Why Gavin is so desperate about his fork? Is he hiding something?

[hdbuck]

As far as I see it Gavin is desperatly trying to save Bitcoin.

but there is no need to save anything at the moment. so far, bitcoin dealt with problems in a good manner.

Right? Its like these "big blockers nao" are under some Reddit spell, talking about problems that are not problems and promoting some solution that is not a solution anyway..

I'm always impressed how non big blockers can say with a straight face that there is no problem leaving everything at 1 Megabyt blocks.

Let's say blocks are half full now. What happens when legit transactions are constantly, on average, 150% of 1MB? It would mean that 33% of all valid transactions will never confirm. Can you imagine a currency where 33% of all transactions never confirm and that currency had somehow a chance to survive?

And fee market... you realize that if constantly many legit transactions are waived, then the fees will rise constantly too. There would simply be no end because even if everyone raises their fee, still 33% can't get confirmed. What would happen? 33% of all users who use bitcoin would drop bitcoin. Surely that would be a great day for adoption.

non big blockers? im just a regular bitcoiner man

anwyay, to answer you, imho i'd tend to say lets revisit blocksize once block reward < fees.

i do want to see a fee market emerge before cutting into it.

its been fun unitl now, low cost transactions and all, but serisouly im in bitcoin for a bit more than a visa competitor.

monetary sovreignty y know...

Are you going to unleash in your typical mature and reasoned protesting when the 1MB limit is lifted before block reward < fees? Or... is your impotent rage only for Gavin?

https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/641707352123645956

It's a question of trajectory and method now. Thankfully, the idea of "1MB forever" popescu pogs is doomed.

again, im not advocating 1MB foreva.

nor am i buying any time, for there is non to be bought in the first place.

i am all up for reassessing the blocksize once block reward < fees

because i do know now is certainly not the time, nor the proper solution to scaling bitcoin far beyond visa paypal et al.

[1715102514]

1715102514

[ArticMine]

...
That's not even possible at 8 gigabyte blocks, some off-chain solution is needed no matter what. So it's the best place to start. Blocksize is basically the last scaling factor that needs adjusting, not the first.

True moving from 1 MB (the present situation) to 8 GB (Bitcoin XT / BIP 101) is like moving from punched cards 80 bytes each to computers with 640 KB of RAM and two floppy drives. (The infamous Bill Gates limit).  Now who says we have to stay at 640 KB of RAM for ever. Baking these kinds of limits into the Bitcoin protocol is fundamentally wrong. The proper solution here is to have market driven adaptive blocksize limits.  

Edit: Now that we have moved from the 1950s to the 1980s we still have a way to go.

[brg444]

...
That's not even possible at 8 gigabyte blocks, some off-chain solution is needed no matter what. So it's the best place to start. Blocksize is basically the last scaling factor that needs adjusting, not the first.

True moving from 1 MB (the present situation) to 8 GB (Bitcoin XT / BIP 101) is like moving from punched cards 80 bytes each to computers with 640 KB of RAM and two floppy drives. (The infamous Bill Gates limit).  Now who says we have to stay at 640 KB of RAM for ever. Baking these kinds of limits into the Bitcoin protocol is fundamentally wrong. The proper solution here is to have market driven adaptive blocksize limits.  

Market incentives are not aligned for every participants in the context of an unbounded limit.

To follow your analogy consider that miners are dealing with 640KB RAM boxes while typical nodes still uses 80 bytes punched cards.

[ArticMine]

...

To follow your analogy consider that miners are dealing with 640KB RAM boxes while typical nodes still uses 80 bytes punched cards.

That was the situation in 1950 when the Diner's Club Credit card first came out. For that reason it could only be used a very small very wealthy portion of the population. The critical mistake that Diner's club made is that for the most part they stayed with their 1950s business model so by 2013 they accounted for a mere 0.2% of the credit card market share. http://www.nilsonreport.com/publication_special_feature_article.php. The bank networks VISA and Mastercard started in the late 1960s and early 1970s and saw the mass market potential of credit cards with the advent of the mainframe computer. In the 1990s we saw even wider use of digital payments with debit cards then networks such as PayPal etc. These were each only made possible by further advances in technology. Yet is all of these cases the concept comes back to the original Diner's Club credit card of 1950.

The problem with the small block fans is that they want to bake 5 year old technology into the Bitcoin protocol forever effectively turning Bitcoin into the Diner's Club of crypto-currency. There are alt-coins already that have adaptive blocksize limits for those that care to look in the alt-coin section. These coins have this problem solved. The issue in my mind is not whether individuals will be using crypto currency to pay for coffee and store the corresponding blockchain in its entirety on their devices or computers. They will. Technology will see to that. The real issue here is will be they use Bitcoin or some other crypto currency to do so.

In short who will be the Diner's Club of crypto-currency and who will be the VISA of crypto-currency.

Edit: When one is old enough to have transferred data from punched cards to 5.25 in floppies, I have. One understands that technology simply does not stand still.

[hdbuck]

we also know moore's law is decelerating.

but for the sake of a sound argument lets cut the crap with the analogies already please.

[ArticMine]

we also know moore's law is decelerating.

but for the sake of a sound argument lets cut the crap with the analogies already please.

“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797)

Here are some more quotes. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/doomed-to-repeat-it

[mayax]

...

To follow your analogy consider that miners are dealing with 640KB RAM boxes while typical nodes still uses 80 bytes punched cards.

That was the situation in 1950 when the Diner's Club Credit card first came out. For that reason it could only be used a very small very wealthy portion of the population. The critical mistake that Diner's club made is that for the most part they stayed with their 1950s business model so by 2013 they accounted for a mere 0.2% of the credit card market share. http://www.nilsonreport.com/publication_special_feature_article.php. The bank networks VISA and Mastercard started in the late 1960s and early 1970s and saw the mass market potential of credit cards with the advent of the mainframe computer. In the 1990s we saw even wider use of digital payments with debit cards then networks such as PayPal etc. These were each only made possible by further advances in technology. Yet is all of these cases the concept comes back to the original Diner's Club credit card of 1950.

The problem with the small block fans is that they want to bake 5 year old technology into the Bitcoin protocol forever effectively turning Bitcoin into the Diner's Club of crypto-currency. There are alt-coins already that have adaptive blocksize limits for those that care to look in the alt-coin section. These coins have this problem solved. The issue in my mind is not whether individuals will be using crypto currency to pay for coffee and store the corresponding blockchain in its entirety on their devices or computers. They will. Technology will see to that. The real issue here is will be they use Bitcoin or some other crypto currency to do so.

In short who will be the Diner's Club of crypto-currency and who will be the VISA of crypto-currency.

Edit: When one is old enough to have transferred data from punched cards to 5.25 in floppies, I have. One understands that technology simply does not stand still.

Diner's Club was/is a PRIVATE company. Is Bitcoin a private company? Well, it will be if it will fork to XT.
Then, the shareholders who backup the big exchangers will own the entire Bitcoin XT system.

[HostFat]

Blockstream is a private company lol (and Bitcoin Core is now their project), BIP101 isn't (and XT is just an implementation, you can even use Bitcoin Core + BIP101 if you prefer)

[croTek4]

...

To follow your analogy consider that miners are dealing with 640KB RAM boxes while typical nodes still uses 80 bytes punched cards.

That was the situation in 1950 when the Diner's Club Credit card first came out. For that reason it could only be used a very small very wealthy portion of the population. The critical mistake that Diner's club made is that for the most part they stayed with their 1950s business model so by 2013 they accounted for a mere 0.2% of the credit card market share. http://www.nilsonreport.com/publication_special_feature_article.php. The bank networks VISA and Mastercard started in the late 1960s and early 1970s and saw the mass market potential of credit cards with the advent of the mainframe computer. In the 1990s we saw even wider use of digital payments with debit cards then networks such as PayPal etc. These were each only made possible by further advances in technology. Yet is all of these cases the concept comes back to the original Diner's Club credit card of 1950.

The problem with the small block fans is that they want to bake 5 year old technology into the Bitcoin protocol forever effectively turning Bitcoin into the Diner's Club of crypto-currency. There are alt-coins already that have adaptive blocksize limits for those that care to look in the alt-coin section. These coins have this problem solved. The issue in my mind is not whether individuals will be using crypto currency to pay for coffee and store the corresponding blockchain in its entirety on their devices or computers. They will. Technology will see to that. The real issue here is will be they use Bitcoin or some other crypto currency to do so.

In short who will be the Diner's Club of crypto-currency and who will be the VISA of crypto-currency.

Edit: When one is old enough to have transferred data from punched cards to 5.25 in floppies, I have. One understands that technology simply does not stand still.

Diner's Club was/is a PRIVATE company. Is Bitcoin a private company? Well, it will be if it will fork to XT.
Then, the shareholders who backup the big exchangers will own the entire Bitcoin XT system.

A fork to XT? The chain wont fork because of XT, the chain will have to fork for a change in block size limit.

[tvbcof]

Blockstream is a private company lol (and Bitcoin Core is now their project), BIP101 isn't (and XT is just an implementation, you can even use Bitcoin Core + BIP101 if you prefer)

Any effort which includes Maxwell, sipa, and Back working together is totally cool with me.  I don't care if it is a private company, corporation, NGO, politburo. or garage workshop rap session.  These people have proven themselves (to me) over the last number of years that I've been paying attention.

Hearn, and to a lesser degree, Andresen and their shitty Bitcoin Foundation have also proven themselves (to me) over this time period.  In that case they have proven themselves to be completely untrustworthy and antithetic to everything I hope for in distributed crypto-currencies.

A few wild-cards have proven themselves to be a surprise.  On the negative side, Ver, and on the positive side (given his involvement with TBF), Matonis.

[hdbuck]

we also know moore's law is decelerating.

but for the sake of a sound argument lets cut the crap with the analogies already please.

“Those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it.”
― Edmund Burke (1729 - 1797)

Here are some more quotes. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/doomed-to-repeat-it

so you are basically arguing about bitcoin's development with false analogies and google quotes.. nnniiiiiice.

edit: oh and 4G USB flashdrives and credit cards from the 50s or something, which is wayy i mean way too technical for me. ^^

[Zarathustra]

Blockstream is a private company lol (and Bitcoin Core is now their project), BIP101 isn't (and XT is just an implementation, you can even use Bitcoin Core + BIP101 if you prefer)

Any effort which includes Maxwell, sipa, and Back working together is totally cool with me.

Not for me. They don't fight against censorship but against downvoting of their posts. Very bad.

[SebastianJu]

As far as I see it Gavin is desperatly trying to save Bitcoin.

but there is no need to save anything at the moment. so far, bitcoin dealt with problems in a good manner.

Right? Its like these "big blockers nao" are under some Reddit spell, talking about problems that are not problems and promoting some solution that is not a solution anyway..

I'm always impressed how non big blockers can say with a straight face that there is no problem leaving everything at 1 Megabyt blocks.

Let's say blocks are half full now. What happens when legit transactions are constantly, on average, 150% of 1MB? It would mean that 33% of all valid transactions will never confirm. Can you imagine a currency where 33% of all transactions never confirm and that currency had somehow a chance to survive?

And fee market... you realize that if constantly many legit transactions are waived, then the fees will rise constantly too. There would simply be no end because even if everyone raises their fee, still 33% can't get confirmed. What would happen? 33% of all users who use bitcoin would drop bitcoin. Surely that would be a great day for adoption.

Except Bitcoin is not contained in a bubble and there are other alternatives by which one can hold & secure their wealth in Bitcoin yet use these superficial open source payment layers to transact with.

Kinda like you don't use your savings account to buy nuggets at McDonald, ya know?

Yes there are other altcoins. But should it really be the plan to practically give up on bitcoin and tell interested users to use an altcoin? That is so very much against the vision every early adopter had of bitcoin. If we give up here then it is claiming being defeated. It says we were wrong, bitcoin can not compete with fiat money. It's use is limited.

Besides, using altcoins surely is no solution to the bandwith problem and all. It would mean you would have to run another node that downloads blocks and so on. It would be pushed from one blockchain to another if the tech is similar.

No, you don't use your savings account for buy nuggets, you would withdraw a little bit from your savings account and go shopping with that. The same with bitcoin. You take some coins out of cold storage and put it in your smartphone wallet. Then shopping. It is still the same currency.

It would be a clusterfuck if we would have to tell interested users that they need different altcoins now because we built bitcoin into a artificial cage. Out of fear. I mean i can understand why fear is spreading in the community. It is, unfortunately, a hunting place for scammers, inept businessmans and whatsoever. Everyone lost huge piles of cash, probably many lost all and becoming cautious is natural. But being fearful and being too restrictive and conservative was never a good receipt for growth.

[SebastianJu]

As far as I see it Gavin is desperatly trying to save Bitcoin.

but there is no need to save anything at the moment. so far, bitcoin dealt with problems in a good manner.

Right? Its like these "big blockers nao" are under some Reddit spell, talking about problems that are not problems and promoting some solution that is not a solution anyway..

I'm always impressed how non big blockers can say with a straight face that there is no problem leaving everything at 1 Megabyt blocks.

Let's say blocks are half full now. What happens when legit transactions are constantly, on average, 150% of 1MB? It would mean that 33% of all valid transactions will never confirm. Can you imagine a currency where 33% of all transactions never confirm and that currency had somehow a chance to survive?

And fee market... you realize that if constantly many legit transactions are waived, then the fees will rise constantly too. There would simply be no end because even if everyone raises their fee, still 33% can't get confirmed. What would happen? 33% of all users who use bitcoin would drop bitcoin. Surely that would be a great day for adoption.

People will learn to pay a fee for a quick Bitcoin transaction.

Yes, but for one we should not enforce high fees. Why do we need to have a network that is 100 times safer than needed? Leading to one standard bitcoin transaction using the electricity of 1.57 average us households per day? One transaction! Bigger ones use even more.

That simply means we have too many miners and that means the reward is too high. Speaking about a needed fee market because we will lose miners is really not the problem at hand. Miners had to switch off unprofitable mining hardware all the time, there is no sense to try to compensate block halving with higher fees. That is impossible and if really done would be deadly to bitcoin.

Second thing is, yes, with 1MB blocks people would learn to pay higher fees. But it would be useless! You can't win that game. I mean imagine constantly 300% legit transactions than we have now. It would mean constantly 33% of all legit transactions could not get confirmed. Which means bitcoin would be HIGHLY unreliable. And even if you want to beat the system with higher fees... you can assume that all other users will try the same. The fees used might rise exponentially, leading to a very expensive currency. No jokes anymore about the paypal fees, they would be heaven then. No jokes about transaction time, your transaction time would be higher pretty sure. Since even when you think you paid more than enough, others had the same thought and raised their fees. So you have a good chance to have your coins caught in limbo, not confirming.

No, the bitcoin we would have then would be a nightmare.

[SebastianJu]

Right? Its like these "big blockers nao" are under some Reddit spell, talking about problems that are not problems and promoting some solution that is not a solution anyway..

I'm always impressed how non big blockers can say with a straight face that there is no problem leaving everything at 1 Megabyt blocks.

Let's say blocks are half full now. What happens when legit transactions are constantly, on average, 150% of 1MB? It would mean that 33% of all valid transactions will never confirm. Can you imagine a currency where 33% of all transactions never confirm and that currency had somehow a chance to survive?

And fee market... you realize that if constantly many legit transactions are waived, then the fees will rise constantly too. There would simply be no end because even if everyone raises their fee, still 33% can't get confirmed. What would happen? 33% of all users who use bitcoin would drop bitcoin. Surely that would be a great day for adoption.

Except Bitcoin is not contained in a bubble and there are other alternatives by which one can hold & secure their wealth in Bitcoin yet use these superficial open source payment layers to transact with.

Kinda like you don't use your savings account to buy nuggets at McDonald, ya know?

I don't see a real big deal in a transaction not confirming in my normal use-case over the last 4 years.  On-chain transactions for me are nearly always about risk management.  My risk management strategies are years-long and course operations.  Even in my to-date use of Bitcoin, I've not expected a transaction to occur with high reliability because it remains in an experimental state.  What I do expect, however, is that my transaction would time-out eventually rather than be lost which is a vastly different thing.  So far I have been pleasantly surprised that my native Bitcoin transactions have gone through within a few block cycles.  That is perfectly adequate for me.

My expectations for a sidecoin will be entirely different.  There I would expect reliable and fast transactions (if that were the design goal of a particular sidechain.)  I would also expect that in an unusual system failure or successful attack, my value would not be lost.  I am willing to take a hit on convenience (say, to have my value tied up for a few weeks) in this case because I expect such events to be rare.

Then this sounds like you have a very different use pattern for bitcoin than most. Practically every transaction is time sensitive. Be it that the bitcoin price stopped rising and you want to sell it fast to not lose value, be it that you need to pay a product before the price drops and you need to send more coins. Most people don't want to wait. And why should they? One of bitcoins rare plus points that is used for advertising the use of bitcoin is it's fast transaction. I mean bitcoin surely has not so many good points that would be enough to make users switch to using it. Taking one point away can make bitcoin already way less attractive.

[hdbuck]

As far as I see it Gavin is desperatly trying to save Bitcoin.

but there is no need to save anything at the moment. so far, bitcoin dealt with problems in a good manner.

Right? Its like these "big blockers nao" are under some Reddit spell, talking about problems that are not problems and promoting some solution that is not a solution anyway..

I'm always impressed how non big blockers can say with a straight face that there is no problem leaving everything at 1 Megabyt blocks.

Let's say blocks are half full now. What happens when legit transactions are constantly, on average, 150% of 1MB? It would mean that 33% of all valid transactions will never confirm. Can you imagine a currency where 33% of all transactions never confirm and that currency had somehow a chance to survive?

And fee market... you realize that if constantly many legit transactions are waived, then the fees will rise constantly too. There would simply be no end because even if everyone raises their fee, still 33% can't get confirmed. What would happen? 33% of all users who use bitcoin would drop bitcoin. Surely that would be a great day for adoption.

People will learn to pay a fee for a quick Bitcoin transaction.

Yes, but for one we should not enforce high fees. Why do we need to have a network that is 100 times safer than needed? Leading to one standard bitcoin transaction using the electricity of 1.57 average us households per day? One transaction! Bigger ones use even more.

That simply means we have too many miners and that means the reward is too high. Speaking about a needed fee market because we will lose miners is really not the problem at hand. Miners had to switch off unprofitable mining hardware all the time, there is no sense to try to compensate block halving with higher fees. That is impossible and if really done would be deadly to bitcoin.

Second thing is, yes, with 1MB blocks people would learn to pay higher fees. But it would be useless! You can't win that game. I mean imagine constantly 300% legit transactions than we have now. It would mean constantly 33% of all legit transactions could not get confirmed. Which means bitcoin would be HIGHLY unreliable. And even if you want to beat the system with higher fees... you can assume that all other users will try the same. The fees used might rise exponentially, leading to a very expensive currency. No jokes anymore about the paypal fees, they would be heaven then. No jokes about transaction time, your transaction time would be higher pretty sure. Since even when you think you paid more than enough, others had the same thought and raised their fees. So you have a good chance to have your coins caught in limbo, not confirming.

No, the bitcoin we would have then would be a nightmare.

1/ there is never enough safety, lets be serious.
2/ we are not enforcing anything but the protocol (read rules) we all signed up for, inculding tx/s, 21M cap, POWalgo etc...
3/ people are not forced to use bitcoin.

[SebastianJu]

...

I'm always impressed how non big blockers can say with a straight face that there is no problem leaving everything at 1 Megabyt blocks.

Let's say blocks are half full now. What happens when legit transactions are constantly, on average, 150% of 1MB? It would mean that 33% of all valid transactions will never confirm. Can you imagine a currency where 33% of all transactions never confirm and that currency had somehow a chance to survive?

And fee market... you realize that if constantly many legit transactions are waived, then the fees will rise constantly too. There would simply be no end because even if everyone raises their fee, still 33% can't get confirmed. What would happen? 33% of all users who use bitcoin would drop bitcoin. Surely that would be a great day for adoption.

This is just basic economics. The fees will first rise sharply, then 33% of users will drop Bitcoin, some will move to (an)other crypto-currency(ies) with adaptive blocksize limits, some will move to the legacy banking system etc. Yes this could very well be the end of Bitcoin but not for distributed blockchain based crypto-currencies. Now we see why Gavin is so desperate about his fork. He cares about Bitcoin.

If this really would be the optimal vision for the developers then this would be not my community or bitcoin anymore. I would gladly use an alternate bitcoin fork where hearn is not taking part or has a big saying then. I'm VERY sure that many many bitcoiners would chose the same since nobody would watch how bitcoin goes down that way.

Yes, i think Gavin cares about bitcoin but merging with hearn was so incredibly stupid that i wonder if i would trust him again. In fact i'm really wondering why there is not a single independent developer who already released a bitcoin version with 8 mb blocks and who is independent. A pure bitcoin fan, nothing more, no sh... politician.

[SebastianJu]

...

I'm always impressed how non big blockers can say with a straight face that there is no problem leaving everything at 1 Megabyt blocks.

Let's say blocks are half full now. What happens when legit transactions are constantly, on average, 150% of 1MB? It would mean that 33% of all valid transactions will never confirm. Can you imagine a currency where 33% of all transactions never confirm and that currency had somehow a chance to survive?

And fee market... you realize that if constantly many legit transactions are waived, then the fees will rise constantly too. There would simply be no end because even if everyone raises their fee, still 33% can't get confirmed. What would happen? 33% of all users who use bitcoin would drop bitcoin. Surely that would be a great day for adoption.

This is just basic economics. The fees will first rise sharply, then 33% of users will drop Bitcoin, some will move to (an)other crypto-currency(ies) with adaptive blocksize limits, some will move to the legacy banking system etc. Yes this could very well be the end of Bitcoin but not for distributed blockchain based crypto-currencies. Now we see why Gavin is so desperate about his fork. He cares about Bitcoin.

Let the freeloaders drop Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin manages to attract the wealthiest of pockets and those that care about true censorship resistance & decentralization then we can consider it a success and a foundation on top of which the next financial system can be built.

Wow, what a mindset. Who wants to use bitcoin and has not much money is a freeloader. Elitist view on things. And the complete opposite of the initial vision of bitcoin. It sounds a bit like bitcoin attracted another kind of users who try to claim it for themselfes only. Enemy takeover? Reminds me on the german pirate party. They were undermined at one point in time by a group called antigermans. They have their own agenda and wanted to misuse the party for their targets. We consequently pushed them out when we became aware of the problem and learned to draw the line clearly.

And you vision of the wealthiest... i think you don't realize which persons you really want to attract. Those that don't like censorship? You would drop most legit users and attract users that use bitcoin for illegal uses. Then you don't need to wait very long until critics get very loud and bitcoin will get in real trouble. And it wouldn't help then that bitcoin can't be stopped. Governments can hurt bitcoin a lot if they want. Attacking nodes, forbidding acceptance and so on. It would be a crimecoin only anymore since the biggest part of legit users was pushed out. And if governments act then the price would not hold. All the wealthy bitcoiners would be done. And to be honest, if i would be such a wealthy bitcoiner then i would not use this fork. Or maybe i would, but only for speculation and trading. I would surely not consider it a safe haven since price stability would be even worse with only high amount users. And the risk of attracting more and more criminal users.

That new financial system would be a little system, not really usefull and surely not surviveable.

[SebastianJu]

Pretty suspicious hey?! There are many people accusing him of going rogue. There are gossips running around saying he wants to bug Bitcoin with this new fork...
Is he working with the CIA or not?

I doubt it. Gossip is gossip. But the actions and ideas hearn bring to light are very suspicious to me. I think it is thinkable that he was an agent of some kind when he worked at google already. I mean why the heck should he try to implement all this restrictive and controlling sh... into bitcoin? That makes not much sense. Either he is stupid and really don't know what will follow by his actions or... i don't know.

I think gavin is simply stupid to merge with hearn. But we will never know the truth most probably.

[SebastianJu]

...

Let the freeloaders drop Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin manages to attract the wealthiest of pockets and those that care about true censorship resistance & decentralization then we can consider it a success and a foundation on top of which the next financial system can be built.

So we keep Bitcoin just for the 0.001% just like credit cards in the 1950s, since we must not upgrade our technology from punched cards and telegraph lines.

Given the engineering decisions behind Bitcoin you really have but two choices: accept that some transactions & use cases will be discriminated against or join the gang of XT shills and attempt to turn Bitcoin into VISA.

What? XT is dead. And that is a good thing. But there is a third way... a developer with visions creating a fork. If he is not a problem person then i would support him.

And bitcoin into visa only because we want that bitcoin is for everyone? I would prefer the factual level of discussion instead such ungainly claims.