The Blocksize Debate & Concerns

[RealBitcoin]

What happens when exuberantly wealthy Bitcoiners with highly eccentric proclivities vote for correspondingly bizarre proposals? (those people demonstratively exist, lol)

He who has the money , has the power. Money is a strategic organization of the finite resources of our planet, if he can move a lot of resources, he by definition has a lot of power, that has to be respected (even if you dont like it).

Bitcoin is money. Therefore if a person has many bitcoin, he by definition has a  lot of power over bitcoin.

Perhaps it could work as a separate blockchain, but you've gotta have one person<>one vote, and that depends on an identity system. I think your motive is admirable, but I think you need to work on the game theory behind the incentives in such a system. Transparent signalling of intent is a good idea in principle.

Yes i need to clear up the OP of that thread, and reformulate my idea, a lot of new things have came into my mind, but i just simply dont have the time now to write a lenghty article about that. But i will rewrite it and then see what comes out of it.

[Carlton Banks]

I don't know, your first reply above is a pretty convincing appraisal of your original idea (and you've had some time to distill that rhetoric since you originally came up with the idea).

It should be tried. It's possible that the information it produces could be more influential than I can currently account for... it should be tried. Find a willing coder, better still, do the coding yourself.

[franky1]

Nope, Satoshi actually left in 2011, shortly after Gavin Andresen announce his trip to Langley HQ (where your paycheck ultimately comes from, remember them?). Shortly after I got into Bitcoin, in fact.

2010


wait next your going to say that satoshi loved using github
welll sorry to burst your biased ignorant and unresearched bubble

he prefered sourceforge.
even on his very last active day he wasnt uploading anything to the core github repo


and wait for it... i can predict your next fail.. so ill just save u the trouble.

"core" was envisioned after satoshi left.. while satoshi was around it was simply bitcoin QT..
satoshi did not decide to throw everything into one repo location
satoshi did not decide to build a corporation to pay devs
satoshi did not decide to call it core..

the only reason you are twisting things is to attempt to make people think that centralization is good. as long as you have a couple people unpaid who just do some grammar corrections of the userguide to make it not seem centralized because dozens of people that make mini edits makes the dozen elitists seem less elite

atleast grow a back bone and own your assumptions and desires of corporate control. rather then faking your desire for decentralization and then be dead against anything thats not blockstream central

[Cuidler]

I think there shouldn't be any blocksize limit.  We can worry about fees in a few decades.

Unlimited, or big enought blocksize to not create artifical limit doesnt mean miners wont earn enought fees at all.

I already see many miners have set minimum fee per KB to even include your transaction to the block. You can often check this fee treshold when non full block is mined, then you might see like minimum 10 satoshi per byte is required (or other value), and no transactions with lower fees added even though there are many in mempool and block space left.

So miners are not dumb and they often setting fee per KB required - so they going to collect reasonable fees no matter whether the blocksize limit is not artifically restricted.

[franky1]

as for realbitcoins idea about voting using coins

id say its good in theory to let people who hold alot, to have a say
rather than just 13 main devs
or
rather than just 20 main pools
or
rather than just 6000 nodes

but here is something im afraid to say that me and carlton would probably agree on
coinbase will use their vault funds to make a large vote for their own single CEO mindset. instead of the 2million users individual votes/mindsets if they didnt put their funds into coinbases control.
same goes for other exchanges. the CEO's one voice may contradict the voice of their own users.

so any decision should not be based purely on one small demograph

[RealBitcoin]

coinbase will use their vault funds to make a large vote for their own single CEO mindset. instead of the 2million users individual votes/mindsets if they didnt put their funds into coinbases control.
same goes for other exchanges. the CEO's one voice may contradict the voice of their own users.

so any decision should not be based purely on one small demograph

People should hold their coins in their own wallets FFS.

I cannot understand these idiots who would rather have a 3rd party taking care of his money. We will end up with bitcoin banks then...

[franky1]

People should hold their coins in their own wallets FFS.

I cannot understand these idiots who would rather have a 3rd party taking care of his money. We will end up with bitcoin banks then...

agreed
but thats where the devs should be more concentrating on making things "granny friendly" to increase individual usability rather than trying to complicate things in favour of non bitcoin use (sidechains).

take for instance buzzwords like "bi-directional payment channels"
the actual fact is that the technology is simply multisignature transactions

also blockstream are making "liquid". so that users of exchanges dont need to withdraw bitcoin from exchanges and instead transfer funds internally to different exchanges using a different protocol. kinda funny

[Carlton Banks]

wait next your going to say that satoshi loved using github
welll sorry to burst your biased ignorant and unresearched bubble

he prefered sourceforge.

I didn't need to research that, I knew already.


Github was nowhere in 2009 when Satoshi started Bitcoin. I don't think it even existed, care to do the research on that one, Franky? You are good for something after all . I have better things to do with my time

[AliceGored]

Miners could change the 21 million coin limit, they would face serious economic consequences for that. They could also increase the throughput of Bitcoin, which they might be rewarded for. I get that you don't like the white paper's definition of CPU led consensus, why not start an altcoin that does away with it in reality, rather than just in your mind?

Why don't you start the altcoin motherfucker? There's nothing wrong with CPU led consensus, you just don't care about the fact that it is not the only factor when it doesn't suit your argument. Because you do actually understand that POW is not the only mechanism determining which version of the software prevails on the network, you've proved you already understand that.

And miners could force your 2MB2MB2MB fork also. Interesting how that hasn't happened, huh? Despite the supposed "reward"

I accept that the current CPU led consensus is for 1MB blocks. I also would accept a Bitcoin where it had been raised by CPU consensus. PoW is the mechanism, and it doesn't happen in a vacuum, which is why I describe the indirect economic incentive structure that underlies it.

How many times today are we going to have to correct something you wrote an entire paragraph about, correctly?


PoW is not the only mechanism.

You haven’t corrected me on anything, not for lack of trying. PoW is the mechanism by which miners reach consensus on the correct version of the chain, full stop.

There are direct and indirect economic forces that inform, punish, or award these choices, as I have described upthread.

As for the rest of your troll replies, pfffffffff. You're just perusing the exact bent logic you've used already, or simply putting heavily exaggerated words in my mouth. Trolling, whichever way you try to dice it.

If anyone was trolled today, it was the miners who made a “grand consensus” agreement with “individuals” in Hong Kong. I bet they feel quite foolish today, they made an effort at a good faith compromise… only, months later, these “individuals” have spit in their faces, some via comment, some via lack thereof. I’d be reconsidering the wisdom of putting my future in the hands of these guys right about now.

Only if they're perusing logic, tho.

[franky1]

meanwhile in a totally different subject, carlton flips his mindset for one moment to make the main point i have been saying for years

Exactly, the last thing Bitcoin needs is even more self-appointed centres of the universe We've got multiple organisations making out like they're "Bitcoin officials" already

i think carlton needs to be called "flip flop".. because he likes to flip around words.. but when he tries defending blockstream dominance.. he flops

[jonald_fyookball]

I think there shouldn't be any blocksize limit.  We can worry about fees in a few decades.

Unlimited, or big enought blocksize to not create artifical limit doesnt mean miners wont earn enought fees at all.

I already see many miners have set minimum fee per KB to even include your transaction to the block. You can often check this fee treshold when non full block is mined, then you might see like minimum 10 satoshi per byte is required (or other value), and no transactions with lower fees added even though there are many in mempool and block space left.

So miners are not dumb and they often setting fee per KB required - so they going to collect reasonable fees no matter whether the blocksize limit is not artifically restricted.

The bigger debate is "does a healthy fee market exist with no blocksize limit". Some have argued it does and even written papers on it (Peter R).
But even if they are wrong, it should not be a concern in 2016...and surprise surprise, it is (to Blockstream).

[franky1]

forcing a fee war is not a concern today for the miners. they are already happily compensated and will continue to be compensated for decades.

but even in the medium term of the next 2-4 years. trying to drag people over to sidechains and LN is not really proving that blockstream cares about giving BITCOIN pools a nice fee bonus. or doing what they can to ensure bitcoin miners continue running to keep at a high enough difficulty to protect bitcoins blockdata..
its too obvious that the roadmap and all the "game theory" buzzword flops have nothing to do with strengthening bitcoin.. but more so a simple bait and switch game.

the reality is more obvious..  they want to make bitcoins blockchain feel unusable in the next couple years to push people offchain.
along with that we have already seen them blackmail miners, risking the difficulty of 7 years of hashpower growth.. over what.. well thats obvious

the "agenda" is not a usable bitcoin blockchain. but instead locking funds to become unusable onchain as a stepping stone to get users used to not using bitcoins onchain network and then creating new value on alternate chains, making the locking of bitcoins more permanent.. where miners would then switch over to protect the other chains and ultimately kill off bitcoin, because everyones using the altcoin.

they have set milestones they need to hit to make all that happen. and tranches of private investment that will release at each of those milestones.

one of which is by core offering "pruned" "no witness" mode as an attempt to reduce the full node count. along with telling the community there is no real need to upgrade as everything is backward compatible..
strange to tell 6000 people who want to be dedicated full nodes, that they dont need to upgrade thus not retain full validating status..
full nodes want to be full nodes because .. they want to be full nodes.. its simple..

features such as pruned/no-witness should be only available for nextgen versions of electrum or multibit and all the other lightnodes. not available for core. as that is making anyone using them features in core, simply a false node and not helping the network.

but all we will see is more insulting defensive cries from carlton and then most probably a message from lauda backing carlton up, followed by carlton quoting lauda in some celebratory manner that they both admire each others opinion.

i feel sorry for those deep in the blockstream defense party.

[RealBitcoin]

features such as pruned/no-witness should be only available for nextgen versions of electrum or multibit and all the other lightnodes. not available for core. as that is making anyone using them features in core, simply a false node and not helping the network.

But you dont realize that a softfork is a softwork, meaning that anyone can implement it.

If green martians would start using bitcoin and code for themselves a softworked lightweight mode then they can already do that.

Any softfork patch, is just saying that anyone can do that ,and requires no consensus. Just as you can code anything softly and run your own client.

There is no way to prevent people using electrum, multibit or pruned node. Its open source code!


However when you require a hardfork, then you need the miners participation, because then you are actually creating an altcoin, that can only become bitcoin if all miners and exchanges swap to it.

[VERUMinNUMERIS]

People should hold their coins in their own wallets FFS.

I cannot understand these idiots who would rather have a 3rd party taking care of his money. We will end up with bitcoin banks then...

Not everybody is tech savvy.  That's one big thing holding BTC adoption back.

[jonald_fyookball]

the reality is more obvious..  they want to make bitcoins blockchain feel unusable in the next couple years to push people offchain.

well that pisses me right off and should piss off just about every bitcoiner.

[RealBitcoin]

People should hold their coins in their own wallets FFS.

I cannot understand these idiots who would rather have a 3rd party taking care of his money. We will end up with bitcoin banks then...

Not everybody is tech savvy.  That's one big thing holding BTC adoption back.

You dont have to be. It's not like you have to code your wallet yourself.

You just download it from a website, and figure things out foryourself. Optionally transfer like 10000 satoshi to it and play around with that until you get used to it.

It's very simple with Electrum, one of the simplest wallets, even simpler with mobile phone wallets.

There is just no excuse for not being able to control your money, those people that held their coins in Gox and Criptsy, did really deserve that. But people dont learn and many more shit like that will happen.

[franky1]

features such as pruned/no-witness should be only available for nextgen versions of electrum or multibit and all the other lightnodes. not available for core. as that is making anyone using them features in core, simply a false node and not helping the network.

But you dont realize that a softfork is a softwork, meaning that anyone can implement it.

If green martians would start using bitcoin and code for themselves a softworked lightweight mode then they can already do that.

Any softfork patch, is just saying that anyone can do that ,and requires no consensus. Just as you can code anything softly and run your own client.

There is no way to prevent people using electrum, multibit or pruned node. Its open source code!


However when you require a hardfork, then you need the miners participation, because then you are actually creating an altcoin, that can only become bitcoin if all miners and exchanges swap to it.

did you not get the memo.. for segwit to really succeed it requires pools to be using it, otherwise they wont add a segwit transaction to their block attempts.
yea once its in a block non-upgrades can look passed it. but to actually get segwit transactions into a block, requires pools to fully validate the transaction and accept it.
and thats why it is now become public that mining pools need to show 95% acceptance to upgrade. and ofcourse why blockstream is blackmailing them if they dont accept..
so while there is a 95% requirement for an upgrade and a X week time period for the other 5%.. you might aswell take that perfect opportunity to add the hard fork code..
after all fullnodes will want to be full nodes after an upgrade anyway.

and even better.. once the codebase has been upgraded. the actual USAGE(activation) of features such as segwit and a bump in the blocksize can actually be set for whenever they like. EG segwit 2 weeks and blocklimit 6 months.. knowing that it only require people to download 0.13 to get both, rather than 0.13 and later a re-run of consensus to get 0.14 going.. where your own argument begins again with 0.14.

its simple logic, and requires no blackmail. just put in the code but if afraid of it not being "secure" have the blocklimit bump delayed a bit longer.. but atleast have the code publicly available soon/now so there is no controversy. and lots of time to check it over

as i said and many others have said its only a controversy if its not available. make it available and the only thing left to cry about is the timing of activation.

[franky1]

People should hold their coins in their own wallets FFS.

I cannot understand these idiots who would rather have a 3rd party taking care of his money. We will end up with bitcoin banks then...

Not everybody is tech savvy.  That's one big thing holding BTC adoption back.

You dont have to be. It's not like you have to code your wallet yourself.

You just download it from a website, and figure things out foryourself. Optionally transfer like 10000 satoshi to it and play around with that until you get used to it.

It's very simple with Electrum, one of the simplest wallets, even simpler with mobile phone wallets.

There is just no excuse for not being able to control your money, those people that held their coins in Gox and Criptsy, did really deserve that. But people dont learn and many more shit like that will happen.

we understand the sentements and we would all love to get our relatives to use bitcoin locally instead of centrally. but its still not user friendly.
even things like microsoft office have a little tutorial. and bitcoin needs to be more user friendly and more intuitive than microsoft word.

EG not needing to use commands to dump privkey. probably even renaming it from "wallet" to "key ring". making it automatically taught that the most important thing is the private key/seed.

[RealBitcoin]

did you not get the memo.. for segwit to really succeed it requires miners to be using it, otherwise they wont add a segwit transaction to their block attempts.
yea once its in a block non-upgrades can look passed it. but to actually get segwit transactions into a block, requires miners to fully validate the transaction and accept it.
and thats why it is now become public that mining pools need to show 95% acceptance to upgrade. and ofcourse why blockstream is blackmailing them if they dont accept..
so while there is a 95% requirement for an upgrade and a X week time period for the other 5%.. you might aswell take that perfect oppertunity to add the hard fork code..
after all fullnodes will want to be full nodes after an upgrade.

and even better.. once the codebase has been upgraded. the actual USAGE of features such as segwit and a bump in the blocksize can actually be set for whenever they like. EG segwit 2 weeks and blocklimit 6 months.. knowing that it only require people to download 0.13 to get both, rather than 0.13 and later a re-run of consensus to get 0.14 going..

its simple logic, and requires no blackmail. just put in the code but if afraid of it not being "secure" have the blocklimit delayed a bit longer.. but atlease have the code publicly available soon/now so there is no controversy.

as i said and many others have said its only a controversy if its not available. make it available and the only thing left to cry about is the timing of activation.

Well if you put it like that, maybe. The main website does talk about block size limit increase, but to my knowledge its currently debated.

https://bitcoincore.org/en/2015/12/23/capacity-increases-faq/

Many engineers and academics have come out and said that blocksize increase is not feasable. But we need more research on this.

[RealBitcoin]

we understand the sentements and we would all love to get our relatives to use bitcoin locally instead of centrally. but its still not user friendly.
even things like microsoft office have a little tutorial. and bitcoin needs to be more user friendly and more intuitive than microsoft word.

EG not needing to use commands to dump privkey. probably even renaming it from "wallet" to "key ring". making it automatically taught that the most important thing is the private key/seed.

What's the point?

When I first downloaded electrum ,i figured out to use it in 2 minutes, with no tutorial or any other documentation.

Maybe it's just because I have an IQ of 141, and with an IQ of 70 it's really hard to figure out how stuff works.

But i think its very very simple. I do know to code a little, and i am somewhat experienced with PC interface, but so do most people, especially younger folks.

Any person with half a brain can really learn it in max 1-2 days, even if they are totally new. There are tutorials, helpful people on this forum, and the official documentation if you want to dig deeper.

There is really no excuse for not learning it, its so basic, you dont need a diploma.

But I just see that there are many dumb people in the world that are as intelligent as a stone, but i hope that bitcoin and other decentralized projects will teach people to be more familiar with open source software and digital stuff.