Satoshi Nakamoto: "Bitcoin can scale larger than the Visa Network"

[BittBurger]

Can someone explain to me why there is any debate when Nakamoto himself said:

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Quote from Mike Hearn:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=149668.msg1596879#msg1596879
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22Bitcoin+can+already+scale+much+larger+than+that+with+existing+hardware+for+a+fraction+of+the+cost.%22

• Satoshi did plan for Bitcoin to compete with PayPal/Visa in traffic volumes.
• The block size limit was a quick safety hack that was always meant to be removed.
• In fact, in the very first email he sent me back in April 2009, he said this:

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Email from Satoshi Nakamoto to Mike Hearn:

"Hi Mike,
I'm glad to answer any questions you have. If I get time, I ought to write a FAQ to supplement the paper.
There is only one global chain.

The existing Visa credit card network processes about 15 million Internet purchases per day worldwide. Bitcoin can already scale much larger than that with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost. It never really hits a scale ceiling. If you're interested, I can go over the ways it would cope with extreme size.  By Moore's Law, we can expect hardware speed to be 10 times faster in 5 years and 100 times faster in 10. Even if Bitcoin grows at crazy adoption rates, I think computer speeds will stay ahead of the number of transactions.

I don't anticipate that fees will be needed anytime soon, but if it becomes too burdensome to run a node, it is possible to run a node that only processes transactions that include a transaction fee. The owner of the node would decide the minimum fee they'll accept. Right now, such a node would get nothing, because nobody includes a fee, but if enough nodes did that, then users would get faster acceptance if they include a fee, or slower if they don't. The fee the market would settle on should be minimal. If a node requires a higher fee, that node would be passing up all transactions with lower fees. It could do more volume and probably make more money by processing as many paying transactions as it can. The transition is not controlled by some human in charge of the system though, just individuals reacting on their own to market forces.

Eventually, most nodes may be run by specialists with multiple GPU cards. For now, it's nice that anyone with a PC can play without worrying about what video card they have, and hopefully it'll stay that way for a while. More computers are shipping with fairly decent GPUs these days, so maybe later we'll transition to that."

~ Satoshi Nakamoto
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Quote:

"Satoshi said back in 2010 that he intended larger block sizes to be phased in with some simple if (height > flag_day) type logic, theymos has linked to the thread before. I think he would be really amazed at how much debate this thing has become. He never attributed much weight to it, it just didn't seem important to him. And yes, obviously, given the massive forum dramas that have resulted it'd have been nice if he had made the size limit floating from the start like he did with difficulty. However, he didn't and now we have to manage the transition."

~ Mike Hearn, on bitcointalk.org, March 07, 2013, 06:15:30 PM

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg15366
bit.ly/1YqiV41

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Quote from Satoshi:

It can be phased in, like:

if (blocknumber > 115000)
    maxblocksize = largerlimit

It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.  When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.

~ Satoshi Nakamoto, on bitcointalk.org, October 04, 2010, 07:48:40 PM

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So now,

If Satoshi himself "never really gave block size limit much weight"  (he assumed scaling was an obvious need that would happen quickly and easily), why are a group of developers refusing to scale the protocol... while simultaneously creating a tool that will generate massive income by moving transactions off the block chain, and into their exclusive transaction processing system (Lightening Network)?  Is it any wonder they were given nearly $50 million in VC funding when VC's realized they just took over Bitcoin transaction processing?

Is this not blatantly changing the design and purpose Satoshi gave to Bitcoin (to freely scale to massive sizes, to support on-chain transaction needs).  This seems to be of grave concern, no?

-B-

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[Lauda]

By Moore's Law, we can expect hardware speed to be 10 times faster in 5 years and 100 times faster in 10. Even if Bitcoin grows at crazy adoption rates, I think computer speeds will stay ahead of the number of transactions.

Did it increase by tenfold in 5 years? Not even close. Satoshi did not have the adequate data here.

Satoshi certainly didn’t do much (if any) analysis of the scaling limitations of Bitcoin.

We need not appeal to authority. Just because Satoshi invented it, that does not mean that he knows the answers to everything.

[sgbett]

I can't explain it.

The people who have decided to change Bitcoin by not doing these things keep trying to explain it.

The elephant in the room just will not go away though. The limit was a temporary fix.

[CIYAM]

The elephant in the room just will not go away though. The limit was a temporary fix.

You do realise that a block as big as 64 MB will take a lot longer than 10 minutes to verify on anything but the most costly hardware?

(so if Satoshi had "got it right" with the original block size then Bitcoin wouldn't be able to even produce blocks as quickly as 10 minutes and no-one but corporations would be able to afford to even run full nodes - but hey who cares about inconvenient truths such as those)

[Quantus]

Satoshi was wrong about so many things.

[Maslate]

Satoshi did a fork by adding one line, why cannot the Core do the same?

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Quote from satoshi:
It can be phased in, like:

if (blocknumber > 115000)
    maxblocksize = largerlimit

It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.  When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.

~ Satoshi Nakamoto, on bitcointalk.org, October 04, 2010, 07:48:40 PM

[CIYAM]

Satoshi did a fork by adding one line, why cannot the Core do the same?

Sure - you could change it to say 100 MB or say 10 GB by a very simple coding change.

Result - no-one can verify all the txs in a block in 10 minutes (maybe not even in an hour) - oops - blockchain stops working. But at least it was a "quick fix".

Lesson to be learned:

"Just because something can be changed easily doesn't mean that such a change is actually a good idea."

[Amph]

Satoshi was wrong about so many things.

like? he said "expect" not that it will be exactly 10 times higher, so it's still a legit prediction

[Zarathustra]

Satoshi was wrong about so many things.

like? he said "expect" not that it will be exactly 10 times higher, so it's still a legit prediction

Yes, it doesn't matter if he was exactly right or not about it. The message is clear.
To the shills of the segwit trojan horse even 4 MB is - surprise! - no problem:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/492tnm/if_according_to_core_roadmap_segwit_will_be/d0p0jes?context=3

[sgbett]

The elephant in the room just will not go away though. The limit was a temporary fix.

You do realise that a block as big as 64 MB will take a lot longer than 10 minutes to verify on anything but the most costly hardware?

(so if Satoshi had "got it right" with the original block size then Bitcoin wouldn't be able to even produce blocks as quickly as 10 minutes and no-one but corporations would be able to afford to even run full nodes - but hey who cares about inconvenient truths such as those)

Premise:
- 64MB blocks are allowed
- 64MB blocks take over 10 minutes to verify

Question:
What financial incentive exists for a miner to produce such a block?

[Lethn]

That's very interesting, so what he's saying is that the network should have no problems handling an increase in the amount of transactions then. Was this limit put in to prevent people from spamming transactions until there was enough network hashing power to cope with an increase if I'm understanding this correctly?

[CIYAM]

Premise:
- 64MB blocks are allowed
- 64MB blocks take over 10 minutes to verify

Question:
What financial incentive exists for a miner to produce such a block?

Am very glad you asked this question.

Let's say you are a rich corporation with money to waste on the most expensive mining rigs, supporting computers and the best bandwidth available on the planet.

You now expend all of those resources to fill up your blocks with 64 MB of txs (create your own txs if you can't find enough from others in the mempool) which basically no-one else can do (and will struggle to even verify in 10 minutes).

You now *own* the blockchain and get all the fees and block rewards - of course that means that Bitcoin is no longer decentralised but of course you'd try and pretend that you were more than one identity wouldn't you.

The people that think getting Bitcoin to compete with the likes of VISA is just a question of increasing block size are naive at best (or at worst are actually being paid by whoever is wanting to gain control).

[pedrog]

The elephant in the room just will not go away though. The limit was a temporary fix.

You do realise that a block as big as 64 MB will take a lot longer than 10 minutes to verify on anything but the most costly hardware?

(so if Satoshi had "got it right" with the original block size then Bitcoin wouldn't be able to even produce blocks as quickly as 10 minutes and no-one but corporations would be able to afford to even run full nodes - but hey who cares about inconvenient truths such as those)

Premise:
- 64MB blocks are allowed
- 64MB blocks take over 10 minutes to verify

Question:
What financial incentive exists for a miner to produce such a block?

A shitload of money...

When we can fill a 64 MB block, or if we will ever fill a 64 MB block, there's probably no subsidy anymore, so miners make money with transactions fees, to collect such fees they need to include transactions in blocks, the more the merrier, big blocks is how they pay their bills, there's your incentive.

[sgbett]

Premise:
- 64MB blocks are allowed
- 64MB blocks take over 10 minutes to verify

Question:
What financial incentive exists for a miner to produce such a block?

Am very glad you asked this question.

Let's say you are a rich corporation with money to waste on the most expensive mining rigs, supporting computers and the best bandwidth available on the planet.

You now expend all of those resources to fill up your blocks with 64 MB of txs (create your own if you can't find enough in the mempool) which basically no-one else can do (and will struggle to even verify in 10 minutes).

You now *own* the blockchain and get all the fees and block rewards - of course that means that Bitcoin is no longer decentralised but of course you'd try and pretend that you were more than one identity wouldn't you.

The people that think getting Bitcoin to compete with the likes of VISA is just a question of increasing block size are naive at best (or perhaps more likely are being paid by whoever is wanting to gain control).

As a bad actor how do you mitigate SPV mining?

How quickly do you think other miners will ignore your 'malicious' blocks?

If such a malicious actor exists how does a 1MB block size limit stop them from attacking/destroying bitcoin?

[sgbett]

The elephant in the room just will not go away though. The limit was a temporary fix.

You do realise that a block as big as 64 MB will take a lot longer than 10 minutes to verify on anything but the most costly hardware?

(so if Satoshi had "got it right" with the original block size then Bitcoin wouldn't be able to even produce blocks as quickly as 10 minutes and no-one but corporations would be able to afford to even run full nodes - but hey who cares about inconvenient truths such as those)

Premise:
- 64MB blocks are allowed
- 64MB blocks take over 10 minutes to verify

Question:
What financial incentive exists for a miner to produce such a block?

A shitload of money...

When we can fill a 64 MB block, or if we will ever fill a 64 MB block, there's probably no subsidy anymore, so miners make money with transactions fees, to collect such fees they need to include transactions in blocks, the more the merrier, big blocks is how they pay their bills, there's your incentive.

correct!

So as a rational actor you include as many as you think you can get away with without somebody else beating you to the punch.

[CIYAM]

How quickly do you think other miners will ignore your 'malicious' blocks?

If you've changed the rules to say that 64MB blocks are legit then they are not "malicious" by definition (they would be in accordance with the consensus rules) so they can't be ignored.

If such a malicious actor exists how does a 1MB block size limit stop them from attacking/destroying bitcoin?

Because everyone with even fairly average bandwidth and supporting hardware can compete to create the next block (which is what happens now).

The reason that SPV mining is used currently is to try and get a slight advantage that poor bandwidth would otherwise prevent.

[sgbett]

How quickly do you think other miners will ignore your 'malicious' blocks?

If you've changed the rules to say that 64MB blocks are legit then they are not "malicious" by definition (they would be in accordance with the consensus rules).

If such a malicious actor exists how does a 1MB block size limit stop them from attacking/destroying bitcoin?

Because everyone with even fairly average bandwidth and supporting hardware can compete to create the next block (which is what happens now).

Your theoretical bad actor mounts a 51% attack => bitcoin is destroyed.

[Lauda]

You do realise that a block as big as 64 MB will take a lot longer than 10 minutes to verify on anything but the most costly hardware?

Actually this can happen at 2 MB block size limit due to the problem of quadratic scaling. Segwit aims to improve on this problem by scaling it down to make it linear. Gavin does acknowledge this as his own proposal (BIP 109) contains a workaround that prevents this from happening (sigops limitation).

Was this limit put in to prevent people from spamming transactions until there was enough network hashing power to cope with an increase if I'm understanding this correctly?

No. The problem is not directly related to the hashing power. You can look at three factors: 1) Storage; 2) Bandwidth; 3) Processing power (for validation).
Update: Corrections (typo at 3rd point).

[psybits]

If Satoshi came back and helped solve this debate now that would be something.

[CIYAM]

Your theoretical bad actor mounts a 51% attack => bitcoin is destroyed.

That is of course up to them (they might happily continue to reap the benefits of the block rewards and fees).

Of course if they did end up with >50% (you don't actually need 51% but for some reason people are fixated on that number) they might be tempted to take advantage of a huge double-spend opportunity.