.

[DrLove2048]

Here's to hoping something happens. It just is frightening it's taking so long for something so obvious to happen

[iCEBREAKER]

https://github.com/gavinandresen/bips/blob/92e1efd0493c1cbde47304c9711f13f413cc9099/bip-bump2mb.mediawiki

How nice of the Gavinista remnant to ride to the aid of the floundering Toominista insurgency.

The blocksize may be increased eventually, but...

Sorry.

Not.

Tonight.

Dear.

[jonald_fyookball]

not so against any kind of increase in the max block size

The Bitcoin Core capacity roadmap includes several block size increases, including the immediate term segwit proposal that many people are actively working on (and which has a testnet)-- which increases the capacity to fairly close to Gavin's latest proposal (which is not BIP 102).

'immediate term' , no one knows what that means exactly.  3 months? 6 months? 18 months? 
This would be more immediate, simpler, and arguably more robust and less risky. What does core have against it?

The community has been screaming for bigger blocks.  If core won't accept Gavin's proposal, it means
one of three things:

1.  They don't care what the community wants (despite their pleas for consensus). 
2. They think they know what is best and are too stubborn to accept anyone else's priorities.
3. They have an alterior motives.

Could be a combination of all the above.

[mayax]

Gavin Andresen = Coinbase= Bitstamp = Okcoin= Marc Andreessen= Andreessen Horowitz & Co.

[johnyj]

It's a great advance in current deadlock situation

For any kind of change, you need nodes and miners to be able to run the new version to express their support. If SW is also published, those interested miner can run SW client too, let the mined blocks finally show what is the opinion of majority of the hash power

I think miners should get more clear and objective explanation about their choice of software and the possible consequence

[Kakmakr]

Another power grab from a desperate developer that might just work, if he play the fiddle in the right manner. The trolls with the limited knowledge will jump onto this proposal without considering the possible consequences. We are driving around with a bus that are 50% to capacity and we are already calling for a double decker replacement.

The Core developers have put a lot of thought into SegWit and scaling for the future and loads of other advantages and we just want to take the first proposal, because we were told the 2 MB Block size increase would be the Nirvana.  

[franky1]

blockstream=pricewater house coopers
classic= scammers (marshal long) corporate backing
xt=banks


can we please have a team of developers thats not got a hidden agenda

[gmaxwell]

Just some spit-balling here, I'm sure I have some ordering and details wrong.


Mike and Gavin argue for no limits and ~free transactions forever, regardless of the costs.

Some in core suggest that if we really need to show the flexibility of a blocksize increase, 2MB could probably be sold and made safe enough (with planned future improvements) if we really had to.

Gavin gets some clue and realizes no limit at all makes no sense; Mike grudgingly agrees to go along with a 20MB proposal.

Miners reject that as unrealistically large.

Gavin and Mike retrench with a 8MB that rapidly ramps to gigabytes. Announce intent to adversarial fork the network in Bitcoin XT. A new client which is 99.99% code from Core but with the addition of the new expanded blocksize and Mike hearn declared benevolent dictator of the project.

In spite of announced intentions by some, almost no one adopts Bitcoin XT and XT development sits at a near standstill compared to Core.

Miners' notice the 8MB change isn't really 8MB and some aren't pleased.

Systems testing is finally performed on XT via testnet a month before it was intended to activate. Many performance problems are found with 8MB, person testing it suggests that 4MB or 3MB initially may be more realistic.

Core completes a years long development work which speeds signature validation >5x, invents a clean way to allow new efficiencies and security trade-offs, gets node pruning working, and comes up with a way to get roughly 2MB worth of capacity without a the risky and coordination problematic hardfork, while simultaneously fixing some long time bugs like malleability and misaligned incentives (utxo bloat).

Core posts a capacity roadmap including these solutions, along with a plan for further development to allow more capacity into the future.

Almost the entire development community and many in industry sign on an open letter in support of this plan. On the order of fifty people in all, it includes all of the most active contributors to Bitcoin Core and many other pieces of Bitcoin software.

Gavin, Jeff, and a few other people (including people involved with the recently insolvent Crypsy exchange) announce that they're creating "Bitcoin Classic"; a retry of the XT approach but with added popular voting on a centralized web voting site.

Mike Hearn catches fire, slams Bitcoin with a one-sided attack piece piece in the NYT calling Bitcoin a failure. Some argue that Mike's position is driven by his employment at R3, an adversarial to Bitcoin company working with major banks. Astute followers know this isn't true: Mike's misalignment with Bitcoin has existed forever.

Bitcoin market price crashes significantly.

Core creates a public test network for the new improvements and many people are actively testing on it. Several wallets begin their integration process for the new improvements. Development moves rapidly, several standards documents are written.

Market price substantially recovers.

Gavin finally announces code for the new "Classic", largely duplicating the XT functionality. Instead of the BIP101 rapid growth scheme, it features a 2MB hardfork, and none of the other improvements that are recently in core and in the works.

Bitcoin market price drops significantly again.

I'm hoping we get to the point where the market realizes it's being toyed with here and repeated XT reloaded attempts are pretty meaningless. We're not seemingly there yet.

Have I basically summarized the last year? Anyone want to add any bullets?

[iCEBREAKER]

blockstream=pricewater house coopers
classic= scammers (marshal long) corporate backing
xt=banks


can we please have a team of developers thats not got a hidden agenda

Can we please just look at what the code does, change it or write our own if we don't like it, and stop speculating about motivations and hidden agendas?

Anwser:

No, no, and Hell No.  Welcome to Bitcointalk!   

[quadriple7]

I believe that it would be a great idea to increase the maximum block size to 2 mb

[NorrisK]

The market loves it!!  

Price has already almost fully recovered from that. Those were just speculators that thought the market would respond much stronger to this proposal.

IMO the mini drop with the fast retrace only shows that the people are actually going to be inclined to go with it just to get it over with.

The only issue I have with a solution like this (if there are not other changes in the code), is that in a few years the same discussion will be started again, with a bigger network that is at a bigger risk when hard forking.

[iCEBREAKER]

Just some spit-balling here, I'm sure I have some ordering and details wrong.


Mike and Gavin argue for no limits and ~free transactions forever, regardless of the costs.

Some in core suggest that if we really need to show the flexibility of a blocksize increase, 2MB could probably be sold and made safe enough (with planned future improvements) if we really had to.

Gavin gets some clue and realizes no limit at all makes no sense; Mike grudgingly agrees to go along with a 20MB proposal.

Miners reject that as unrealistically large.

Gavin and Mike retrench with a 8MB that rapidly ramps to gigabytes. Announce intent to adversarial fork the network in Bitcoin XT. A new client which is 99.99% code from Core but with the addition of the new expanded blocksize and Mike hearn declared benevolent dictator of the project.

In spite of announced intentions by some, almost no one adopts Bitcoin XT and XT development sits at a near standstill compared to Core.

Miners' notice the 8MB change isn't really 8MB and some aren't pleased.

Systems testing is finally performed on XT via testnet a month before it was intended to activate. Many performance problems are found with 8MB, person testing it suggests that 4MB or 3MB initially may be more realistic.

Core completes a years long development work which speeds signature validation >5x, invents a clean way to allow new efficiencies and security trade-offs, gets node pruning working, and comes up with a way to get roughly 2MB worth of capacity without a the risky and coordination problematic hardfork, while simultaneously fixing some long time bugs like malleability and misaligned incentives (utxo bloat).

Core posts a capacity roadmap including these solutions, along with a plan for further development to allow more capacity into the future.

Almost the entire development community and many in industry sign on an open letter in support of this plan. On the order of fifty people in all, it includes all of the most active contributors to Bitcoin Core and many other pieces of Bitcoin software.

Gavin, Jeff, and a few other people (including people involved with the recently insolvent Crypsy exchange) announce that they're creating "Bitcoin Classic"; a retry of the XT approach but with added popular voting on a centralized web voting site.

Mike Hearn catches fire, slams Bitcoin with a one-sided attack piece piece in the NYT calling Bitcoin a failure. Some argue that Mike's position is driven by his employment at R3, an adversarial to Bitcoin company working with major banks. Astute followers know this isn't true: Mike's misalignment with Bitcoin has existed forever.

Bitcoin market price crashes significantly.

Core creates a public test network for the new improvements and many people are actively testing on it. Several wallets begin their integration process for the new improvements. Development moves rapidly, several standards documents are written.

Market price substantially recovers.

Gavin finally announces code for the new "Classic", largely duplicating the XT functionality. Instead of the BIP101 rapid growth scheme, it features a 2MB hardfork, and none of the other improvements that are recently in core and in the works.

Bitcoin market price drops significantly again.

I'm hoping we get to the point where the market realizes it's being toyed with here and repeated XT reloaded attempts are pretty meaningless. We're not seemingly there yet.

Have I basically summarized the last year? Anyone want to add any bullets?

Great summary, very accurate.

For completeness, don't forget the first XT-induced price crash, and the wonderful #ScalingBitcoin workshops that Hearn declined to attend.  Perhaps consider the role of the (shady cloud-mining) Toomir Bros and (shady Panopticoin pushers) The Blockchain Alliance, although they are really just footnotes.

3 cheers for BIP000; long live Bitcoin Core!

[goregrind]

As someone heavily invested in bitcoin I will never trust Gavin or Mike
and frankly I can't see anyone willing to risk his money following this ill intended peeps.
Its been all talk and no walk for this two and they need to be out of bitcoin.

[johnyj]

Have I basically summarized the last year? Anyone want to add any bullets?

Nice summary, but maybe you noticed that Gavin constantly change his proposal based on community feed back, which proved to be a much more efficient way of gaining support. Blockstream give me a feeling like: We decided, it should be done like this, because we are the expert and you should listen to us and respect our hard work. This is not a way to reach consensus in a community full of paranoid conspiracists    It's exactly this kind of people most attracted by bitcoin because they trust nobody by default

[Haswell]

The market loves it!! 

It is because of the uncertainty behind the future of Bitcoin.

If the core devs were not so against any kind of increase in the max block size then the market would react differently. When the first block that "voted" for XT was mined someone sold 20k BTC on bitfinex (likely because of the uncertainty)

I think if the Core accepts the 2MB proposal and implements it after through testing on the test net, then the bitcoin price will fly.

[Lauda]

Nice summary, but maybe you noticed that Gavin constantly change his proposal based on community feed back, which proved to be a much more efficient way of gaining support.

He's trying to play the game like Andreas Antonopoulos. They try to stay neutral & communicate more due to the fear of the uncertain; later on whatever happens they've supported it.

We decided, it should be done like this, because we are the expert and you should listen to us and respect our hard work. This is not a way to reach consensus in a community full of paranoid conspiracists    It's exactly this kind of people most attracted by bitcoin because they trust nobody by default

The majority is wrong in the most cases. Should we let the majority decide these things? Bitcoin is not a democracy either.

Price has already almost fully recovered from that. Those were just speculators that thought the market would respond much stronger to this proposal.

It shows that the market dislikes the situation. I'm pretty sure that there are going to be huge sell-offs if a political forks succeeds.

Another power grab from a desperate developer that might just work, if he play the fiddle in the right manner.

That's all there is to it, under the premise that 'SegWit is complex & urgent capacity increase needed'. .

[CIYAM]

So if we had a vote that said to "the community" you have the following two choices:

1. An increase in the block size.
2. An increase in the block size and a free beer.

Which do you think would be more popular?

(and perhaps if Gavin starts giving out free beers he might actually succeed)

I vote for free beer (with or without a increase in block size). Who's with me?

How about we start a "free beer" political party (who knows if we are successful we might be able to get free beer happening all around the world).

[DeathAngel]

The guy's trying to save BTC. I hope he will be successful but it's hard to be optimistic. He failed last year because of rats who don't want to change anything which would reduce their domination. Gavin's brave! Without him, or people like him, BTC would be dead already. What is going to happen when there will be 300,000 transactions each day? Then 500,000. I'd like to dream there's one million transactions everyday, but that's impossible at this stage. Too many miners just don't want BTC to grow.

Ridiculous post.

[pereira4]

The guy's trying to save BTC. I hope he will be successful but it's hard to be optimistic. He failed last year because of rats who don't want to change anything which would reduce their domination. Gavin's brave! Without him, or people like him, BTC would be dead already. What is going to happen when there will be 300,000 transactions each day? Then 500,000. I'd like to dream there's one million transactions everyday, but that's impossible at this stage. Too many miners just don't want BTC to grow.

We will never have those amounts of volume transaction without a secondary layer like Lightning Network anyway, so you are being delusional here to think that the solution to get around that problem is to keep raising the block size ad infinitium. With segregated witness we can buy enough time until LN is finally active which I hope we can see the first tests this year an release next year.

[bargainbin]

...problem is to keep raising the block size ad infinitium. ...

You do realize that the blockchain is growing ad infinitum already, without removing the blocksize limit, right?