Analysis and list of top big blocks shills (XT #REKT ignorers)

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Hegelian dialectic culminate in Truth (a perfect thesis without a begging antithesis), but only if one of you is good with a knife.

Profound homespun wisdom. You must be from Cincinnati as well. 

[Lauda]

If you say moderators are independent, I believe you. But it's hard to believe that every moderator in this forum came freely to the conclusion that there should be no alternative client who violates consensus and that the blocks should not be raised now. It sounds more like the unity of a party than of free men. Or did I miss something?

Every moderator? No. While quite a lot have not expressed their views strongly like I have, there are others that have. E.g. Hostfat, he is in a strong disagreement with theymos on the matter (I think he even supports XT, I'm not sure).

Tell me more about the 8MB blocks. What could they do? I follow this debate for long, more on reddit then here, but - I never heard really confessing reasons for not raising the limit. Bandwith? Space? CPU? Node-Centralization? Mega-Transactions? None of this problem seemed like a problem large enough to stall development of bitcoin and / or scaling it completely in a way that's not the original bitcoin (lightning).

This is what I was referencing (such blocks might occur):

The other thing I deeple disargue with you is, as other people said: You and your team seem not to be willing to allow a free market of alternative clients and you hinder the community to collect informations to express their opinion with the choice of the client. This is a major democratic element in open source and in bitcoin, it's the major mechanism to protect bitcoin for an destructive takeover by developers (I explicitly don't mint this on Core!). If you deny and surpress this possibility, - what you say you do - you are no longer in a consensus of democracy. And bitcoin needs its own kind of democracy to survice.

When I see a good alternative that isn't biased by various suspicious people, then I might consider it. I would be okay with a decent alternative implementation, but you do have to admit that more implementations make the ecosystem more complex. This isn't good if one wants to keep Bitcoin simpler while introducing it to more people (e.g.Telling someone that they have to choose between X, Y, Z implementations).

[fisheater22]

Hegelian dialectic culminate in Truth (a perfect thesis without a begging antithesis), but only if one of you is good with a knife.

Profound homespun wisdom. You must be from Cincinnati as well. 

Yes, I believe the correct word is not culminate but rather aufheben, or sublate to those of us who don't speak Nazi.

[siameze]

Thanks for this list, dunno how I didn't find it sooner. Most of the obvious shills you listed are consistent with what I have seen in other threads.
...
I too agree with this. It has already been established that larger blocks at this time are reckless.

Spreading lies doesn't help the discussion. For most members of the community it is NOT established.

If people like you would explain honestly and patiently why big blocks are bad, and if you would discuss this reason, instead of insulting people, claiming a non-existent consens, bullying alternatives and praising authority, you MAYBE would persuade some people to believe how "reckless" larger blocks are. But with just throwing a false statement into discussion you just ridicule your side.

Currentyl there are several well known developers (e. G. Gavin, Mike Hearn, Andreas Schildbach, Jeff Garzik) that believe that large blocks are possible. With them there are some akteurs of the economy (blockchain, bitpay, coinbase, btcchina, bitstamp, xapo) as well as the majority of the miners and a good bunch of members of bitcointalk that I remember as being most sophisticated early in 2013.

So no, it is not established that larger blocks do harm at this time. Please - stop spreading lies.

Do some research noob, or go back to the echo chamber (reddit) before calling people liars. I certainly have done my homework on the subject. How do we know for sure it isn't a reckless path? Your appeals to authority don't do your argument any justice.

[iCEBREAKER]

  I thought bitcoin is about a free currency for free people   

   I really wonder why the moderators tolerate that this gang of hooligans continuosly violates all rules of online-discussion   

   I don't know any forum where something like this would be tolerated more than two days   

Now you're saying the mods are too tolerant?  After months of whining about HitlerThermos's Sensor Ships?  Make up your mind FFS.

Yes, the small block militia stopped Gavin and Mike's attempted governance coup.  I understand you are very butthurt about that.   

You failed to understand Bitcoin's necessarily inherently reactionary nature, as well as the mechanisms by which it confers all possible advantages to defenders of its status quo.  So now you wallow in self-pity, and blame the venue (boo-hoo mods boo-hoo I thought this was America boo-hoo) rather than look inward for explanations why the Gavinista putsch failed.

You were warned in advance this outcome was inevitable.  And yet you still insist Bitcoin is a democracy and its engineering should be decided via Reddit populism.

I conclude you are hopeless.  Your manufactured dissent has no power here.  We don't need or even want your support.   Please find a new hobby, or accept your role as a jester in the Court of La Serenissima.   

[shinohai]

  I thought bitcoin is about a free currency for free people   

   I really wonder why the moderators tolerate that this gang of hooligans continuosly violates all rules of online-discussion   

   I don't know any forum where something like this would be tolerated more than two days   

Now you're saying the mods are too tolerant?  After months of whining about HitlerThermos's Sensor Ships?  Make up your mind FFS.

Yes, the small block militia stopped Gavin and Mike's attempted governance coup.  I understand you are very butthurt about that.   

You failed to understand Bitcoin's necessarily inherently reactionary nature, as well as the mechanisms by which it confers all possible advantages to defenders of its status quo.  So now you wallow in self-pity, and blame the venue (boo-hoo mods boo-hoo I thought this was America boo-hoo) rather than look inward for explanations why the Gavinista putsch failed.

You were warned in advance this outcome was inevitable.  And yet you still insist Bitcoin is a democracy and its engineering should be decided via Reddit populism.

I conclude you are hopeless.  Your manufactured dissent has no power here.  We don't need or even want your support.   Please find a new hobby, or accept your role as a jester in the Court of La Serenissima.   

Long live La Serenissima.

@siameze join us sometimes on #bitcoin-assets

[maokoto]

It seems to me that most people want bigger blocks, but they do not agree in size. As for me, I do not understand much about the tech stuff and I am happy with just Bitcoin going on and keep working lol.

Not bad to do a list however.

[Quantus]

Long due, thanks. Add Litecoinguy to the list, not essentially a big block shill but a shill of forum.bitcoin.com who hugely promotes XT

sure, iam a big block shill!

Tits or GTFO

[siameze]

Long due, thanks. Add Litecoinguy to the list, not essentially a big block shill but a shill of forum.bitcoin.com who hugely promotes XT

sure, iam a big block shill!

Tits or GTFO

Fitting a message about big blocks is placed near the part of the anatomy that produces shit.

[ATguy]

Nope, no consensus at all, just majority of Bitcoin core developers which represents only small part in Bitcoin ecosystem. At least Bitcoin core developers are honest and telling clearly they cannot dictate the future of Bitcoin thus encouraging others for developing other full node clients working with (and defining) Bitcoin protocol, so no sabotaging at all, just finding full node client which gets widest popularity among Bitcoiners. There is not realistic other option than Bitcoin core today, but given the unpopular features like RBF, SegWit as scaling option, and full blocks in 2016/2017, Im pretty sure the competetion finally starts soon and we will be not in situation where one group of developers controls the future of the whole Bitcoin ecosystem anymore, especially when they are unwilling to hear substantional (if not majority) view.

Good luck with your fairy tale. People call out on SegWit for its "complexity" but they have no problems with several implementations and different groups of developers (it certainly makes it "easier" for a person new to Bitcoin). Anyone who understands features like SegWit endorses them, the others (most, not all) are ignorant and quickly jump to conclusions. You sound a bit like Peter R to me.

I understand SegWit pretty well and I have two issues with SegWit:

First there is already complain Bitcoin is not easy enought for average person, now add two types of transactions, normal and SegWit ones and different security under different clients (full core, little core, SVP clients) for both types of transactions and average person will not get it at all and will be not able to understand the small risks associated with SegWit transactions. Not to mention some hardcore small blockers (including services) might choose not accepting SegWit transactions at all and it can become mess for average users.
 
Second it makes technical analysis of future scalling much harder because with SegWit total block sizes can be from 1 MB to about 2-3 MB all based how much SegWit transactions actually become used by Bitcoin users. Now when you consider scale Bitcoin peer-to-peer transactions more with increasing the base 1 MB to more like 2 MB, all of sudden you get possible total block sizes from 2MB to about 6 MB again based how much SegWit transactions become used. Now it might come to technical conclusion over 4 MB are not recommended safe with the technology at that time and althought maximum block sizes fit 1.5 MB all the time (with SegWit signatures) and more scaling is necessary for more peer-to-peer transactions, it might be risky because potential attack of generating about 6 MB blocks can be used as a argument for not scaling Bitcoin at that time at all, even though simple scaling to 3 MB or 4MB without using SegWit would be acceptable.

Transaction mallebeality can be solved in more elegant way than SegWit with much simpler scalling to just 2MB in the same long planed hardfork and no complicated SegWit is necessary (I guess SegWit is applauded by supporteers only because it can be done in soft fork).

[Quantus]

I am a 1MB block supporter who feels 1MB is enough for many years to come. We have a network run on Raspberry Pi's and old laptops from the 90s, We need a stronger network and a stronger world wide web and a stronger Tor network; we need better mempool protocols to allow for rebroadcasting transactions with higher transaction fees and many other features like client side minimum fee requirement prediction but what we do not need is a larger block size. Bitcoin was never meant to be a free system, higher transaction fees are the only way to secure the network from government manipulation and control.

Hardforking now is impossible, consensus is everything and it will not be won by force, A hard fork now would mean fracturing the network into two distinct camps the 1MB faction and the others, it would be war.  A war the 1MB camp will win.
There can only be one Bitcoin and one Bitcoin network and the new fork would be seen as nothing more then an alt coin bootstrapping itself with the Bitcoin Blockchain. When in doubt people will side with the 1MB faction and people know it, this is the only thing preventing a hardfork now.

Higher transaction fees mean more incentive for mining pools to process transactions and reinvest profits in the cutting edge hardware needed to stay ahead of the mining difficulty wave.  The total cost of all transaction fees is more or less = to the amount of money spent on mining hardware, as that price falls so dose the price needed to manipulate the network. If miners are not constantly reinvesting profits to buy new hardware then governments will gain control simply by waiting for our mining hardware to become antiquated.  We should only raise the block size after transaction fees grow to a point where they become prohibitive to the growth of the network that inflection point will be around 1 to 5 USD per transaction. Again Bitcoin was never meant to be free. Freedom is not free and nether is Bitcoin.  

When transactions hit the 1MB limit nothing will happen other then through natural selection, the higher transaction fees will start culling out the useless tiny transactions (spam) of the network.

[topiOleg]

I am a 1MB block supporter who feels 1MB is enough for many years to come. We have a network run on Raspberry Pi's and old laptops from the 90s, We need a stronger network and a stronger world wide web and a stronger Tor network; we need better mempool protocols to allow for rebroadcasting transactions with higher transaction fees and many other features like client side minimum fee requirement prediction but what we do not need is a larger block size. Bitcoin was never meant to be a free system, higher transaction fees are the only way to secure the network from government manipulation and control.

Hardforking now is impossible, consensus is everything and it will not be won by force, A hard fork now would mean fracturing the network into two distinct camps the 1MB faction and the others, it would be war.  A war the 1MB camp will win.
There can only be one Bitcoin and one Bitcoin network and the new fork would be seen as nothing more then an alt coin bootstrapping itself with the Bitcoin Blockchain. When in doubt people will side with the 1MB faction and people know it, this is the only thing preventing a hardfork now.

Higher transaction fees mean more incentive for mining pools to process transactions and reinvest profits in the cutting edge hardware needed to stay ahead of the mining difficulty wave.  The total cost of all transaction fees is more or less = to the amount of money spent on mining hardware, as that price falls so dose the price needed to manipulate the network. If miners are not constantly reinvesting profits to buy new hardware then governments will gain control simply by waiting for our mining hardware to become antiquated.  We should only raise the block size after transaction fees grow to a point where they become prohibitive to the growth of the network that inflection point will be around 1 to 5 USD per transaction. Again Bitcoin was never meant to be free. Freedom is not free and nether is Bitcoin.   

When transactions hit the 1MB limit nothing will happen other then through natural selection, the higher transaction fees will start culling out the useless tiny transactions (spam) of the network.

Why you not choose some less used coin instead where every obsolete computer including 1GB RAM Raspberry Pi's can run full node from now to eternity, and let Bitcoin to be the most popular and used coin with requirements of average or better comps only to run full nodes - thus the availability of scalling and letting Bitcoin keep its 1st market share between decentralized cryptocurrencies where you dont need offchain and likely centralized services to be used - which Bitcoin was meant to be from the start.

Seriously do you really think many will use Bitcoin in offchain centralized solutions only because of Bitcoin brand and giving up decentralized direct onchain transactions (which only brings them to cryptocurrency anyway - if we exclude just speculators) ? Because with 1 MB, in future, almost everyone would need to do offchain transactions only - where is the decentralization then?

[Quantus]

I am a 1MB block supporter who feels 1MB is enough for many years to come. We have a network run on Raspberry Pi's and old laptops from the 90s, We need a stronger network and a stronger world wide web and a stronger Tor network; we need better mempool protocols to allow for rebroadcasting transactions with higher transaction fees and many other features like client side minimum fee requirement prediction but what we do not need is a larger block size. Bitcoin was never meant to be a free system, higher transaction fees are the only way to secure the network from government manipulation and control.

Hardforking now is impossible, consensus is everything and it will not be won by force, A hard fork now would mean fracturing the network into two distinct camps the 1MB faction and the others, it would be war.  A war the 1MB camp will win.
There can only be one Bitcoin and one Bitcoin network and the new fork would be seen as nothing more then an alt coin bootstrapping itself with the Bitcoin Blockchain. When in doubt people will side with the 1MB faction and people know it, this is the only thing preventing a hardfork now.

Higher transaction fees mean more incentive for mining pools to process transactions and reinvest profits in the cutting edge hardware needed to stay ahead of the mining difficulty wave.  The total cost of all transaction fees is more or less = to the amount of money spent on mining hardware, as that price falls so dose the price needed to manipulate the network. If miners are not constantly reinvesting profits to buy new hardware then governments will gain control simply by waiting for our mining hardware to become antiquated.  We should only raise the block size after transaction fees grow to a point where they become prohibitive to the growth of the network that inflection point will be around 1 to 5 USD per transaction. Again Bitcoin was never meant to be free. Freedom is not free and nether is Bitcoin.  

When transactions hit the 1MB limit nothing will happen other then through natural selection, the higher transaction fees will start culling out the useless tiny transactions (spam) of the network.

Why you not choose some less used coin instead where every obsolete computer including 1GB RAM Raspberry Pi's can run full node from now to eternity, and let Bitcoin to be the most popular and used coin with requirements of average or better comps only to run full nodes - thus the availability of scalling and letting Bitcoin keep its 1st market share between decentralized cryptocurrencies where you dont need offchain and likely centralized services to be used - which Bitcoin was meant to be from the start.

Seriously do you really think many will use Bitcoin in offchain centralized solutions only because of Bitcoin brand and giving up decentralized direct onchain transactions (which only brings them to cryptocurrency anyway - if we exclude just speculators) ? Because with 1 MB, in future, almost everyone would need to do offchain transactions only - where is the decentralization then?

No because... bitcoin is best coin.  

"Seriously do you really think many will use Bitcoin in offchain centralized solutions only because of Bitcoin brand and giving up decentralized direct onchain transactions"
No unless they intend to send spam because they won't be able to do that in bitcoin.

"Because with 1 MB, in future, almost everyone would need to do offchain transactions only"
Wut? did you read my post? maybe you should re-read it.


Here this line. When transactions hit the 1MB limit nothing will happen other then through natural selection, the higher transaction fees will start culling out the useless tiny transactions (spam) of the network.

[topiOleg]

"Because with 1 MB, in future, almost everyone would need to do offchain transactions only"
Wut? did you read my post? maybe you should re-read it.

I did:

I am a 1MB block supporter who feels 1MB is enough for many years to come. We have a network run on Raspberry Pi's and old laptops from the 90s...We should only raise the block size after transaction fees grow to a point where they become prohibitive to the growth of the network that inflection point will be around 1 to 5 USD per transaction.

Oh yeah, I have to pay 1+ USD per transaction to be able to use Bitcoin in decentralized way while you can run full nodes on your obsolete hardware before Raspberry Pi's and old laptops naturally breaks down. But I have bad news for you, if there become constant demand for Bitcon decentralized onchain transactions higher than is blocksize capacity, the transaction fee skyrockets more quickly than you think up to a point where people give up and equilubrum is reached (might be higher than 1-5 USD). So not only it doesnt sound there is ready plan for automatic increase of blocksize because when it happens it is not many years or even many months process, and the pain to use Bitcoin will be high at these times  (unless your happy offchain user), but your obsolete hardware will not be enought to run full node much sonner than you think anyway. Really clever idea! Hail to our new clever rulers who choosing the best for all of us.

[HostFat]

Hostfat, he is in a strong disagreement with theymos on the matter (I think he even supports XT, I'm not sure).

I support the freedom of choice and I'm against censorship.
I found and I loved Bitcoin because of this, but during the last times I see both things going on the opposite side.
I think that Theymos has burned his mind or he was the wrong person from the beginning, I hope that some light will turn back in him.

[Quantus]

"Because with 1 MB, in future, almost everyone would need to do offchain transactions only"
Wut? did you read my post? maybe you should re-read it.

I did:

I am a 1MB block supporter who feels 1MB is enough for many years to come. We have a network run on Raspberry Pi's and old laptops from the 90s...We should only raise the block size after transaction fees grow to a point where they become prohibitive to the growth of the network that inflection point will be around 1 to 5 USD per transaction.

Oh yeah, I have to pay 1+ USD per transaction to be able to use Bitcoin in decentralized way while you can run full nodes on your obsolete hardware before Raspberry Pi's and old laptops naturally breaks down. But I have bad news for you, if there become constant demand for Bitcon decentralized onchain transactions higher than is blocksize capacity, the transaction fee skyrockets more quickly than you think up to a point where people give up and equilubrum is reached (might be higher than 1-5 USD). So not only it doesnt sound there is ready plan for automatic increase of blocksize because when it happens it is not many years or even many months process, and the pain to use Bitcoin will be high at these times  (unless your happy offchain user), but your obsolete hardware will not be enought to run full node much sonner than you think anyway. Really clever idea! Hail to our new clever rulers who choosing the best for all of us.

you know nothing noob

[johnyj]

I personally am a bit taken back by the current situation.  Bitcoin has such promise.  If a few reasonable changes were made, it COULD become a global currency, probably THE global currency.  Honestly, it has everything going for it - a huge infrastructure buildout, pretty solid user base, good name recognition, almost 10 years of solid debugging and real world lab experience, and yet..... why the heck am I getting this impending sense of doom lately?

I am totally serious.  I am totally shocked that this little Blockstream Player / Core-Dev group is so blind to what they are squandering, and at how strongly rebellion is brewing.  Right now it would not take much for everyone to start running for the exits, or towards another solution. And we KNOW that other solutions are being worked on.

I have a feeling that bitcoin will eventually overcome all these difficulties and prove that a decentralized system has its own decision making intelligence

In a centralized system like presidential election, nearly half of the people do not vote since they don't like any of those candidates or they don't care who rules. However the participants in a decentralized system all cares about the system development and running related issues, since these directly affect their own business

This means every participants here are highly motivated to make the system better. Of course the definition of better varies drastically from person to person, but unless they can reach a major consensus, they are not going anywhere. They can just fork as they will, and their fork will become an alt-coin and value crash to almost nothing. So after several such try, they will eventually agree that consensus is the king, they will try to make compromise and try to listen to other's idea until they finally find a major consensus that everyone can live with

It takes time to reach consensus. It is very easy to reach consensus on 1+1=2 since it does not take more than a few minutes to explain to the most illiterate person. But to reach consensus on if Segwit or 8MB block is a good idea, these are very time consuming task due to the complexity they involved, and it will take much longer time to reach agreement among all the major stake holders, maybe never. I guess only small changes have a chance to reach consensus

[keepdoing]

I personally am a bit taken back by the current situation.  Bitcoin has such promise.  If a few reasonable changes were made, it COULD become a global currency, probably THE global currency.  Honestly, it has everything going for it - a huge infrastructure buildout, pretty solid user base, good name recognition, almost 10 years of solid debugging and real world lab experience, and yet..... why the heck am I getting this impending sense of doom lately?

I am totally serious.  I am totally shocked that this little Blockstream Player / Core-Dev group is so blind to what they are squandering, and at how strongly rebellion is brewing.  Right now it would not take much for everyone to start running for the exits, or towards another solution. And we KNOW that other solutions are being worked on.

I have a feeling that bitcoin will eventually overcome all these difficulties and prove that a decentralized system has its own decision making intelligence

In a centralized system like presidential election, nearly half of the people do not vote since they don't like any of those candidates or they don't care who rules. However the participants in a decentralized system all cares about the system development and running related issues, since these directly affect their own business

This means every participants here are highly motivated to make the system better. Of course the definition of better varies drastically from person to person, but unless they can reach a major consensus, they are not going anywhere. They can just fork as they will, and their fork will become an alt-coin and value crash to almost nothing. So after several such try, they will eventually agree that consensus is the king, they will try to make compromise and try to listen to other's idea until they finally find a major consensus that everyone can live with

It takes time to reach consensus. It is very easy to reach consensus on 1+1=2 since it does not take more than a few minutes to explain to the most illiterate person. But to reach consensus on if Segwit or 8MB block is a good idea, these are very time consuming task due to the complexity they involved, and it will take much longer time to reach agreement among all the major stake holders, maybe never. I guess only small changes have a chance to reach consensus

I wholeheartedly agree that the definition of "better" varies.  I disagree that every participant is highly motivated to make the "system" better, because to me that infers a sort of moral and fair approach.  I don't see that.  I see manipulation, censorship, lies, misdirection.   Of course that is my opinion based on my observations.  And while others may have different opinions - I sort of like mine for a simple reason.... I am one of the rare people without an agenda loyalty to any of the specific paths.  I dislike XT for many reasons, but primarily because it is lazy.  It does not encourage much thought into the ongoing design of bitcoin.  It just says, make the blocks so big it is disgusting, and pack Pack PACK them with all the crap you can think.  And yes, I do think that leads to a much faster  centralization that bothers me.   I dislike 1mb because it is a blatant crippling of the possibilities, and I say blatant because there is a CLEAR Conflict of Interest involved.

I agree and disagree in various ways with your last 2 sentences.  I think a middle of the road compromise, increasing to 2 mb, and building in a few years of slow, measured increases, then capping it ---WOULD BE ACCEPTED by a Huge Majority.  And I am not a super tech in this, but I have read and watched and studied more than most, and I just don't see that a middle road solution would be threatening at all - IF we could get a decent consensus.  ALL it would take is someone willing to DO IT.  I mean, if it were thrown out like XT - and triggered by the same "voting" mechanism - then I honestly think that it would get the 750 blocks.  And I also think that most of Core-Dev is perfectly aware of that.  That is why the tricks, censorship, lying manipulations etc..... no one with Commit Auth will do it.  I honestly think it would have to be Gavin.  And it WOULD work.

And ALL paths would be given reasonable growing room to explore possibilities.  And at that point in the future that whatever small, measured increase in size hits the new cap - then there will be CLEARER data.  And perhaps there is a then a fight for another increase path - or perhaps sidechains are actually ready and built out and widely so entrenched that they are doing their job and no more increases are necessary.  Most likely it would be that sidechains would be established, and well received, but also direct bitcoin use as currency would be established, and another short ramp up in blocksize would be implemented.  But we wouldn't have to fear centralization because we'd have time and data to tell us what to do - along with the expected technological advances that would be coming along with the added time gained.  And there might even be something NEW we haven't even seen yet that emerges.  Something we'll NEVER see if we can't even at least explore this new technology a bit instead of crippling it right out of the womb!

[johnyj]

As far as the numbers, there's 8 bits in one byte.  Therefore, a difference of 8 megabits in speed is one megabyte per second.
If block size is 8 MB, that's 8 seconds.  Yet it takes 10 minutes to solve a block so 8/600.

Each node connects to 8 nodes, and each of these 8 nodes connect to another 8 nodes, and so on. But some of these connections are duplicated, so it will take several hop before a block is relayed to majority of the nodes, 4-5 hops maybe. When you have 8 seconds for a block transfer and the block verify time of 8 seconds, the nodes on the far end of the network would receive it in 80 seconds, which is a significant delay

Let's first imagine the ideal bitcoin blockchain done by aliens: It takes 1 second to receive and verify each block, takes 1MB hard drive space, and can carry unlimited amount of transactions in 10 minutes    Then you add those real world limitations on it and see which part you can compromise

[jonald_fyookball]

As far as the numbers, there's 8 bits in one byte.  Therefore, a difference of 8 megabits in speed is one megabyte per second.
If block size is 8 MB, that's 8 seconds.  Yet it takes 10 minutes to solve a block so 8/600.

Each node connects to 8 nodes, and each of these 8 nodes connect to another 8 nodes, and so on. But some of these connections are duplicated, so it will take several hop before a block is relayed to majority of the nodes, 4-5 hops maybe. When you have 8 seconds for a block transfer and the block verify time of 8 seconds, the nodes on the far end of the network would receive it in 80 seconds, which is a significant delay

Let's first imagine the ideal bitcoin blockchain done by aliens: It takes 1 second to receive and verify each block, takes 1MB hard drive space, and can carry unlimited amount of transactions in 10 minutes    Then you add those real world limitations on it and see which part you can compromise

Ok fine, but the additional hops don't have anything to do with the miner himself and how long it takes him to propagate his winning block in the first place.
Therefore my point is still valid:  The small-blocker argument of 'geographic centralization will happen with bigger blocks due to internet speed descrepencies' doesn't really hold water.

Actually, I have a question that you might be able to answer for me.

If two miners get their blocks out at roughly the same time, and one has a slightly longer chain (not an additional block but just a lower hash/more work/more transactions/higher difficulty -- you know what i'm trying to say) , do nodes throw out the first one and use the second one?