcoin decentralised and the Blockchain secure.

Also, once coin creation diminishes and miners need to be paid fees... the number of tx makes a huge difference on whether the fees remain competitive.

7 tps is ridiculously small. Only 604.800 txs per day. It was always a temporary limit.

If Bitcoin is to be used by millions of people, maybe not for paying coffee, but at least for online shopping.... we are going to need at least 10 million tx per day (115 tps). VISA peak rate is 4.000 tps.

[flix]

Right now miners are rewarded on average with 6 x 24 x 25 = 3600 BTC per day.
For 604.800 daily txs to equal that reward, fees would have to be 3600 / 604.800 = 0.006 BTC per tx.

However with bigger blocks... say at 100tps (14MB blocks):  3600/ 8.640.000 = 0.0004 BTC per tx.
Right now that's about $0.12 per tx. Too expensive for micropayments, but still competitive for almost anything else.

If the Bitcoin network wanted to be as popular as VISA, say in 10 years time... 4000 tps would mean 345 million txs per day capacity. That would mean 571MB blocks.

Even BIP101 would not get to 512MB blocks until 2028.


(On the plus side at 4000tps, even without full blocks, fees per tx would be tiny, smaller than $0.01 or BTC0.0000104).

[Pain84]

7 tps is ridiculously small. Only 604.800 txs per day. It was always a temporary limit.

Bitcoin probably already does far more than 7tps today if you take into account off-chain services in the market today( changetip/coinbase/exchanges/etc..).
It is almost certain that Lightning will take over all shopping txns once it is implemented, simply because it is cheaper and offers instant confirmation.

Although off-chain txs just move the centralisation elsewhere

Its important to consider what is being centralised.

-Centralising mining/validation centralises control over the protocol itself, meaning everything is subject to change (money supply, censorship, etc..). Getting this wrong will destroy the currency.

-Centralising transaction processing over a trustless system like lightning only allows a hub to lockup your money for x amount of time. They can never steal it or touch the protocol.  Choosing a bad hub will lock up your money for X blocks depending on what X you chose.

Also id like to add, that the grand vision for lightning is to have a decentralised hub network like mining is today, meaning your wallet will automatically query the list of lightning hubs out there and choose one based on your cost preferences/configuration. Similar to how packet routing works today for the internet, your wallet will find the most cost efficient hub route to your payee.

[flix]

Gavin:

I understand you want to build an extremely decentralized system, where
everybody participating trusts nothing except the genesis block hash.

I think it is more interesting to build a system that works for hundreds of
millions of people, with no central point of control and the opportunity
for ANYBODY to participate at any level. Permission-less innovation is what
I find interesting.

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/009902.html

[RoadTrain]

Gavin:

I understand you want to build an extremely decentralized system, where
everybody participating trusts nothing except the genesis block hash.

I think it is more interesting to build a system that works for hundreds of
millions of people, with no central point of control and the opportunity
for ANYBODY to participate at any level. Permission-less innovation is what
I find interesting.

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/009902.html

That is exactly what I dislike about Gavin's position. Actually these paragraphs aren't contradictory, it's not a discrete choice. But if we lose decentralization (already happening), then Bitcoin is nothing more than another Visa, and is not needed. E.g. the Lightning Network can theoretically scale to hundreds of millions people, but the effect on decentralization is much lower this way than if we simple raise blocksize limit to 20 GB. That's my opinion.

[flix]

it's not a discrete choice.

I agree completely. It is not and will never be all or nothing. We both want the same thing: scalability + decentralisation.

My argument is that 8MB maxblocksize next year will not have a significant effect in increasing centralisation, compared to 1MB maxblocksize. However it will have a major positive impact on scalability and tx fees.

Keeping Bitcoin decentralised is important. But how much and at what cost? How many independent nodes do you need to make sure that the network is censorship resistant? 1000? 2000? 5000? 20000?

Will a Bitcoin that is used by 100 million people have more active nodes than one that is used by 1 million? I think so.

Therefore IMHO at this point growth has to be the priority. Reaching critical mass.

Just as there are technical solutions for scalability (Lightning Network, payment channels, off-chain txs...), there may be technical solutions for decentralisation (auto node-running hardware, bots, mining chips in toasters.....).

But none of those solutions will be developed if Bitcoin remains small.

[flix]

Also, remember that maxblocksize is not the only thing keeping blocks small. Propagating blocks is harder the larger they are.. and in the ultra-competitive Bitcoin mining industry, miners don't want larger blocks if they don't have the bandwidth to propagate them fast enough. (A few milliseconds can mean that another miner propagates a confirmed block first).

Therefore increasing maxblocksize to 8MB does not mean that blocks will be 8MB. Right now most confirmed blocks are not 1MB, even when they could be.

Actual block size will be the result of a miner trade-off between propagation speed and fees. Right now, because fees are small compared to coinbase reward, miners have a strong incentive to go for small blocks, especially in high latency countries (ie: China).

The 1MB maxblocksize is an arbitrary, temporary limit. It should be removed or increased substantially. However that does not mean that we will get larger blocks unless the tech infrastructure improves. The current constraint is not storage. It's bandwidth.

(As @rogerkver recently tweeted "If every 1MB block were always full, it would take over 55 years to fill my new HD." https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/628596027965083648)

[RoadTrain]

I wish there was a 'Like' button under posts so that I wouldn't need to create useless posts just to say that I agree with you.

[Dissonance]

Id like to point out that just because a blocksize limit increases doesn't mean the block sizes themselves it will be filled.  It will be a while before we hit 8mb block sizes filled on a regular basis and when we do reach it it will mean bitcoin is going mainstream and btc is likely much higher in price.  At that point the miners will be more concerned with the boatload of money they are making and less about hd space and bandwidth costs.   I got my first computer 22 years ago, it ran windows 3.1 and had a 170mb hard drive. The hard drive alone cost several hundred dollars. Today, I can buy flash cards the size of an eraser head that have 100 times the storage for 5 bucks. 22 years from now 1GB blocks will comfortably fit any retail hard drive with enough space for decades.

[bitcoinmasterlord]

I think any solution besides option one is no solution at all. We need a change now and if it is only to stop this spamming. The spam attacks already made enough damage to bitcoin since it's hard to explain to newbies why their transactions doesn't get confirmed.

[Lauda]

Id like to point out that just because a blocksize limit increases doesn't mean the block sizes themselves it will be filled.  It will be a while before we hit 8mb block sizes filled on a regular basis and when we do reach it it will mean bitcoin is going mainstream and btc is likely much higher in price.  At that point the miners will be more concerned with the boatload of money they are making and less about hd space and bandwidth costs.   I got my first computer 22 years ago, it ran windows 3.1 and had a 170mb hard drive. The hard drive alone cost several hundred dollars. Today, I can buy flash cards the size of an eraser head that have 100 times the storage for 5 bucks. 22 years from now 1GB blocks will comfortably fit any retail hard drive with enough space for decades.

I've been saying this in a numerous amount of threads throughout many months.
8 MB blocks will have almost no impact on decentralization (at least not a noticeable impact). Basically with pruning (which is partially implemented now, and will be fully implemented later) storage is not a concern anymore and it is all up to bandwidth.
Even if we do have full blocks, that's 8MB x 6 x 24 = 1152 MB per day or 34.56GB per month.

[RoadTrain]

Id like to point out that just because a blocksize limit increases doesn't mean the block sizes themselves it will be filled.  It will be a while before we hit 8mb block sizes filled on a regular basis and when we do reach it it will mean bitcoin is going mainstream and btc is likely much higher in price.  At that point the miners will be more concerned with the boatload of money they are making and less about hd space and bandwidth costs.   I got my first computer 22 years ago, it ran windows 3.1 and had a 170mb hard drive. The hard drive alone cost several hundred dollars. Today, I can buy flash cards the size of an eraser head that have 100 times the storage for 5 bucks. 22 years from now 1GB blocks will comfortably fit any retail hard drive with enough space for decades.

I've been saying this in a numerous amount of threads throughout many months.
8 MB blocks will have almost no impact on decentralization (at least not a noticeable impact). Basically with pruning (which is partially implemented now, and will be fully implemented later) storage is not a concern anymore and it is all up to bandwidth.
Even if we do have full blocks, that's 8MB x 6 x 24 = 1152 MB per day or 34.56GB per month.

Ok, let's talk about bandwidth and centralization. The current situation is that chinese pools combined have close to 60% of network hashrate (already pretty bad, isn't it?). The notable thing about China is that it has relatively poor network connections to the outside world while the intra-China network is better. It basically means that chinese pools propagate blocks faster between themselves than to the rest of world. It probably doesn't matter now but the larger blocks get, the higher will be the disbalance. For the rest of world miners it will mean increasingly higher orphan rates, which will encourage miners to mine on chinese pools, thus worsening centralization.

What I described is an abstract situation which not necessarily exists, but it gives you some food for thought. My position is that it's extremely important to avoid creating incentives for further centralization.

Id like to point out that just because a blocksize limit increases doesn't mean the block sizes themselves it will be filled.  It will be a while before we hit 8mb block sizes filled on a regular basis and when we do reach it it will mean bitcoin is going mainstream and btc is likely much higher in price.

If we have an 8Mb limit, then no way we should assume that "it will be a while before we hit 8mb block sizes filled". If there are any incentives linked to larger blocks, we must assume that they will be used. If 8Mb blocks increase orphan rates for non-Chinese miners, then we should assume that Chinese miners will use this to their profit.

[flix]

If we have an 8Mb limit, then no way we should assume that "it will be a while before we hit 8mb block sizes filled". If there are any incentives linked to larger blocks, we must assume that they will be used. If 8Mb blocks increase orphan rates for non-Chinese miners, then we should assume that Chinese miners will use this to their profit.

My point before about the miner propagation trade-off was precisely this: If a miner sees that a 500k block has a 30% lower orphan rate than a 1MB block, but the 1MB block has only 10% more in BTC value for the miner (reward +fees), he will try to validate smaller blocks. Even if the limit is 1MB.

That is what is happening now:
https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size


So it is reasonable to assume that 8MB blocks will not start appearing until:
-bandwidth improves so that propagation speed is not significantly affected
-Fees become a larger part of the miner reward

[flix]

If 8Mb blocks increase orphan rates for non-Chinese miners, then we should assume that Chinese miners will use this to their profit.

Have you considered that maybe the exact opposite will be true? Maybe larger blocks will actually work to the detriment of high latency regions like China, especially if mining pools have members from all over the world.


Regardless of whether Chinese miners are helped or hindered by larger blocks, it is the good of the network that we should be concerned with.

[Mickeyb]

The more I research this, the more it worries me. I have voted for a Gavin's proposal since I believe that in order for Bitcoin to achieve a mass adoption we need much bigger blocks in order to process more transactions.

I don't understand this low confidence in Gavin by many, he has been in Bitcoin since the earliest days and if he has proven there is no harm on network if the block size increase than that should be it. More and more it seems to me that Bitcoin is slowly held hostage by the Chinese miners and couple of big stakeholders that are against the change.

[RoadTrain]

If 8Mb blocks increase orphan rates for non-Chinese miners, then we should assume that Chinese miners will use this to their profit.

Have you considered that maybe the exact opposite will be true? Maybe larger blocks will actually work to the detriment of high latency regions like China, especially if mining pools have members from all over the world.

Regardless of whether Chinese miners are helped or hindered by larger blocks, it is the good of the network that we should be concerned with.

It won't as Chinese miners hold majority of the network hashrate, and it's located in China, i.e. they will mathematically win more orphan races than the rest of world. This network fragmentation is one of things that the core devs are concerned of and it has been mentioned on the mailing list several times. Though I should note that the underlying problem is more complicated than what I described here.

My point before about the miner propagation trade-off was precisely this: If a miner sees that a 500k block has a 30% lower orphan rate than a 1MB block, but the 1MB block has only 10% more in BTC value for the miner (reward +fees), he will try to validate smaller blocks. Even if the limit is 1MB.

If there's any chance the large blocks can be used to attack the network, then we should assume they will be.

[RoadTrain]

I don't understand this low confidence in Gavin by many, he has been in Bitcoin since the earliest days and if he has proven there is no harm on network if the block size increase than that should be it. More and more it seems to me that Bitcoin is slowly held hostage by the Chinese miners and couple of big stakeholders that are against the change.

This is called appeal to authority. Gavin has been arguing for the increase, but it's far from being proven safe.

P.S. I'd have more confidence in Gavin if he and Mike didn't plan this XT thing in the first place. They might have had good intentions but by going this way they lost credibility in the eyes of many people here.

[Lauda]

Ok, let's talk about bandwidth and centralization. The current situation is that chinese pools combined have close to 60% of network hashrate (already pretty bad, isn't it?). The notable thing about China is that it has relatively poor network connections to the outside world while the intra-China network is better. It basically means that chinese pools propagate blocks faster between themselves than to the rest of world. It probably doesn't matter now but the larger blocks get, the higher will be the disbalance. For the rest of world miners it will mean increasingly higher orphan rates, which will encourage miners to mine on chinese pools, thus worsening centralization.

What I described is an abstract situation which not necessarily exists, but it gives you some food for thought. My position is that it's extremely important to avoid creating incentives for further centralization.

If we have an 8Mb limit, then no way we should assume that "it will be a while before we hit 8mb block sizes filled". If there are any incentives linked to larger blocks, we must assume that they will be used. If 8Mb blocks increase orphan rates for non-Chinese miners, then we should assume that Chinese miners will use this to their profit.

Well I was never saying that bandwidth is no a issue for Chinese miners. I was saying that storage is (almost) no longer a issue, and thus the people that are against the increase have lost a major point. While there won't be almost any decentralization due to storage, with bandwidth it is different.
This is why something like a compromise needs to be used so that we can agree on a increase right now. 2 MB blocks should not cause the problems that you've described.

Additionally I do not understand why we should assume that blocks will be instantly filled. AFAIK 1 MB blocks have been around for a while, and it took a plethora of months before they started becoming full.
Update:
Ah now I understand. You're trying to see that we should not assume that someone will not exploit this. Aren't we doing the same with 51% attacks (not yet solved)? We just assume that someone won't do a bad thing because of X.

[RoadTrain]

Additionally I do not understand why we should assume that blocks will be instantly filled. AFAIK 1 MB blocks  have been around for a while, and it took a plethora of months before they started becoming full.

That's not exactly what I meant. We should assume that, if there's an exploitable part of system, it will likely be used by someone. It doesn't mean it will necessarily be exploited but no way we should push controversial changes and then pray to God and hope nothing bad happens. It's better avoided.

[flix]

This is called appeal to authority. Gavin has been arguing for the increase, but it's far from being proven safe

I agree, we should not fall into this fallacy. If there's anything that Satoshi's example has taught us is that we should judge ideas based on their merits and not on who their proponents are.


Irony intended!  

[RustyNomad]

...Therefore increasing maxblocksize to 8MB does not mean that blocks will be 8MB. Right now most confirmed blocks are not 1MB, even when they could be.

Actual block size will be the result of a miner trade-off between propagation speed and fees. Right now, because fees are small compared to coinbase reward, miners have a strong incentive to go for small blocks, especially in high latency countries (ie: China)....

This is true, just had a quick look at the last 50 blocks in regards to sizes and found the following:

Code:

Block Size (KB)     No. of blocks      % of total
0-100                      15             30%
201-300                     8             16%
301-400                     3              6%
401-500                    11             22%
501-600                     0              0%
601-700                     0              0%
701-800                     0              0%
801-900                     3              6%
901+                        2              4%

[RoadTrain]

Ah now I understand. You're trying to see that we should not assume that someone will not exploit this. Aren't we doing the same with 51% attacks (not yet solved)? We just assume that someone won't do a bad thing because of X.

There are two points:
1) Yes, we are assuming no one does 51% attack, but this assumption is based on economics and game theory (e.g. that BTC becomes worthless and hurts miners so it's not rational). Though it doesn't mean there can't be a hostile actor who's dedicated to bring Bitcoin down, and it's an inherent flaw.
2) But this doesn't mean we should do this kind of assumptions about not-yet-implemented features. Those should be as safe as possible (my opinion). In fact, if we don't do it carefully, we worsen 1) by adding incentives for centralization.

[flix]

Interesting summary of the often mentioned accusation against devs that oppose any block size increase:

The Blockstream Business Plan
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3gmkak/the_blockstream_business_plan/

tl;dr: Blockstream wants to choke transactions on the blockchain in order to spur adoption of sidechannels and the Lightning Network, where they will be perfectly situated to collect fees for providing that service.

[Swordsoffreedom]

Voted for a less popular option since it's more complex but Adam Backs idea of sidechains as an extension of the Bitcoin infrastructure seems like the best long term solution to the problem as it addresses size issues and bandwidth capacity until the technology picks up, combined with a Pieter Wullies idea in the short term for incremental blocksize increases programmed into Bitcoin to ensure that Blocksize is Dynamic and adjusts relative to the capacity the network needs at any time, whether incremental increases can be set up this way would require a D@T discussion.
Else go back to Blockchain compression.

That said I can see Gavins idea of increasing the size to 8MB then implementing sidechains steadily over time to further enhance Bitcoin's capability and options as a viable idea as well but not an 8GB blockchain in the near future.

[RoadTrain]

Interesting summary of the often mentioned accusation against devs that oppose any block size increase:

The Blockstream Business Plan
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3gmkak/the_blockstream_business_plan/

tl;dr: Blockstream wants to choke transactions on the blockchain in order to spur adoption of sidechannels and the Lightning Network, where they will be perfectly situated to collect fees for providing that service.

What is sidechannels btw? Did he mean sidechains?

In fact, even the LN paper states that it needs bigger blocks to operate smoothly.

The OP is arguing that LN itself is centralized, so it's dishonest for Blockstream devs to argue against Bitcoin centralization. One question: what's better - to have a centralized system build on top of a decentralized one or a centralized system built on top of a centralized one? Also, these two kinds of centralization are probably very different, e.g. how costly is it to set up and operate a payment hub as compared to setting up and operating a mining farm of comparable characteristics (can we even compare them)?

Moreover, the OP downplays that Blockstream was created to develop sidechains (a completely different matter which he doesn't discuss at all) in the first place, and they became involved in the LN only very recently. Then he assumes they have a plan to monetize on the LN, but doesn't discuss what was their plan before the advent of the LN (did they plan to monetize of sidechains? How?). He's assuming that Blockstream investors want direct monetization, but that's not neccessarily true, e.g. investors can monetize by using their innovation in business.

This post might seem good at first glance, but if we dig deeper, it's full of baseless assumptions.

[Possum577]

Where can we get more background on the pros and cons of each option?

I'm not willing to vote until i have more information - can you point me (and I'm sure others) in the right direction to get more information?

Thanks.

[RoadTrain]

Where can we get more background on the pros and cons of each option?

I'm not willing to vote until i have more information - can you point me (and I'm sure others) in the right direction to get more information?

Thanks.

The most summaries I have seen so far are biased towards one of options. I'd suggest reading the bitcoin-dev mailing list (it's a link to page two, there are some relevant discussions), it might be a long read, but it can give you a better idea of what's going on.

[Lauda]

There are two points:
1) Yes, we are assuming no one does 51% attack, but this assumption is based on economics and game theory (e.g. that BTC becomes worthless and hurts miners so it's not rational). Though it doesn't mean there can't be a hostile actor who's dedicated to bring Bitcoin down, and it's an inherent flaw.
-snip-

Exactly. However, recently we've learned that economics and game theory aren't accountable as there are hostile people (i.e. transaction spam attacks).

Where can we get more background on the pros and cons of each option?
-snip-

Well if you read the thread and you would know a few. Basically Gavin's proposal is risky mainly because of China and their bandwidth outside of the country. If we increase the blocks too much then it will cause even more centralization as miners outside of China will be generating more orphans. I think that a 2 or 4 MB compromise wouldn't cause such a issue.
There are also cons to sidechains. Basically that's completely unexplored territory, something that has never been done before. Sidechains are going to add a lot of unnecessary complexity for their benefits. It's hard to teach people already how to use Bitcoin, not to mention how harder it is going to be to explain sidechains and two way peg. Another factor is that we don't know when it is going to be fully operational. Even if we use sidechains or the LN right now, eventually 1 MB blocks will not be enough. I certainly would not want to be having the same discussion in 10-15 years.

Tl;dr: There can't be an agreement because nobody is willing to compromise. There are a ton of topics on here and reddit for you to read about the debate.

[RoadTrain]

There are two points:
1) Yes, we are assuming no one does 51% attack, but this assumption is based on economics and game theory (e.g. that BTC becomes worthless and hurts miners so it's not rational). Though it doesn't mean there can't be a hostile actor who's dedicated to bring Bitcoin down, and it's an inherent flaw.
-snip-

Exactly. However, recently we've learned that economics and game theory aren't accountable as there are hostile people (i.e. transaction spam attacks).

Well, I think that they are still accountable as the hostile actor still needs money to execute an attack, and our job is to make this attack as expensive as possible. That's why e.g. JorgeStolfi has argued for bigger blocks - to make a spam attack more expensive thus less likely. It might not apply only if actors are completely irrational, I guess.

[RoadTrain]

Jorge Timon has posted a summary of concers raleted to raising blocksize limit and not raising it.

[iCEBREAKER]

No change, and/or Dr. Back's soft fork.  Give extension blocks (Layer 1.5) a chance before resorting to bloating-as-scaling desperation.

Jorge Timon has posted a summary of concers related to raising blocksize limit

That summary sucks.  We can do much better:

I'm not sure if you are aware of the centralization pressure that occurs when miners are allowed to pick their own block sizes. Miners have incentives to encourage a very high orphan rate, if the orphan rate is properly targeted. Mining is a 0-sum game, which means that miners have incentive to hurt eachother. (less competition means lower difficulty and more blocks for you).

The ideal scenario for a miner is that the block they produce immediately hits a large portion of the hash power (at least 51%, but I'm not sure what the optimal percentage is), and then never hits the remaining hashpower at all. That remaining hashpower will have to find 2 blocks before the rest of the hashpower finds a single block - this will be detrimental to the profits of the minority hashpower, significantly so.

Large blocks provide a way to achieve this to some effect for bigger miners....

...This attack can be levied by a single large miner with no collusion. Simply by prioritizing the other large miners, and refusing to send the block to the low-bandwidth minority, a big miner can create blocks large enough to heavily impact the orphan rate of smaller miners without significantly affecting their own orphan rate.

This is very bad. The block size limit is important to stop this class of attack.

The vast majority of research demonstrates that blocksize does matter, blocksize caps are required to secure the network, and large blocks are a centralizing pressure.

Here’s a short list of what has been published so far:

1) No blocksize cap and no minimum fee leads to catastrophic breakage as miners chase marginal 0 fees:

    http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2400519

It’s important to note that mandatory minimum fees could simply be rebated out-of-band, which would lead to the same problems.

2) a) Large mining pools make strategies other than honest mining more profitable:

    http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~ie53/publications/btcProcArXiv.pdf

2) b) In the presence of latency, some alternative selfish strategy exists that is more profitable at any mining pool size. The larger the latency, the greater the selfish mining benefit:

    http://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.06183v1.pdf

3) Mining simulations run by Pieter Wuille shows that well-connected peers making a majority of the hashing power have an advantage over less-connected ones, earning more profits per hash. Larger blocks even further favor these well-connected peers. This gets even worse as we shift from block subsidy to fee based reward :

    http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net/msg08161.html

4) Other point(s):

If there is no blocksize cap, a miner should simply snipe the fees from the latest block and try to stale that block by mining their own replacement. You get all the fees plus any more from new transactions. Full blocks gives less reward for doing so, since you have to choose which transactions to include. https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3fpuld/a_transaction_fee_market_exists_without_a_block/ctqxkq6

[tadakaluri]

The long debate over the bitcoin block size is over. The updates being done to the bitcoin code have been published by the core developer Gavin Andresen on GitHub. The block size will change from 1MB to 8MB, with further doubling every two years – so in 2018, it will reach 16 MB, then 32MB in 2020 and so on.

2016: 8 MB
2018: 16 MB
2020: 32 MB
2022: 64 MB
2024: 128 MB
2026: 256MB
2028: 512 MB
2030: 1024 MB
2032: 2048 MB
2034: 4096 MB

Personally I believe that this well overestimating the rate internet connection-speeds and hard-disk space will grow. Just look at ADSL or even cable for instance.

4096mb per 10minutes in a year will grow to: 205TB per year worth of storage.

I wonder if they took in account the laws of physics in this equation. It is not impossible but who can and will pay for such an investment just to be a unpaid bitcoin client (full node).

[RoadTrain]

The long debate over the bitcoin block size is over.

No, it's not.

The updates being done to the bitcoin code have been published by the core developer Gavin Andresen on GitHub.

Who cares?

The block size will change from 1MB to 8MB, with further doubling every two years – so in 2018, it will reach 16 MB, then 32MB in 2020 and so on.

In case of doubling, Bitcoin is doomed.

I'd personally favor an altered sipa's approach, which starts in 2016 instead of 2017 and maybe has a bit higher base limit (e.g. 2Mb). His suggestion of 17% yearly increase looks conservative enough to try to avoid any downsides while providing enough time to develop the LN.

[Swordsoffreedom]

The long debate over the bitcoin block size is over. The updates being done to the bitcoin code have been published by the core developer Gavin Andresen on GitHub. The block size will change from 1MB to 8MB, with further doubling every two years – so in 2018, it will reach 16 MB, then 32MB in 2020 and so on.

2016: 8 MB
2018: 16 MB
2020: 32 MB
2022: 64 MB
2024: 128 MB
2026: 256MB
2028: 512 MB
2030: 1024 MB
2032: 2048 MB
2034: 4096 MB

Personally I believe that this well overestimating the rate internet connection-speeds and hard-disk space will grow. Just look at ADSL or even cable for instance.

4096mb per 10minutes in a year will grow to: 205TB per year worth of storage.

I wonder if they took in account the laws of physics in this equation. It is not impossible but who can and will pay for such an investment just to be a unpaid bitcoin client (full node).

The part that bugs me about that schedule of growth is that it may work in the West especially if the internet of things picks up and bandwidth becomes even more valuable but it surely will not be anywhere near as fast elsewhere it causes a huge US centered node base for Bitcoin with Japan in Asia and any opportunities for catching up bandwidth wise is unlikely with 2 year interval increases.

A global increase rate would probably be 1/3rd of that over the same duration

2016: 8 MB --> 2.7 MB
2018: 16 MB --> 5.3 MB
2020: 32 MB --> 10.6 MB
2022: 64 MB --> 21.3 MB
2024: 128 MB --> 42.6 MB
2026: 256MB --> 85.3 MB
2028: 512 MB --> 170.7 MB
2030: 1024 MB --> 341.3 MB
2032: 2048 MB --> 682.7 MB
2034: 4096 MB --> 1365.3 MB --> In 2033 Global speeds will finally reach the 1GB level

At least that's how I see it who will want to run a full node without Proof Of Stake makes me wonder if an incentive would have made sense retroactively as it does seem like a weakness.

[Lauda]

The long debate over the bitcoin block size is over. The updates being done to the bitcoin code have been published by the core developer Gavin Andresen on GitHub.
-snip-

The debate is not over. Gavin has published that code for Bitcoin XT which has no relationship with Bitcoin Core. This means that your post is irrelevant and contains useless information.
Basically Gavin has made the proposed changes and implemented them into Bitcoin XT. However, people related to Bitcoin Core do not agree with him.

If you factor in the network problems related to centralization and China, 16 MB blocks by 2018 would be catastrophic. It would be much worse every 2 years.

-snip-
I'd personally favor an altered sipa's approach, which starts in 2016 instead of 2017 and maybe has a bit higher base limit (e.g. 2Mb). His suggestion of 17% yearly increase looks conservative enough to try to avoid any downsides while providing enough time to develop the LN.

Well the problem is that people are not willing to compromise. A increase in 2016 to 2 MB (as Jeff suggested) and a 17% yearly increase would be a decent compromise. We need to buy more time without risking anything.

[boopy265420]

I gave vote for Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik's suggestions.It seems more logical and applicable according to my very limited knowledge and information.It is very hard to understand what exactly these changes are for and their long term consequences.We give vote on base of big lines.

[iCEBREAKER]

Another reason to do the fork soon, is that after the next reward halving (est.2017) it will be much harder to convince miners to accept low tx fees. Right now fees are a tiny part of their income compared to the 25BTC reward... in effect all BTC holders are currently paying miners via inflation. As new money creation declines, fees will have to pay for the network.

...but it is better for everyone if fees become a major source of income for miners at 50 million users and 1M daily txs than earlier. Scale must come first.

Social media companies (like Twitter and Facebook) that delayed revenue generation until they reached massive scale and network effects are a good example.

We have no idea what the price of Bitcoin (in fiat/gold/energy) will be in 2017, so who knows what part of miners' income will come from tx fees then?

Scale cannot come before security, which includes decentralization.

And you cannot scale by simply accommodating 8MB of mostly-spam in every block.  Scaling entails doing more with less, not more of the same.  You scale by adding layers, not by stuffing everything into a bloated Layer 1.

TWTR and FB are terrible examples.  Bitcoin is fintech, which emphasizes high availability and 100% security.  Nobody loses their life savings (or defection fund) if some daft corporation's vapid social media site is down for a week or hacked.

[iCEBREAKER]

Gavin:

I understand you want to build an extremely decentralized system, where
.

I think it is more interesting to build a system that works for hundreds of
millions of people, with no central point of control and the opportunity
for ANYBODY to participate at any level. Permission-less innovation is what
I find interesting.

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/009902.html

I wish Gavin and Hearn good luck with their unicorn project.

But if they try to change Bitcoin's social contract (everybody participating trusts nothing except the genesis block hash), in order to capture and repurpose Bitcoin as the engine of their utopian altcoin, both projects may be ruined.

[kelsey]

bitcoin reminds me of one of those anti establishment rockbands 

now this is the $hit that happens when all the corporate dogs notice the $$$$$ possible from said rockband 

[Adrian-x]

thanks for the survey and condensed summary.

[Adrian-x]

Gavin:

I understand you want to build an extremely decentralized system, where
.

I think it is more interesting to build a system that works for hundreds of
millions of people, with no central point of control and the opportunity
for ANYBODY to participate at any level. Permission-less innovation is what
I find interesting.

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/009902.html

I wish Gavin and Hearn good luck with their unicorn project.

But if they try to change Bitcoin's social contract (everybody participating trusts nothing except the genesis block hash), in order to capture and repurpose Bitcoin as the engine of their utopian altcoin, both projects may be ruined.

Keep dreaming :-) its not a unicorn project its call Satoshhi's Bitcoin.  Hearn and Gavin have both toyed with unpopular or potentially devastating ideas, but unlike Gmax and Back they have never tried to implement them.

We all learn as we go, I'll only judge what they have done or are to do, and right now BIP 101 makes is the most appropriate solution to keep the original intent of Bitcoin intact.

[GreenStox]

No increase until the block doesnt reach 70% fullness, its no reason to increase it until we have low block size.

I`d prefer the 8mb one if they would do it, but i think its not needed.

But anyway its not us who decide but the miners... Talking about decentralization... Bitcoin is a fucking oligarchy!

[Adrian-x]

No increase until the block doesnt reach 70% fullness, its no reason to increase it until we have low block size.

I`d prefer the 8mb one if they would do it, but i think its not needed.

But anyway its not us who decide but the miners... Talking about decentralization... Bitcoin is a fucking oligarchy!

the Miners follow us, they dont want to mine a coin no one accepts. Miners can mine all the alt coins they want, I'm only accepting Bitcoin and mining it too.

its the network that gives Bitcoin its Value, the network is us, the best theory to prove his is Peter R's Metcalfe's Law correlation  miners mine for value the value is in the network.

[RoadTrain]

Hearn and Gavin have both toyed with unpopular or potentially devastating ideas, but unlike Gmax and Back they have never tried to implement them.

Care to elaborate? What unpoplar and potentially devastating ideas did they try to implement?

[iCEBREAKER]

the Miners follow us, they dont want to mine a coin no one accepts. Miners can mine all the alt coins they want, I'm only accepting Bitcoin and mining it too.

So you're going to be the first to stick your neck out and start accepting XTcoins, in order to begin establishing its alleged economic majority?

Such a brave choice.  XT needs more White Knights like you, since smoothie chickened out.

OK, I'll happily pay you in XTcoins for whatever you want to sell.  Got any silver, gold, or prepper gear/camping supplies?

[Adrian-x]

Hearn and Gavin have both toyed with unpopular or potentially devastating ideas, but unlike Gmax and Back they have never tried to implement them.

Care to elaborate? What unpoplar and potentially devastating ideas did they try to implement?

Sidechains, and Lightning Network, both those proposals are being worked on with full intent to move bitcoin transactions off the Main Chain. The net long term result is as block rewards diminish mining revenue that should come from transaction fees is moved out of the Bitcoin Block-chain and onto of-chain solutions, this changes the inherent incentive structure as designed by Satoshi and erodes the security dependent on incentives that secure Bitcoin from manipulation and attack.  

 

[Adrian-x]

the Miners follow us, they dont want to mine a coin no one accepts. Miners can mine all the alt coins they want, I'm only accepting Bitcoin and mining it too.

So you're going to be the first to stick your neck out and start accepting XTcoins, in order to begin establishing its alleged economic majority?

Such a brave choice.  XT needs more White Knights like you, since smoothie chickened out.

OK, I'll happily pay you in XTcoins for whatever you want to sell.  Got any silver, gold, or prepper gear/camping supplies?

nice try, Blockstream-coin if it survives will be an alt, I suspect Gmax and co will eat some humble Pie and move over to working on the Original Bitcoin.

the whole idea of a fork being a divorce is ludicrous and shame on you for speeding such crap, almost every significant upgrade to bitcoin has resulted in a hard fork, this upgrade will be no different, it's a problem developers dont want to fix bugs for feer of fracturing the network now is the time to do it as you know it only gets harder as we go forward.  

[iCEBREAKER]

the Miners follow us, they dont want to mine a coin no one accepts. Miners can mine all the alt coins they want, I'm only accepting Bitcoin and mining it too.

So you're going to be the first to stick your neck out and start accepting XTcoins, in order to begin establishing its alleged economic majority?

Such a brave choice.  XT needs more White Knights like you, since smoothie chickened out.

OK, I'll happily pay you in XTcoins for whatever you want to sell.  Got any silver, gold, or prepper gear/camping supplies?

nice try, Blockstream-coin if it survives will be an alt, I suspect Gmax and co will eat some humble Pie and move over to working on the Original Bitcoin.

the whole idea of a fork being a divorce is ludicrous and shame on you for speeding such crap, almost every significant upgrade to bitcoin has resulted in a hard fork, this upgrade will be no different, it's a problem developers dont want to fix bugs for feer of fracturing the network now is the time to do it as you know it only gets harder as we go forward.  

There has never been a contentious hard fork of Bitcoin, so in any case, XT's would be necessarily be "different."

And that's why you Gavinista's authoritarian junta is not going to happen.

In a contentious hard fork, somebody (the most hardcore Gavinista ever) has to stick their neck out and be the first to accept XTcoins, at the risk of them becoming worthless if their contentious fork fails.

OTOH, those staying safely with the previously demonstrated multi-billion dollar economic majority may seek to exploit the ideological (over)commitments of XTcoin's White Knight first actors, in the form of MPEX's XTcoin Short.  No wonder you don't want to sell your silver for my XTcoins!

Given enough leverage, Team Core will move XT's world onto the ash heap of history.   

Watch and learn, n00b...   

[LiteCoinGuy]

Consensus is WAY more important than whatever particular solution it's gonna be.

Increasing blocksize now, increasing blocksize gradually over time in the near future, lowering the average block time, all fine with me. Bitcoin should remain functional like it has been the past 6.5 years.

Agree completely. Any change must have overwhelming consensus.

But consensus can be built over time, and the way to do so is to have an extended and very public discussion of the issue. We still have at least 6 months before the problems become urgent. We should make the most of that time to get each dev to explain their position very clearly, including its consequences and meaning for the future of Bitcoin.

some people said that we dont have to do anything until the shit hits the fan  

thanks to Gavin we will have a choice and a plan when we need it in the future!


@Adrian-x

i agree. and even for the other solutions (sidechains etc) we need more time and bigger blocks.


@flix

thx for clearing things up.

[timothythomas]

no matter how much people fight over the block size issue . sooner or later they will have to accept the fact that it needs to be increased to keep bitcoin stable

[RoadTrain]

Hearn and Gavin have both toyed with unpopular or potentially devastating ideas, but unlike Gmax and Back they have never tried to implement them.

Care to elaborate? What unpoplar and potentially devastating ideas did they try to implement?

Sidechains, and Lightning Network, both those proposals are being worked on with full intent to move bitcoin transactions off the Main Chain. The net long term result is as block rewards diminish mining revenue that should come from transaction fees is moved out of the Bitcoin Block-chain and onto of-chain solutions, this changes the inherent incentive structure as designed by Satoshi and erodes the security dependent on incentives that secure Bitcoin from manipulation and attack.  

The reality is that Bitcoin blockchain can't handle all the world's transactions without getting completely centralized. These off-chain proposals are serving to satisfy both needs -- a need for scalability and a need for decentralization. If you read LN paper, you would have noticed that it actually argues in favor of bigger blocks -- otherwise it can't be reliable.

On the other hand, if we increase blocksize limit too much, we also erode its security and decentralization.

IMO, there must be a compromise. We can increase the limit without undermining decentralization, but the increases must be very conservative with regards to technological improvements, I'd suggest 15-20% a year. In the meantime, trustless off-cain solutions must be developed.

[Adrian-x]

Hearn and Gavin have both toyed with unpopular or potentially devastating ideas, but unlike Gmax and Back they have never tried to implement them.

Care to elaborate? What unpoplar and potentially devastating ideas did they try to implement?

Sidechains, and Lightning Network, both those proposals are being worked on with full intent to move bitcoin transactions off the Main Chain. The net long term result is as block rewards diminish mining revenue that should come from transaction fees is moved out of the Bitcoin Block-chain and onto of-chain solutions, this changes the inherent incentive structure as designed by Satoshi and erodes the security dependent on incentives that secure Bitcoin from manipulation and attack.  

The reality is that Bitcoin blockchain can't handle all the world's transactions without getting completely centralized. These off-chain proposals are serving to satisfy both needs -- a need for scalability and a need for decentralization. If you read LN paper, you would have noticed that it actually argues in favor of bigger blocks -- otherwise it can't be reliable.

On the other hand, if we increase blocksize limit too much, we also erode its security and decentralization.

IMO, there must be a compromise. We can increase the limit without undermining decentralization, but the increases must be very conservative with regards to technological improvements, I'd suggest 15-20% a year. In the meantime, trustless off-cain solutions must be developed.

Centralization and decentralization need to be defined and agreed on for this debate.
Bitcoin needs to be protected from any one minority group influencing it's function that's the promise decentralization provides.

What many here are overlooking is it's already centralized, and the centralized controllers are telling us that all nodes should run their version of the code, and they use terms like it's a hostile hard fork if you try to improve Bitcoin without our approval.  Those centralized controllers either don't trust the Bitcoin protocol or don't want to concede control. XT is no threat to Bitcoin, it's a threat to how it's controlled. 

More nodes running centrally controlled code is not decentralization, we want many implementations of code running the same protocol.  If we end up with 200 nodes run by competing interests we will have more decentralization that we have today.

[Adrian-x]

the Miners follow us, they dont want to mine a coin no one accepts. Miners can mine all the alt coins they want, I'm only accepting Bitcoin and mining it too.

So you're going to be the first to stick your neck out and start accepting XTcoins, in order to begin establishing its alleged economic majority?

Such a brave choice.  XT needs more White Knights like you, since smoothie chickened out.

OK, I'll happily pay you in XTcoins for whatever you want to sell.  Got any silver, gold, or prepper gear/camping supplies?

nice try, Blockstream-coin if it survives will be an alt, I suspect Gmax and co will eat some humble Pie and move over to working on the Original Bitcoin.

the whole idea of a fork being a divorce is ludicrous and shame on you for speeding such crap, almost every significant upgrade to bitcoin has resulted in a hard fork, this upgrade will be no different, it's a problem developers dont want to fix bugs for feer of fracturing the network now is the time to do it as you know it only gets harder as we go forward.  

There has never been a contentious hard fork of Bitcoin, so in any case, XT's would be necessarily be "different."

And that's why you Gavinista's authoritarian junta is not going to happen.

In a contentious hard fork, somebody (the most hardcore Gavinista ever) has to stick their neck out and be the first to accept XTcoins, at the risk of them becoming worthless if their contentious fork fails.

OTOH, those staying safely with the previously demonstrated multi-billion dollar economic majority may seek to exploit the ideological (over)commitments of XTcoin's White Knight first actors, in the form of MPEX's XTcoin Short.  No wonder you don't want to sell your silver for my XTcoins!

Given enough leverage, Team Core will move XT's world onto the ash heap of history.   

Watch and learn, n00b...   

Every day blocks are orphaned by competition for the longest chain, each orphan represent a failed fork, the reason miners stop mining the shortest chain is they mine coins that will be accepted by the users of the network. This is not political or risky, the chain that accommodates the most transactions and uses create a market for miners to sell the coins they mine and so will be the longest.

This is how Bitcoin works, and has always worked.

[iCEBREAKER]

the Miners follow us, they dont want to mine a coin no one accepts. Miners can mine all the alt coins they want, I'm only accepting Bitcoin and mining it too.

So you're going to be the first to stick your neck out and start accepting XTcoins, in order to begin establishing its alleged economic majority?

Such a brave choice.  XT needs more White Knights like you, since smoothie chickened out.

OK, I'll happily pay you in XTcoins for whatever you want to sell.  Got any silver, gold, or prepper gear/camping supplies?

nice try, Blockstream-coin if it survives will be an alt, I suspect Gmax and co will eat some humble Pie and move over to working on the Original Bitcoin.

the whole idea of a fork being a divorce is ludicrous and shame on you for speeding such crap, almost every significant upgrade to bitcoin has resulted in a hard fork, this upgrade will be no different, it's a problem developers dont want to fix bugs for feer of fracturing the network now is the time to do it as you know it only gets harder as we go forward.  

There has never been a contentious hard fork of Bitcoin, so in any case, XT's would be necessarily be "different."

And that's why you Gavinista's authoritarian junta is not going to happen.

In a contentious hard fork, somebody (the most hardcore Gavinista ever) has to stick their neck out and be the first to accept XTcoins, at the risk of them becoming worthless if their contentious fork fails.

OTOH, those staying safely with the previously demonstrated multi-billion dollar economic majority may seek to exploit the ideological (over)commitments of XTcoin's White Knight first actors, in the form of MPEX's XTcoin Short.  No wonder you don't want to sell your silver for my XTcoins!

Given enough leverage, Team Core will move XT's world onto the ash heap of history.   

Watch and learn, n00b...   

Every day blocks are orphaned by competition for the longest chain, each orphan represent a failed fork, the reason miners stop mining the shortest chain is they mine coins that will be accepted by the users of the network. This is not political or risky, the chain that accommodates the most transactions and uses create a market for miners to sell the coins they mine and so will be the longest.

This is how Bitcoin works, and has always worked.

I've known "how Bitcoin works" since before you made your account here.  But thanks for the (partial) refresher.

What you left out is the key role of the economic majority, and more specifically, the risk incurred by those (brave) actors who are first to attempt defection from it.

[RoadTrain]

Every day blocks are orphaned by competition for the longest chain, each orphan represent a failed fork, the reason miners stop mining the shortest chain is they mine coins that will be accepted by the users of the network. This is not political or risky, the chain that accommodates the most transactions and uses create a market for miners to sell the coins they mine and so will be the longest.

This is how Bitcoin works, and has always worked.

Do you even know what you're talking about? How is your description of orphaning relevant to the discussion of hards forks?

Bitcoin needs to be protected from any one minority group influencing it's function that's the promise decentralization provides.

Yes, it needs to be protected from Gavin&Mike, a clear minority group trying influencing it. Yup?

What many here are overlooking is it's already centralized, and the centralized controllers are telling us that all nodes should run their version of the code, and they use terms like it's a hostile hard fork if you try to improve Bitcoin without our approval.  Those centralized controllers either don't trust the Bitcoin protocol or don't want to concede control.

That's plain wrong. All nodes shouldn't neccessarily run one version of code, they should implement one version of protocol. That's how Bitcoin works, didn't you know that?

XT is no threat to Bitcoin

And you have proof of that, don't you? Because the burden of proof lies on the claimant.

More nodes running centrally controlled code is not decentralization, we want many implementations of code running the same protocol.

Don't you know we already have many implementations of the current protocol?

If we end up with 200 nodes run by competing interests we will have more decentralization that we have today.

What are competing interests?

[danielW]

There should be a new option in the survey:

'Smaller increases in the future'.

[flix]

Mike Hearn. Why Bitcoin is forking:

https://medium.com/@octskyward/why-is-bitcoin-forking-d647312d22c1?1

[flix]

Mike Hearn says:

Raising the block size is supported by, amongst others:

-The developers of the most popular wallets on iOS, Android and one of the most popular web wallets. Between them they have served millions of users.
-Several of the biggest Bitcoin exchanges.
-The two biggest payment processors, which between them have most of the market.
-Several major mining pools, including all the Chinese pools.
-Two of the five Bitcoin Core committers (Gavin and Jeff)
-User polling shows about 75–80% support from people in online forums.

[RoadTrain]

Mike Hearn says:

Raising the block size is supported by, amongst others:

-The developers of the most popular wallets on iOS, Android and one of the most popular web wallets. Between them they have served millions of users.
-Several of the biggest Bitcoin exchanges.
-The two biggest payment processors, which between them have most of the market.
-Several major mining pools, including all the Chinese pools.
-Two of the five Bitcoin Core committers (Gavin and Jeff)
-User polling shows about 75–80% support from people in online forums.

I wonder how many of the mentioned have stated their position publicly. Why not name them?
Also, the last one doesn't really count, because it's a non-representative sample.

[iCEBREAKER]

Mike Hearn says:

Raising the block size is supported by, amongst others:

-The developers of the most popular wallets on iOS, Android and one of the most popular web wallets. Between them they have served millions of users.
-Several of the biggest Bitcoin exchanges.
-The two biggest payment processors, which between them have most of the market.
-Several major mining pools, including all the Chinese pools.
-Two of the five Bitcoin Core committers (Gavin and Jeff)
-User polling shows about 75–80% support from people in online forums.

These days, Gavin is a "Core committer" in name only.  He's too busy meeting with spooks and oligarchs in smoke filled rooms to code much.

Most of the people who support larger blocks eschew XT.

Hearn is misleading the public like it's his job.  Case in point:

[ArticMine]

...

Then the answer is to run Bitcoin XT with just the large blocks fork and without the additional items such as the double transactions propagation, lighting network Lighthouse compatibility etc. In short let us focus this debate on the blocksize issue and not allow it to be distracted by this additional baggage.

Edit: Replaced "lighting network" with Lighthouse since I confused them. This furthers my point  that adding extraneous baggage in Bitcoin XT to the blocksize debate does not help at all.

[iCEBREAKER]

the answer is to run Bitcoin XT with just the large blocks fork and without the additional items

No, the answer is to avoid contentious hard forks and stick with the BIP process.

[Adrian-x]

the Miners follow us, they dont want to mine a coin no one accepts. Miners can mine all the alt coins they want, I'm only accepting Bitcoin and mining it too.

So you're going to be the first to stick your neck out and start accepting XTcoins, in order to begin establishing its alleged economic majority?

Such a brave choice.  XT needs more White Knights like you, since smoothie chickened out.

OK, I'll happily pay you in XTcoins for whatever you want to sell.  Got any silver, gold, or prepper gear/camping supplies?

nice try, Blockstream-coin if it survives will be an alt, I suspect Gmax and co will eat some humble Pie and move over to working on the Original Bitcoin.

the whole idea of a fork being a divorce is ludicrous and shame on you for speeding such crap, almost every significant upgrade to bitcoin has resulted in a hard fork, this upgrade will be no different, it's a problem developers dont want to fix bugs for feer of fracturing the network now is the time to do it as you know it only gets harder as we go forward.  

There has never been a contentious hard fork of Bitcoin, so in any case, XT's would be necessarily be "different."

And that's why you Gavinista's authoritarian junta is not going to happen.

In a contentious hard fork, somebody (the most hardcore Gavinista ever) has to stick their neck out and be the first to accept XTcoins, at the risk of them becoming worthless if their contentious fork fails.

OTOH, those staying safely with the previously demonstrated multi-billion dollar economic majority may seek to exploit the ideological (over)commitments of XTcoin's White Knight first actors, in the form of MPEX's XTcoin Short.  No wonder you don't want to sell your silver for my XTcoins!

Given enough leverage, Team Core will move XT's world onto the ash heap of history.   

Watch and learn, n00b...   

Every day blocks are orphaned by competition for the longest chain, each orphan represent a failed fork, the reason miners stop mining the shortest chain is they mine coins that will be accepted by the users of the network. This is not political or risky, the chain that accommodates the most transactions and uses create a market for miners to sell the coins they mine and so will be the longest.

This is how Bitcoin works, and has always worked.

I've known "how Bitcoin works" since before you made your account here.  But thanks for the (partial) refresher.

What you left out is the key role of the economic majority, and more specifically, the risk incurred by those (brave) actors who are first to attempt defection from it.

I'm not sure you do know how it works, the economic majority dont defect, the incentives ensure the majority's interests are best served.
You call this a hostile hard fork and an Altcion because you have another agenda that requires you to use political manipulation and fear to choose a path that is not in there best interests.

You are losing credibility by trying to elevate your understanding of Bitcoin by bench marking of my membership date. what relevance is that? 

[iCEBREAKER]

I'm not sure you do know how it works, the economic majority dont defect, the incentives ensure the majority's interests are best served.
You call this a hostile hard fork and an Altcion because you have another agenda that requires you to use political manipulation and fear to choose a path that is not in there best interests.

You are losing credibility by trying to elevate your understanding of Bitcoin by bench marking of my membership date. what relevance is that? 

Your relatively recent membership date became relevant when you presumed to lecture me on Mining 101 and How Bitcoin Works.

Actualizing XT's theoretical economic majority just got harder, as the risk of defecting from Bitcoin's is now compounded by the additional uncertainty generated by NotXT and PseudoNode.   

What you call "political manipulation and fear" others call "computer science."



#R3KT

[flix]

MeniRosenfeld
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h9cq4/its_time_for_a_break_about_the_recent_mess/cu6udfe

Sorry for being the odd one out in theymos' list, not having my stance on the issue clear . I will clarify it, but only after I explain at length why I reject the whole premise of the question.
This used to be a technical debate about block sizes. We were presented with two bad choices: Keep it at 1MB which is obviously too low, or increase to 8MB/20MB which is obviously too high (obvious to me anyway). As a community we've failed to reach a compromise, and I think that if more people pushed for a reasonable number like 3-4 MB in the short term (including also Gavin and Mike on one extreme, and Peter on the other), things would be different now.
Given that compromise failed, Gavin and Mike went ahead to push Bitcoin-XT, and now the real issue isn't about technology, it's about the philosophy of Bitcoin evolution. To me, Bitcoin-XT represents a somewhat reckless approach, which in the name of advancement shatters existing structures, fragments the community, and spins the ecosystem into chaos. Whereas Bitcoin Core represents a frigid approach, where no technology improvement will ever be made because consensus can't be reached, and where we can't do anything about the fact that we can't do anything, because of the delegitimization of attempts to change the status quo by forking and letting the best currency win (and make no mistakes, there will be many necessary technology improvements down the road; the block size limit pales in comparison).
Both choices are bad.
I had plans once to write a paper about the game-theoretic aspects of changing the Bitcoin protocol, the contingencies in case of a fork, and how the mere threat of a fork can create a Schelling point which would prevent it from happening. I regret never getting around to it, because it might have been illuminating in the current debate. (For that matter, the other paper I had plans for writing was about transaction fees and how they relate to things like a block size limit; I regret that too, but again the block size is no longer the real issue).
But anyway, I do strongly believe that the possibility of forking Bitcoin - even if at first it has no consensus - is vital to Bitcoin's health, growth and survival. It's the glue that holds everything together and makes sure the Bitcoin economy has a say in case something goes wrong with the development. Ideally a contentious fork would forever remain a theoretical possibility - but if it is possible it means it can happen, and that's what we're seeing right now. Rejecting a fork on the grounds that it's a fork is wrong.
Of course, there are grounds to reject Bitcoin-XT on the grounds that its timing and method are wrong. The objection to the technical change was too strong to just gloss over it. We're definitely not anywhere near the point where Pieter, Greg or Wladimir can be conceivably considered rogue and we should break away from them. Mike and Gavin have, quite arrogantly I would say, assumed that this is just like any other software change and that virtually everyone will just automatically follow them, where the reality is far from it. They didn't properly consider the consequences of making this move without enough support. (They might reply that they have been fighting for this for a long time and exhausted all other options, but I don't accept this - they made many attempts at persuasion, but not enough at compromise).
So here we are, having to choose between two bad alternatives. The mere act of choosing commits, in my opinion, the logical fallacy of privileging the hypothesis. There are millions of possible approaches, and "someone" out there restricted them to just 2. Most of the decision process (culling from millions to 2) was made for me and I'm left rubber-stamping one of the choices that remain. (See also http://lesswrong.com/lw/mi/stop_voting_for_nincompoops/).
But hey, even a noisy bit contains some information, and the question was asked, so...

Given the choice between short-term sticking with 1MB or going all the way to 8MB, I am in favor of going to 8MB.
Given the choice between sticking with Bitcoin Core or switching to Bitcoin-XT, I am in slight favor of sticking with Bitcoin Core, but that could change any time.

All that said, the parent post explaining theymos' policy makes no sense to me. As explained above, the possibility of forking is an integral part of Bitcoin. As long as Bitcoin-XT has non-negligible support as the true Bitcoin implementation, even with nothing resembling unanimous consensus, it is a part of what Bitcoin is, and of course is on topic on a Bitcoin subreddit.
Even if for some reason we take a purist approach that Bitcoin = Bitcoin Core, I'd imagine that most posts about Bitcoin-XT would compare it in some way to Bitcoin Core, and as such are on-topic (just like a post comparing Bitcoin and Litecoin would be on topic).
I'm considering upgrading the above to a post, but honestly, since it includes a discussion of Bitcoin-XT, I'm not even sure it passes the moderation rules...

[RoadTrain]

I think Meni is quite rational here. Calling for a compromise is what we should be doing, I believe.

[GreenStox]

No increase until the block doesnt reach 70% fullness, its no reason to increase it until we have low block size.

I`d prefer the 8mb one if they would do it, but i think its not needed.

But anyway its not us who decide but the miners... Talking about decentralization... Bitcoin is a fucking oligarchy!

the Miners follow us, they dont want to mine a coin no one accepts. Miners can mine all the alt coins they want, I'm only accepting Bitcoin and mining it too.

its the network that gives Bitcoin its Value, the network is us, the best theory to prove his is Peter R's Metcalfe's Law correlation  miners mine for value the value is in the network.

Perhaps Bytecoin can resolve this issue, the whole point of this centralization in bitcoin is getting worse and worse.
 Our bitcoins are held hostage by a few greedy miners and stupid devs.

It's obvious that the blocksize should be increased, but its the plain old divide & conquer bullshit, and there are plenty of followers on the other side too, which could cause fork in bitcoin.

We really need a real decentralized system, not a pseudo one.

[RoadTrain]

stupid devs

Well, I must say, they are still way smarter than you...

[NextTroll]

The Bitcoin Network will probably reach the 7 tps level in 2016 at current growth rates. With a maximum block size of 1MB this will force an increase in fees and stress the network, unless the rules are changed to allow larger blocks.

Here is a summary of several major proposals by the core developers on how to solve this issue:

For near-term increase:
Gavin Andresen: Currently favors "8MB very soon, then automatic double every two years till it hits 8GB in distant future", aka BIP101. Also finds Jeff Garzik's BIP100 (see below) acceptable.
Mike Hearn: Agrees with Gavin on BIP101. Currently working on implementing the increase in an alternative client, Bitcoin XT, to provide full node operators with a real choice.
Jeff Garzik: Favors "8MB after miner negotiation and a delay period before enforcement, stepping up/down on maxblocksize possible after with similar miner voting, absolute upper limit for the hard fork at 32MB", aka BIP100. Also proposed "2MB immediately and nothing further", aka BIP102, as an emergency stopgap in case adoption takes off, fees ratchet up and the sudden ecosystem meltdown puts further growth in danger.

For very conservative increase:
Pieter Wuille: "First increase scheduled at 2017 (to ~1.04MB, I believe), then automatic increase some 17% per year till 2GB in distant future", aka "Draft BIP103" (nominally un-numbered).
Luke-jr: Finds Pieter's proposal an acceptable compromise, though generally favors smaller blocks, occasionally expressing views that even 1MB blocks are too big.

Against increase until "something X is implemented":
Adam Back: Proposed "Extension blocks", aka a sidechain-lite, that allows migration to bigger blocks with only a soft fork. Also favors only migrating when sidechain tech is ready, against hard-forks in general.

Against increase in near-to-medium term future:
Gregory Maxwell: Against hard-forks in general, also against bigger blocks in the short-to-medium term future.
Mark Friedenbach: Against hard-forks in general, also against bigger blocks in the short-to-medium term future.

Staying neutral:
Wladimir J. van der Lann (Core lead dev): "You guys wake me up when you have a consensus, not gonna merge anything till then" (not actual words)

I vote with BIP100 or BIP101

[GreenStox]

stupid devs

Well, I must say, they are still way smarter than you...

Not if they intentionally divide and conquer the userbase and risk 4.7 billion $ of user funds based on their stupid ego.

A true intellectual would give in his ego and achieve a compromize. These devs are just clowns that got lucky to work on this project.

[RoadTrain]

stupid devs

Well, I must say, they are still way smarter than you...

Not if they intentionally divide and conquer the userbase and risk 4.7 billion $ of user funds based on their stupid ego.

A true intellectual would give in his ego and achieve a compromize. These devs are just clowns that got lucky to work on this project.

What if it's their primary plan? That's possible.

[DooMAD]

My first choice is BIP101, but if certain corners of the community are absolutely hellbent on torpedoing it through increasingly fraudulent means (the 'notXT' spoof client, impersonating satoshi, reddit and forum censorship, calling it an altcoin, general FUD or misinformation and all the other underhand and dishonest shit that's currently going on), I would settle on this proposal as a compromise or fallback.

However, we'll see if those currently engaged in said fraudulent activity are prepared to make any compromises themselves.

  

[Possum577]

Consensus, consensus, consensus...if we start to lose consensus we end up like fiat - it IS that simple.

Also, the more opportunities you have share your voice, the better, I invite (and strongly encourage you) to participate in this poll to echo you opinion in as many places as possible on this forum...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1153896.0

Thank you.

[flix]

Roger Ver:
Bigger Blocks Mean More Decentralization for Bitcoin
https://www.bitcoin.com/news/bigger-blocks-means-decentralization-bitcoin/

*Currently a very modest internet connection, available in most of the world, can easily support blocks more than one hundred times what is in use today.

*A $100 USD hard drive would take the better part of a century worth of full blocks to fill up at the current block size limit.

[RoadTrain]

Roger Ver:
Bigger Blocks Mean More Decentralization for Bitcoin
https://www.bitcoin.com/news/bigger-blocks-means-decentralization-bitcoin/

*Currently a very modest internet connection, available in most of the world, can easily support blocks more than one hundred times what is in use today.

*A $100 USD hard drive would take the better part of a century worth of full blocks to fill up at the current block size limit.

Jesus, these are arguments of 5yr old...

You know, I have a fairly powerful PC, but even it struggled running Core during the last spam attack. It didn't crash, but the load was noticeable.
In order for the reference client to be runnable by an average Joe, A LOT of engineering work must be done on the code side. That's exactly what core devs have been doing during the last year or two (or ever since the Bitcoin inception).

On a side note: if more users mean more nodes, why then the node count has been actually falling in the last two years? Despite an 1Mb limit and a lot of improvements in code...

[desired_username]

Roger Ver:
Bigger Blocks Mean More Decentralization for Bitcoin
https://www.bitcoin.com/news/bigger-blocks-means-decentralization-bitcoin/

*Currently a very modest internet connection, available in most of the world, can easily support blocks more than one hundred times what is in use today.

*A $100 USD hard drive would take the better part of a century worth of full blocks to fill up at the current block size limit.

Jesus, these are arguments of 5yr old...

You know, I have a fairly powerful PC, but even it struggled running Core during the last spam attack. It didn't crash, but the load was noticeable.
In order for the reference client to be runnable by an average Joe, A LOT of engineering work must be done on the code side. That's exactly what core devs have been doing during the last year or two.

On a side note: if more users mean more nodes, why then the node count has been actually falling in the last two years? Despite an 1Mb limit and a lot of improvements in code...

It's not realistic to desire that an average person should run a full node.

Even Satoshi foresaw that.

[RoadTrain]

Roger Ver:
Bigger Blocks Mean More Decentralization for Bitcoin
https://www.bitcoin.com/news/bigger-blocks-means-decentralization-bitcoin/

*Currently a very modest internet connection, available in most of the world, can easily support blocks more than one hundred times what is in use today.

*A $100 USD hard drive would take the better part of a century worth of full blocks to fill up at the current block size limit.

Jesus, these are arguments of 5yr old...

You know, I have a fairly powerful PC, but even it struggled running Core during the last spam attack. It didn't crash, but the load was noticeable.
In order for the reference client to be runnable by an average Joe, A LOT of engineering work must be done on the code side. That's exactly what core devs have been doing during the last year or two.

On a side note: if more users mean more nodes, why then the node count has been actually falling in the last two years? Despite an 1Mb limit and a lot of improvements in code...

It's not realistic to desire that an average person should run a full node.

Even Satoshi foresaw that.

Tell Roger Ver about that, it's his assumption, not mine.

And there's no point in appealing to Satoshi, he's not infallible.

[GreenStox]

stupid devs

Well, I must say, they are still way smarter than you...

Not if they intentionally divide and conquer the userbase and risk 4.7 billion $ of user funds based on their stupid ego.

A true intellectual would give in his ego and achieve a compromize. These devs are just clowns that got lucky to work on this project.

What if it's their primary plan? That's possible.

I suspect that bitcoin has been infiltrated by shadow forces from behind and many devs are controlled by marionettes from behind, so the sabotage can be intentional, to divide & conquer.

It's not a conspiracy, since many devs have been in the CFR meetings where the elite are meeting too.

[iCEBREAKER]

Roger Ver:
Bigger Blocks Mean More Decentralization for Bitcoin
https://www.bitcoin.com/news/bigger-blocks-means-decentralization-bitcoin/

*Currently a very modest internet connection, available in most of the world, can easily support blocks more than one hundred times what is in use today.

*A $100 USD hard drive would take the better part of a century worth of full blocks to fill up at the current block size limit.

Wow, Bitcoin Jesus certainly has picked his cross to die on.

It's a shame for someone with such a great reputation to instantly blow it by becoming known as Roger "100MB blocks are easy" Ver.

[Adrian-x]

Roger Ver:
Bigger Blocks Mean More Decentralization for Bitcoin
https://www.bitcoin.com/news/bigger-blocks-means-decentralization-bitcoin/

*Currently a very modest internet connection, available in most of the world, can easily support blocks more than one hundred times what is in use today.

*A $100 USD hard drive would take the better part of a century worth of full blocks to fill up at the current block size limit.

Wow, Bitcoin Jesus certainly has picked his cross to die on.

It's a shame for someone with such a great reputation to instantly blow it by becoming known as Roger "100MB blocks are easy" Ver.

your the odd ball, BIP101 is an improvement that is necessary for bitcoin to prosper, XT is the only viable option to implement this upgrade at this time, you've spread loads of FUD calling it an altcoin  .

on one is going to die on a cross, some of us want liberty and freedom more than you. Ver, just happens to be a leading figure in the bitcoin space. but anyway looking at the sheep and the Bitcoin wealthy I think your doing a good job for the next growth spurt.

[Swordsoffreedom]

Roger Ver:
Bigger Blocks Mean More Decentralization for Bitcoin
https://www.bitcoin.com/news/bigger-blocks-means-decentralization-bitcoin/

*Currently a very modest internet connection, available in most of the world, can easily support blocks more than one hundred times what is in use today.

*A $100 USD hard drive would take the better part of a century worth of full blocks to fill up at the current block size limit.

I think he did not calculate that one accurately
We are not just concerned about the size but the speed of the internet connection and geographical regions we may see larger adoption but in areas where the requirements for a speedy connection are met.

On the other hand incentivization to run Bitcoin nodes is non-existent per se besides feeling more secure from online exchange risk and nodes do not it face the issues of miner centralization near cheap electricity so I guess there may be a point for an increased userbase resulting in more nodes but in a capacity that can't really be measured till we start pushing that limit.

(mumble did a speed test on wifi down = 16mbp up = 4.87 mbps)
Plan offers 20-50mbp down 10 up ISP's over advertise compared to actual for local bandwidth purposes but sizing aside not the main issue.

MeniRosenfeld
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h9cq4/its_time_for_a_break_about_the_recent_mess/cu6udfe

The mere act of choosing commits, in my opinion, the logical fallacy of privileging the hypothesis. There are millions of possible approaches, and "someone" out there restricted them to just 2. Most of the decision process (culling from millions to 2) was made for me and I'm left rubber-stamping one of the choices that remain. (See also http://lesswrong.com/lw/mi/stop_voting_for_nincompoops/).
But hey, even a noisy bit contains some information, and the question was asked, so...

A voice of reason in the storm sides with Meni on this.

[iCEBREAKER]

BIP101 is an improvement that is necessary for bitcoin to prosper, XT is the only viable option to implement this upgrade at this time, you've spread loads of FUD calling it an altcoin  .

BIP101 is still in the very early 'concept' phase.  You are remiss to make flat, broad assertions based on positive assumptions about how it will do in the later prototype/testnet/deployment stages.

XT, as defined on Trolltalk and /r/bitcoin, is most certainly an altcoin:

Activating a hardfork based on what miners do is really bad. You could easily have a situation where 75% of miners support XT but none of the big Bitcoin exchanges or businesses do. Then miners would start mining coins that they couldn't spend anywhere useful, and SPV users would find that they can't transact with the businesses they want to deal with. The currency would be split, and in this case XT would be in a far weaker position than Bitcoin.

The possibility of this sort of network/currency split is what makes XT not a "legitimate hardfork", but rather the programmed creation of an altcoin. A consensus hardfork can only go forward once it has been determined that it's nearly impossible for the Bitcoin economy to split in any significant way. Not every Bitcoin user on Earth has to agree, but enough that there won't be a noticeable split.

If can't accept that, please fuck off to /v/bitcoinxt.   

[HostFat]

@iCEBREAKER
I'll give you a secret.
With the next fork it will be 1 block for minute, with the reward of 2.5 BTC (and after the halving, 1.25 BTC every minute and so on)

 

Hmm, even the max block size will be probably divided by 10, or even better, it will be made unlimited

[Quantus]

The facts are that the majority of Bitcoin transactions are worth less then 20 cents.  I consider this a micro transaction.
Now going even further I would argue 20% of transactions are worth less then 1 cent. I would consider these transactions spam.

I believe wholeheartedly that the network as it exists today was never envisioned by its creators and will collapse if propagation time between miners, full nodes and users continue to grow.
I believe wholeheartedly maintenance costs of the network will rise substantially with the rise of block size leading to consolidation and control of the network too private companies.   
I agree 1MB blocks do in fact limit the number of transaction the Bitcoin network can handle but this is only an issue for those sending transactions below 1 cent with no fee.

May the Ddos be with you. 



 

[Lauda]

My first choice is BIP101, but if certain corners of the community are absolutely hellbent on torpedoing it through increasingly fraudulent means (the 'notXT' spoof client, impersonating satoshi, reddit and forum censorship, calling it an altcoin, general FUD or misinformation and all the other underhand and dishonest shit that's currently going on), I would settle on this proposal as a compromise or fallback.

As far as I know, the BIP 101 is not sustainable (doubling every two years). This is just a conclusion based upon information that I've found through the months (not research). I'm pretty sure that developing lands and especially China can't handle the doubling. The problem isn't really the storage, but rather network bandwidth (i.e. increased orphan rates).
Wouldn't BIP 100 be better, having a soft limit between 1MB to a maximum of 32 MB?

However, we'll see if those currently engaged in said fraudulent activity are prepared to make any compromises themselves.

Fraudulent activity?

[Peter R]

My first choice is BIP101, but if certain corners of the community are absolutely hellbent on torpedoing it through increasingly fraudulent means (the 'notXT' spoof client, impersonating satoshi, reddit and forum censorship, calling it an altcoin, general FUD or misinformation and all the other underhand and dishonest shit that's currently going on), I would settle on this proposal as a compromise or fallback.

However, we'll see if those currently engaged in said fraudulent activity are prepared to make any compromises themselves.

  

As far as I know, the BIP 101 is not sustainable (doubling every two years). This is just a conclusion based upon information that I've found through the months (not research).

What do you believe is not sustainable?  Bandwidth, Blockchain size, UTXO set?  BIP101 seems conservative to me. 

[Zarathustra]

My first choice is BIP101, but if certain corners of the community are absolutely hellbent on torpedoing it through increasingly fraudulent means (the 'notXT' spoof client, impersonating satoshi, reddit and forum censorship, calling it an altcoin, general FUD or misinformation and all the other underhand and dishonest shit that's currently going on), I would settle on this proposal as a compromise or fallback.

However, we'll see if those currently engaged in said fraudulent activity are prepared to make any compromises themselves.

  

Wouldn't it be better to fork away the people with such behavior? What's the benefit to keep them within the bitcoin movement?

[DooMAD]

XT, as defined on Trolltalk and /r/bitcoin, is most certainly an altcoin:

Activating a hardfork based on what miners do is really bad. You could easily have a situation where 75% of miners support XT but none of the big Bitcoin exchanges or businesses do. Then miners would start mining coins that they couldn't spend anywhere useful, and SPV users would find that they can't transact with the businesses they want to deal with. The currency would be split, and in this case XT would be in a far weaker position than Bitcoin.

The possibility of this sort of network/currency split is what makes XT not a "legitimate hardfork", but rather the programmed creation of an altcoin. A consensus hardfork can only go forward once it has been determined that it's nearly impossible for the Bitcoin economy to split in any significant way. Not every Bitcoin user on Earth has to agree, but enough that there won't be a noticeable split.

If can't accept that, please fuck off to /v/bitcoinxt.  

Already refuted:

To summarise, he's basically saying if the economy doesn't follow the miners, there's a problem.  Which is a negative spin.

But at the same time, the statement would be equally true if he had phrased it to say that if the economy does follow the miners, there isn't a problem.  Positive spin.  

A subtle change in emphasis makes all the difference.  The only thing he's really giving here is an opinion.  He thinks a fork would be bad and he's trying to make it sound as scary as possible.  He's more than welcome to his opinion, but it's not beyond repute.

If Bitcoin forks and people go with the flow, everything keeps working normally.  There is no drama.  First we'll see if the network reaches the consensus threshold and if that happens, we'll then see who tries to fight the current and gets swept away.  That's how it would work regardless of what the client is called or who coded it.  If it was bitcoin core that introduced the 8mb patch, the fork would occur once the network reaches the consensus threshold and if that happens, we'll then see who tries to fight the current and gets swept away.  Same story, different name.  At the end of the day, it makes no difference.  Another equally valid outcome is that the alternative client reaches consensus and the core devs concede and release a version of core supporting 8mb blocks and then there's no bickering over a silly name or the personalities involved.

It's only an altcoin if it forks without consensus.  If he wants to keep moving threads to altcoins because of his opinion, I honestly couldn't care less.  It's only going to polarise the discussion, encourage controversy and make people dig their heels in.  If anything, it's generating more support for the alternative client than there otherwise would be.

Feel free to express your opinions, but they are only opinions.  Don't present spin as fact.

My first choice is BIP101, but if certain corners of the community are absolutely hellbent on torpedoing it through increasingly fraudulent means (the 'notXT' spoof client, impersonating satoshi, reddit and forum censorship, calling it an altcoin, general FUD or misinformation and all the other underhand and dishonest shit that's currently going on), I would settle on this proposal as a compromise or fallback.

However, we'll see if those currently engaged in said fraudulent activity are prepared to make any compromises themselves.  

Wouldn't it be better to fork away the people with such behavior? What's the benefit to keep them within the bitcoin movement?

I fundamentally believe Bitcoin is permissionless.  That means I wouldn't want to exclude people just because I don't agree with them doing things I perceive as being immoral to influence the outcome of the fork proposal.  Based on everything I've read, I think the right course of action is a larger blocksize.  If at the end of all this... actually, I should clarify what I mean by that first.  I don't just mean this silly "XT vs Core" spat, but the wider blocksize issue, including alternative proposals we haven't thoroughly explored yet (like my second preference linked to above), so the "end" could be a long way away yet.  But if at the end of it all, there is still no fork and Bitcoin remains at a 1mb blocksize, that simply means we (those of us who want a larger blocksize) didn't state the case effectively enough.  I'll accept that outcome.  I can't promise there won't be an "I told you so" or twelve if that outcome leads to negative consequences down the road, but I'll accept it.  I only believe in forking if it's with consensus, but I'll continue to make the case for larger blocks and call out the BS when I see it.

However, we'll see if those currently engaged in said fraudulent activity are prepared to make any compromises themselves.

Fraudulent activity?

Was I not clear about that part?

• Running a client to spoof your version and manipulate the figures is not honest behaviour
• Impersonating satoshi to "discredit" the fork proposal is not honest behavior
• Dismissing the fork proposal as an altcoin is not honest behaviour
• Attempting to sweep discussion on both forums and reddit under the carpet is not honest behaviour
• Claiming XT has suddenly introduced the possibility to log or ban IPs when this has always been possible is not honest behaviour.

The best part is, no one can stop them from doing these things.  They're perfectly entitled to do as they please.  But they aren't doing their cause any favours.  People aren't stupid and if they suspect something underhand is occurring, it's only going to make them dubious of the motives involved.

[Muhammed Zakir]

-snip-

However, we'll see if those currently engaged in said fraudulent activity are prepared to make any compromises themselves.

Fraudulent activity?

Was I not clear about that part?

• Running a client to spoof your version and manipulate the figures is not honest behaviour
• Impersonating satoshi to "discredit" the fork proposal is not honest behavior
• Dismissing the fork proposal as an altcoin is not honest behaviour

This has gone away from a "proposal. It already forked without consensus but lets wait and see...

-snip-
It's only an altcoin if it forks without consensus.
 -snip-

• Attempting to sweep discussion on both forums and reddit under the carpet is not honest behaviour

It is an altcoin. It forked without consensus. So it does not belong under "Bitcoin" discussion unless if that talks about Bitcoin and not XT solely. The forum is not deleting XT topics but moving it to Altcoin board.

• Claiming XT has suddenly introduced the possibility to log or ban IPs when this has always been possible is not honest behaviour.

Unlike Bitcoin Core, it is "default" behavior of XT.

The best part is, no one can stop them from doing these things.  They're perfectly entitled to do as they please.  But they aren't doing their cause any favours.  People aren't stupid and if they suspect something underhand is occurring, it's only going to make them dubious of the motives involved.

[DooMAD]

-snip-

However, we'll see if those currently engaged in said fraudulent activity are prepared to make any compromises themselves.

Fraudulent activity?

Was I not clear about that part?

• Running a client to spoof your version and manipulate the figures is not honest behaviour
• Impersonating satoshi to "discredit" the fork proposal is not honest behavior
• Dismissing the fork proposal as an altcoin is not honest behaviour

This has gone away from a "proposal. It already forked without consensus but lets wait and see...

-snip-
It's only an altcoin if it forks without consensus.
 -snip-

• Attempting to sweep discussion on both forums and reddit under the carpet is not honest behaviour

It is an altcoin. It forked without consensus. So it does not belong under "Bitcoin" discussion unless if that talks about Bitcoin and not XT solely. The forum is not deleting XT topics but moving it to Altcoin board.

The best part is, no one can stop them from doing these things.  They're perfectly entitled to do as they please.  But they aren't doing their cause any favours.  People aren't stupid and if they suspect something underhand is occurring, it's only going to make them dubious of the motives involved.

The code has forked, but the blockchain hasn't.  It's an open source coin and that means anyone is allowed to fork the code.  Anyone can make a change to the code and release their own client.  If that client sends and receives altcoins on an alternate blockchain, then yes, it's an altcoin.  If, however, it sends and receives bitcoin transactions following Bitcoin's blockchain, then it's still Bitcoin.  If the fork goes ahead, the longest chain remains Bitcoin and the other one will not be.  Consensus is not a central group of developers reaching agreement.  If you don't want people to be able to release their own clients with their own proposals for how to run the network, why are you using an open source coin?  Neither Core nor it's developers are a permanent authority on what Bitcoin is or should be.  If you want a coin where the developers make all the decisions and the users have no choice, you have the option of using a closed source coin.  

• Claiming XT has suddenly introduced the possibility to log or ban IPs when this has always been possible is not honest behaviour.

Unlike Bitcoin Core, it is "default" behavior of XT.

Indeed, and if the other thread has simply stated that in an honest fashion, I doubt it would have gone on for so many pages and caused so much of a stir.  The purpose of the thread was to cause a panic and discredit the developers.  Hence dishonest behaviour.  If they had simply said what you just did, I wouldn't have taken issue with it.

Yes, by default, if the node is being flooded or DDoS'd, it will prioritise which connections to keep and which to drop.  But this is nowhere near what the other thread was claiming.  

[Muhammed Zakir]

-snip-
The code has forked, but the blockchain hasn't.  It's an open source coin and that means anyone is allowed to fork the code.  Anyone can make a change to the code and release their own client.  If that client sends and receives altcoins on an alternate blockchain, then yes, it's an altcoin.  If, however, it sends and receives bitcoin transactions following Bitcoin's blockchain, then it's still Bitcoin.  If the fork goes ahead, the longest chain remains Bitcoin and the other one will not be.  Consensus is not a central group of developers reaching agreement.  If you don't want people to be able to release their own clients with their own proposals for how to run the network, why are you using an open source coin?  Neither Core nor it's developers are a permanent authority on what Bitcoin is or should be.  If you want a coin where the developers make all the decisions and the users have no choice, you have the option of using a closed source coin. 

You are right! Once a >1 MB block is created, the blockchain forks. I did not meant consensus from core developers as consensus. Consensus for >1 MB block is there but not for BIP 101. I am also for maximum block size increase but we haven't got a good solution yet! CMIIW.

• Claiming XT has suddenly introduced the possibility to log or ban IPs when this has always been possible is not honest behaviour.

Unlike Bitcoin Core, it is "default" behavior of XT.

Indeed, and if the other thread has simply stated that in an honest fashion, I doubt it would have gone on for so many pages and caused so much of a stir.  The purpose of the thread was to cause a panic and discredit the developers.  Hence dishonest behaviour.  If they had simply said what you just did, I wouldn't have taken issue with it.

Yes, by default, if the node is being flooded or DDoS'd, it will prioritise which connections to keep and which to drop.  But this is nowhere near what the other thread was claiming. 

Fair enough.

[Lauda]

Was I not clear about that part?
-snip-
The best part is, no one can stop them from doing these things.  They're perfectly entitled to do as they please.  But they aren't doing their cause any favours.  People aren't stupid and if they suspect something underhand is occurring, it's only going to make them dubious of the motives involved.

Yes, you were. My initial thought process couldn't get an answer to who might be doing this, rather than what that fraudulent activity was. This post provides a great answer to both question. People pseudo nodes and similar activity.

• Attempting to sweep discussion on both forums and reddit under the carpet is not honest behaviour

People can't agree on this part alone, thus it is hard to expect that the 'crowd' will reach consensus on something more important (e.g. block size limit).

Consensus for >1 MB block is there but not for BIP 101.
-snip-

Exactly. A lot of people misinterpret the words of others when they show support for something.
supporting bigger blocks =/= supporting XT/BIP 101
supporting 8 MB blocks =/= supporting XT/BIP 101

Even supporting BIP 101 does not necessarily mean that you support XT.

[flix]

We support the implementation of BIP101. We have found Gavin's arguments on
both the need for larger blocks and the feasibility of their implementation - while
safeguarding Bitcoin's decentralization - to be convincing. BIP101 and 8MB blocks
are already supported by a majority of the miners and we feel it is time for the
industry to unite behind this proposal.

http://blog.blockchain.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/Industry-Block-Size-letter-All-Signed.pdf

[flix]

25% of Hashing Power is now Publicly Backing BIP100

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3i9qdj/25_of_hashing_power_is_now_publicly_backing_bip100/

At least 3 pools are now tagging their coinbase signatures with "BIP100" which combined amounts to about 25% of mining hashing power. This includes f2pool Kano pool and Bitclub. It would appear BIP100 has quickly overtaken BIP101 in terms of hashing power support. F2pool previously called BitcoinXT an altcoin and it would appear they are pushing for BIP100's in Bitcoin Core as an alternative. Kano pool made a statement about the switch here.

[coinpr0n]

25% of Hashing Power is now Publicly Backing BIP100

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3i9qdj/25_of_hashing_power_is_now_publicly_backing_bip100/

At least 3 pools are now tagging their coinbase signatures with "BIP100" which combined amounts to about 25% of mining hashing power. This includes f2pool Kano pool and Bitclub. It would appear BIP100 has quickly overtaken BIP101 in terms of hashing power support. F2pool previously called BitcoinXT an altcoin and it would appear they are pushing for BIP100's in Bitcoin Core as an alternative. Kano pool made a statement about the switch here.

Glad to see BIP100 getting some love through all the noise. It's not quite the binary option some people are making it out to seem.

[Adrian-x]

25% of Hashing Power is now Publicly Backing BIP100

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3i9qdj/25_of_hashing_power_is_now_publicly_backing_bip100/

At least 3 pools are now tagging their coinbase signatures with "BIP100" which combined amounts to about 25% of mining hashing power. This includes f2pool Kano pool and Bitclub. It would appear BIP100 has quickly overtaken BIP101 in terms of hashing power support. F2pool previously called BitcoinXT an altcoin and it would appear they are pushing for BIP100's in Bitcoin Core as an alternative. Kano pool made a statement about the switch here.

Glad to see BIP100 getting some love through all the noise. It's not quite the binary option some people are making it out to seem.

with BIP100 it looks like, miners get to vote on the block size, it isn't difficult for me to think of a scenario where the majority of hashing power votes to limit the block size to compensate for the risk of loosing blocks due to poor propagation time, (this scenario gives advantage to the Voting Majority and penalizes the group with lower total network hashing power and higher bandwidth capacity.)

in this scenario miners are held to the will of the cartel (in other words BIP100 will empower mining cartels) miners can not break from the cartel without a vote, where as with BIP101 miners are welcome to form a cartel, and those miners who want to break the cartel rules are not held hostage by the majority of miners who control the cartel.

[HostFat]

21% attack possible against BIP100?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3id7f9/21_attack_possible_against_bip100/

[Klestin]

It is an altcoin. It forked without consensus. So it does not belong under "Bitcoin" discussion unless if that talks about Bitcoin and not XT solely. The forum is not deleting XT topics but moving it to Altcoin board.

Code that creates a hard fork is by definition an altcoin?  By that definition, the current Bitcoin itself is an altcoin, and Bitcoin Core discussion doesn't belong here either.  None of us are using the Bitcoin system that existed two years ago - Bitcoin has hard-forked more than once, most recently with BIP 34.  Should we move all Bitcoin discussion to an altcoin board?

[Muhammed Zakir]

It is an altcoin. It forked without consensus. So it does not belong under "Bitcoin" discussion unless if that talks about Bitcoin and not XT solely. The forum is not deleting XT topics but moving it to Altcoin board.

Code that creates a hard fork is by definition an altcoin?  By that definition, the current Bitcoin itself is an altcoin, and Bitcoin Core discussion doesn't belong here either.  None of us are using the Bitcoin system that existed two years ago - Bitcoin has hard-forked more than once, most recently with BIP 34.  Should we move all Bitcoin discussion to an altcoin board?

Did you read second sentence completely? It hardforked without consensus.

-snip-
If two developers can fork Bitcoin and succeed in redefining what "Bitcoin" is, in the face of widespread technical criticism and through the use of populist tactics, then I will have no choice but to declare Bitcoin a failed project.
 -snip-

[Lauda]

21% attack possible against BIP100?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3id7f9/21_attack_possible_against_bip100/

Even if it is vulnerable, it only is on paper. As far as I know Jeff is currently working on the paper itself. The paper isn't perfect. Luckily Jeff is a very nice guy, so just bumping him a few times should give the community a quick answer. If there is a problem, I'm sure that it will be resolved (especially since support for BIP100 has been growing).

[HostFat]

It is just funny that there is a "huge support" for something that it seems not working on the paper and still doesn't exist on code   (and so, not even tested)

[Lauda]

It is just funny that there is a "huge support" for something that it seems not working on the paper and still doesn't exist on code   (and so, not even tested)

Not working on paper? So Bitcoin, being vulnerable to a 51% attack as it is, does not work? The code for BIP101 solely exists because of its simplicity, and it has not been tested either. Have 8 MB blocks been tested? Not really,thus the same principles apply.

As I've stated, it would be best to wait for Jeff to answer this before actually continuing this (fruitless) discussion)

[HostFat]

Not working on paper? So Bitcoin, being vulnerable to a 51% attack as it is, does not work? The code for BIP101 solely exists because of its simplicity, and it has not been tested either. Have 8 MB blocks been tested? Not really,thus the same principles apply.

Gavin has made tests up to 200 MB.
Simpler the better

[Lauda]

Gavin has made tests up to 200 MB. Simpler the better

Technically no, simpler != better. If engineers had applied that saying long ago we would be stuck on old hardware forever (since smaller manufacturing processes are more complicated). Besides, you can't generalize anyways.
In a range from 8 MB to 8196 MB, 200MB is minor. He tested up to (your words) 2.44140625% of the maximum that his proposal will handle. That's really a great way to test something. I would not really want to go through the forking trouble again once something breaks.

[flix]

http://www.coindesk.com/support-grows-for-bip-100-bitcoin-block-size-proposal/
Support Grows for BIP 100 Bitcoin Block Size Proposal

Of all the proposed changes, an 8MB increase has the biggest share of bitcoin's hashrate (25.5%), with support from KnCMiner, Antpool, 21 Inc and BW Pool. Meanwhile, Gavin Andresen's XT fork – which has been branded "dangerous" by some core developers – lags behind with 1%, despite 14.6% of nodes showing support.

Additionally, Slush.io, the only mining pools having voted for XT so far, appears to have 'switched off' its vote in its most recent blocks.

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

I think 8MB every 2 years is random as hell and insane. The blocksize should be increased in relation to the real increments of network usage, not some 8ball prediction about it and then naming it the magic 8MB every 2 year solution.

[flix]

Bitcoin Backers Propose Solution to Split That Threatened Disruption
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-25/bitcoin-backers-propose-solution-to-split-that-threatened-disruption

Here's Hearn responding to a query from Bloomberg:

"It's great news. Bitcoin XT implements BIP 101 + other things. The letter doesn't say if they'll run XT or not, but that's OK: the other changes in it are useful but not as important in the same way as the block size limit is. If these companies take just the BIP 101 changes and apply them to Bitcoin Core, we're all good.

[Lauda]

Bitcoin Backers Propose Solution to Split That Threatened Disruption
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-25/bitcoin-backers-propose-solution-to-split-that-threatened-disruption

Here's Hearn responding to a query from Bloomberg:

"It's great news. Bitcoin XT implements BIP 101 + other things. The letter doesn't say if they'll run XT or not, but that's OK: the other changes in it are useful but not as important in the same way as the block size limit is. If these companies take just the BIP 101 changes and apply them to Bitcoin Core, we're all good.

My question is why? Aside from the few companies that recently signed a document, there is currently 0% support for BIP101 from the miners. I don't really see the point in pushing a BIP for which there is no support.

There is more than 30% support for BIP100 though. Bitfury is now supporting it as well.

[bliss]

Right now, I would like to see us all work together to find what works for bitcoins future.

Keep in mind the current trend is bitcoin and litecoin both taking center stage in the future, with A. Bitcoin allowing larger purchases such as homes, vehicles and other larger purchases. B. Litecoin meeting every day needs with small sized purchases.

Bitcoin also is human technology, so the technology itself is humanities. There is no 2 humanity, 1, so when t comes to btc or ltc, group has to decide. This is why there are other crypto currencies. Again, we all need to work together to make it work and also to agree together.

Bitcoin being the first is also an experimentation, remember that.

Mining. Ok. With mining, I need to also consult The London Bitcoin Bank members and find out there view so they can chime in here.

My view with blockchain size, its big... time to verify is long but also gives room for services. Electrum? I think at LBTC Electrum is the future for personal btc client and also similar on smart phones, it could be sped up, but remember the twin bitcoin litecoin system. You can't have a coin to meet everyones needs all the time. We have silver coins and gold coins (or green notes!). Fee's must be left to increase if need be. Mining is in a dangerous place. Miners are not making money. If the price is becoming silly, have to move it back to the miners like it was at the beginning, because that is what made the changes in price to happen from $1 for 1300 btc to what we have today.

Good work people. Let's make this happen right for humanities future.


Create a great day,

Kozan

[Muhammed Zakir]

Bitcoin Backers Propose Solution to Split That Threatened Disruption
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-08-25/bitcoin-backers-propose-solution-to-split-that-threatened-disruption

Here's Hearn responding to a query from Bloomberg:

"It's great news. Bitcoin XT implements BIP 101 + other things. The letter doesn't say if they'll run XT or not, but that's OK: the other changes in it are useful but not as important in the same way as the block size limit is. If these companies take just the BIP 101 changes and apply them to Bitcoin Core, we're all good.

My question is why? Aside from the few companies that recently signed a document, there is currently 0% support for BIP101 from the miners. I don't really see the point in pushing a BIP for which there is no support.

There is more than 30% support for BIP100 though. Bitfury is now supporting it as well.

Why does Gavin and Mike only want to support BIP 101? A result based on a mysterious calculation, 8 MB increment and henceforth, doubling. If they really want to support bigger block size limit, like all pro-XTs say, why can't they accept any other BIP which has got more support?

[HostFat]

BIP100 is bad for the market, because it add unpredictability, by giving votes to the miners.
This will just push the market (services) and users to other networks.  

If BIP100 is chosen, you can be sure that will we need another earlier fork to take away the vote from the miners, if we want to get the Bitcoin to survive the competitors.

[bliss]

Note... going to put up several things as comes to me.

This is a page on the bitcoin wiki:
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy

[Mickeyb]

I think 8MB every 2 years is random as hell and insane. The blocksize should be increased in relation to the real increments of network usage, not some 8ball prediction about it and then naming it the magic 8MB every 2 year solution.

I don't know why but this seems insane to me too. To get to the 8GB in the next 20 years is possible, but why take that road today. I mean, who the he'll can predict a future. Well nobody, not even Gavin. And then what will happen if such a huge blocks won't be needed or they create more problems in few years.

Why not opt in for some more modest solution and then revise it again in few years, even if we would have a debate like this again.

[DooMAD]

I think 8MB every 2 years is random as hell and insane. The blocksize should be increased in relation to the real increments of network usage, not some 8ball prediction about it and then naming it the magic 8MB every 2 year solution.

Personally, I can't see how going from the original 33.5MB and reducing down to 1MB was changed with no fuss at all, but an 8MB increase is suddenly controversial.  Also note that it doesn't have to increase every two years.  Preventing it only requires a soft fork, which is far less dramatic.

But that aside, there is a proposal here that seems to be gaining some momentum which seems to meet your criteria.  It just needs BIPing and coding sooner rather than later.  BIP101 is still my first choice, but if there's still no sign of an agreement by January, I'll settle for the as-yet-un-BIP'd "Proposal 1" as a compromise.

Code:

If more than 50% of block's size, found in the first 2000 of the last difficulty period, is more than 90% MaxBlockSize
    Double MaxBlockSize
Else if more than 90% of block's size, found in the first 2000 of the last difficulty period, is less than 50% MaxBlockSize
    Half MaxBlockSize
Else
    Keep the same MaxBlockSize

So it adjusts roughly every two weeks based on what traffic the network is actually dealing with at any given time.  Blocksize can increase or decrease as required, without handing over too much power to miners, like BIP100 does.

[HostFat]

Just remember everyone, that everything is started because the limit of the actual block size.
So, if the community will make the wrong choice by still limiting too much the size, we will need to start again all of these mess to make another fork

[Mickeyb]

Just remember everyone, that everything is started because the limit of the actual block size.
So, if the community will make the wrong choice by still limiting too much the size, we will need to start again all of these mess to make another fork

Well not necessarily, at least let's hope so. If the increase goes well, ends up justified, and community sees that we made to much of the fuss last time about is since it was really needed, the increase, maybe the next debate will be smoother.

Also, we don't need to put too much of a pressure not to get it right this time because of the possible future debate. Who knows what the future holds, we can't predict it. We might be sure that we have chosen right, and we end up wrong. We need to stay flexible.

[flix]

Potential dangers of BIP100
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3ii1vt/potential_dangers_of_bip100/


21% attack possible against BIP100?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3id7f9/21_attack_possible_against_bip100/

[HostFat]

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/bitcoin-xt/oFmzqn46v74/B1CKY7bNBgAJ

BIP 100 isn't currently implemented. I guess we'd put together some more concrete thoughts if and when it is coded up.

My initial thoughts are that I prefer BIP 101 because:
The BIP 100 voting mechanism doesn't seem fully thought out. A majority of miners can always win any vote because they can just orphan blocks that contain votes for something they don't like. So the more complex approach doesn't seem really robust.

But that'd require special code. If most miners just adopt the defaults, then it's possible for a minority of hash power to drag the block size down to nearly nothing.

It's quite common for miners to just accept whatever the defaults are, regardless of whether they make sense. That's why we still see 750kb blocks sometimes when the network is actually backlogged (XT fixes this).

I think the reason is that miners, not unreasonable, assume the Bitcoin Core developers are selecting default behaviour in sensible ways. Alas it's not the case anymore, because they feel choosing opinionated defaults is "centralising". This is why the XT manifesto specifically states we will pick defaults as we think best.

The BIP100 default is 1 megabyte. Thus by default miners would be voting for no change. However what we need is change!

It gives miners additional power to modify the system for no obviously good reason beyond "some miners are saying they'd like more power". Miners are not the only stakeholders. Users, merchants, exchanges, etc matter too - if not more!

The upper limit is meant to be a kind of DoS limit, to stop troll miners generating giant mega-blocks. It's not meant to be a stick that miners can use to beat important but voteless economic players.

There's a risk that someone comes up with a business plan like this:   we will build a giant ASIC farm in the middle of a desert at the end of a piece of string and tin can (i.e. no bandwidth). This will be super cheap because of abundant land/solar/wind/whatever and the lack of bandwidth won't matter because we can just drag down the block size limit to ensure tiny blocks.

This would of course hurt the entire ecosystem for their own short term benefit, but BIP 100 would let them do that with just a small amount of the overall hash power.

Miners have just one job: order transactions by time. They shouldn't be doing anything else, and arguably, people already freak out about the concentration of power in the hands of big mining pools. BIP 100 would make this issue worse.

So these are my initial thoughts.

[flix]

This piece from Coindesk summarizes how different players are positioning themselves in the #blocksize debate:
http://www.coindesk.com/block-size-debate-whos-picking-sides/

Below you can see results from the 15 biggest mining organisations and the 10 best-funded bitcoin service providers.

TL/DR:
-Miners like BIP100 (which lets miners decide blocksize)
-Service providers like BIP101 (which makes blocksize limit predictable).

Common ground: Most want larger maxblocksize.

Support BIP100
KNC Miner            
21 Inc            
BitFury            
BTCChina            
Discus Fish/ F2Pool            
Kano CKPool            
BitClub Network

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....if could just know the position of the top 10 exchanges and the top 100 Bitcoin holders.... we would have a very good picture of where the community stands.

[uxgpf]

I think 8MB every 2 years is random as hell and insane. The blocksize should be increased in relation to the real increments of network usage, not some 8ball prediction about it and then naming it the magic 8MB every 2 year solution.

Personally, I can't see how going from the original 33.5MB and reducing down to 1MB was changed with no fuss at all, but an 8MB increase is suddenly controversial.  Also note that it doesn't have to increase every two years.  Preventing it only requires a soft fork, which is far less dramatic.

But that aside, there is a proposal here that seems to be gaining some momentum which seems to meet your criteria.  It just needs BIPing and coding sooner rather than later.  BIP101 is still my first choice, but if there's still no sign of an agreement by January, I'll settle for the as-yet-un-BIP'd "Proposal 1" as a compromise.

Code:

If more than 50% of block's size, found in the first 2000 of the last difficulty period, is more than 90% MaxBlockSize
    Double MaxBlockSize
Else if more than 90% of block's size, found in the first 2000 of the last difficulty period, is less than 50% MaxBlockSize
    Half MaxBlockSize
Else
    Keep the same MaxBlockSize

So it adjusts roughly every two weeks based on what traffic the network is actually dealing with at any given time.  Blocksize can increase or decrease as required, without handing over too much power to miners, like BIP100 does.

I think that would keep blocksize limit too close to the actual blocksize and give an incentive for miners to spam the network with transactions. In order to make spamming unprofitable max blocksize should be atleast 50% higher than the average blocksize.

[flix]

This:
Miners, merchants, exchanges & wallet providers, let us know which block size you will support
http://blocksize.org/

[flix]

Excellent interview with @gavinandresen on #blocksize, Bitcoin governance and a lot more:


Gavin Andresen: On The Blocksize And Bitcoin's Governance
https://youtu.be/B8l11q9hsJM


He clarifies his plans to promote BIP101 (with or without Bitcoin XT), the problems with the current decision process in Bitcoin Core, the need for multiple implementations, etc....



...and here is a previous one with Mike Hearn:
Mike Hearn - Blocksize Debate At The Breaking Point
https://youtu.be/8JmvkyQyD8w

[hdbuck]

lol at dat consensus (eg. poll).

at this point its safe to say we aint gonna fork, at least until we really need it.
but if we would in advance, the fork wont live long.
bye bye centralized governance.
too late at the party, we already are out of any governance's reach!

Now this is Bitcoin

[flix]

Let's Talk Bitcoin! #241 - The 'Big Blockist' Perspective
https://youtu.be/QGD6zouEzW8

with @aantonop

[hdbuck]

Let's Talk Bitcoin! #241 - The 'Big Blockist' Perspective
https://youtu.be/QGD6zouEzW8

with @aantonop

lol no fork this egomaniac dude tellin us what to do with our coins.
fed up with these people.

cf. my sig

[Jeremycoin]

I chose "Any, but with consensus.", because without everyone this problem won't solved.

[DooMAD]

Let's Talk Bitcoin! #241 - The 'Big Blockist' Perspective
https://youtu.be/QGD6zouEzW8

with @aantonop

lol no fork this egomaniac dude tellin us what to do with our coins.
fed up with these people.

cf. my sig

You're going to be fed up for a while longer, then.  You seem to hate any talk of a fork, but it's something people keep discussing and keep pushing for.  Clearly this isn't going away.  And the pressure will only build over time.  The momentum is building against you here.  We get that you think Bitcoin's sole purpose is an investment to make you wealthy and that you want to prevent the fork by any means necessary because you deem it a threat to your investment.  Fortunately, your tactics for preventing the fork appear to consist primarily of telling people to "fork off" and other torrents of equally lame insults.  I'm sure I've explained this before, but just in case you missed it last time, you need to research your investments a little more carefully in future.  If you wanted a coin to invest in, where the code can't be altered and can't be forked by popular demand to support a greater number of transactions, you should have invested in a closed-source coin.  If you wanted a coin the masses can't use, you should have invested in a coin that isn't permissionless.  If you want an exclusive blockchain that only benefits a privileged few, you chose the wrong blockchain.  This train doesn't lead to the destination you thought it did.

Better luck in your future ventures.

[flix]

Looking at this:
http://blocksize.org/bip101.html

It seems that BIP101 actually has all that is necessary to be the main chain. They have miners, wallets, exchanges.... the largest companies.. what is starting to be called "the economic majority".

BIP100 and 8MB only have miners:
http://blocksize.org/bip100.html

The small-blockist camp has wallets and exchanges, but no miners...
http://blocksize.org/contra.html

[hdbuck]

miners need bitcoin holders first and foremost or their minted coins will be worthless.

if they want out with some forked altcoin, that will allow real bitcoiners to get back to mining.

if they secedes, they can only hope for the new users the redditards keeps on praying but that are not here: the mass.. XD

so plz gimme a break.

we control bitcoin.

[flix]

Seeing how the forces are lining up... I think that the most likely outcome is going to be a fork. With BIP101 gaining majority support and a minority supporting a "classic" small-block Bitcoin.

I used to think a fork was the worst possible outcome... but I am starting to reconcile myself to the idea. It might not be such a bad thing to have 2 coins and let people choose.

After all.. there are hundreds of altcoins... they all seem to co-exist and compete just fine.

[hdbuck]

^ yup this i agree, i am all up for a fork, any fork actually.

good riddance of the socialists aka statists aka corporatists aka coffeetiperz with their usgavin usgarzik mofoantonopoulos et al. leading them centralized way to their new masters.

dont mind if i stick with bitcoin. the one and only.

[Lauda]

Looking at this:
http://blocksize.org/bip101.html

It seems that BIP101 actually has all that is necessary to be the main chain. They have miners, wallets, exchanges.... the largest companies.. what is starting to be called "the economic majority".

What nonsense are you talking about? 3 smaller miners and 13 entities is what you call the economic majority? You're essentially saying that Bitcoin has a total of 20-25 companies. Without the miners there is no fork, and these companies can't do anything about it.
Besides, a few vital components are missing in the BIP101 support. We've yet to see the debate resolved.

miners need bitcoin holders first and foremost or their minted coins will be worthless.
-snip-
we control bitcoin.

I'm pretty sure that everyone else has much more to lose than the miners. I doubt that they are holding onto a high percentage of Bitcoins. Why did you change your stance towards the fork?

[hdbuck]

miners need bitcoin holders first and foremost or their minted coins will be worthless.
-snip-
we control bitcoin.

I'm pretty sure that everyone else has much more to lose than the miners. I doubt that they are holding onto a high percentage of Bitcoins.

sure its a balance. imho no blocksize fork proposals until now have actually managed to take into account such sensible equilibrium.
not that i believe there is a problem to be dealt with for a start.. or at least consensually yet.

Why did you change your stance towards the fork?

because if they really want to go for it, i feel the sooner usgavin and its consensus breakers at reddit are out of the picture, the better for bitcoin.

in the end i am sure bitcoin will prevail (because open source, decentralized etc..) on any power grab fork, whether it be by the miners, the gov moles or the devs.

so bring it on! lets do this!

[isvicre]

Surprised to see that Gavin Andresen lead the poll. So many XT shills out there.

[ph.amracyshop]

I voted for Soft fork. Adam Back.

[flix]

Surprised to see that Gavin Andresen lead the poll. So many XT shills out there.

BIP101 is not XT. It could still be merged into Core. This is in fact the scenario that all those who have supported BIP101 without mentioning XT are hoping for.

Actually if this is a power grab by Mike Hearn, he couldn't have chosen a better battlefield. Almost nobody defends 1MB maxblocksize forever.

Core developers should accept BIP101 and fight Hearn's fork over the next technical issue.

[hdbuck]

Surprised to see that Gavin Andresen lead the poll. So many XT shills out there.

the poll started debut august, when the shill storm was ATH.

[isvicre]

But almost everybody who voted for BIP101 is supporting XT. If we do separate poll and ask who wants 1 MB block size I'm sure nobody will support it.

[Lauda]

the poll started debut august, when the shill storm was ATH.

I'm actually surprised by the low number of votes. It looks like people are carefully trying to manipulate polls so that it is not too obvious. I just enjoy when people without zero technical background agree and praise the BIP101 growth pattern.

sure its a balance. imho no blocksize fork proposals until now have actually managed to take into account such sensible equilibrium.
not that i believe there is a problem to be dealt with for a start.. or at least consensually yet.
because if they really want to go for it, i feel the sooner usgavin and its consensus breakers at reddit are out of the picture, the better for bitcoin.
-snip-

Essentially you are not supporting XT, but you rather want to get them out of the way? Interesting approach. People around here are either pro or anti. Another interesting argument is that the development is 'centralized'. However people want to take away the power from a group of developers and give it to just two (which are, considering everything, questionable at best).

[hdbuck]

the poll started debut august, when the shill storm was ATH.

I'm actually surprised by the low number of votes. It looks like people are carefully trying to manipulate polls so that it is not too obvious. I just enjoy when people without zero technical background agree and praise the BIP101 growth pattern.

True true.. ^^

sure its a balance. imho no blocksize fork proposals until now have actually managed to take into account such sensible equilibrium.
not that i believe there is a problem to be dealt with for a start.. or at least consensually yet.
because if they really want to go for it, i feel the sooner usgavin and its consensus breakers at reddit are out of the picture, the better for bitcoin.
-snip-

Essentially you are not supporting XT, but you rather want to get them out of the way? Interesting approach. People around here are either pro or anti. Another interesting argument is that the development is 'centralized'. However people want to take away the power from a group of developers and give it to just two (which are, considering everything, questionable at best).

Ah, yes, im anti any power grab, hence any fork as of how they are now, because besides the fud and the mass adoption propaganda, there is nothing..

So i figured there is no point arguing anymore, just let them flock to whatever untested, unbalanced, centralized fork they want, with their delusional socialist hopes for some sort of mass tipping spamming adoption.

That should give the real bitcoin more oxygen and more context as to what it really is.
Which is decentralized financial freedom, or a *very* high value privilege.

[tvbcof]

Pieter Wuillie and Luke-jr have weird mindsets. The network is now having trouble from time to time with the amount of transactions. How can 1 MB blocks be even too big?

They consider it too big when viewing it from a decentralization point of view. Even at 1MB, mining is centralized, full node count continues to drop drastically every year, the recent fork revealed that majority of hashpower was SPV mining, meaning they were blindly building blocks without even checking if txns were valid! They consider decentralization the upmost important property of Bitcoin because that is the ONLY 1 thing that sets it apart from any other currency today. Their view is that once you lose decentralization, Bitcoin becomes just another currency, ie. vulnerable to manipulation, censorship, inflation like other currencies. With regards to too many txns for 1MB, they can all still work via offchain DBs like coinbase/changetip (just as much of the financial system functions today, only inter-bank settlements are cleared with the central bank) or more promisingly Lightning which has the added benefit of being trustless and instant confirmation.

In short, their view is that bitcoin should not risk decentralization to allow onchain txns for everyone and everything. All of that can be done on higher layers.

This is very well written.  I won't speak for the view of others, but it captures my own mindset to a tee.  Thanks!

I will add that I would find it 'kinda cool' in a way if a $0.12 goat-cheese transaction in Mongolia lived along side a $12,408,671.04 nightly financial services entity settlement, but if it means compromising the decentralized nature of Bitcoin and the robustness that this decentralization imparts, it is simply not worth the trade-off.  If the Mongolian can achieve 99% of the benefit of Bitcoin through use of a proxy system (some sidechain) that is a really good compromise in my mind.  I look forward to being able to make the same compromise myself for 99.9% of my financial activity.

[hdbuck]

Pieter Wuillie and Luke-jr have weird mindsets. The network is now having trouble from time to time with the amount of transactions. How can 1 MB blocks be even too big?

They consider it too big when viewing it from a decentralization point of view. Even at 1MB, mining is centralized, full node count continues to drop drastically every year, the recent fork revealed that majority of hashpower was SPV mining, meaning they were blindly building blocks without even checking if txns were valid! They consider decentralization the upmost important property of Bitcoin because that is the ONLY 1 thing that sets it apart from any other currency today. Their view is that once you lose decentralization, Bitcoin becomes just another currency, ie. vulnerable to manipulation, censorship, inflation like other currencies. With regards to too many txns for 1MB, they can all still work via offchain DBs like coinbase/changetip (just as much of the financial system functions today, only inter-bank settlements are cleared with the central bank) or more promisingly Lightning which has the added benefit of being trustless and instant confirmation.

In short, their view is that bitcoin should not risk decentralization to allow onchain txns for everyone and everything. All of that can be done on higher layers.

This is very well written.  I won't speak for the view of others, but it captures my own mindset to a tee.  Thanks!

I will add that I would find it 'kinda cool' in a way if a $0.12 goat-cheese transaction in Mongolia lived along side a $12,408,671.04 nightly financial services entity settlement, but if it means compromising the decentralized nature of Bitcoin and the robustness that this decentralization imparts, it is simply not worth the trade-off.  If the Mongolian can achieve 99% of the benefit of Bitcoin through use of a proxy system (some sidechain) that is a really good compromise in my mind.  I look forward to being able to make the same compromise myself for 99.9% of my financial activity.

+2 Bitcoin's universality resides in its decentralization, as in the ability for anyone to run a full node or download the blockchain, directly check it, transact within it, etc.

It is not about allowing everybody to freely-SPV-spam the holy ledger with their groceries and let only a handful corporations/devs/miners run the show.

That's what makes Bitcoin precious imho.

PS: also im glad there is still sane people around here. So although I happened to be quite virulent lately, I would like to take this opportunity to thank both for the very calm and wise comments you provide this nutplace with. This gives me indeed hope that bitcoin will overcome any sketchy social attack.

[flix]

Doesn't say much.. apart from "let´s work together" and come to the scaling Bitcoin conference in September.... but at least it's a start.

An Open Letter to the Bitcoin Community from the Developers
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/21809/open-letter-bitcoin-community-developers/

As active contributors to Bitcoin, we share this letter to communicate our plan of action related to technical consensus and Bitcoin scalability.

Bitcoin is many things to many people. However, the development and maintenance of Bitcoin is a human endeavor. Satoshi sought review and cooperation, and the subsequent work by Bitcoin’s developers has made the system more secure and orders of magnitude faster. The Bitcoin developer community is dedicated to the future of Bitcoin, looks after the health of the network, strives for the highest standards of performance, and works to keep Bitcoin secure on behalf of everyone.

In the upcoming months, two open workshops will bring the community together to explore these issues. The first Scaling Bitcoin workshop will be in Montreal on September 12-13. The second workshop is planned for December 6-7 and will be hosted in Hong Kong to be more inclusive of Bitcoin’s global user base.

We ask the community to not prejudge and instead work collaboratively to reach the best outcome through the existing process and the supporting workshops. It’s great to already see broad excitement for the event and the high concentration of technical participants attending.

Wladimir J. van der Laan

Pieter Wuille
Cory Fields
Luke Dashjr
Jonas Schnelli
Jorge Timón
Greg Maxwell
Eric Voskuil
Amir Taaki
Dave Collins
Michael Ford
Peter Todd
Phillip Mienk
Suhas Daftuar
R E Broadley
Eric Lombrozo
Daniel Kraft
Chris Moore
Alex Morcos
dexX7
Warren Togami
Mark Friedenbach
Ross Nicoll
Pavel Janík
Josh Lehan
Andrew Poelstra
Christian Decker
Bryan Bishop
Benedict Chan
฿tcDrak
Charlie Lee
Jeremy Rubin

[flix]

But almost everybody who voted for BIP101 is supporting XT. If we do separate poll and ask who wants 1 MB block size I'm sure nobody will support it.

For the sake of completeness I Have been searching for arguments online in defense of 1MB. I cannot find any document or video which represents the 1MB forever position.

Can anybody please provide a link to such a video/paper/post?

[flix]

a16z Podcast: Hard Forks, Hard Choices for Bitcoin
WITH ADAM BACK AND ALEX MORCOS
http://a16z.com/2015/09/02/a16z-podcast-hard-forks-hard-choices-for-bitcoin/

So in the interest of airing all options for solving Bitcoin’s scaling problem, we invited two more experts from the Bitcoin world, Adam Back and Alex Morcos to share their views on alternate ways to scale the Bitcoin blockchain.

Back is a well-known applied cryptographer, whose longtime focus has been digital currency. Back invented hashcash, a proof-of-work system, which, among its other applications, is used in Bitcoin mining. He’s the cofounder of Blockstream.

Morcos is the founder of Chaincode Labs, based in New York City, and was a co-founder of quantitative trading company Hudson River Trading. He’s more recently become immersed in the Bitcoin world.

It seems like both Adam and Alex favour bigger blocks too, they just have a different approach to how to scale.

Seriously... who is in favour of 1MB blocks forever? Link please!

[hdbuck]

a16z Podcast: Hard Forks, Hard Choices for Bitcoin
WITH ADAM BACK AND ALEX MORCOS
http://a16z.com/2015/09/02/a16z-podcast-hard-forks-hard-choices-for-bitcoin/

So in the interest of airing all options for solving Bitcoin’s scaling problem, we invited two more experts from the Bitcoin world, Adam Back and Alex Morcos to share their views on alternate ways to scale the Bitcoin blockchain.

Back is a well-known applied cryptographer, whose longtime focus has been digital currency. Back invented hashcash, a proof-of-work system, which, among its other applications, is used in Bitcoin mining. He’s the cofounder of Blockstream.

Morcos is the founder of Chaincode Labs, based in New York City, and was a co-founder of quantitative trading company Hudson River Trading. He’s more recently become immersed in the Bitcoin world.

It seems like both Adam and Alex favour bigger blocks too, they just have a different approach to how to scale.

Seriously... who is in favour of 1MB blocks forever? Link please!

Not saying 4eva^tm. altho...


The economics of sinking Garzikcoin aka BIP 100.
http://www.contravex.com/2015/08/29/the-economics-of-sinking-garzikcoin-aka-bip-100/

Vox populi, vox dei, no more.
http://www.contravex.com/2015/08/19/vox-populi-vox-dei-no-more/

Bitcoin is unfair. That’s the point and so it shall remain.
http://www.contravex.com/2015/03/08/bitcoin-is-unfair-thats-the-point-and-so-it-shall-remain/

The future of Bitcoin regulation
http://trilema.com/2013/the-future-of-bitcoin-regulation/#selection-103.295-103.500

The Economics of Bitcoin Transaction Fees
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2400519

Who Controls Bitcoin?
http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/who-controls-bitcoin/

Meditations on Cypherpunk Nightmares
http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/meditations-on-cypherpunk-nightmares/


Hope this selection of articles widens a bit your view on the subject.

[flix]

Hope this selection of articles widens a bit your view on the subject.

Thanks!

Always love to read different views.

[DooMAD]

The economics of sinking Garzikcoin aka BIP 100.
http://www.contravex.com/2015/08/29/the-economics-of-sinking-garzikcoin-aka-bip-100/

Somehow I figured it wouldn't take long for that shit to start.  Once you finish telling everyone that Gavin and Mike are basically the equivalent of terrorists for daring to propose a fork, then the focus switches to Jeff and then he's just as scary/bad/evil/etc and no one should trust him because he dared to propose a change, so he must want power for himself, right?  So eventually absolutely anyone with a proposal that involves a blocksize increase becomes an enemy of the "true" Bitcoin?  Is that basically where this shit is headed?  Because I guarantee you're going to run out of credibility if you cry wolf again.  Bunch of fear-mongering fuckwits, the lot of you.

[hdbuck]

Lol but basically, we were right about Gavin.. From the very begining.. So how about you read and learn baby  

In the end, we, "fuckwits", are the only ones really fighting, givin no concessions, for you fools bitcoiner's best interest.



 

[poeEDgar]

Why is BIP102 not included?

[DooMAD]

Lol but basically, we were right about Gavin.. From the very first start. So how about you read and learn baby

We "fuckwits" are the ones fighting for you bitcoiners best interest.

No, you've just reinforced your own baseless assertions to the point where you've actually started to believe them.  Others are willing to compromise and find a balance between capacity and decentralisation, but you aren't.  Either start making concessions, or guarantee a messy split when the fork does happen.  You attacked 20mb without proposing an alternative, you attacked 8mb without proposing an alternative, and now you're attacking BIP100 without proposing an alternative.  Where's your alternative?  Is there even an inch of ground you're prepared to give?  What increase in blocksize would you find acceptable?  Either be reasonable and negotiate, or lose your say altogether and get left behind.  No one is going to waste their time talking to a brick wall.  Your choice.  

[jonald_fyookball]

Lol but basically, we were right about Gavin.. From the very first start. So how about you read and learn baby

We "fuckwits" are the ones fighting for you bitcoiners best interest.

No, you've just reinforced your own baseless assertions to the point where you've actually started to believe them.  Others are willing to compromise and find a balance between capacity and decentralisation, but you aren't.  Either start making concessions, or guarantee a messy split when the fork does happen.  You attacked 20mb without proposing an alternative, you attacked 8mb without proposing an alternative, and now you're attacking BIP100 without proposing an alternative.  Where's your alternative?  Is there even an inch of ground you're prepared to give?  What increase in blocksize would you find acceptable?  Either be reasonable and negotiate, or lose your say altogether and get left behind.  No one is going to waste their time talking to a brick wall.  Your choice.  

When someone can't even tell the difference between "Gavin" and "Garzik" its time to put them on ignore.  (hdbuck, not you DooMAD)

[hdbuck]

Fork you man there is no alternative to be found to bitcoin! Cant you just get it?
Im starting to be really irritated by your constant fud and unfounded, untested, illogical bullshit

such ignorance wtf.


Cant wait for you sheeple to Fork the Fuck off.

[funkenstein]

If you think this kind of thing could somehow be useful but you're not sure you trust Themos to officiate, you could use a public fraud-proof voting system:

http://coin-vote.com/poll/55e8a33299baadff0a34acb7

[DooMAD]

Fork you man there is no alternative to be found to bitcoin! Cant you just get it?
Im starting to be really irritated by your constant fud and unfounded, untested, illogical bullshit

such ignorance wtf.


Cant wait for you sheeple to Fork be Fuck off.

So to clarify, regardless of how many people (Sheeple?  Really?  Could you be any less mature?) push for larger blocks because it's an entirely legitimate and acceptable view, until the blocks are regularly full and the mempool starts to grow as well, you will staunchly and vehemently oppose any proposals that involve an increase?  Even resorting to baseless accusations and character assassinations of any developers proposing a fork?  Even though that will degrade the service for the average user?  Is that pretty much the sum of it?  Constant FUD and derision of anything that differs to your equally untested view?  

There's literally no reasoning with you (or brg444, or iCEBREAKER, or your other fellow cronies feeding off MP's elitist rhetoric).  Despite every attempt to find common ground with you, you simply don't want there to be any.  Even when we acknowledge your view that decentralisation is still an important aspect and we shouldn't go too crazy with the blocksize, you still won't move an inch.  Why should anyone acknowledge your view if you won't acknowledge theirs?  When the majority find benefit in scaling, you're more than welcome to stay behind and trade amongst a small handful of noisy extremists who are incapable of allowing compromise.  Everyone else will leave you in the dust.  That's how it'll end.

[hdbuck]

Lol, whatever you so smartass, get lost.

Cant be bothered anymore with your fallacies, altho the more pitiful part is you may actually buy this nonsense..

In the end, you will be ruined, i will be cheering.

Ignored.

[RoadTrain]

Even when we acknowledge your view that decentralisation is still an important aspect and we shouldn't go too crazy with the blocksize, you still won't move an inch.

Still? My belief it's always an important aspect. Or did I misinterpret you?

[DooMAD]

Even when we acknowledge your view that decentralisation is still an important aspect and we shouldn't go too crazy with the blocksize, you still won't move an inch.

Still? My belief it's always an important aspect. Or did I misinterpret you?

I get the impression at times they feel that anyone with a view supporting larger blocks doesn't care about jeopardising decentralisation.  Like we've somehow forgotten that it's important.  That's why they can only see it as an "attack", they genuinely believe we don't understand the importance of decentralisation.  We do.  But there are valid concerns about capacity and it's vital we get the balance right, so we propose smaller increases, or dynamic increases and decreases, or letting the miners choose, but apparently none of these are viable options to the handful of "asset class" militants who reject everything out of hand.  It appears as though the only option they're willing to allow is "GTFO my chain, peasant".  So what's the point in trying to engage with them?  If they want a blockchain all to themselves, that's exactly what they're going to get when everyone else leaves them behind.

[poeEDgar]

It appears as though the only option they're willing to allow is "GTFO my chain, peasant".  So what's the point in trying to engage with them?

I believe you have just stated Gavin's position.

I asked Andresen whether, if XT were to achieve full acceptance, he would then include all the earlier Bitcoin core devs in the new XT team. He replied that “[XT] will have a different set of developers.”
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/inside-the-fight-over-bitcoins-future

"My way or the highway."

[brg444]

Fork you man there is no alternative to be found to bitcoin! Cant you just get it?
Im starting to be really irritated by your constant fud and unfounded, untested, illogical bullshit

such ignorance wtf.


Cant wait for you sheeple to Fork be Fuck off.

So to clarify, regardless of how many people (Sheeple?  Really?  Could you be any less mature?) push for larger blocks because it's an entirely legitimate and acceptable view, until the blocks are regularly full and the mempool starts to grow as well, you will staunchly and vehemently oppose any proposals that involve an increase?  Even resorting to baseless accusations and character assassinations of any developers proposing a fork?  Even though that will degrade the service for the average user?  Is that pretty much the sum of it?  Constant FUD and derision of anything that differs to your equally untested view?  

There's literally no reasoning with you (or brg444, or iCEBREAKER, or your other fellow cronies feeding off MP's elitist rhetoric).  Despite every attempt to find common ground with you, you simply don't want there to be any.  Even when we acknowledge your view that decentralisation is still an important aspect and we shouldn't go too crazy with the blocksize, you still won't move an inch.  Why should anyone acknowledge your view if you won't acknowledge theirs?  When the majority find benefit in scaling, you're more than welcome to stay behind and trade amongst a small handful of noisy extremists who are incapable of allowing compromise.  Everyone else will leave you in the dust.  That's how it'll end.

How many strawmen, lies and general butthurt can you fit in one post. WOW

The "majority" you speak of doesn't exist. It is a product of "the masses" own hubris and incapacity to process that Bitcoin is not a democracy and that if they're poor, no amount of social media upvotes, likes, tweets or medium articles is gonna change anything about Bitcoin's governance. The latter is executed by people who pay and maintain the system. The miners, the nodes, and most importantly the holders (and yes the amount of bitcoin you have in your wallet weights in the discussion). The number of fiat showing in your bank account though, is irrelevant. Yes this goes for the VCs, bankers, entrepreneurs.

Now you need to reconcile with the fact that it has been a long going attempt to weaken Bitcoin through centralization under capture of corporate interests. Understand that way before the block size debate really started getting traction from a post by Matt Corallo on the bitcoin dev list, Gavin was running around every telling all the Bitcoin companies around that the blocksize was a no-brainer issue. These same start-ups went to all the VCs in the country selling them on models all most likely built on ridiculous assumption about the scale of mainchain transaction growth. Visa number eventually? Why not? "It's just a number, right?"

These same startups after a couple of months are starting to see their funding dry up but they can't go back to their VC with a 7 tps controversy. Now rather than blame their poor business acumen and false expectations they are lobbying their old friends from back in the Bitcoin foundation days. After thinking twice it came to me that Gavin most likely had no difficulty convincing them to sign this letter.

There are perfectly sensible, technical reasons to believe it is absolutely essential to keep the max block size reasonably close to the network actual average demand. Whether that is done through a flex cap or a fixed schedule it remains that we need to be absolutely conservation as we err in unknown territories.

More importantly, hitting or filling the blocks are absolutely not a bad thing and would likely develop into an healthy fee market. Obviously we cannot confirm this yet but I guess maybe we'll see next week? It is imperative that we get this right. I'm sure you have observed how contentious the hard fork is at this stage in Bitcoin's growth, it may be our last chance to arrive to consensus on one.

[bambou]

Even when we acknowledge your view that decentralisation is still an important aspect and we shouldn't go too crazy with the blocksize, you still won't move an inch.

Still? My belief it's always an important aspect. Or did I misinterpret you?

I get the impression at times they feel that anyone with a view supporting larger blocks doesn't care about jeopardising decentralisation.  Like we've somehow forgotten that it's important.  That's why they can only see it as an "attack", they genuinely believe we don't understand the importance of decentralisation.  We do.  But there are valid concerns about capacity and it's vital we get the balance right, so we propose smaller increases, or dynamic increases and decreases, or letting the miners choose, but apparently none of these are viable options to the handful of "asset class" militants who reject everything out of hand.  It appears as though the only option they're willing to allow is "GTFO my chain, peasant".  So what's the point in trying to engage with them?  If they want a blockchain all to themselves, that's exactly what they're going to get when everyone else leaves them behind.

Nonsense.

You need to understand that the bigger blocks that are being pushed today is literally the same as pushing for centralization.

Purely scaling is not "only" a matter of blocksize anyway.

Moreover, there aint no testing, no data, no nothing. So imho people against such reckless and clueless increase are the ones that actually cares for the sake of bitcoin.

You're being mindfucked hard : either you get it, or you dont, but then it will not be a great loss once you fork outta here.

[brg444]

Even when we acknowledge your view that decentralisation is still an important aspect and we shouldn't go too crazy with the blocksize, you still won't move an inch.

Still? My belief it's always an important aspect. Or did I misinterpret you?

I get the impression at times they feel that anyone with a view supporting larger blocks doesn't care about jeopardising decentralisation.  Like we've somehow forgotten that it's important.  That's why they can only see it as an "attack", they genuinely believe we don't understand the importance of decentralisation.  We do.  But there are valid concerns about capacity and it's vital we get the balance right, so we propose smaller increases, or dynamic increases and decreases, or letting the miners choose, but apparently none of these are viable options to the handful of "asset class" militants who reject everything out of hand.  It appears as though the only option they're willing to allow is "GTFO my chain, peasant".  So what's the point in trying to engage with them?  If they want a blockchain all to themselves, that's exactly what they're going to get when everyone else leaves them behind.

Nonsense.

You need to understand that the bigger blocks that are being pushed today is literally the same as pushing for centralization.

Purely scaling is not "only" a matter of blocksize anyway.

Moreover, there aint no testing, no data, no nothing. So imho people against such reckless and clueless increase are the ones that actually cares for the sake of bitcoin.

You're being mindfucked hard : either you get it, or you dont, but then it will not be a great loss once you fork outta here.

x1000

DooMAD you are in way over your head you need to step back from it and gather your thoughts you are currently playing right into their hands.

[jonald_fyookball]

Even when we acknowledge your view that decentralisation is still an important aspect and we shouldn't go too crazy with the blocksize, you still won't move an inch.

Still? My belief it's always an important aspect. Or did I misinterpret you?

I get the impression at times they feel that anyone with a view supporting larger blocks doesn't care about jeopardising decentralisation.  Like we've somehow forgotten that it's important.  That's why they can only see it as an "attack", they genuinely believe we don't understand the importance of decentralisation.  We do.  But there are valid concerns about capacity and it's vital we get the balance right, so we propose smaller increases, or dynamic increases and decreases, or letting the miners choose, but apparently none of these are viable options to the handful of "asset class" militants who reject everything out of hand.  It appears as though the only option they're willing to allow is "GTFO my chain, peasant".  So what's the point in trying to engage with them?  If they want a blockchain all to themselves, that's exactly what they're going to get when everyone else leaves them behind.

Perhaps you can explain the centralization risks as many of us who want bigger blocks think the fears are exaggerated.

For example, the storage space of the entire blockchain...Last I heard the pruned ledger was only 1 gig.

[bambou]

In the end, even the small poll up above clearly shows there is no consensus about it.

Hence, bitcoin stays as it is.

Forkers are welcome to fork out and enjoy their blindful life within some cheap tipping altchain.

But there is no need to POW it, litecoin or ripple would do the work perfectly.

[brg444]

Even when we acknowledge your view that decentralisation is still an important aspect and we shouldn't go too crazy with the blocksize, you still won't move an inch.

Still? My belief it's always an important aspect. Or did I misinterpret you?

I get the impression at times they feel that anyone with a view supporting larger blocks doesn't care about jeopardising decentralisation.  Like we've somehow forgotten that it's important.  That's why they can only see it as an "attack", they genuinely believe we don't understand the importance of decentralisation.  We do.  But there are valid concerns about capacity and it's vital we get the balance right, so we propose smaller increases, or dynamic increases and decreases, or letting the miners choose, but apparently none of these are viable options to the handful of "asset class" militants who reject everything out of hand.  It appears as though the only option they're willing to allow is "GTFO my chain, peasant".  So what's the point in trying to engage with them?  If they want a blockchain all to themselves, that's exactly what they're going to get when everyone else leaves them behind.

Perhaps you can explain the centralization risks as many of us who want bigger blocks think the fears are exaggerated.

For example, the storage space of the entire blockchain...Last I heard the prunable ledger was only 1 gig.

A prunable ledger is useless as it does nothing but relay transactions. They do not help to keep the ledger decentralized.

The problem starts with a precipitation of miner centralization brought by a screwed incentive which now enables the biggest, most connected ones to start mining bigger blocks at a rate the smaller ones could not keep up with. The real issue though is the impact it has on the nodes, who are not rewarded btw. This is where the "tragedy of the commons" plays out. As miners are incentivized to fill up their blocks regular nodes will be wiped off the map as only corporate set ups could service the appetite of the miners.

That is how Bitcoin becomes "captured" by corporate interests as they grab control over its nodes governance.

[DooMAD]

There are perfectly sensible, technical reasons to believe it is absolutely essential to keep the max block size reasonably close to the network actual average demand. Whether that is done through a flex cap or a fixed schedule it remains that we need to be absolutely conservation as we err in unknown territories.

More importantly, hitting or filling the blocks are absolutely not a bad thing and would likely develop into an healthy fee market. Obviously we cannot confirm this yet but I guess maybe we'll see next week? It is imperative that we get this right. I'm sure you have observed how contentious the hard fork is at this stage in Bitcoin's growth, it may be our last chance to arrive to consensus on one.

Finally we're getting somewhere.  So you're not opposed to a flexible cap based on demand as long as it's handled conservatively?  Was that really so difficult?  Why couldn't you just say that a few weeks ago?  The phrase "blood from a stone" comes to mind.  Obviously you couldn't say it without throwing in some conspiracy guff and once again insinuating Gavin is the devil, but hey, it's still progress.

[brg444]

There are perfectly sensible, technical reasons to believe it is absolutely essential to keep the max block size reasonably close to the network actual average demand. Whether that is done through a flex cap or a fixed schedule it remains that we need to be absolutely conservation as we err in unknown territories.

More importantly, hitting or filling the blocks are absolutely not a bad thing and would likely develop into an healthy fee market. Obviously we cannot confirm this yet but I guess maybe we'll see next week? It is imperative that we get this right. I'm sure you have observed how contentious the hard fork is at this stage in Bitcoin's growth, it may be our last chance to arrive to consensus on one.

Finally we're getting somewhere.  So you're not opposed to a flexible cap based on demand as long as it's handled conservatively?  Was that really so difficult?  Why couldn't you just say that a few weeks ago?  The phrase "blood from a stone" comes to mind.  Obviously you couldn't say it without throwing in some conspiracy guff and once again insinuating Gavin is the devil, but hey, it's still progress.

Let me insist I'd much rather we keep current blocksize for at least next year.

[DooMAD]

There are perfectly sensible, technical reasons to believe it is absolutely essential to keep the max block size reasonably close to the network actual average demand. Whether that is done through a flex cap or a fixed schedule it remains that we need to be absolutely conservation as we err in unknown territories.

More importantly, hitting or filling the blocks are absolutely not a bad thing and would likely develop into an healthy fee market. Obviously we cannot confirm this yet but I guess maybe we'll see next week? It is imperative that we get this right. I'm sure you have observed how contentious the hard fork is at this stage in Bitcoin's growth, it may be our last chance to arrive to consensus on one.

Finally we're getting somewhere.  So you're not opposed to a flexible cap based on demand as long as it's handled conservatively?  Was that really so difficult?  Why couldn't you just say that a few weeks ago?  The phrase "blood from a stone" comes to mind.  Obviously you couldn't say it without throwing in some conspiracy guff and once again insinuating Gavin is the devil, but hey, it's still progress.

Let me insist I'd much rather we keep current blocksize for at least next year.

Well I wouldn't want you to make it too easy.  We'll call it slow progress, then.  Still counting it as a win. 

[poeEDgar]

There are perfectly sensible, technical reasons to believe it is absolutely essential to keep the max block size reasonably close to the network actual average demand. Whether that is done through a flex cap or a fixed schedule it remains that we need to be absolutely conservation as we err in unknown territories.

More importantly, hitting or filling the blocks are absolutely not a bad thing and would likely develop into an healthy fee market. Obviously we cannot confirm this yet but I guess maybe we'll see next week? It is imperative that we get this right. I'm sure you have observed how contentious the hard fork is at this stage in Bitcoin's growth, it may be our last chance to arrive to consensus on one.

Finally we're getting somewhere.  So you're not opposed to a flexible cap based on demand as long as it's handled conservatively?  Was that really so difficult?  Why couldn't you just say that a few weeks ago?  The phrase "blood from a stone" comes to mind.  Obviously you couldn't say it without throwing in some conspiracy guff and once again insinuating Gavin is the devil, but hey, it's still progress.

A lot of us who are here arguing against BIP101 are not staunchly opposed to increasing the limit > 1MB. We just think that BIP101 is a very irresponsible way to implement it.

[Hugroll]

There are perfectly sensible, technical reasons to believe it is absolutely essential to keep the max block size reasonably close to the network actual average demand. Whether that is done through a flex cap or a fixed schedule it remains that we need to be absolutely conservation as we err in unknown territories.

More importantly, hitting or filling the blocks are absolutely not a bad thing and would likely develop into an healthy fee market. Obviously we cannot confirm this yet but I guess maybe we'll see next week? It is imperative that we get this right. I'm sure you have observed how contentious the hard fork is at this stage in Bitcoin's growth, it may be our last chance to arrive to consensus on one.

Finally we're getting somewhere.  So you're not opposed to a flexible cap based on demand as long as it's handled conservatively?  Was that really so difficult?  Why couldn't you just say that a few weeks ago?  The phrase "blood from a stone" comes to mind.  Obviously you couldn't say it without throwing in some conspiracy guff and once again insinuating Gavin is the devil, but hey, it's still progress.

A lot of us who are here arguing against BIP101 are not staunchly opposed to increasing the limit > 1MB. We just think that BIP101 is a very irresponsible way to implement it.

exactly, the limit increase doesn't seem like a bad idea to me.

[Lauda]

We just think that BIP101 is a very irresponsible way to implement it.

Irresponsible, dangerous and risky. If we are going to do it, then do it right. Letting Bitcoin be potentially harmed by someones prediction of technical growth is not what I would like to see.

A prunable ledger is useless as it does nothing but relay transactions. They do not help to keep the ledger decentralized.

This is partially correct. Just because pruning has not been fully implemented in Core, that does not mean that it is not going to happen.

Let me insist I'd much rather we keep current blocksize for at least next year.

That would be okay if there was no halving. We do not currently know what is going to happen with the number of transactions. What if it increases 5-10x just after the halving (this is just a example; nothing might happen as well)?

[hdbuck]

BIP000: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3jhwi3/i_support_

[brg444]

What if it increases 5-10x just after the halving (this is just a example; nothing might happen as well)?

I don't want any decision done based on such speculation.

[DooMAD]

Upal's dynamic blocksize proposal has now been assigned a BIP number, BIP106:  https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0106.mediawiki

It already has advantages that many want to see in an "ideal" solution.  It's algorithmic.  It can lower the blocksize as well as raise it if need be, so it adapts to the load the network is bearing.  It would likely encourage fee markets in a more subtle and natural manner than any artificial "blunt-force" caps.  It doesn't grant too much power to the miners, unlike BIP100.  Unlike BIP101 where the size would only be altered every two years, this would alter it every two weeks, so it would be more nimble and adapt more quickly to both surges and lulls in traffic.

However, there are concerns raised with potential gaming of the system and manipulating the size by pushing extra transactions.  Doubling may be excessive, so a lower percentage may need to be considered.  It should also be noted that BIP106 only considers the demand for block space and doesn't take miners' resources into consideration, which could potentially impact decentralisation if not kept in check (but again, changing the doubling part to a lower percentage would help in this regard).

What other suggestions, considerations and improvements could be made to this proposal to make it more appealing to a larger majority?

[Lauda]

I don't want any decision done based on such speculation.

Finally someone else agrees with me that we should not be basing the implementation/solution on speculation. This is exactly what Gavin has done and it is way too risky. We can not know what will happen in the future, nor will the past trends continue.

However, there are concerns raised with potential gaming of the system and manipulating the size by pushing extra transactions.  Doubling may be excessive, so a lower percentage may need to be considered.  It should also be noted that BIP106 only considers the demand for block space and doesn't take miners' resources into consideration, which could potentially impact decentralisation if not kept in check (but again, changing the doubling part to a lower percentage would help in this regard).

I concur. The main thing that bothers me is that instant doubling and halving. I think that this is way too much especially in the long run. Going from 60 to 120 MB blocks seems like way too much. If a lower percentage is to be used then this proposal would be much better.
There's also BIP105 now, and it proposes a maximum 10% increase or decrease every 2016 blocks.

[DooMAD]

However, there are concerns raised with potential gaming of the system and manipulating the size by pushing extra transactions.  Doubling may be excessive, so a lower percentage may need to be considered.  It should also be noted that BIP106 only considers the demand for block space and doesn't take miners' resources into consideration, which could potentially impact decentralisation if not kept in check (but again, changing the doubling part to a lower percentage would help in this regard).

I concur. The main thing that bothers me is that instant doubling and halving. I think that this is way too much especially in the long run. Going from 60 to 120 MB blocks seems like way too much. If a lower percentage is to be used then this proposal would be much better.
There's also BIP105 now, and it proposes a maximum 10% increase or decrease every 2016 blocks.

So if we further alter juiceayres' amendment:

Code:

If more than 50% of block's size, found in the first 144 of the last difficulty period, is more than 90% MaxBlockSize
    MaxBlockSize = MaxBlockSize +12.5% 
    Limit = +12.5% MaxBlockSize_last_1008

Else if more than 90% of block's size, found in the first 144 of the last difficulty period, is less than 50% MaxBlockSize
    MaxBlockSize = MaxBlockSize -12.5%
    Limit = -12.5% MaxBlockSize_last_1008

Else
    Keep the same MaxBlockSize

This would alter the blocksize daily if required, but the maximum increase or decrease per week would be 12.5%

Is that something that would appeal to people on both sides of the fence?

[RoadTrain]

If I understand correctly, shrinking blocksizes can be much more easily gamed by miners, as it requires only 10%+ of hashpower to prevent blocksizes from shrinking.

[DooMAD]

If I understand correctly, shrinking blocksizes can be much more easily gamed by miners, as it requires only 10%+ of hashpower to prevent blocksizes from shrinking.

It's certainly possible, but if they want to collect a greater quantity of fees, ultimately, keeping blocks deliberately small won't in their best interests.  Diminishing block rewards will naturally incentivise miners to produce larger blocks over time (providing they're significantly filled to trigger the increase).  In theory, this should garner the best of both worlds.  Not an exponential increase, but still room for growth.  Not a blunt-force cap, but a dynamic threshold that reacts to demand.

[flix]

BIP106:

BIP 106: Dynamically Controlled Bitcoin Block Size Max Cap
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/commit/2e0d3412546e28da19c8ab6cc0056fc05542acac

+===Proposal 1 : Depending only on previous block size calculation===
+
+  If more than 50% of block's size, found in the first 2000 of the last difficulty period, is more than 90% MaxBlockSize
+      Double MaxBlockSize
+  Else if more than 90% of block's size, found in the first 2000 of the last difficulty period, is less than 50% MaxBlockSize
+      Half MaxBlockSize
+  Else
+      Keep the same MaxBlockSize

[DooMAD]

BIP106:

BIP 106: Dynamically Controlled Bitcoin Block Size Max Cap
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/commit/2e0d3412546e28da19c8ab6cc0056fc05542acac

+===Proposal 1 : Depending only on previous block size calculation===
+
+  If more than 50% of block's size, found in the first 2000 of the last difficulty period, is more than 90% MaxBlockSize
+      Double MaxBlockSize
+  Else if more than 90% of block's size, found in the first 2000 of the last difficulty period, is less than 50% MaxBlockSize
+      Half MaxBlockSize
+  Else
+      Keep the same MaxBlockSize

Yes, flix, that's what the previous five posts in the thread were speaking in reference to.     (plus some BIP105 and a possible middle ground between the two of them) 

I like BIP106, but feel that at present, it would attract the same kind of vehement opposition BIP101 is receiving, as doubling/halving the blocksize may prove excessive.  So some have suggested toning it down a smidgen to avoid frightening potential support away and provide greater potential for a compromise to be reached.

[flix]

Yes, flix, that's what the previous five posts in the thread were speaking in reference to. 

oops... I'll remind myself to read before posting!   

[RoadTrain]

If I understand correctly, shrinking blocksizes can be much more easily gamed by miners, as it requires only 10%+ of hashpower to prevent blocksizes from shrinking.

It's certainly possible, but if they want to collect a greater quantity of fees, ultimately, keeping blocks deliberately small won't in their best interests.  Diminishing block rewards will naturally incentivise miners to produce larger blocks over time (providing they're significantly filled to trigger the increase).  In theory, this should garner the best of both worlds.  Not an exponential increase, but still room for growth.  Not a blunt-force cap, but a dynamic threshold that reacts to demand.

I'm talking about shrinking blocksizes, not keeping blocks small -- a pool with 10% of hashpower can prevent any shrinkage, i.e. keeping blocksize limit unreasonably high, so the supposed algorithm isn't sound. I'm not saying that it would be rational, just pointing this out.

[DooMAD]

Yes, flix, that's what the previous five posts in the thread were speaking in reference to. 

oops... I'll remind myself to read before posting!   

Easily done.  I find myself getting the threads mixed up as there's several dozen of them now.   

If I understand correctly, shrinking blocksizes can be much more easily gamed by miners, as it requires only 10%+ of hashpower to prevent blocksizes from shrinking.

It's certainly possible, but if they want to collect a greater quantity of fees, ultimately, keeping blocks deliberately small won't in their best interests.  Diminishing block rewards will naturally incentivise miners to produce larger blocks over time (providing they're significantly filled to trigger the increase).  In theory, this should garner the best of both worlds.  Not an exponential increase, but still room for growth.  Not a blunt-force cap, but a dynamic threshold that reacts to demand.

I'm talking about shrinking blocksizes, not keeping blocks small -- a pool with 10% of hashpower can prevent any shrinkage, i.e. keeping blocksize limit unreasonably high, so the supposed algorithm isn't sound. I'm not saying that it would be rational, just pointing this out.

Okay, we can work on that part, so how do we make it more sound?  The rather frustrating pattern with these discussions is that people are very quick to point out what might not work, but very slow to offer a solution as to what might work.   

[RoadTrain]

If I understand correctly, shrinking blocksizes can be much more easily gamed by miners, as it requires only 10%+ of hashpower to prevent blocksizes from shrinking.

It's certainly possible, but if they want to collect a greater quantity of fees, ultimately, keeping blocks deliberately small won't in their best interests.  Diminishing block rewards will naturally incentivise miners to produce larger blocks over time (providing they're significantly filled to trigger the increase).  In theory, this should garner the best of both worlds.  Not an exponential increase, but still room for growth.  Not a blunt-force cap, but a dynamic threshold that reacts to demand.

I'm talking about shrinking blocksizes, not keeping blocks small -- a pool with 10% of hashpower can prevent any shrinkage, i.e. keeping blocksize limit unreasonably high, so the supposed algorithm isn't sound. I'm not saying that it would be rational, just pointing this out.

Okay, we can work on that part, so how do we make it more sound?  The rather frustrating pattern with these discussions is that people are very quick to point out what might not work, but very slow to offer a solution as to what might work.   

I guess I need to analyze BIP106's proposal 2, it looks more interesting (though more complicated) at a first glance.

[Hugroll]

hey, i dont really follow the bitcoin background updates. i just wanted to know if theres a proposal that supports no change (the limit staying at 1mb). and is that proposal popular. i don't support the " no changers",just wanted to know if theres a chance that they will prevail, cuz imo thats pretty bad for bitcoin.

[hdbuck]

hey, i dont really follow the bitcoin background updates. i just wanted to know if theres a proposal that supports no change (the limit staying at 1mb). and is that proposal popular. i don't support the " no changers",just wanted to know if theres a chance that they will prevail, cuz imo thats pretty bad for bitcoin.

BIP000: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3jhwi3/i_support_

and chances are it will prevail.. at least for the next coupla years.

[Hugroll]

hey, i dont really follow the bitcoin background updates. i just wanted to know if theres a proposal that supports no change (the limit staying at 1mb). and is that proposal popular. i don't support the " no changers",just wanted to know if theres a chance that they will prevail, cuz imo thats pretty bad for bitcoin.

BIP000: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3jhwi3/i_support_

the one and only true realistic fork!!!

lol that doesnt look like a proposal. all i see is a short "because" speech. He's saying stuff like "Because I conlude that therefore, blocks must necessarily be full for the Bitcoin network to be able to pay for its own security." ?  is he implying that bitcoin wasnt secure when we werent close to the limits?

[Hugroll]

hey, i dont really follow the bitcoin background updates. i just wanted to know if theres a proposal that supports no change (the limit staying at 1mb). and is that proposal popular. i don't support the " no changers",just wanted to know if theres a chance that they will prevail, cuz imo thats pretty bad for bitcoin.

BIP000: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3jhwi3/i_support_

and chances are it will prevail.. at least for the next coupla years.

if the blocksize stays at 1mb, people are either going to ditch the currency or end up paying huge fees like $2-10 to incentivize the miner to include the transaction.
idk about you,but to me its like begging to a person to please let my transaction go through. how is that appealing to anyone?

[hdbuck]

hey, i dont really follow the bitcoin background updates. i just wanted to know if theres a proposal that supports no change (the limit staying at 1mb). and is that proposal popular. i don't support the " no changers",just wanted to know if theres a chance that they will prevail, cuz imo thats pretty bad for bitcoin.

BIP000: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3jhwi3/i_support_

and chances are it will prevail.. at least for the next coupla years.

if the blocksize stays at 1mb, people are either going to ditch the currency or end up paying huge fees like $2-10 to incentivize the miner to include the transaction.
idk about you,but to me its like begging to a person to please let my transaction go through. how is that appealing to anyone?

1/ now the min fee to get through is <0,02$
2/ i shall wait fo moar data & tests before making any assumptions extrapolations
3/ i am not trying to appeal to anyone. who do you think i am?

[iCEBREAKER]

if the blocksize stays at 1mb, people are either going to ditch the currency or end up paying huge fees like $2-10 to incentivize the miner to include the transaction.
idk about you,but to me its like begging to a person to please let my transaction go through. how is that appealing to anyone?

The only people ditching BTC are the ones who get priced out.  That's marginalism (ie the invisible hand) at work, and they will move to substitutes like Layer 2 or altcoins.

So please stop with the false sense of (omg Bitcoin will die unloved and alone with her cats!) urgency.

Begging would be appealing for charity in the form of underpriced transactions.

As davout states: "block space is a scarce resource that is sold, but not paid for, by the miners" so any generosity on their part is a false economy and a step towards tragedy in the commons.

Stop thinking in terms of yet another payment rail.  $2-$10 is not a "huge fee" considering the miraculous and disruptive properties unique to Bitcoin (and Monero).

Even >$100 is reasonable if the tx in question is responsible for settling out a Lightning channel responsible for $millions.  That's just a normal day for a chain of stores like Macy's (that currently has its own branded credit card but would love to cut Visa out of its action).

Bitcoin's blockchain is the Financial District of e-cash.  You don't/can't scale a financial district sideways with sprawl, you build skyscrapers and max the density.

[DooMAD]

Bitcoin's blockchain is the Financial District of e-cash.  You don't/can't scale a financial district sideways with sprawl, you build skyscrapers and max the density.

Yes, you don't push transactions sideways off-chain, you max the density of transactions in blocks.  I couldn't agree more.  But to do that, we'll need larger blocks. 

[Zarathustra]

Bitcoin's blockchain is the Financial District of e-cash.  You don't/can't scale a financial district sideways with sprawl, you build skyscrapers and max the density.

Yes, you don't push transactions sideways off-chain, you max the density of transactions in blocks.  I couldn't agree more.  But to do that, we'll need larger blocks. 

Yes, an off-chain coin is an altcoin (cripplecoin).

[iCEBREAKER]

Bitcoin's blockchain is the Financial District of e-cash.  You don't/can't scale a financial district sideways with sprawl, you build skyscrapers and max the density.

Yes, you don't push transactions sideways off-chain, you max the density of transactions in blocks.  I couldn't agree more.  But to do that, we'll need larger blocks. 

Yes, an off-chain coin is an altcoin (cripplecoin).

Altcoins have their own blockchains, (mostly) based on their own proof of work, and backed by their own alternative socioeconomic consensus.

Have you read the Bitcoin FAQ?   

[neoneros]

Bitcoin's blockchain is the Financial District of e-cash.  You don't/can't scale a financial district sideways with sprawl, you build skyscrapers and max the density.

Yes, you don't push transactions sideways off-chain, you max the density of transactions in blocks.  I couldn't agree more.  But to do that, we'll need larger blocks. 

Yes, an off-chain coin is an altcoin (cripplecoin).

Altcoins have their own blockchains, (mostly) based on their own proof of work, and backed by their own alternative socioeconomic consensus.

Have you read the Bitcoin FAQ?   

an off-chain coin is fiat?! or did I miss something?

[Zarathustra]

Bitcoin's blockchain is the Financial District of e-cash.  You don't/can't scale a financial district sideways with sprawl, you build skyscrapers and max the density.

Yes, you don't push transactions sideways off-chain, you max the density of transactions in blocks.  I couldn't agree more.  But to do that, we'll need larger blocks. 

Yes, an off-chain coin is an altcoin (cripplecoin).

Altcoins have their own blockchains, (mostly) based on their own proof of work, and backed by their own alternative socioeconomic consensus.

Have you read the Bitcoin FAQ?   

Yes, you are right. An off-chain coin (Blockstream coin) is indeed not even a real altcoin. That's why I wrote "cripplecoin".

[tvbcof]

Yes, you are right. An off-chain coin (Blockstream coin) is indeed not even a real altcoin. That's why I wrote "cripplecoin".

You wrote 'cripplecoin' because you are a tard or a shill (or both.)

The term exists because of the conjecture that limiting the native transaction rate on the blockchain so that everyone's coffee purchase was not stored forever and analyzed forever on the computers of anyone who tried to support the distributed system by running a node would somehow 'cripple' the solutions.

The fact of the matter is that your so-called 'Blockstream coin' is a near perfect proxy for Bitcoin represented in the main chain due to the 2-way peg.  The main 'downside' is that it becomes much more difficult to correlate transactions to individual users and this drives those who wish to do so crazy.

It is a fair bet that 'Blockstream' won't even know of the existence of various sidechains, much less have any control of them and much much less make any money off them.  Unless they close-source their work, but doing this would spell then end of support among a lot of the community.  Certainly it would from me.

At the end of the day, sidechains would do the exact opposite of 'cripple' Bitcoin.  I have a lot of hope that they will explode Bitcoin into an unassailable force in global financial systems and solve some issues which Bitcoin has that are not realistic to solve in any other manner.  Scaling is just one of these.

[Zarathustra]

The forking is gaining speed.

The trolls are downvoted heavily. I guess the 21 Million Dollar attack won't work.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3jy9y3/meta_what_happened_to_ugavinandresens_expert_flair/cutex4s

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3jy9y3/meta_what_happened_to_ugavinandresens_expert_flair/cutfnol

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3jwebt/mike_hearn_on_sidechains_and_blockstream/cut3k4m

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3jwebt/mike_hearn_on_sidechains_and_blockstream/cut7u1b

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3jwebt/mike_hearn_on_sidechains_and_blockstream/cutfmk1

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3jwebt/mike_hearn_on_sidechains_and_blockstream/cutfdhy

[Zarathustra]

Yes, you are right. An off-chain coin (Blockstream coin) is indeed not even a real altcoin. That's why I wrote "cripplecoin".

You wrote 'cripplecoin' because you are a tard or a shill (or both.)

No, I wrote 'cripplecoin' because a coin becomes a cripple as soon as it leaves the real chain and arrives on the cripplechain.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3jo24n/bitcoin_foundation_todays_shoutout_is_to/curig4c

[brg444]

The forking is gaining speed.

The trolls are downvoted heavily. I guess the 21 Million Dollar attack won't work.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3jy9y3/meta_what_happened_to_ugavinandresens_expert_flair/cutex4s

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3jy9y3/meta_what_happened_to_ugavinandresens_expert_flair/cutfnol

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3jwebt/mike_hearn_on_sidechains_and_blockstream/cut3k4m

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3jwebt/mike_hearn_on_sidechains_and_blockstream/cut7u1b

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3jwebt/mike_hearn_on_sidechains_and_blockstream/cutfmk1

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3jwebt/mike_hearn_on_sidechains_and_blockstream/cutfdhy

cENShORSHIP!!!!!!!!! 

[iCEBREAKER]

your so-called 'Blockstream coin' is a near perfect proxy for Bitcoin represented in the main chain due to the 2-way peg.  The main 'downside' is that it becomes much more difficult to correlate transactions to individual users and this drives those who wish to do so crazy.

It's becoming clear TPTB (ie sigint.google.mil and tla.mit.gov) have set a strategic goal of forcing most or all full nodes to be relocated in their data centers.

Can you imagine the Google/A16/GS/JPM board meetings where they concede Bitcoin's blockchain is going to be worth trillions?

Do you think they're happy with every Joe Sixcoins being able to run his own bank/stock market/credit union/payment rail?

'Oh Hell NO,' they said.  And then deployed Hearn on his mission to expand node footprints until unsupportable almost anywhere outside of vulnerable, carefully-controlled colocation facilities.

These SHR MIC VC ratfuckers won't stop until they scour every last trace of cypherpunk influence from Bitcoin, and they are able to profit from correlating transactions to individual users.

Small wonder they declared war on Blockstream, and Dr. Backamoto in particular.

This is more than a typical dust-up between IEEE type Dilberts and Wallys versus Goldman-Sachs type Pointy-Haired Bosses and Pointy-Headed CEOs.

To be clear, Hearn = Circle = Goldman = M. Michele Burns = Hillary Clinton = Yankee Lawyer Mafia.  Cite: http://www.coindesk.com/goldman-sachs-director-board-bitcoin-startup-circle/

Per Chaum, the price of our digital freedom is eternal vigilance, guarding against XT-like governance coups and malicious forks.

Wall Street is coming, and the intend to either buy or destroy anything that smells like disruption.

[uxgpf]

The forking is gaining speed.

The trolls are downvoted heavily. I guess the 21 Million Dollar attack won't work.

But trolls can't be downvoted here on BCT. All reasonable discussion drowns due to few trolls conquering the threads and driving others away. (people get tired of constant nonsense and ad-hominem attacks)

[brg444]

your so-called 'Blockstream coin' is a near perfect proxy for Bitcoin represented in the main chain due to the 2-way peg.  The main 'downside' is that it becomes much more difficult to correlate transactions to individual users and this drives those who wish to do so crazy.

It's becoming clear TPTB (ie sigint.google.mil and tla.mit.gov) have set a strategic goal of forcing most or all full nodes to be relocated in their data centers.

Can you imagine the Google/A16/GS/JPM board meetings where they concede Bitcoin's blockchain is going to be worth trillions?

Do you think they're happy with every Joe Sixcoins being able to run his own bank/stock market/credit union/payment rail?

'Oh Hell NO,' they said.  And then deployed Hearn on his mission to expand node footprints until unsupportable almost anywhere outside of vulnerable, carefully-controlled colocation facilities.

These SHR MIC VC ratfuckers won't stop until they scour every last trace of cypherpunk influence from Bitcoin, and they are able to profit from correlating transactions to individual users.

I think it needs to be mentioned the war also seems to be on China. It is a perfectly rational fact to expect that most of the big time bankers backing these VC companies are not comfortable with +50% of the network being run from there. Mike Hearn has been extremely clear in his position that mining should be available only to those with the best bandwidth connection.

It is quite obvious he would prefer bitcoin to be run from datacenters and concentrate mining into geo-politically favorable locations.

His attempt to promote SPV wallets shows how little he care about actual full node users. To him they are "casualties of the network growth" but he absolutely doesn't realizes they actually maintain its strength. If there is one right that should exist in Bitcoin it should be that one is able to enjoy the full privacy of the p2p network through running his own personal node. This is worth all the transactions in the world.

Mike Hearn wants to take Bitcoin away from us and hand it over to a bunch of corporations supported by his SPVcoin so that they have absolute control over transaction relaying and the governance of the network.

What a horrible human being  

[iCEBREAKER]

your so-called 'Blockstream coin' is a near perfect proxy for Bitcoin represented in the main chain due to the 2-way peg.  The main 'downside' is that it becomes much more difficult to correlate transactions to individual users and this drives those who wish to do so crazy.

It's becoming clear TPTB (ie sigint.google.mil and tla.mit.gov) have set a strategic goal of forcing most or all full nodes to be relocated in their data centers.

Can you imagine the Google/A16/GS/JPM board meetings where they concede Bitcoin's blockchain is going to be worth trillions?

Do you think they're happy with every Joe Sixcoins being able to run his own bank/stock market/credit union/payment rail?

'Oh Hell NO,' they said.  And then deployed Hearn on his mission to expand node footprints until unsupportable almost anywhere outside of vulnerable, carefully-controlled colocation facilities.

These SHR MIC VC ratfuckers won't stop until they scour every last trace of cypherpunk influence from Bitcoin, and they are able to profit from correlating transactions to individual users.

I think it needs to be mentioned the war also seems to be on China. It is a perfectly rational fact to expect that most of the big time bankers backing these VC companies are not comfortable with +50% of the network being run from there. Mike Hearn has been extremely clear in his position that mining should be available only to those with the best bandwidth connection.

Excellent point about China.  The military part of the complex wants to keep strategic rivals from dominating Bitcoin, while the industrial (crony capitalist) side wants to capture the value provided by progress towards crypto-minarchism.

Team XT kills both birds with one stone, so I take Blockstream's VC funding as them 'keeping their enemies closer.'

[flix]

EB95 – Adam Back: Why Bitcoin Needs A Measured Approach To Scaling
https://youtu.be/wYHyR2E5Pic

[hdbuck]

So flix? Any thoughts on the litterature i provided you?

[Zarathustra]

your so-called 'Blockstream coin' is a near perfect proxy for Bitcoin represented in the main chain due to the 2-way peg.  The main 'downside' is that it becomes much more difficult to correlate transactions to individual users and this drives those who wish to do so crazy.

It's becoming clear TPTB (ie sigint.google.mil and tla.mit.gov) have set a strategic goal of forcing most or all full nodes to be relocated in their data centers.

Can you imagine the Google/A16/GS/JPM board meetings where they concede Bitcoin's blockchain is going to be worth trillions?

Do you think they're happy with every Joe Sixcoins being able to run his own bank/stock market/credit union/payment rail?

'Oh Hell NO,' they said.  And then deployed Hearn on his mission to expand node footprints until unsupportable almost anywhere outside of vulnerable, carefully-controlled colocation facilities.

These SHR MIC VC ratfuckers won't stop until they scour every last trace of cypherpunk influence from Bitcoin, and they are able to profit from correlating transactions to individual users.

I think it needs to be mentioned the war also seems to be on China. It is a perfectly rational fact to expect that most of the big time bankers backing these VC companies are not comfortable with +50% of the network being run from there. Mike Hearn has been extremely clear in his position that mining should be available only to those with the best bandwidth connection.

Excellent point about China.  The military part of the complex wants to keep strategic rivals from dominating Bitcoin, while the industrial (crony capitalist) side wants to capture the value provided by progress towards crypto-minarchism.

Team XT kills both birds with one stone, so I take Blockstream's VC funding as them 'keeping their enemies closer.'

Yes. Choice is tyranny. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

[flix]

So flix? Any thoughts on the litterature i provided you?

Yes... I did not want to say anything, but since you insist: I was not impressed at all. Most were off-topic or only marginally referred to the blocksize issue.

I did not find a coherent presentation of the no-increase argument.

At least the one on the economics of tx fees was interesting...

[hdbuck]

So flix? Any thoughts on the litterature i provided you?

Yes... I did not want to say anything, but since you insist: I was not impressed at all. Most were off-topic or only marginally referred to the blocksize issue.

I did not find a coherent presentation of the no-increase argument.

At least the one on the economics of tx fees was interesting...

oky

[flix]

The Decentralist Perspective, or Why Bitcoin Might Need Small Blocks
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/21919/decentralist-perspective-bitcoin-might-need-small-blocks/

Well-known cryptographer and digital currency veteran Nick Szabo explained:

“In computer science there are fundamental trade-offs between security and performance. Bitcoin’s automated integrity necessarily comes at high costs in its performance and resource usage. Compared to existing financial IT, Satoshi made radical trade-offs in favor of security and against performance. The seemingly wasteful process of mining is the most obvious of these trade-offs, but it also makes others. Among them is that it requires high redundancy in its messaging. Mathematically provable integrity would require full broadcast between all nodes. Bitcoin can’t achieve that, but to even get anywhere close to a good approximation of it requires a very high level of redundancy. So a 1MB block takes vastly more resources than a 1MB web page, for example, because it has to be transmitted, processed and stored with such high redundancy for Bitcoin to achieve its automated integrity.”

[hdbuck]

hehe ^^

[flix]

Also a lot of interesting stuff here:
http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/scalingbitcoin/

[RocketSingh]

BIP106:

BIP 106: Dynamically Controlled Bitcoin Block Size Max Cap
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/commit/2e0d3412546e28da19c8ab6cc0056fc05542acac

+===Proposal 1 : Depending only on previous block size calculation===
+
+  If more than 50% of block's size, found in the first 2000 of the last difficulty period, is more than 90% MaxBlockSize
+      Double MaxBlockSize
+  Else if more than 90% of block's size, found in the first 2000 of the last difficulty period, is less than 50% MaxBlockSize
+      Half MaxBlockSize
+  Else
+      Keep the same MaxBlockSize

This appears to be the most dynamic and acceptable solution so far. I wish, you add it in the poll as well as in the OP with a short description.

[DooMAD]

BIP106:

BIP 106: Dynamically Controlled Bitcoin Block Size Max Cap
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/commit/2e0d3412546e28da19c8ab6cc0056fc05542acac

+===Proposal 1 : Depending only on previous block size calculation===
+
+  If more than 50% of block's size, found in the first 2000 of the last difficulty period, is more than 90% MaxBlockSize
+      Double MaxBlockSize
+  Else if more than 90% of block's size, found in the first 2000 of the last difficulty period, is less than 50% MaxBlockSize
+      Half MaxBlockSize
+  Else
+      Keep the same MaxBlockSize

This appears to be the most dynamic and acceptable solution so far. I wish, you add it in the poll as well as in the OP with a short description.

Might be a bit late for that, as I don't think you can change your vote now if you've already cast it.  Maybe a new poll with all the options is needed.

I think BIP106 is definitely heading in the right direction, but will likely need some tweaking and balancing before it's ready to be implemented.

[Lauda]

So if we further alter juiceayres' amendment:

-snip-
This would alter the blocksize daily if required, but the maximum increase or decrease per week would be 12.5%

Is that something that would appeal to people on both sides of the fence?

I'm having trouble trying to comprehend what you exactly mean. You want the blocksize to re-adjust every day? Wouldn't it better to make a weekly recalculation and a increase of 10-20%? I think that aside from the exact percentage and potential ways of gambling the system, this might be one of the best solutions out there. Obviously we will also have a hard time deciding the exact percentage as many users will pitch into the debate.
(saying this one more time) Regardless of all of this, I do not agree to the proposed doubling and halving in BIP106 and will never do so. Going from e.g. 40MB to 80MB is drastic.

But trolls can't be downvoted here on BCT. All reasonable discussion drowns due to few trolls conquering the threads and driving others away. (people get tired of constant nonsense and ad-hominem attacks)

So if I say that the fork is not gaining speed (which it is not), am I supposedly a troll? People tend to spread wrong information around here, especially related to the debate. I've already said that the Core vs XT war needs to stop. There was enough ad-hominem and whatnot.

[RoadTrain]

An interesting slide from a Mark Friedenbach presentation at Scaling Bitcoin. Quite interesting indeed, worth watching: https://youtu.be/TgjrS-BPWDQ?t=11093 Jeff Garzik is next, btw.


Here's this block: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000003dd2fdbb484d6d9c349d644d8bbb3cbfa5e67f639a465fe

[hdbuck]

Another design for 2nd layer for small-b bitcoin (+ why large-B Bitcoin won't scale):

http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/716b955c130e6c703fac336ea17b1670/duplex-micropayment-channels.pdf


haha take dat forkers/scalers. ^^

[Lauda]

An interesting slide from a Mark Friedenbach presentation at Scaling Bitcoin. Quite interesting indeed, worth watching: https://youtu.be/TgjrS-BPWDQ?t=11093 Jeff Garzik is next, btw.

Here's this block: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000003dd2fdbb484d6d9c349d644d8bbb3cbfa5e67f639a465fe

I wouldn't call it just interesting. Rather remarkable, as it shows exactly what people have been talking about. Most XT/BIP101 supporters aren't willing to admit or just don't understand this. Bitcoin in its essence does not scale efficiently. This is why technologies like the Lightning Network would be helpful. Even though such block is not a regular one, imagine a validation time of 2h 8min.
As seen clearly while Garzik was presenting, we're heading towards 1 MB blocks. However, as of today, blocks are not full. He did nicely present potential problems that we might encounter at the 1 MB wall. The whole economic policy is going to drastically change.

"and we all go work on Etherium." 

[killerjoegreece]

winner is not clear on this one yet. plus number of votes are way too low.

[DooMAD]

So if we further alter juiceayres' amendment:

-snip-
This would alter the blocksize daily if required, but the maximum increase or decrease per week would be 12.5%

Is that something that would appeal to people on both sides of the fence?

I'm having trouble trying to comprehend what you exactly mean. You want the blocksize to re-adjust every day? Wouldn't it better to make a weekly recalculation and a increase of 10-20%? I think that aside from the exact percentage and potential ways of gambling the system, this might be one of the best solutions out there. Obviously we will also have a hard time deciding the exact percentage as many users will pitch into the debate.
(saying this one more time) Regardless of all of this, I do not agree to the proposed doubling and halving in BIP106 and will never do so. Going from e.g. 40MB to 80MB is drastic.

The only thinking behind the daily part was so that the system could deal with any short bursts of activity and then return to a smaller size when it ends.  The main emphasis is still on the weekly adjustment.  For example, if we're at 1MB now, this week the blocksize limit could fluctuate between 0.875MB and 1.125MB, but if we spend most of the week nudging the upper limit, next week it could be raised and we could hover between 1 and 1.27MB and so on.  Or if (which seems more likely at the moment) we aren't filling the blocks and are mostly at the lower bound, next week the blocksize limit could vary between 0.766MB and 1MB.  Keep the network fluid and adaptable, but still keep blocksizes small enough for full nodes and miners to cope.  But if that's too complex, then we can just do it weekly.  Mostly just seeing if anyone thought the idea had merit.

[iCEBREAKER]

An interesting slide from a Mark Friedenbach presentation at Scaling Bitcoin. Quite interesting indeed, worth watching: https://youtu.be/TgjrS-BPWDQ?t=11093 Jeff Garzik is next, btw.

Here's this block: https://blockchain.info/block/000000000000000003dd2fdbb484d6d9c349d644d8bbb3cbfa5e67f639a465fe

I wouldn't call it just interesting. Rather remarkable, as it shows exactly what people have been talking about. Most XT/BIP101 supporters aren't willing to admit or just don't understand this. Bitcoin in its essence does not scale efficiently. This is why technologies like the Lightning Network would be helpful. Even though such block is not a regular one, imagine a validation time of 2h 8min.
As seen clearly while Garzik was presenting, we're heading towards 1 MB blocks. However, as of today, blocks are not full. He did nicely present potential problems that we might encounter at the 1 MB wall. The whole economic policy is going to drastically change.

I was just talking to some Derp who believes their average Euro-pipe

could easily support two gigabyte blocks from home

How can we deal with such colossal levels of sheer ignorance?  Fire?  Or just drink until we can't read their stupid words anymore?

[iCEBREAKER]

winner is not clear on this one yet. plus number of votes are way too low.

BIP000 is clearly the winner.

[Zarathustra]

winner is not clear on this one yet. plus number of votes are way too low.

BIP000 is clearly the winner.

Small blockers should laugh at blocked streams as long as they can. It's their last year.

[Hazir]

winner is not clear on this one yet. plus number of votes are way too low.

BIP000 is clearly the winner.

,
So why our poll shows that BIP101 by Gavin Andresen. in winning by huge margin? People don't know what they are voting for?
Honestly I wish we could implement voting system for all bitcoin users (in wallets or other bitcoin software), but I have no idea how to block 1 person for voting multiple times.

[brg444]

winner is not clear on this one yet. plus number of votes are way too low.

BIP000 is clearly the winner.

,
So why our poll shows that BIP101 by Gavin Andresen. in winning by huge margin? People don't know what they are voting for?
Honestly I wish we could implement voting system for all bitcoin users (in wallets or other bitcoin software), but I have no idea how to block 1 person for voting multiple times.

 

Maybe because bitcointalk is not representative of Bitcoin 

[HostFat]

"A Transaction Fee Market Exists Wihtout a Block Size Limit" - Peter R
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKDC2DpzNbw&t=0h26m21s

[hdbuck]

"A Transaction Fee Market Exists Wihtout a Block Size Limit" - Peter R
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKDC2DpzNbw&t=0h26m21s

[brg444]

"A Transaction Fee Market Exists Wihtout a Block Size Limit" - Peter R
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKDC2DpzNbw&t=0h26m21s

Then watch this https://youtu.be/mhAsnzidtZ8?t=1379

and this https://youtu.be/gpJrGuZEJsY?t=2056

and this https://youtu.be/gpJrGuZEJsY?t=37

[newIndia]

"A Transaction Fee Market Exists Wihtout a Block Size Limit" - Peter R
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKDC2DpzNbw&t=0h26m21s

Then watch this https://youtu.be/mhAsnzidtZ8?t=1379

and this https://youtu.be/gpJrGuZEJsY?t=2056

and this https://youtu.be/gpJrGuZEJsY?t=37

Sorry to say, the sound quality is very very bad. I can not listen to any of the four.

[hdbuck]

"A Transaction Fee Market Exists Wihtout a Block Size Limit" - Peter R
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKDC2DpzNbw&t=0h26m21s

Then watch this https://youtu.be/mhAsnzidtZ8?t=1379

and this https://youtu.be/gpJrGuZEJsY?t=2056

and this https://youtu.be/gpJrGuZEJsY?t=37

Sorry to say, the sound quality is very very bad. I can not listen to any of the four.

try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tJkr8sfBK8

[DooMAD]

Larger blocks will naturally provide benefit to:

• Those who want to use Bitcoin as a payments network
• Miners
• Merchants
• Payment Processors
• "Mainstream" users

Smaller blocks will naturally provide benefit to:

• Those who want to use Bitcoin as an asset class
• Those wanting to run full nodes cheaply
• Those who don't care if the average user is priced off the main chain

Either we find a solution that these groups can all agree on, or we go our separate ways and implement our ideals unhindered by the other group.  Increasingly, it's sounding like these ideals are not compatible.  I'm pretty sure the larger blocks group have been dealt a stronger hand, so the smaller blocks group should be looking for a compromise while they still can.  I'm not naive enough to think that we don't need people to run full nodes, because we do.  But at the same time, people running full nodes have to concede that they aren't much use without the miners.  The miners will want larger blocks to collect more fees by supporting more transactions.  This has to be done in a careful way, granted, but it has to be done.  This "BIP000" belligerence is just sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "la-la-la-I'm-not-listening" and you're more than welcome to keep doing it, but it's not part of the discussion everyone else wants to have.  So don't be surprised if you isolate yourselves in the process.

[hdbuck]

oh noes, isolation

lol for centuries, this has been one of the main argument for the socialist bs agenda: "if you are not with us you are alone.."

bouhouohouhouhouh pathetic.

the greatest minds have always been alone standing for their ideas, rejected by the majority of brainwashed sheeples.

you forkers will end up owned by the same corporations (but all together yeayyy), using a centralized system which security would be "under control" and some flashy ph0undation (or LaB, so fancyyy ^^) with their "governance" and "regulations".

so lol no GFY.

bitcoin is sovereign, if you dont like it, go ahead and use any fork altcoin that suits your onchain-micro-transactions-coffee-spaming or just go with XT already.. but you wouldnt uh?  


edit: altho it seems to me the gavinistas are the ones pretty alone in this nonsense..

[hdbuck]

HEY PETER!! so many fancy graphs and "equilibrium points" you came up with at that conf!





just waooow.
so much intellectual... BULLSHIET.


plus, that shwartzy voice of yours.. please don't bother "coming back" tho.


edit: does peter seems lonely? hell yeaaaa ^^


edit edit: hahah dat troll at the end: "dont block the stream people.. dont block the stream" XD

[Zarathustra]

edit edit: hahah dat troll at the end: "dont block the stream people.. dont block the stream" XD

The stream blockers (marxist kids@core) won't be able to block the stream. You'll get big blocks next year.

[hdbuck]

edit edit: hahah dat troll at the end: "dont block the stream people.. dont block the stream" XD

The stream blockers (marxist kids@core) won't be able to block the stream. You'll get big blocks next year.

such arguments.

but hey guess wat? we wont because we actually dont need it.. where my mass adoption?!

too bad cuz i coulda appreciated you noobs forking off asap: need to "isolate" bitcoin from your constant fud and bs.

[DooMAD]

oh noes, isolation

lol for centuries, this has been one of the main argument for the socialist bs agenda: "if you are not with us you are alone.."

bouhouohouhouhouh pathetic.

the greatest minds have always been alone standing for their ideas, rejected by the majority of brainwashed sheeples.

you forkers will end up owned by the same corporations (but all together yeayyy), using a centralized system which security would be "under control" and some flashy ph0undation (or LaB, so fancyyy ^^) with their "governance" and "regulations".

so lol no GFY.

bitcoin is sovereign, if you dont like it, go ahead and use any fork altcoin that suits your onchain-micro-transactions-coffee-spaming or just go with XT already.. but you wouldnt uh?  

Again with the "you only care about microtransactions" BS.  Change the record already.  I've stated enough times by now that your paranoia over microtransactions is just deflecting the issue:

People tend to make the assumption that a larger blocksize would encourage more microtransactions or other transactions sent without a fee.  To an extent, that's possible (but not a certainty by any means), so there is a balance to be struck to ensure there is space enough for legitimate fee-paying transactions, but not so much space that most of the traffic being processed doesn't give any reward for the miners securing the network.  1MB almost certainly isn't enough, but how much is too much?  That's where most of the discourse seems to focus, and rightly so.

Third party layers should be strictly reserved for micropayments and transactions that don't include a fee.  And as much as small block proponents obsess about micropayments, they really aren't the issue.  Even after they're swept under the carpet, Bitcoin still needs to support more than two-thirds of a floppy disk every ten minutes.  If it doesn't, something else will.  

Just about every single opponent of larger blocks is completely fixated on micro-payments and thinks that once those are swept under the carpet that the scalability issue is magically solved forever.  That's just plain wrong.  Larger blocks will become a necessity as the usage increases and prolonging the inevitable is only going to result in more disruption later.  

Get it?  It's.  Not.  About.  Microtransactions.

altho it seems to me the gavinistas are the ones pretty alone in this nonsense..

You're the one who thinks you can have a system where you can ignore the wishes of miners, merchants, payment processors and users.  You've made it abundantly and abhorrently clear what your view of Bitcoin's future is and I'm pretty sure most people don't share it. 

[Zarathustra]

I guess Blockthestream Corp. and its cheerleaders will be marginalized (decentralized).

[hdbuck]

I guess Blockthestream Corp. and its cheerleaders will be marginalized (decentralized).

and you gavinistas gov pigs will be centralized? lmao.







@doomad:




edit: place your bets gents: https://bitbet.us/bet/1191/the-hearn-gavin-scamcoin-will-fizzle-in-2016/

[Zarathustra]

I guess Blockthestream Corp. and its cheerleaders will be marginalized (decentralized).

and you gavinistas gov pigs will be centralized? lmao.

The several big blockians and the 'Bitcoin unlimited' people will be decentralized as well. But together they are a majority to raise the limit.

[hdbuck]

[Zarathustra]

Yes, otherwise Xapo would not prefer Switzerland, the most direct democracy. That's always producing better results than feudalist/elitist/sociopath ruled territories.

[DooMAD]

Anyway, since some are determined to deflect away from technical proposals and throw silly memes around, we'll drag the topic back to one of merit.

The ideal solution is one that doesn't create a blocksize too large for full nodes to cope with, but at the same time, one that doesn't force a large number of people off chain.  Even doubling to 2MB in one go is quite high when you think about it, so we should aim to increase (or decrease) in smaller increments more often, if needed.  One possible route is to take the best elements of BIP100 and BIP106.  BIP100 only considers what benefits the miners and not the users.  BIP106 only considers what benefits the users and not the miners.  So neither is particularly balanced on its own.  If we can find a way of allowing half of the "vote" to go to the miners and half to an automated, algorithmic vote based on traffic volumes, then we maintain some kind of equilibrium that should (in theory, at least) benefit the network as a whole.

Code:

Miners vote by encoding ‘BV’+BlockSizeRequestValue into coinbase scriptSig to: 
    raise blocksize limit by 12.5%, 
    lower blocksize limit by 12.5%, 
    or remain at current blocksize limit.  

This vote, however, only counts for half of the total vote and the other half is determined by algorithm based on network traffic:

If more than 50% of block's size, found in the first 1008 of the last difficulty period, is more than 90% MaxBlockSize
    Network votes for MaxBlockSize = MaxBlockSize +12.5% 

Else if more than 90% of block's size, found in the first 1008 of the last difficulty period, is less than 50% MaxBlockSize
    Network votes for MaxBlockSize = MaxBlockSize -12.5%

Else
    Network votes for keeping the same MaxBlockSize

The 12.5% part is open to negotiation, some think 10% is more reasonable (i.e. BIP105).  If every 1008 blocks is too fast, we could (for example) increase that to 2016 blocks, approximately every two weeks.  Tweaks are inevitable, but I feel it's something that could work if it's not too complex to code.

[iCEBREAKER]

"BIP000" belligerence

BIP000 is just the natural expression of Bitcon's Honey Badger "don't a shit what you say" philosophy reflected in the domain of blocksize debating.

Face it, XT got #REKT.  The Gavinistas can't even keep their fail-nodes and fail-pools up, but expected us to hand them the keys to Satoshi's Kingdom?   

G.T.F.O. noob!  Go play with the other losers at bitco.in or voat/v/bitcoinxt.

(Just kidding, we value your flailings for their entertainment value.)

[iCEBREAKER]

Yes, otherwise Xapo would not prefer Switzerland, the most direct democracy. That's always producing better results than feudalist/elitist/sociopath ruled territories.

OK, let's add geography and politics to the list of things about which Zarathustra knows very little.

Switzerland is a confederacy, not a direct democracy.  The have multiple sub-jurisdictions and ultimate power resides in the heavily armed populace of the cantons.

That's all to deal with the fact that majority rule doesn't scale beyond groups of ~100 people (because we can't remember more names/faces and tragedy of the commons + negative marginal returns ensue when we try).

Zar, please say less and listen more, because your colossal ignorance is an embarrassment to the forum, your fail-teachers, and your fail-parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland

The pure form of direct democracy only exists in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus.[11] The Swiss confederation is a semi-direct democracy (representative democracy with instruments of direct democracy).

[brg444]

Yes, otherwise Xapo would not prefer Switzerland, the most direct democracy. That's always producing better results than feudalist/elitist/sociopath ruled territories.

OK, let's add geography and politics to the list of things about which Zarathustra knows very little.

Switzerland is a confederacy, not a direct democracy.  The have multiple sub-jurisdictions and ultimate power resides in the heavily armed populace of the cantons.

That's all to deal with the fact that majority rule doesn't scale beyond groups of ~100 people (because we can't remember more names/faces and tragedy of the commons + negative marginal returns ensue when we try).

Zar, please say less and listen more, because your colossal ignorance is an embarrassment to the forum, your fail-teachers, and your fail-parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland

The pure form of direct democracy only exists in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus.[11] The Swiss confederation is a semi-direct democracy (representative democracy with instruments of direct democracy).

Let Popescu tell him: http://trilema.com/2015/why-representative-democracy-doesnt-work-and-doesnt-make-sense/

[Zarathustra]

Yes, otherwise Xapo would not prefer Switzerland, the most direct democracy. That's always producing better results than feudalist/elitist/sociopath ruled territories.

OK, let's add geography and politics to the list of things about which Zarathustra knows very little.

Switzerland is a confederacy, not a direct democracy.  The have multiple sub-jurisdictions and ultimate power resides in the heavily armed populace of the cantons.

That's all to deal with the fact that majority rule doesn't scale beyond groups of ~100 people (because we can't remember more names/faces and tragedy of the commons + negative marginal returns ensue when we try).

Zar, please say less and listen more, because your colossal ignorance is an embarrassment to the forum, your fail-teachers, and your fail-parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland

The pure form of direct democracy only exists in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus.[11] The Swiss confederation is a semi-direct democracy (representative democracy with instruments of direct democracy).

Ridiculous.
1. I live in Switzerland
2. I spoke twice on that podium in Glarus to the people, until the officials forked me away from the podium
3. Appenzell was the last canton that gave the woman the right to vote
4. Switzerland is the most direct democracy on the planet and that's the reason why companies like Xapo move to this country: The results are better than in elitist/feudalist ruled countries.

Imagine the disaster if people like you, the headbuck, the brg444, the popescu and alikes would rule that country....

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

Let Popescu tell him: http://trilema.com/2015/why-representative-democracy-doesnt-work-and-doesnt-make-sense/

MPfag

[DooMAD]

Yes, otherwise Xapo would not prefer Switzerland, the most direct democracy. That's always producing better results than feudalist/elitist/sociopath ruled territories.

OK, let's add geography and politics to the list of things about which Zarathustra knows very little.

Switzerland is a confederacy, not a direct democracy.  The have multiple sub-jurisdictions and ultimate power resides in the heavily armed populace of the cantons.

That's all to deal with the fact that majority rule doesn't scale beyond groups of ~100 people (because we can't remember more names/faces and tragedy of the commons + negative marginal returns ensue when we try).

Zar, please say less and listen more, because your colossal ignorance is an embarrassment to the forum, your fail-teachers, and your fail-parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland

The pure form of direct democracy only exists in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus.[11] The Swiss confederation is a semi-direct democracy (representative democracy with instruments of direct democracy).

Ridiculous.
1. I live in Switzerland
2. I spoke twice on that podium in Glarus to the people, until the officials forked me away from the podium
3. Appenzell was the last canton that gave the woman the right to vote
4. Switzerland is the most direct democracy on the planet and that's the reason why companies like Xapo move to this country: The results are better than in elitist/feudalist ruled countries.

Imagine the disaster if people like you, the headbuck, the brg444, the popescu and alikes would rule that country....

It seems certain people have spent so long hanging on Mircea Popescu's every word, they've completely lost the ability to think rationally for themselves.  And yet they still portray others as the insipid and corrupting influences on Bitcoin.  It'll still be "gavinista" this and "noob" that, never realising who the real cancer is in all this.  I genuinely hope Bitcoin does fork and MP tries to fight it.  I hope he loses every last satoshi in the process.  I have zero respect for anyone with their head crammed up that crackpot's backside.  

[juiceayres]

so we should aim to increase (or decrease) in smaller increments more often, if needed.

That's the point.

Let's think about sustainable development. In 50 years from now (2065) which BIP could potentially work better ?


The answer is: No one knows, bitcoin could become the world currency or a retro geek stuff. The insane part is that BIP101, 102 & 103 just ignore it. Those BIPs can overshoot a lot. For now only BIP105 and 106 are reasonable, and as DooMAD pointed out 105 can give a lot of power to miners.


Do we need a implement now? No, blocks still 400kb and some of them does not have any transaction... This block size wars is just about ego and being the alpha male. It will be resolved quickly if people use  rational thinking.

[hdbuck]

Yes, otherwise Xapo would not prefer Switzerland, the most direct democracy. That's always producing better results than feudalist/elitist/sociopath ruled territories.

OK, let's add geography and politics to the list of things about which Zarathustra knows very little.

Switzerland is a confederacy, not a direct democracy.  The have multiple sub-jurisdictions and ultimate power resides in the heavily armed populace of the cantons.

That's all to deal with the fact that majority rule doesn't scale beyond groups of ~100 people (because we can't remember more names/faces and tragedy of the commons + negative marginal returns ensue when we try).

Zar, please say less and listen more, because your colossal ignorance is an embarrassment to the forum, your fail-teachers, and your fail-parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland

The pure form of direct democracy only exists in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus.[11] The Swiss confederation is a semi-direct democracy (representative democracy with instruments of direct democracy).

Ridiculous.
1. I live in Switzerland
2. I spoke twice on that podium in Glarus to the people, until the officials forked me away from the podium
3. Appenzell was the last canton that gave the woman the right to vote
4. Switzerland is the most direct democracy on the planet and that's the reason why companies like Xapo move to this country: The results are better than in elitist/feudalist ruled countries.

Imagine the disaster if people like you, the headbuck, the brg444, the popescu and alikes would rule that country....

lmfao.. nothing to do with banking advantages.

democracy.. lol so overrated.
hello, this word does not describe what it was supposed to etymologically mean anymore.
typical verbal diarrhea. only the sheeples and the statists shills still go for it.

How about just freedom?


sidenote: even Blythe Masters does not want to build a blockchain (or whatever she thinks she is building..) for you peasants.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/blythe-masters-back-in-business-with-blockchain-for-banks-2015-09-02

[Zarathustra]

Yes, otherwise Xapo would not prefer Switzerland, the most direct democracy. That's always producing better results than feudalist/elitist/sociopath ruled territories.

OK, let's add geography and politics to the list of things about which Zarathustra knows very little.

Switzerland is a confederacy, not a direct democracy.  The have multiple sub-jurisdictions and ultimate power resides in the heavily armed populace of the cantons.

That's all to deal with the fact that majority rule doesn't scale beyond groups of ~100 people (because we can't remember more names/faces and tragedy of the commons + negative marginal returns ensue when we try).

Zar, please say less and listen more, because your colossal ignorance is an embarrassment to the forum, your fail-teachers, and your fail-parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland

The pure form of direct democracy only exists in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus.[11] The Swiss confederation is a semi-direct democracy (representative democracy with instruments of direct democracy).

Ridiculous.
1. I live in Switzerland
2. I spoke twice on that podium in Glarus to the people, until the officials forked me away from the podium
3. Appenzell was the last canton that gave the woman the right to vote
4. Switzerland is the most direct democracy on the planet and that's the reason why companies like Xapo move to this country: The results are better than in elitist/feudalist ruled countries.

Imagine the disaster if people like you, the headbuck, the brg444, the popescu and alikes would rule that country....

lmfao.. nothing to do with banking advantages.

democracy.. lol so overrated.
hello, this word does not describe what it was supposed to etymologically mean anymore.
typical verbal diarrhea. only the sheeples and the statists shills still go for it.

How about just freedom?

Free of what? A society (patriarchy) can only more ore less be free (free of this and that). Only anarchist, stateless communities in the rainforest are free and selfsufficient. You are not.

[hdbuck]

Yes, otherwise Xapo would not prefer Switzerland, the most direct democracy. That's always producing better results than feudalist/elitist/sociopath ruled territories.

OK, let's add geography and politics to the list of things about which Zarathustra knows very little.

Switzerland is a confederacy, not a direct democracy.  The have multiple sub-jurisdictions and ultimate power resides in the heavily armed populace of the cantons.

That's all to deal with the fact that majority rule doesn't scale beyond groups of ~100 people (because we can't remember more names/faces and tragedy of the commons + negative marginal returns ensue when we try).

Zar, please say less and listen more, because your colossal ignorance is an embarrassment to the forum, your fail-teachers, and your fail-parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland

The pure form of direct democracy only exists in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus.[11] The Swiss confederation is a semi-direct democracy (representative democracy with instruments of direct democracy).

Ridiculous.
1. I live in Switzerland
2. I spoke twice on that podium in Glarus to the people, until the officials forked me away from the podium
3. Appenzell was the last canton that gave the woman the right to vote
4. Switzerland is the most direct democracy on the planet and that's the reason why companies like Xapo move to this country: The results are better than in elitist/feudalist ruled countries.

Imagine the disaster if people like you, the headbuck, the brg444, the popescu and alikes would rule that country....

lmfao.. nothing to do with banking advantages.

democracy.. lol so overrated.
hello, this word does not describe what it was supposed to etymologically mean anymore.
typical verbal diarrhea. only the sheeples and the statists shills still go for it.

How about just freedom?

Free of what? A society (patriarchy) can only more ore less be free (free of this and that). Only anarchist, stateless communities in the rainforest are free and selfsufficient. You are not.

free from your statist "selfsufficent" fud, and your ill-logic fucked up democracies.


heh and this actually perfectly sums it up: http://trilema.com/2015/why-should-the-argentine-population-go-graze-already/

one group of retards (let's call them libertards) agrees with itself that right-to-choice and words-are-like-bullets! and everyone-is-unique-just-like-everyone-else and whatnot whereas another group of retards (let's call them Bush, because they're all related anyway) agrees with itself that every-sperm-is-precious and drugz-r-bad-mkay and whatnot, and then they go about "disagreeing" with each other and "debating" "issues" in the psychotic manner of each side repeating its mantras at the other like so many magical incantations.

[iCEBREAKER]

I live in Switzerland

You live in Switzerland, and yet someone on the other side of the planet had to explain your country is a confederacy, not a direct democracy.   

[LiQio]

[...]
Switzerland is a confederacy, not a direct democracy.  The have multiple sub-jurisdictions and ultimate power resides in the heavily armed populace of the cantons.
[...]

AFAIK there are four federal votes on different topics per year. Those decisions are based on individual votes and not elected representatives. Why would you not call that direct democracy?

[Zarathustra]

[...]
Switzerland is a confederacy, not a direct democracy.  The have multiple sub-jurisdictions and ultimate power resides in the heavily armed populace of the cantons.
[...]

AFAIK there are four federal votes on different topics per year. Those decisions are based on individual votes and not elected representatives. Why would you not call that direct democracy?

Yes. The people can start an initiative for new laws or a referendum that questions the decisions of the politicians, on all three levels commune, canton and federal government.

[Zarathustra]

Yes, otherwise Xapo would not prefer Switzerland, the most direct democracy. That's always producing better results than feudalist/elitist/sociopath ruled territories.

OK, let's add geography and politics to the list of things about which Zarathustra knows very little.

Switzerland is a confederacy, not a direct democracy.  The have multiple sub-jurisdictions and ultimate power resides in the heavily armed populace of the cantons.

That's all to deal with the fact that majority rule doesn't scale beyond groups of ~100 people (because we can't remember more names/faces and tragedy of the commons + negative marginal returns ensue when we try).

Zar, please say less and listen more, because your colossal ignorance is an embarrassment to the forum, your fail-teachers, and your fail-parents.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_democracy#Switzerland

The pure form of direct democracy only exists in the Swiss cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus.[11] The Swiss confederation is a semi-direct democracy (representative democracy with instruments of direct democracy).

Ridiculous.
1. I live in Switzerland
2. I spoke twice on that podium in Glarus to the people, until the officials forked me away from the podium
3. Appenzell was the last canton that gave the woman the right to vote
4. Switzerland is the most direct democracy on the planet and that's the reason why companies like Xapo move to this country: The results are better than in elitist/feudalist ruled countries.

Imagine the disaster if people like you, the headbuck, the brg444, the popescu and alikes would rule that country....

lmfao.. nothing to do with banking advantages.

democracy.. lol so overrated.
hello, this word does not describe what it was supposed to etymologically mean anymore.
typical verbal diarrhea. only the sheeples and the statists shills still go for it.

How about just freedom?

Free of what? A society (patriarchy) can only more ore less be free (free of this and that). Only anarchist, stateless communities in the rainforest are free and selfsufficient. You are not.

free from your statist "selfsufficent" fud, and your ill-logic fucked up democracies.


heh and this actually perfectly sums it up: http://trilema.com/2015/why-should-the-argentine-population-go-graze-already/

Great elitist and feudalist country! No chance for Switzerland to compete with it on the world market.

[tvbcof]

Great elitist and feudalist country! No chance for Switzerland to compete with it on the world market.
http://oi47.tinypic.com/2e6hr38.jpg

Nestle is operational, or planning to be, buying water in my state for '$0.00225 per gallon' and selling it for 'up to $2.63 per gallon'.

I'd say that multi-national corporations headquartered in Switzerland are as up-to-speed as any on how to exploit 'underdeveloped' populations worldwide.  Small wonder that they are as out-in-front as any in trying to get guns out of the hands of people of areas that they exploit.  Gotta protect those infrastructure investments.

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

Great elitist and feudalist country! No chance for Switzerland to compete with it on the world market.
http://oi47.tinypic.com/2e6hr38.jpg

Nestle is operational, or planning to be, buying water in my state for '$0.00225 per gallon' and selling it for 'up to $2.63 per gallon'.

I'd say that multi-national corporations headquartered in Switzerland are as up-to-speed as any on how to exploit 'underdeveloped' populations worldwide.  Small wonder that they are as out-in-front as any in trying to get guns out of the hands of people of areas that they exploit.  Gotta protect those infrastructure investments.

The people of Oregon are 'underdeveloped'?   

Don't Coca Cola and every other soft drink manufacturer buy municipal water and process it it into finished products at roughly the same price differential?

You are either being devilishly obtuse, or simply incredibly thick. 

[tvbcof]

Great elitist and feudalist country! No chance for Switzerland to compete with it on the world market.
http://oi47.tinypic.com/2e6hr38.jpg

Nestle is operational, or planning to be, buying water in my state for '$0.00225 per gallon' and selling it for 'up to $2.63 per gallon'.

I'd say that multi-national corporations headquartered in Switzerland are as up-to-speed as any on how to exploit 'underdeveloped' populations worldwide.  Small wonder that they are as out-in-front as any in trying to get guns out of the hands of people of areas that they exploit.  Gotta protect those infrastructure investments.

The people of Oregon are 'underdeveloped'?   

Absolutely, and regressing rapidly as our society and education system devolves.

Don't Coca Cola and every other soft drink manufacturer buy municipal water and process it it into finished products at roughly the same price differential?

Probably.  Most are multi-national corporations and are more similar than they are different.  All are equally worthless and the world would be better of if/when they all are '#rekt.'

You are either being devilishly obtuse, or simply incredibly thick. 

OK.

[Zarathustra]

Great elitist and feudalist country! No chance for Switzerland to compete with it on the world market.
http://oi47.tinypic.com/2e6hr38.jpg

Nestle is operational, or planning to be, buying water in my state for '$0.00225 per gallon' and selling it for 'up to $2.63 per gallon'.

I'd say that multi-national corporations headquartered in Switzerland are as up-to-speed as any on how to exploit 'underdeveloped' populations worldwide.  Small wonder that they are as out-in-front as any in trying to get guns out of the hands of people of areas that they exploit.  Gotta protect those infrastructure investments.

The people of Oregon are 'underdeveloped'?  

Absolutely, and regressing rapidly as our society and education system devolves.

Yes, q.e.d.
Needless to say that the Swiss direct democracy generates a better (broad) education system (not just the higher education for the 1 percent).

For the sixth consecutive edition, Switzerland tops the rankings of the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report. Since 1979, this annual study has helped to pinpoint the reasons behind the differing fortunes of the countries studied – 144 economies in the 2014-2015 edition.
Switzerland owes its success to a combination of factors. Among these are its stable, transparent and effective institutions; sound and healthy public finances; an attractive tax regime; excellent infrastructure and connectivity; a world-class education system; relatively peaceful relations among social actors within a flexible labour market; the highest level of business sophistication; and, most importantly, an exceptional capacity for innovation. In advanced countries, innovation is the main source of long-term growth. However, few countries can pride themselves on being global innovation powerhouses. With the highest international patent application rate per inhabitant in the world, Switzerland is certainly entitled to make this claim.

http://www.weforum.org/content/what-makes-switzerland-so-competitive

[tvbcof]

The people of Oregon are 'underdeveloped'?  

Absolutely, and regressing rapidly as our society and education system devolves.

Yes, q.e.d.
Needless to say that the Swiss direct democracy generates a better (broad) education system (not just the higher education for the 1 percent).
...

Ya, educating kids about how great it is to butt-fuck one another.

[Zarathustra]

The people of Oregon are 'underdeveloped'?  

Absolutely, and regressing rapidly as our society and education system devolves.

Yes, q.e.d.
Needless to say that the Swiss direct democracy generates a better (broad) education system (not just the higher education for the 1 percent).
...

Ya, educating kids about how great it is to butt-fuck one another.

Yes, that's civilization and capitalism (patriarchy). That means competition, in contrast to the stateless, self-sufficient community (anarchy).
I'm postulating anarchy, but among the several different reign systems I still prefer direct democracy over elitist/feudalist systems.

[hdbuck]

The people of Oregon are 'underdeveloped'?   

Absolutely, and regressing rapidly as our society and education system devolves.

Yes, q.e.d.
Needless to say that the Swiss direct democracy generates a better (broad) education system (not just the higher education for the 1 percent).
...

Ya, educating kids about how great it is to butt-fuck one another.

Yes, that's civilization and capitalism (patriarchy). That means competition, in contrast to the stateless, self-sufficient community (anarchy).
I'm postulating anarchy, but among the several different reign systems I still prefer direct democracy over elitist/feudalist systems.

eh, always the false antagonisms fud: patriachy vs anarchy blablabla..

time to change the bloody record dude..

[Zarathustra]

The people of Oregon are 'underdeveloped'?   

Absolutely, and regressing rapidly as our society and education system devolves.

Yes, q.e.d.
Needless to say that the Swiss direct democracy generates a better (broad) education system (not just the higher education for the 1 percent).
...

Ya, educating kids about how great it is to butt-fuck one another.

Yes, that's civilization and capitalism (patriarchy). That means competition, in contrast to the stateless, self-sufficient community (anarchy).
I'm postulating anarchy, but among the several different reign systems I still prefer direct democracy over elitist/feudalist systems.

eh, always the false antagonisms fud: patriachy vs anarchy blablabla..

time to change the bloody record dude..

If you don't know the history - your problem.

[tvbcof]

Yes, q.e.d.
Needless to say that the Swiss direct democracy generates a better (broad) education system (not just the higher education for the 1 percent).
...

Ya, educating kids about how great it is to butt-fuck one another.

Yes, that's civilization and capitalism (patriarchy). That means competition, in contrast to the stateless, self-sufficient community (anarchy).
I'm postulating anarchy, but among the several different reign systems I still prefer direct democracy over elitist/feudalist systems.

Sounds like perviarchy to me.  I'm postulating that you sheep are under management of a bunch of one-worlders who don't want you, or anyone else, reproduce on your own and without proper management.

[Zarathustra]

Yes, q.e.d.
Needless to say that the Swiss direct democracy generates a better (broad) education system (not just the higher education for the 1 percent).
...

Ya, educating kids about how great it is to butt-fuck one another.

Yes, that's civilization and capitalism (patriarchy). That means competition, in contrast to the stateless, self-sufficient community (anarchy).
I'm postulating anarchy, but among the several different reign systems I still prefer direct democracy over elitist/feudalist systems.

Sounds like perviarchy to me.  I'm postulating that you sheep are under management of a bunch of one-worlders who don't want you, or anyone else, reproduce on your own and without proper management.

Your postulates are schizophrenic.

You are against progressiv and regressive education systems at the same time:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1144606.msg12451762#msg12451762

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1144606.msg12454448#msg12454448

Counter 'arguments' as an end in itself.

[tvbcof]

Yes, q.e.d.
Needless to say that the Swiss direct democracy generates a better (broad) education system (not just the higher education for the 1 percent).
...

Ya, educating kids about how great it is to butt-fuck one another.

Yes, that's civilization and capitalism (patriarchy). That means competition, in contrast to the stateless, self-sufficient community (anarchy).
I'm postulating anarchy, but among the several different reign systems I still prefer direct democracy over elitist/feudalist systems.

Sounds like perviarchy to me.  I'm postulating that you sheep are under management of a bunch of one-worlders who don't want you, or anyone else, reproduce on your own and without proper management.

Your postulates are schizophrenic.

You are against progressiv and regressive education systems at the same time:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1144606.msg12451762#msg12451762

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1144606.msg12454448#msg12454448

Counter 'arguments' as an end in itself.

As far as education goes, I've relatively recently and relatively abruptly gone 'old school'.  As long as people somehow learn the three R's (reading, writing, and 'rithmatic), that's fine and it doesn't matter how it happens.  Hopefully it would happen in small localized groups as much as possible.  After that, if some kids want to go farther, fantastic.  I'm happy to have my tax dollars go toward that as well.  These factory schools are as bad for kids and factory farms are bad for swine in my opinion.  And the end goal of pure exploitation by the factory owners is very similar as well.

I don't think it is appropriate for teachers to demo their perversions on kids even if the 'community consensus' in places like Switzerland is that pre-schoolers should know everything there is to know about sodomy and what-not.  But, hey, it's your country.  I'm not going to run over there and try to change you folks just because you do things that I think are sick.

[Zarathustra]

Yes, q.e.d.
Needless to say that the Swiss direct democracy generates a better (broad) education system (not just the higher education for the 1 percent).
...

Ya, educating kids about how great it is to butt-fuck one another.

Yes, that's civilization and capitalism (patriarchy). That means competition, in contrast to the stateless, self-sufficient community (anarchy).
I'm postulating anarchy, but among the several different reign systems I still prefer direct democracy over elitist/feudalist systems.

Sounds like perviarchy to me.  I'm postulating that you sheep are under management of a bunch of one-worlders who don't want you, or anyone else, reproduce on your own and without proper management.

Your postulates are schizophrenic.

You are against progressiv and regressive education systems at the same time:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1144606.msg12451762#msg12451762

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1144606.msg12454448#msg12454448

Counter 'arguments' as an end in itself.

As far as education goes, I've relatively recently and relatively abruptly gone 'old school'.  As long as people somehow learn the three R's (reading, writing, and 'rithmatic), that's fine and it doesn't matter how it happens.  Hopefully it would happen in small localized groups as much as possible.  After that, if some kids want to go farther, fantastic.  I'm happy to have my tax dollars go toward that as well.  These factory schools are as bad for kids and factory farms are bad for swine in my opinion.  And the end goal of pure exploitation by the factory owners is very similar as well.

I don't think it is appropriate for teachers to demo their perversions on kids even if the 'community consensus' in places like Switzerland is that pre-schoolers should know everything there is to know about sodomy and what-not.  But, hey, it's your country.  I'm not going to run over there and try to change you folks just because you do things that I think are sick.

Societies are not communities. But yes, direct democratic ruled people don't need elitists who define for others what's sick and whats' not.

[flix]

It looks like this debate is back....

In talking with miners and companies, one thing I’m hearing repeatedly is “we will wait for the second conference in December. If there’s no progress by then, we’ll switch to BIP 101”

https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-block-sizes-e047bc9f830#.4orj1opxc



If Hearn is correct and all these miners...
http://blocksize.org/bip100.html

..switch to BIP101 in December, we could very well see BIP101 activating in January 2016.

[hdbuck]

It looks like this debate is back....

In talking with miners and companies, one thing I’m hearing repeatedly is “we will wait for the second conference in December. If there’s no progress by then, we’ll switch to BIP 101”

https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-block-sizes-e047bc9f830#.4orj1opxc



If Hearn is correct and all these miners...
http://blocksize.org/bip100.html

..switch to BIP101 in December, we could very well see BIP101 activating in January 2016.

total moron.

btcdrak response, adressing the outright lies and fud:

https://medium.com/@btcdrak/full-of-lies-and-desperation-of-someone-who-risked-his-entire-reputation-on-something-and-lost-and-6c206e68d0cf#.qiiljl3pa

[Adrian-x]

It looks like this debate is back....

In talking with miners and companies, one thing I’m hearing repeatedly is “we will wait for the second conference in December. If there’s no progress by then, we’ll switch to BIP 101”

https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-block-sizes-e047bc9f830#.4orj1opxc



If Hearn is correct and all these miners...
http://blocksize.org/bip100.html

..switch to BIP101 in December, we could very well see BIP101 activating in January 2016.

total moron.

btcdrak response, adressing the outright lies and fud:

https://medium.com/@btcdrak/full-of-lies-and-desperation-of-someone-who-risked-his-entire-reputation-on-something-and-lost-and-6c206e68d0cf#.qiiljl3pa

there is lots of FUD, btcdrak doesn't address it at all! btcdrak overlooks the huge chasm between the crony Developers who have assess to modify Bitcoin Core, and there inbred circle jerking, ignoring experts in other disciplines who contribute to the Bitcoin space mainly the economics.

The essence of what is actually happening is expressed well here: Blocksizegate as Regulatory Capture its got nothing to do with Mike other than he's out first casualty Regulatory Capture.

if bitcoin fails its not for the reasons you think it's going to be because of the inbred development team who are not open to input from experts in other fields. the power doesn't rest with Developers and miners but with the network of users and investors, who are being alienated and herded towards off block chain solutions. 

[hdbuck]

It looks like this debate is back....

In talking with miners and companies, one thing I’m hearing repeatedly is “we will wait for the second conference in December. If there’s no progress by then, we’ll switch to BIP 101”

https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-block-sizes-e047bc9f830#.4orj1opxc



If Hearn is correct and all these miners...
http://blocksize.org/bip100.html

..switch to BIP101 in December, we could very well see BIP101 activating in January 2016.

total moron.

btcdrak response, adressing the outright lies and fud:

https://medium.com/@btcdrak/full-of-lies-and-desperation-of-someone-who-risked-his-entire-reputation-on-something-and-lost-and-6c206e68d0cf#.qiiljl3pa

there is lots of FUD, btcdrak doesn't address it at all! btcdrak overlooks the huge chasm between the crony Developers who have assess to modify Bitcoin Core, and there inbred circle jerking, ignoring experts in other disciplines who contribute to the Bitcoin space mainly the economics.

The essence of what is actually happening is expressed well here: Blocksizegate as Regulatory Capture its got nothing to do with Mike other than he's out first casualty Regulatory Capture.

if bitcoin fails its not for the reasons you think it's going to be because of the inbred development team who are not open to input from experts in other fields. the power doesn't rest with Developers and miners but with the network of users and investors, who are being alienated and herded towards off block chain solutions. 

lel and who would the 'experts' be? you? frapdoc? please dont tell me peter r...

seriously, go crawl back in that circle jerk minority of a forum you and your fallacies found refuge in.

[flix]

Average #blocksize

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size

We are not so far away from 1MB....

[VeritasSapere]

Everyone should read this:
https://medium.com/faith-and-future/why-is-bitcoin-forking-d647312d22c1
https://medium.com/@octskyward/on-block-sizes-e047bc9f830
https://medium.com/@riprowan/the-entire-debate-transcends-block-sizes-and-gets-to-the-fundamental-principles-of-bitcoin-as-c7f7bc1a493#.qj0wwps11

These are also informative:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=946236.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1164464.0

Inform yourself and decide for yourself using reason.

[zimmah]

I don't care how it gets fixed, as long as it does gets fixed.

How did we still not get consensus on this?       

An open source protocol should be much faster at adopting to change. 

This is not a good sign

[hdbuck]

I don't care how it gets fixed, as long as it does gets fixed.

How did we still not get consensus on this?      

An open source protocol should be much faster at adopting to change.  

This is not a good sign

nothing to be fixed as no problem jeopardizing bitcoin as of now. + the famous pseudo BIPs solutions brings more problems to bitcoin in the first place if implemented in such hurry.

consensus is status quo, and research.

open source means you can propose and participate at the writing of the code, yet nobody is forced to use your new code, even if you have a noob army brigading for you over social networks a la reddit.

[Zarathustra]

I don't care how it gets fixed, as long as it does gets fixed.

How did we still not get consensus on this?      

An open source protocol should be much faster at adopting to change.  

This is not a good sign

nothing to be fixed as no problem jeopardizing bitcoin as of now. + the famous pseudo BIPs solutions brings more problems to bitcoin in the first place if implemented in such hurry.

consensus is status quo, and research.

open source means you can propose and participate at the writing of the code, yet nobody is forced to use your new code, even if you have a noob army brigading for you over social networks a la reddit.

It has to be fixed. Even Adam 'proposes' today: 2 MB now, 4 MB in 2 years and 8 MB in 4 years. On which planet do you live?

[tvbcof]

I don't care how it gets fixed, as long as it does gets fixed.

How did we still not get consensus on this?       

An open source protocol should be much faster at adopting to change. 

This is not a good sign

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Right now Bitcoin still constitutes a potentially usable foundation for autonomous value storage free of counter-party risk (much like precious metals.)  It is simple and proven and has stood the test of time and of attack better than I had guessed it would when I initially took a position.

I and others see the appropriate track to be to build on the foundation that Bitcoin provides.  The most obvious failure mode would be for Bitcoin to grow itself into a situation where it was no longer reliable or workable as an autonomous system supportable by low capital actors.  I have little doubt that the real force behind the movement to bloat Bitcoin is coming from people who see things the exact same way.  The main difference is that Bitcoin failing is, to me, a bad thing.

[hdbuck]

I don't care how it gets fixed, as long as it does gets fixed.

How did we still not get consensus on this?       

An open source protocol should be much faster at adopting to change. 

This is not a good sign

nothing to be fixed as no problem jeopardizing bitcoin as of now. + the famous pseudo BIPs solutions brings more problems to bitcoin in the first place if implemented in such hurry.

consensus is status quo, and research.

open source means you can propose and participate at the writing of the code, yet nobody is forced to use your new code, even if you have a noob army brigading for you over social networks a la reddit.

It has to be fixed. Even Adam 'proposes' today: 2 MB now, 4 MB in 2 years and 8 MB in 4 years. On which planet do you live?

Adam's throwing you hysteric babies a bone to chew on.

[VeritasSapere]

I don't care how it gets fixed, as long as it does gets fixed.

How did we still not get consensus on this?      

An open source protocol should be much faster at adopting to change.  

This is not a good sign

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Right now Bitcoin still constitutes a potentially usable foundation for autonomous value storage free of counter-party risk (much like precious metals.)  It is simple and proven and has stood the test of time and of attack better than I had guessed it would when I initially took a position.

I and others see the appropriate track to be to build on the foundation that Bitcoin provides.  The most obvious failure mode would be for Bitcoin to grow itself into a situation where it was no longer reliable or workable as an autonomous system supportable by low capital actors.  I have little doubt that the real force behind the movement to bloat Bitcoin is coming from people who see things the exact same way.  The main difference is that Bitcoin failing is, to me, a bad thing.

It works now, however with increased adoption and therefore increased transaction volume it will not work as it does now, transactions would become unreliable and the fee would also increase, this would conversely hamper adoption and worsen the public perception of Bitcoin.

I think that increasing the blocksize will maximize decentralization and financial freedom compared to the alternatives over the long run. That is my position and that is my intend, I want Bitcoin to "succeed" regardless of what other people say to the contrary.

[tvbcof]

...The most obvious failure mode would be for Bitcoin to grow itself into a situation where it was no longer reliable or workable as an autonomous system supportable by low capital actors.  I have little doubt that the real force behind the movement to bloat Bitcoin is coming from people who see things the exact same way.  The main difference is that Bitcoin failing is, to me, a bad thing.

It works now, however with increased adoption and therefore increased transaction volume it will not work as it does now, transactions will become unreliable and the fee will increase, this would conversely hamper adoption and worsen the public perception of Bitcoin.

I think that increasing the blocksize will maximize decentralization and financial freedom compared to the alternatives over the long run. That is my position and that is my intend, I want Bitcoin to "succeed" regardless of what other people say to the contrary.

I choose my text carefully to account for participants like you.  And, in fact, you specifically since you are one of the more visible of (potentially) this category these days.

[brg444]

I don't care how it gets fixed, as long as it does gets fixed.

How did we still not get consensus on this?      

An open source protocol should be much faster at adopting to change.  

This is not a good sign

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

Right now Bitcoin still constitutes a potentially usable foundation for autonomous value storage free of counter-party risk (much like precious metals.)  It is simple and proven and has stood the test of time and of attack better than I had guessed it would when I initially took a position.

I and others see the appropriate track to be to build on the foundation that Bitcoin provides.  The most obvious failure mode would be for Bitcoin to grow itself into a situation where it was no longer reliable or workable as an autonomous system supportable by low capital actors.  I have little doubt that the real force behind the movement to bloat Bitcoin is coming from people who see things the exact same way.  The main difference is that Bitcoin failing is, to me, a bad thing.

I think that increasing the blocksize will maximize decentralization and financial freedom compared to the alternatives over the long run.

Yes, and some people "think" Quantitative Easing will lead to economic recovery.

There's a reason why you're left posing as a corporate side-show on the forums and not in position of power or decision: your opinion and what you "think" is irrelevant since you have no experience or authority in this field.

You can shout as loud as you'd like for as long as you want no one is listening.

[VeritasSapere]

More ad hominem from the usual suspects.

[brg444]

More ad hominem from the usual suspects.

 

[manselr]

BIP101 will lead to a centralized Bitcoin where mr entrepreneur guy and his multi million dollar venture with a building full of nodes run the show, instead of people around the world.

Yes, bigger fees suck, but I dont see any other solution.

[VeritasSapere]

BIP101 will lead to a centralized Bitcoin where mr entrepreneur guy and his multi million dollar venture with a building full of nodes run the show, instead of people around the world.

Yes, bigger fees suck, but I dont see any other solution.

Increasing the blocksize will maximize decentralization and financial freedom compared to the alternatives over the long run.

[hdbuck]

BIP101 will lead to a centralized Bitcoin where mr entrepreneur guy and his multi million dollar venture with a building full of nodes run the show, instead of people around the world.

Yes, bigger fees suck, but I dont see any other solution.

Increasing the blocksize will maximize decentralization and financial freedom compared to the alternatives over the long run.

hmnope.

[Blue_Tiger73]

I think that the blocksize limit of Bitcoin should stay the same. 1MB is good enough and it was put in to prevent spam and system failures. How can you be sure that if you raise the limit that these 2 things won't come back to bite you in the arse?

[flix]

A miner consensus seems to be forming around Adam Back's 2-4-8:

https://imgur.com/3fceWVb

81% of hashrate is in favour of increasing to 2MB now.

[LiteCoinGuy]

[hdbuck]

meh, so? seems nothing is stopping you altcoin wannabes.

almost like all the redditards from doge et al. flocked back into bitcoin, with their corporate masters and USG champions.

[flix]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3zvs8f/a_simple_adaptive_block_size_limit/
https://medium.com/@spair/a-simple-adaptive-block-size-limit-748f7cbcfb75#.lx595vbgo

Of all the ideas we’ve examined, the one that seems most appealing is a simple adaptive limit based on a recent median block size. To determine the block size limit, you compute the median block size over some recent sample of blocks and apply a multiple. For example, you might set the limit to 2x the median block size of the last 2016 blocks.

[ATguy]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3zvs8f/a_simple_adaptive_block_size_limit/
https://medium.com/@spair/a-simple-adaptive-block-size-limit-748f7cbcfb75#.lx595vbgo

Of all the ideas we’ve examined, the one that seems most appealing is a simple adaptive limit based on a recent median block size. To determine the block size limit, you compute the median block size over some recent sample of blocks and apply a multiple. For example, you might set the limit to 2x the median block size of the last 2016 blocks.

The biggest problem is choosing optimal multiplier of the past median block size, or are there any papers on this problem?


BTW it would be interesting to run similar Blocksize survey again, funny how the 1 MB vocal minority succesfully making illusion their minority view have much higher support than is the reality. Their lattest perk is :
Analysis and list of top big blocks shills (XT #REKT ignorers)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1318519.0

big blocks shills whose goal it is to destroy Bitcoin , by checking Blocksize survey result they will have a lot of work to identify all who are open minded to question their holly number, 1 MB

[flix]

Here's a nice platform for debating different proposals:

Bitcoin Consensus Census
https://bitcoin.consider.it/

[Lauda]

Here's a nice platform for debating different proposals:

Bitcoin Consensus Census
https://bitcoin.consider.it/

Nice is the best word that you can use in this case. It seems to be lacking in the amount of members and seems to be somewhat manipulative (support of BU by unverified individuals). Always look for opinions of miners and developers here (and verified people). However it does not currently tell us much aside from confirming what I knew so far (e.g. opinions of Luke Dashjr). Regardless, it is a good website.

[flix]

BitPay's Adaptive Block Size Limit is my favorite proposal. It's easy to explain, makes it easy for the miners to see that they have ultimate control over the size (as they always have), and takes control away from the developers.

– Gavin Andresen
https://np.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3zvvua/stephen_pair_a_simple_adaptive_block_size_limit/


I quite like the idea of a dynamic #maxblocksize and so I find this proposal very interesting.

I would however love to hear objections and arguments against it...

What could go wrong with this?

[BTCBinary]

I'm in favor of a block increase. I just think that we only need to change this and not any thing more to the code. Its innevitable an increase on the blocksize because the cheer number of eveyday transaction is growing at an enormous speed.

[ebliever]

Litecoinguy, thanks for putting that together. Hopefully you or others can keep it updated and maybe get more responses and formalize the ones already obtained. I do think the miners are key to this whole discussion.

It's interesting the system of checks and balances, the influence of Adam Smith's invisible hand as it were, how it keeps bitcoin in a healthy state over the long run. The miners are incentivized to choose a transaction system that maximizes fees, but that in turn depresses usage of bitcoin in the long run. Lower usage means crashing prices, means lost profits for the miners. So they are better off choosing volume/growth over short-term profits at this point, and that means a block size increase to encourage general adoption.

Staying at 1 MB railroads bitcoin usage into centralized institutions that will do off-blockchain bookkeeping (like faucetbox for bitcoin faucets), making users dependent on those 3rd party institutions. Some level of off-blockchain transaction activity is inevitable, but I can't think of a good reason to want to encourage it unless we are out of other options for transaction volume growth.

[flix]

Here's a nice platform for debating different proposals:

Bitcoin Consensus Census
https://bitcoin.consider.it/

Nice is the best word that you can use in this case. It seems to be lacking in the amount of members and seems to be somewhat manipulative (support of BU by unverified individuals). Always look for opinions of miners and developers here (and verified people). However it does not currently tell us much aside from confirming what I knew so far (e.g. opinions of Luke Dashjr). Regardless, it is a good website.

I agree. It is a good website. It definitely needs much more participation, especially from miners and devs, to be really meaningful.

[Adrian-x]

More ad hominem from the usual suspects.

 

is that you talking brg444

[Adrian-x]

I think that the blocksize limit of Bitcoin should stay the same. 1MB is good enough and it was put in to prevent spam and system failures. How can you be sure that if you raise the limit that these 2 things won't come back to bite you in the arse?

tl;dr NO!

We know blocks are mostly full. (there are some empty blocks that get mined immediately after a full block that bring down the average these blocks are empty because there is not enough time to include transactions.)

an average webpage is 2MB, In a distributed network like Bitcoin hosting a node that can accommodating 1 webpage every 20minits is not a viable justification to protect against spam. (in the almost 6 years since the limit was introduced technology has improved immensely so even if it was we should adjust it for technological gains)

Limiting the block size when it's full will limit the utility. The people who can interact directly with the blockchain will be limited to a number of users similar to today.

Future growth will happen on layer 2 services in exchanges and third party services who will charge fees. these service fees will bypass miners and as the Bitcoin security subsidy halves every 4 years we know miners will get less and less revenue.

While I am pro layer 2 services using bitcoin I am not pro limiting block size to make them viable. Limiting block size to artificiality create a demand for them is not what a responsible leader would do. Especially if the leader is actually developing layer 2 services.   

We can be sure that 2 MB is a small insignificant increase that will limit bitcoin growth if the price doubled. We also have no conclusive evidence that the 1MB limit prevented spamming the network, now that the infrastructure around bitcoin has grown, bitcoin is not as susceptible to that type of attack. In fact that vector of attack vanished when miners started favoring transactions with fees. Today we have tools to refine what transactions are relayed and what transactions should be accepted, and miners can manage this with just a small fee to mitigate spam. 



In 2010 Bitcoin had an inflation rate of 250% investors in bitcoin know that the inflation rate (the 50BTC) given to miners was a security subsidy in exchange miners processed transactions for free.  back then the threat was someone would try and send infinite transactions for free and destroy the network. It never happened and the threat is now gone. 

Today the inflation rate is just under 10% miners are still subsidize to process transactions (some miners cheat the system and mine empty blocks) but in general most transactions now pay a small fee to be included in a block despite all users subsidizing miners.  It would be impossible to spam the network today because of the small fee. so we don't need to protect against it. 

[hdbuck]

*snip

an average webpage is 2MB,

*snap

ah there we go again:





lel

[DooMAD]

Future growth will happen on layer 2 services in exchanges and third party services who will charge fees. these service fees will bypass miners and as the Bitcoin security subsidy halves every 4 years we know miners will get less and less revenue.

Absolutely.  I've argued before that the smallblock militants suck at math and logic and I'm still yet to hear a counter argument from them that makes a shred of sense.  Either we get more users paying fees to the miners, or the fees have to rise.  Diverting fees to third parties makes it even worse. 

Unless you foresee Bitcoin becoming a niche, elitist, isolated haven for wealthy one-percenters, there is simply no other option than to accommodate more users.  More users equals more fees for miners, not less.

[Adrian-x]

Absolutely.  I've argued before that the smallblock militants suck at math and logic and I'm still yet to hear a counter argument from them that makes a shred of sense.  Either we get more users paying fees to the miners, or the fees have to rise.  Diverting fees to third parties makes it even worse. 

The Core argument is no, we need to limit Block Space to increase fees to subsidize miners. This logic assumes Bitcoin will grow despite being a very expensive network while other cheeper solutions exist.

The solution is economies of scale, we need more users paying moderate fees, The security subsidy (25BTC) that we all pay via inflation is subsidizing fees while we grow the network. restricting block space is jeopardizing this growth and undermining the defalt incentive design in Bitcoin. 

here is another very underhanded play by Core developers manipulating the situation:
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/428aae/influential_bitcoin_core_developer_proposes/

[Adrian-x]

*snip

an average webpage is 2MB,

*snap

ah there we go again:

I'm not sure I understand? are you saying we want people to stop using the blockchain?

What do you think people are going to do when Block space is full, they are going to use off blockchan solutions. (I.E. not Bitcoin) I would like to avoid a Mt'Gox situation and let people interact directly with Bitcoin, not make it just an exclusive club for centralized corporations and banks.   

[DooMAD]

*snip

an average webpage is 2MB,

*snap

ah there we go again:

I'm not sure I understand? are you saying we want people to stop using the blockchain?

What do you think people are going to do when Block space is full, they are going to use off blockchan solutions. (I.E. not Bitcoin) I would like to avoid a Mt'Gox situation and let people interact directly with Bitcoin, not make it just an exclusive club for centralized corporations and banks.   

Yep, that's exactly what hdsuck thinks and, ultimately, wants.  An exclusive, privileged chain for early adopters and millionaires and everyone else can GTFO.  This would be an appalling outcome for Bitcoin and we can't allow it to happen.