.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

by moving transactions off chain we are depriving miners from potential fees.

Miners know this. I imagine it's the only reason they would ever even consider a contentious hard fork. Core better recognize.

[Lauda]

I think it is the other way around, not increasing the blocksize makes it harder not to rely on third parties, at least with SPV wallets we do still regain control of our private keys.

It is not the other way around. The harder it gets to create a full node, the more users will have to rely on third parties. SPV wallets rely on the node that they're connected to.

Not increasing the blocksize leads to much higher transaction costs while making transacting directly on the Bitcoin network also much more unreliable.

"much higher"? No. We have not had experience with this and thus you can't know exactly how much of a increase there is going to be. It doesn't make transacting unreliable at all. The system will continue functioning as it should, transactions of higher priority will confirm faster.

Increasing the blocksize leads to a marginal increase in the cost of running a full node, especially the increase we are discussing to two megabyte is unlikely to have a significant effect on node count.

I wasn't talking about 2 MB directly. It is going to have an effect on the node count, that is undeniable. The question is: "Is this effect negligible or not?".

I have nothing against the lighting network as long as it is not used as a reason to restrict the main Bitcoin blockchain. I think we should scale Bitcoin directly and if people still choose to use the lighting network instead then that is fine, then we would not need to increase the blocksize again.

You keep talking about it like they're comparable. Bitcoin does not scale well by design. You can't change that, you can keep lying about it as much as you want. Engineers are the judge of that, not people with various other useless backgrounds. What LN offers is hard to describe on a scale of efficiency in comparison to transacting on the main chain.

I do not think that layer one was restricted in order to strengthen the other layers. Furthermore layer one, so to speak still remains the most important and most used part of the internet.

No, neither statements are correct. Do you even know what operates at the first layer? Of course you don't.

These statements absolutely do have a correlation by moving transactions off chain we are depriving miners from potential fees.

It can work the other way around: With so much empty space after the HF I'll be sure not to include a fee (or include a much lower fee). Why would I? You've deprive miners of "potential fees" either way.

And you should stop fear mongering, increasing the blocksize to two megabyte will not be catastrophic in anyway. That you are even mentioning orphan rates at two megabytes is ridiculous and just reveals that you do not have any proper criticisms of such an increase, its not like segwit in all of its complexity presents less risk?

This is not "fear mongering" as some uneducated person (in this field) would say. This is how you build a strong and secure system. If you're being optimistic (and not realistic) everything is most likely going to come crashing down on you. We already have orphan rates that are causing miners to experience losses, those will likely increase with 2 MB blocks (so much about "do not have any proper criticisms). People are afraid of what they don't understand; Segwit is one of those things.

[VeritasSapere]

I think it is the other way around, not increasing the blocksize makes it harder not to rely on third parties, at least with SPV wallets we do still regain control of our private keys.

It is not the other way around. The harder it gets to create a full node, the more users will have to rely on third parties. SPV wallets rely on the node that they're connected to.

I suppose we can agree to disagree on this point, I think the ability to transact freely, cheaply and directly with the Bitcoin blockchain is more important then the ability to run a full node, or the cost of independent validation. Not that an increase to two megabyte would even increase the difficulty of running a full node significantly, this does need to be a balancing act after all.

Not increasing the blocksize leads to much higher transaction costs while making transacting directly on the Bitcoin network also much more unreliable.

"much higher"? No. We have not had experience with this and thus you can't know exactly how much of a increase there is going to be. It doesn't make transacting unreliable at all. The system will continue functioning as it should, transactions of higher priority will confirm faster.

How much higher the fees will actually be depends on the level of adoption, I personally think that Bitcoin will be obsoleted and outcompeted if we do not increase the blocksize. However hypothetically at least under increased adoption it would become much more expensive, so expensive that it would not be practical or even feasible for "normal" people to use the Bitcoin blockchain, it will be reserved for large financial institutions and banks as a type of settlement network. Not that I think this would even happen without the mass adoption by the people as a currency first which is what I advocate. I do question who would want to even run full nodes for the financial institutions? Since it would no longer be a peer to peer network by and for the people at that point.

It is not the case that you just need to pay a higher fee, this is a misnomer that is often repeated. There will not be enough space for everyone to transact regardless of the fee that is payed, furthermore it will be impossible to know at any one time how much of a fee will even be required, which is why many transactions will likely never be confirmed at all. Essentially you would need to enter a bidding war with large financial institutions, payment processors and banks, which I would not consider a good user experience compared to what we have today.

Increasing the blocksize leads to a marginal increase in the cost of running a full node, especially the increase we are discussing to two megabyte is unlikely to have a significant effect on node count.

I wasn't talking about 2 MB directly. It is going to have an effect on the node count, that is undeniable. The question is: "Is this effect negligible or not?".

I suppose you rather side with caution when faced with an uncertainty? I suppose I feel differently especially with such a revolutionary experiment like Bitcoin. We should not cripple the project out of caution.

I have nothing against the lighting network as long as it is not used as a reason to restrict the main Bitcoin blockchain. I think we should scale Bitcoin directly and if people still choose to use the lighting network instead then that is fine, then we would not need to increase the blocksize again.

You keep talking about it like they're comparable. Bitcoin does not scale well by design. You can't change that, you can keep lying about it as much as you want. Engineers are the judge of that, not people with various other useless backgrounds. What LN offers is hard to describe on a scale of efficiency in comparison to transacting on the main chain.

Efficiency is not everything, it might be to an engineer but there is more to life then that. You have not answered my question of why sacrificing efficiency for political and ideological goals can be justified, in the same way that Bitcoin and something like the concept of democracy already does this inherently in its design.

I do not think that layer one was restricted in order to strengthen the other layers. Furthermore layer one, so to speak still remains the most important and most used part of the internet.

No, neither statements are correct. Do you even know what operates at the first layer? Of course you don't.

I presumed you where referring to the Internet Protocol as layer one.

These statements absolutely do have a correlation by moving transactions off chain we are depriving miners from potential fees.

It can work the other way around: With so much empty space after the HF I'll be sure not to include a fee (or include a much lower fee). Why would I? You've deprive miners of "potential fees" either way.

I doubt it would change the behavior of the miners significantly compared to today, even at a higher blocksize limit, miners still determine what transactions to include and not to include. It also does not change the fundamental fact that moving transactions off chain does deprive the miners from potential fees, this is inherently true.

And you should stop fear mongering, increasing the blocksize to two megabyte will not be catastrophic in anyway. That you are even mentioning orphan rates at two megabytes is ridiculous and just reveals that you do not have any proper criticisms of such an increase, its not like segwit in all of its complexity presents less risk?

This is not "fear mongering" as some uneducated person (in this field) would say. This is how you build a strong and secure system. If you're being optimistic (and not realistic) everything is most likely going to come crashing down on you. We already have orphan rates that are causing miners to experience losses, those will likely increase with 2 MB blocks (so much about "do not have any proper criticisms). People are afraid of what they don't understand; Segwit is one of those things.

The contradiction in your position has already been pointed out. How can you possibly say that an increase to two megabyte is unsafe while simultaneously arguing that segwit is safe? When both increase the effective blocksize while being radically different in terms of complexity.

Orphan rates today are not causing any significant losses to miners, any losses due to orphans are most often evenly distributed across the pools as well. If orphan rates did ever become an issue the pools could simply move their node to another datacentre, it is that simple, I do not see the problem with this at all. If anything it is a good thing, since if miners profits are effected by bigger blocks they can simply create smaller blocks, problem solved. They can decide for themselves what risks they take and parameters they use, they do not need us to hold their hand. I even think that we should not concern ourselves with the miners to much since mining is a self balancing system no matter what happens, we should focus more on giving the network value that is what will be good for the miners, and I am saying this as a miner myself.

[Lauda]

I suppose we can agree to disagree on this point, I think the ability to transact freely, cheaply and directly with the Bitcoin blockchain is more important then the ability to run a full node, or the cost of independent validation.

Sure, we can do that, especially when your opinion is wrong.

How much higher the fees will actually be depends on the level of adoption, I personally think that Bitcoin will be obsoleted and outcompeted if we do not increase the blocksize.

You guys seem to have many things wrong with assumptions. e.g.: A lot of people are transacting on the main chain -> fees rise -> fees are too high for some -> some leave the system -> fees lower -> repeat. The system will never self destruct like this, no matter how many times you repeat that. There are various scenarios of how this might play out; we can't know for sure until it does.

I suppose you rather side with caution when faced with an uncertainty? I suppose I feel differently especially with such a revolutionary experiment like Bitcoin. We should not cripple the project out of caution.

Of course, albeit: 1. You can easily kill this system with naivety; 2. Nobody is crippling anything.

Efficiency is not everything, it might be to an engineers but there is more to life then that. You have not awnsered my question of why sacrificing efficiency for political and ideological goals can be justified, in the same way that Bitcoin and something like the concept of democracy already does inherently in its design.

Efficiency is what matters in the world today. It can't be justified, especially not when you can do so much more if you combine the first layer with the second.

I presumed you where referring to the Internet Protocol as layer one.

This is what I dislike about people, they talk even when they have no idea what they're talking about. IP is not layer 1, it is part of layer 3.

I doubt it would change the behavior of the miners significantly compared to today, even at a higher blocksize limit, miners still determine what transactions to include and not to include. It also does not change the fundamental fact that moving transactions off chain does deprive the miners from potential fees, this is inherently true.

They have no reason not to include transactions with lower fees because there is empty space.

The contradiction in your position has already been pointed out. How can you possibly say that an increase to two megabyte is unsafe while simultaneously arguing that segwit is safe? When both increase the effective blocksize while being radically different in terms of complexity.

Nope. I never said that segwit is safe.

If orphan rates did ever become an issue the pools could simply move their node to another datacentre, it is that simple.

So you think that orphan rates are caused by slow datacenters?  

[Quantus]

There are companies who want to decentralize databases with massive amounts of data and use bitcoin to secure it. We couldn't possibly accommodate all the data they want to secure within the blockchain itself but we can in side chains.  

There will always be a need for transactions on the main chain even if side chains become popular. I support core and the roadmap they have put forward.

[blunderer]

There are companies who want to decentralize databases with massive amounts of data and use bitcoin to secure it. We couldn't possibly accommodate all the data they want to secure within the blockchain itself but we can in side chains.  

There will always be a need for transactions on the main chain even if side chains become popular. I support core and the roadmap they have put forward.

Instead of finding fiendishly clever ways to pound nails with an oscilloscope, why not use a hammer? Bitcoin is clearly not for storing massive amounts of data.

[Quantus]

There are companies who want to decentralize databases with massive amounts of data and use bitcoin to secure it. We couldn't possibly accommodate all the data they want to secure within the blockchain itself but we can in side chains.  

There will always be a need for transactions on the main chain even if side chains become popular. I support core and the roadmap they have put forward.

Instead of finding fiendishly clever ways to pound nails with an oscilloscope, why not use a hammer? Bitcoin is clearly not for storing massive amounts of data.

I agree but they got it in their head it is and we can't stop them. The best part of side chains is they can be forgotten and discarded when no longer needed.

[blunderer]

There are companies who want to decentralize databases with massive amounts of data and use bitcoin to secure it. We couldn't possibly accommodate all the data they want to secure within the blockchain itself but we can in side chains.  

There will always be a need for transactions on the main chain even if side chains become popular. I support core and the roadmap they have put forward.

Instead of finding fiendishly clever ways to pound nails with an oscilloscope, why not use a hammer? Bitcoin is clearly not for storing massive amounts of data.

I agree but they got it in their head it is and we can't stop them. The best part of side chains is they can be forgotten and discarded when no longer needed.

Who are "they"? Why haven't "they" maxed out the 1MB blocks with their crap data?

[Quantus]

There are companies who want to decentralize databases with massive amounts of data and use bitcoin to secure it. We couldn't possibly accommodate all the data they want to secure within the blockchain itself but we can in side chains.  

There will always be a need for transactions on the main chain even if side chains become popular. I support core and the roadmap they have put forward.

Instead of finding fiendishly clever ways to pound nails with an oscilloscope, why not use a hammer? Bitcoin is clearly not for storing massive amounts of data.

I agree but they got it in their head it is and we can't stop them. The best part of side chains is they can be forgotten and discarded when no longer needed.

Who are "they"? Why haven't "they" maxed out the 1MB blocks with their crap data?

The same people screaming for bigger blocks. They are parasitic in nature but bitcoin in its current form can not accommodate them so they attack from within by lobbying anyone who might sway opinion toward larger blocks by saying the sky is falling.

[VeritasSapere]

I suppose we can agree to disagree on this point, I think the ability to transact freely, cheaply and directly with the Bitcoin blockchain is more important then the ability to run a full node, or the cost of independent validation.

Sure, we can do that, especially when your opinion is wrong.

You obviously do not know what agree to disagree means, I obviously think your position is invalided and incorrect, not necessarily wrong in the ethical sense, and also not necessarily wrong in an empirical sense either since we are dealing with subjective ideologies.

How much higher the fees will actually be depends on the level of adoption, I personally think that Bitcoin will be obsoleted and outcompeted if we do not increase the blocksize.

You guys seem to have many things wrong with assumptions. e.g.: A lot of people are transacting on the main chain -> fees rise -> fees are too high for some -> some leave the system -> fees lower -> repeat. The system will never self destruct like this, no matter how many times you repeat that. There are various scenarios of how this might play out; we can't know for sure until it does.

I find it hard to fathom why you think that Bitcoin does not need to compete with other cryptocurrencies and alternatives, Bitcoin does not exist inside of a ivory tower, which I think much of your thinking is indicative off. The price to transact does matter and so does the user experience.

I suppose you rather side with caution when faced with an uncertainty? I suppose I feel differently especially with such a revolutionary experiment like Bitcoin. We should not cripple the project out of caution.

Of course, albeit: 1. You can easily kill this system with naivety; 2. Nobody is crippling anything.

I consider not increasing the blocksize the equivalent of crippling Bitcoin. If you think that the will of the economic majority can kill the system with naivety then we have some fundamental disagreements about the merits of the collective wisdom of the crowd. Which I do think Bitcoin is fundamentally beholden towards.

Efficiency is not everything, it might be to an engineers but there is more to life then that. You have not answered my question of why sacrificing efficiency for political and ideological goals can be justified, in the same way that Bitcoin and something like the concept of democracy already does inherently in its design.

Efficiency is what matters in the world today. It can't be justified, especially not when you can do so much more if you combine the first layer with the second.

Again you are not answering my question. I will be more specific. Take Democracy for example, as a political system it is very inefficient, however its advantages are worth the inefficiencies for ethical and ideological reasons. You seem to be ignoring these very important human principles when weighing up paths and visions for Bitcoins future. Bitcoin is more then just a robotic machine, human beings are a part of this machine, with their emotions, fears and even irrationality. I think that you are failing to take this into account, this is the very game theory that the Bitcoin of today relies on for its continued operation.

I presumed you where referring to the Internet Protocol as layer one.

This is what I dislike about people, they talk even when they have no idea what they're talking about. IP is not layer 1, it is part of layer 3.

You should try and embrace talking to people outside of your field of expertise. I might not be an expert in this field however after looking this up more it does seem like layer three is the best analogy for Bitcoin, since it is the network layer, not layer one or two. Since they already exist as the internet within a certain extend. So my argument comparing Bitcoin to the Internet Protocol still holds.

I doubt it would change the behavior of the miners significantly compared to today, even at a higher blocksize limit, miners still determine what transactions to include and not to include. It also does not change the fundamental fact that moving transactions off chain does deprive the miners from potential fees, this is inherently true.

They have no reason not to include transactions with lower fees because there is empty space.

You are now creating a circular argument, which one is it, orphan rates will be significant enough to act as a force for smaller blocks, or there is no reason not to include transactions with lower fees? Which one is it? Both can not be true, you have clearly contradicted yourself here. Furthermore I do not see anything wrong with keeping the fees at the same level at which they have been over the last few years, since the block subsidy is meant to bootstrap adoption during the early phases after all. Since there have been fees before we hit the block limit it also proves that there is a fee market that does exist without a blocksize limit that is near the average transaction volume.

The contradiction in your position has already been pointed out. How can you possibly say that an increase to two megabyte is unsafe while simultaneously arguing that segwit is safe? When both increase the effective blocksize while being radically different in terms of complexity.

Nope. I never said that segwit is safe.

If that is your position on segwit then I suppose you do not support any solution to scaling? I know that this is not true, since you did say you supported segwit in favor of a blocksize increase. So you are saying that you support an unsafe complex change to the network but we should not support a simple change to the network because it is unsafe? Can you see the contradiction in your statements?

If orphan rates did ever become an issue the pools could simply move their node to another datacentre, it is that simple.

So you think that orphan rates are caused by slow datacenters?  

I do not, though since the major pools all operate out of datacentre like environments they are more or less on a level playing field, the only point at which orphan rate would become an issue is when it is unequal because of block propagation, simply moving the mining node to a better location would fix this and put the miner on a level playing field again. Chinese mining pools could face this issue because of the great firewall of China, this would only become an issue with much larger blocks then what we have today, certainly not two megabyte blocks.

[blunderer]

There are companies who want to decentralize databases with massive amounts of data and use bitcoin to secure it. We couldn't possibly accommodate all the data they want to secure within the blockchain itself but we can in side chains. 

There will always be a need for transactions on the main chain even if side chains become popular. I support core and the roadmap they have put forward.

Instead of finding fiendishly clever ways to pound nails with an oscilloscope, why not use a hammer? Bitcoin is clearly not for storing massive amounts of data.

I agree but they got it in their head it is and we can't stop them. The best part of side chains is they can be forgotten and discarded when no longer needed.

Who are "they"? Why haven't "they" maxed out the 1MB blocks with their crap data?

The same people screaming for bigger blocks. They are parasitic in nature but bitcoin in its current form can not accommodate them so they attack from within by lobbying anyone who might sway opinion toward larger blocks by saying the sky is falling.

K.
Why are we always surrounded by so many nasty enemies?

[VeritasSapere]

I would be wary when listening to the opinions of people who describes other human beings as parasites. Especially when generalizing about a large group of people. It is not a nice thing to do.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

I would be wary when listening to the opinions of people who describes other human beings as parasites. Especially when generalizing about a large group of people. It is not a nice thing to do.  

[jbreher]

Efficiency is not everything, it might be to an engineers but there is more to life then that. You have not awnsered my question of why sacrificing efficiency for political and ideological goals can be justified, in the same way that Bitcoin and something like the concept of democracy already does inherently in its design.

Efficiency is what matters in the world today.

Nonsense. If efficiency was the be all and end all, then we would not be communicating at this very moment over formatted HTML, which is hideously inefficient as compared to raw UTF-8 text.

I presumed you where referring to the Internet Protocol as layer one.

This is what I dislike about people, they talk even when they have no idea what they're talking about. IP is not layer 1, it is part of layer 3.

Hmm. Interesting. By that measure, Bitcoin is not at the bottom layer. It is already sits atop the routing layer. It even sits atop the Transport layer, which in turn sits atop the Routing layer, which sits atop the Link layer. So raw bitcoin transactions already are already atop several layers of lower level protocols. Hmm. So what was your point again?

[Quantus]

Large corporations are soulless parasitic things THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE! THEY DO NOT HAVE SOULS!

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Large corporations are soulless parasitic things THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE! THEY CAN NOT HAVE A SOUL!

Blockstream isn't evil. Is it??

[Quantus]

Large corporations are soulless parasitic things THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE! THEY CAN NOT HAVE A SOUL!

Blockstream isn't evil. Is it??

NO there is no such thing as EVIL only stupidity. They have been mislead.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Large corporations are soulless parasitic things THEY ARE NOT PEOPLE! THEY CAN NOT HAVE A SOUL!

Blockstream isn't evil. Is it??

NO there is no such thing as EVIL only stupidity. They have been mislead.

Holy cow! Does Gmax know about this?!

[Lauda]

You obviously do not know what agree to disagree means, I obviously think your position is invalided and incorrect, not necessarily wrong in the ethical sense, and also not necessarily wrong in an empirical sense either since we are dealing with subjective ideologies.

Of course I do. Your opinion is invalid due to the fact that you'd support a centralization just to transact on the main chain. You're talking about it like it's some kind of big deal when you compare it to the second layer; it is not.

I find it hard to fathom why you think that Bitcoin does not need to compete with other cryptocurrencies and alternatives, Bitcoin does not exist inside of a ivory tower, which I think much of your thinking is indicative off. The price to transact does matter and so does the user experience.

This is a straw man. This has nothing to do with my statement that the fees would correct themselves due to users joining and leaving. Similar does apply to mining it should be always marginally profitable.

I consider not increasing the blocksize the equivalent of crippling Bitcoin.

If you consider a horse to be a unicorn, does that make it one? What you consider something to be does not change the nature of what it is.

If you think that the will of the economic majority can kill the system with naivety then we have some fundamental disagreements about the merits of the collective wisdom of the crowd. Which I do think Bitcoin is fundamentally beholden towards.

If anything, the crowd has no wisdom, the crowd is ignorant and foolish at best (have you studied sociology at all?). Besides there is no "economic majority" that support an increase nor a HF away from Core. No matter how many times you repeat this lie, it is not going to become true.

Again you are not answering my question. I will be more specific. Take Democracy for example, as a political system it is very inefficient, however its advantages are worth the inefficiencies for ethical and ideological reasons. You seem to be ignoring these very important human principles when weighing up paths and visions for Bitcoins future. Bitcoin is more then just a robotic machine, human beings are a part of this machine, with their emotions, fears and even irrationality. I think that you are failing to take this into account, this is the very game theory that the Bitcoin of today relies on for its continued operation.

I could care less for humans, their emotions, fears and stupidity. What is the question here again?

You should try and embrace talking to people outside of your field of expertise. I might not be an expert in this field however after looking this up more it does seem like layer three is the best analogy for Bitcoin, since it is the network layer, not layer one or two. Since they already exist as the internet within a certain extend. So my argument comparing Bitcoin to the Internet Protocol still holds.

It doesn't. Layer three can't operate without layer two or one. If anything, Bitcoin would be considered layer one (LN and sidechains layer two and so on). Guess where the widely used protocols are (e.g. https, https); they must be on the first one right?

You are now creating a circular argument, which one is it, orphan rates will be significant enough to act as a force for smaller blocks, or there is no reason not to include transactions with lower fees? Which one is it? Both can not be true, you have clearly contradicted yourself here.

I mentioned orphan rates; I never said that they would force smaller blocks. You're taking things out of context.

If that is your position on segwit then I suppose you do not support any solution to scaling? I know that this is not true, since you did say you supported segwit in favor of a blocksize increase. So you are saying that you support an unsafe complex change to the network but we should not support a simple change to the network because it is unsafe? Can you see the contradiction in your statements?

If I haven't stated that segwit is safe (which would be a ignorant statement; your precious HF and 2 MB blocks aren't safe either), that does not mean that I called it unsafe. There are no perfect solutions; we balance out the pros and cons and then decide. Obviously Segwit is a tad complex (or a lot, depending on your knowledge and intellect; some even compared it to an altcoin), but it is being worked on from many aspects and views (e.g. P. Todd suggested something recently that would reduce the 'risks' even further).

[Quantus]

There is nothing wrong with parasitic companies using bitcoins blockchain to secure their decentralized databases, all healthy ecosystems have parasites.
I support Blockstream they are doing the best they can under the circumstances but there are those who wish to manipulate them and some of them I suspect are now puppets.