Surprised that people are still on the xt bandwagon, neanderthals or homo habilus?
Prepare for incoming logic fallacies.
I can't comprehend how someone could still support XT; how, after so much research, they could claim that this is a good solution? Trying to destroy Bitcoin maybe?
I find it difficult to comprehend why someone would still support Core. For the same reasons that Jeff Garzik has now clearly stated:
An Economic Change Event is a period of market chaos, where large changes to prices and sets of economic actors occurs over a short time period. A Fee Event is a notable Economic Change Event, where a realistic projection forsees higher fee/KB on average, pricing some economic actors (bitcoin projects and businesses) out of the system.
The game theory bidding behavior is different for a mostly-empty resource versus a usually-full resource. Prices are different. Profitable business models are different. Users (the set of economic actors on the network) are different.
Failure to increase block size is not obviously-conservative, it is a conscious choice, electing for one economic state and set of actors and prices over another. Choosing Future Fee Market over Today's Fee Market. It is rational to reason that maintaining TFM is more conservative than enduring an Economic Change Event from TFM to FFM. It is rational to reason that maintaining similar prices and economic actors is less disruptive. Failure to increase block size will lead to a Fee Event sooner rather than later. Failure to plan ahead for a Fee Event will lead to greater market chaos and User pain.
Some Developers wish to accelerate the Fee Event, and a veto can accomplish that. In the current developer dynamics, 1-2 key developers can and very likely would veto any block size increase.
This is an extreme moral hazard: A few Bitcoin Core committers can veto increase and thereby reshape bitcoin economics, price some businesses out of the system. It is less of a moral hazard to keep the current economics [by raising block size] and not exercise such power.
The current trajectory of no-block-size-increase can lead to short time market chaos, actor chaos, businesses no longer viable. In a $6.6B economy, it is criminal to let the Service undergo an Economic Change event without warning users loudly, months in advance: "Dear users, ECE has accelerated potential due to developers preferring a transition from TFM to FFM."
Further, wallet software User experience is very, very poor in a hyper-competitive fee market.
Almost all bitcoin businesses, exchanges and miners have stated they want a block size increase. See the many media articles, BIP 101 letter, and wiki.
It is a valid and rational economic choice to subsidize the system with lower fees in the beginning. Many miners, for example, openly state they prefer long term system growth over maximizing tiny amounts of current day income. Vetoing a block size increase has the effect of eliminating that economic choice as an option.
Without exaggeration, I have never seen this much disconnect between user wishes and dev outcomes in 20+ years of open source.
Higher Service prices can negatively impact system security. Bitcoin depends on a virtuous cycle of users boosting and maintaining bitcoin's network effect, incentivizing miners, increasing security. Higher prices that reduce bitcoin's user count and network effect can have the opposite impact.
We only know for certain that blocks-mostly-not-full works. We do not know that changing to blocks-mostly-full works. Changing to a new economic system includes boatloads of risk.
The worst possible outcome is letting the ecosystem randomly drift into the first Fee Event without openly stating the new economic policy choices and consequences. The simple fact is *inaction* on this supply-limited resource, block size, will change bitcoin to a new economic shape and with different economic actors, selecting some and not others. It is better to kick the can and gather crucial field data, because next-step (FFM) is very much not fleshed out.
