Dear Satoshi Nakamoto

[Qartada]

Reading the comments i have seen many people criticizing Satoshi that he did not make any changes to the block size limit at that time and so is the reason we are having issues right now,first thing everyone must understand is bitcoin at that time was a prototype and every software needs upgrades to keep up with time and that is the exact thing we need now,we need a good upgrade to solve the issue and what is best must be determined after careful thought process and testing.

Bitcoin is not software like Microsoft Windows is software.  It can't just be upgraded at will by the Bitcoin Core team, otherwise it wouldn't be the same immutable blockchain that it's supposed to be.  It takes mining support and a lot of effort and lot of proposed open source code for any upgrade to go through.

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[eaLiTy]

The point is that a crypto currency is not "software", it is a contractual protocol.  Upgrading a contract is difficult.

Crypto currency might not be a software but the process requires you to implement and run everything using a software and every software needs up gradation with time,  but here all the issues are centered around the block limit and since here in this case if the majority of nodes agrees to the changes then there wont be any issues in upgrading .It might not be that easy because there are many interest between different parties and unless there is an amicable solution they are literally killing the golden goose.

[dinofelis]

The point is that a crypto currency is not "software", it is a contractual protocol.  Upgrading a contract is difficult.

Crypto currency might not be a software but the process requires you to implement and run everything using a software and every software needs up gradation with time,  but here all the issues are centered around the block limit and since here in this case if the majority of nodes agrees to the changes then there wont be any issues in upgrading .It might not be that easy because there are many interest between different parties and unless there is an amicable solution they are literally killing the golden goose.

My point was that the *protocol* can be implemented by gazillion of software packages, that can update and add features as much as they like, as long as they implement the same protocol.  However, the protocol itself is a contract, which can only be changed if all parties agree, which is usually not the case if that change involves more advantages for some parties, and less for others.
The block size is such a change: more and cheaper transactions for users, less power and fees for miners. 

[dinofelis]

What stops the mining oligarchy from starting again from the genesis block and get 50 BTC block rewards? As soon as they connect to other validating nodes with the full  blockchain history they would have to sync to it!

If ALL (or a very large majority) of miners decided to redo the chain, introducing a soft fork on the second block after the genesis block, so that they *would not* accept the traditional chain, then the traditional chain would come to a grinding halt entirely.  You would simply not get any block any more on the original chain ; or you would get a block ever so slowly if a small minority of miners decided to continue mining it.

Note that those redoing miners wouldn't be hindered at all by "non mining nodes having a better block chain", because they would simply introduce a softfork with a requirement (say, a check point) on the new block just after the genesis block.  Of course these miners would be aware of the original chain, and not bother !  Miners make the chains they like and don't HAVE to follow rules.  But they want to follow rules, because it is by following rules that they make block chains on which people buy their tokens.

The only question would be: what would motivate miners to do that ?  Of course, everyone would SEE that the normal bitcoin block chain is dead - until the newly mined chain overtakes the total hash power of the original chain, which can take a year or so.  At that point, all bitcoin holders would see an empty balance on the new chain.  And nobody is going to buy anything from these miners.

So what crazy set of miners would waste a year of mining on a chain that is not going to contain tokens that nobody is going to buy, instead of continuing to mine tokens on an existing chain where the tokens are worth a lot ?

So, essentially, the thing that stops them from doing that, is that those coins could not be sold to any fool anywhere.

Again, the whole block chain is simply produced by miners, and only by miners, because the block chain in bitcoin needs PoW and miners are the only providers of PoW.  Without PoW, nobody else can make a block chain, so miners are sole master of the AVAILABLE PoW block chains.  But miners are sensitive to the people (idiots ?) who pay for the coins they make on that block chain: they want them to keep paying for the coins they make.  So miners cannot mess too much with them.  Not because they run nodes, but because they are the people paying for the tokens on the chains they make.

[deisik]

What stops the mining oligarchy from starting again from the genesis block and get 50 BTC block rewards? As soon as they connect to other validating nodes with the full  blockchain history they would have to sync to it!

If ALL (or a very large majority) of miners decided to redo the chain, introducing a soft fork on the second block after the genesis block, so that they *would not* accept the traditional chain, then the traditional chain would come to a grinding halt entirely.  You would simply not get any block any more on the original chain ; or you would get a block ever so slowly if a small minority of miners decided to continue mining it

I guess you are not telling the whole truth here

And it seems like you do that deliberately so that what you say next should fit better into your logic and sound more plausible. First of all, if all current mining pools decide to leave (let's assume that they just completely shut down their operation, for the beginning), the mining difficulty will quickly adjust (within two weeks), and after about a month we will be in exactly the same situation as before top miners leaving. New miners will just fill the void as soon as they see such a possibility. Let's now proceed to miners starting their own fork. Basically, we will have a dozen users of what would otherwise be a new altcoin. So what would make all users want to switch to this coin? These users are not interested in the raw hash power that this new coin will provide, and they will most certainly prefer to remain with the "old" Bitcoin, and then we are essentially back to our first assumption, i.e. when all top miners just choose to leave

[dinofelis]

What stops the mining oligarchy from starting again from the genesis block and get 50 BTC block rewards? As soon as they connect to other validating nodes with the full  blockchain history they would have to sync to it!

If ALL (or a very large majority) of miners decided to redo the chain, introducing a soft fork on the second block after the genesis block, so that they *would not* accept the traditional chain, then the traditional chain would come to a grinding halt entirely.  You would simply not get any block any more on the original chain ; or you would get a block ever so slowly if a small minority of miners decided to continue mining it

I guess you are not telling the whole truth here

And it seems like you do that deliberately so that what you say next should fit better into your logic and sound more plausible. First of all, if all current mining pools decide to leave (let's assume that they just completely shut down their operation, for the beginning), the mining difficulty will quickly adjust (within two weeks)

No, that is not right.  Not within two weeks, within 2016 blocks.  

You first have to mine 2016 blocks at the old difficulty.  That's a "feature" of bitcoin that many altcoins corrected, but it can also be a thing on purpose, to make hard forks very risky and difficult.

So if, say, 95% of the miners stop mining tomorrow, and there are still 1008 blocks to go to the next difficulty adjustment, then you still have to mine 1008 blocks at the *current* difficulty, which was about so that with the previous hash rate, we would get a block every 10 minutes.  However, if you only have 1/20 of the hash rate mining right now, that takes 20 times longer.  So instead of 1 week before you have your 1008 blocks, you'd be doing this for 20 weeks, before the next difficulty adjustment.
Moreover, a difficulty adjustement can never be more than a certain factor (I think from the top of my head that it is 4, but I'm not sure).
If it is 4, then next time, the difficulty will be 4 times less, not 20 times less as it should be.  So the next 2016 blocks will take not 2 weeks, but 10 weeks before you get another difficulty adjustment.

In other words, if 95% of the miners leave in the middle of a difficulty period, you're 30 weeks gone before things return more or less to normal, and in those 30 weeks, you'd mine about 3000 blocks (instead of 30 000 blocks).

(I can be wrong with the factor of 4)

[AngelSky]

Reading the comments i have seen many people criticizing Satoshi that he did not make any changes to the block size limit at that time and so is the reason we are having issues right now,first thing everyone must understand is bitcoin at that time was a prototype and every software needs upgrades to keep up with time and that is the exact thing we need now,we need a good upgrade to solve the issue and what is best must be determined after careful thought process and testing.

Bitcoin is not software like Microsoft Windows is software.  It can't just be upgraded at will by the Bitcoin Core team, otherwise it wouldn't be the same immutable blockchain that it's supposed to be.  It takes mining support and a lot of effort and lot of proposed open source code for any upgrade to go through.

If bitcoin wants to upgrade, they always choose the most suitable source for development, and they will definitely organize a poll for everyone who is mine explorer on the lake. That is also the reason why bitcoin exists long term and is constantly growing. Perhaps, if the heads of the right to upgrade the bitcoin, they will conduct segwit, while segwit is not really necessary for bitcoin.

Segwit and BU have been came arise to pull the bitcoin in the world. Bitcoin existence is from the year 2009 and rate of people use in numbers has been increased to billions now. This is the reason we have been popular and exists in the world. Apart that bitcoin's price value and features such as anonymity, payment mode and fewer fees are attracting to the people. Therefore, will have the long life for bitcoin.

[paul gatt]

Reading the comments i have seen many people criticizing Satoshi that he did not make any changes to the block size limit at that time and so is the reason we are having issues right now,first thing everyone must understand is bitcoin at that time was a prototype and every software needs upgrades to keep up with time and that is the exact thing we need now,we need a good upgrade to solve the issue and what is best must be determined after careful thought process and testing.

Bitcoin is not software like Microsoft Windows is software.  It can't just be upgraded at will by the Bitcoin Core team, otherwise it wouldn't be the same immutable blockchain that it's supposed to be.  It takes mining support and a lot of effort and lot of proposed open source code for any upgrade to go through.

If bitcoin wants to upgrade, they always choose the most suitable source for development, and they will definitely organize a poll for everyone who is mine explorer on the lake. That is also the reason why bitcoin exists long term and is constantly growing. Perhaps, if the heads of the right to upgrade the bitcoin, they will conduct segwit, while segwit is not really necessary for bitcoin.

[deisik]

What stops the mining oligarchy from starting again from the genesis block and get 50 BTC block rewards? As soon as they connect to other validating nodes with the full  blockchain history they would have to sync to it!

If ALL (or a very large majority) of miners decided to redo the chain, introducing a soft fork on the second block after the genesis block, so that they *would not* accept the traditional chain, then the traditional chain would come to a grinding halt entirely.  You would simply not get any block any more on the original chain ; or you would get a block ever so slowly if a small minority of miners decided to continue mining it

I guess you are not telling the whole truth here

And it seems like you do that deliberately so that what you say next should fit better into your logic and sound more plausible. First of all, if all current mining pools decide to leave (let's assume that they just completely shut down their operation, for the beginning), the mining difficulty will quickly adjust (within two weeks)

No, that is not right.  Not within two weeks, within 2016 blocks. 

You first have to mine 2016 blocks at the old difficulty.  That's a "feature" of bitcoin that many altcoins corrected, but it can also be a thing on purpose, to make hard forks very risky and difficult

Even if we take your view there is nothing really dramatic going to happen

So instead of 10 minutes between blocks we will have to wait 200 minutes, i.e. roughly 3 hours for a few weeks. As to me, this is not too big a price to finally get rid of rogue and corrupted miners once and for good. And this is obviously the worst case scenario. It should be clear that as soon as evil miners are gone, there will be a quick patch accepted by the remaining consensus that would adjust the difficulty as required to continue flawless and uninterruptible operation of the Bitcoin network. Any way you look at it, the leaving miners would be shooting themselves right in the head

[dinofelis]

So instead of 10 minutes between blocks we will have to wait 200 minutes, i.e. roughly 3 hours for a few weeks.

Well, "a few weeks" is 20 weeks if it happened mid-period, or, what, 4 months.  If it happened at the beginning of a period, that would become 40 weeks, or some 8 months.

With a block every 3 hours, that comes down to a transaction capacity as if the blocks were not 1 MB now, but rather 50 KB, during 4 or 8 months, followed by another period where things improve somewhat.

Of course, nothing would stop people at that point from doing a hard fork, and modifying the difficulty by hand. 

[deisik]

So instead of 10 minutes between blocks we will have to wait 200 minutes, i.e. roughly 3 hours for a few weeks.

Well, "a few weeks" is 20 weeks if it happened mid-period, or, what, 4 months.  If it happened at the beginning of a period, that would become 40 weeks, or some 8 months.

With a block every 3 hours, that comes down to a transaction capacity as if the blocks were not 1 MB now, but rather 50 KB, during 4 or 8 months, followed by another period where things improve somewhat.

Of course, nothing would stop people at that point from doing a hard fork, and modifying the difficulty by hand

And you can be pretty sure that people will quickly switch to this "fork"

Because it won't be a hard fork in the eyes of a total majority of Bitcoin users primarily because nothing is going to change for them (even if technically that would be a hard fork). I think the most evil of miners know that perfectly well, so despite all their fear-mongering rhetoric I somehow don't see them leaving Bitcoin, neither now nor in the future. As I said, no one will be particularly interested in their "pristine" Bitcoin if they start mining it from "scratch" with all their hash power. And they simply can't ignore what most users think

[dinofelis]

So instead of 10 minutes between blocks we will have to wait 200 minutes, i.e. roughly 3 hours for a few weeks.

Well, "a few weeks" is 20 weeks if it happened mid-period, or, what, 4 months.  If it happened at the beginning of a period, that would become 40 weeks, or some 8 months.

With a block every 3 hours, that comes down to a transaction capacity as if the blocks were not 1 MB now, but rather 50 KB, during 4 or 8 months, followed by another period where things improve somewhat.

Of course, nothing would stop people at that point from doing a hard fork, and modifying the difficulty by hand

And you can be pretty sure that people will quickly switch to this "fork"

Depends on how many of them are then around !  Who will decide ?  What if there are now 10 different versions of that fork ?

[deisik]

So instead of 10 minutes between blocks we will have to wait 200 minutes, i.e. roughly 3 hours for a few weeks.

Well, "a few weeks" is 20 weeks if it happened mid-period, or, what, 4 months.  If it happened at the beginning of a period, that would become 40 weeks, or some 8 months.

With a block every 3 hours, that comes down to a transaction capacity as if the blocks were not 1 MB now, but rather 50 KB, during 4 or 8 months, followed by another period where things improve somewhat.

Of course, nothing would stop people at that point from doing a hard fork, and modifying the difficulty by hand

And you can be pretty sure that people will quickly switch to this "fork"

Depends on how many of them are then around ! Who will decide ?  What if there are now 10 different versions of that fork ?

I pretty much don't know

But I think you shouldn't harbor false hopes that there will be 10 different forks. If matters do really come to this, I suspect there will be a single number to which everyone involved in Bitcoin will quickly arrive after a few iterations (with no more rogue miners sticking around and putting grit in the Bitcoin machine). What makes me think so? Simply because we have a reference point which is current hash rate (difficulty), and in the worst case scenario it will just remain the same for the time being. Even if there are 10 different forks, we will see a tough but short or rather flash competition with only one fork remaining since the only difference between them would be difficulty change

[dinofelis]

no more rogue miners sticking around and putting grit in the Bitcoin machine).

To be honest, I don't see any rogue miners.  I see miners do exactly what their job is: maintaining the integrity of the protocol and the consensus history.  I see a lot of non-miners wanting to deviate from the agreed-upon protocol, but miners resisting to that is their job in the eco system.  So, if any rogue forces, it are those wanting change, I'd say - even though in a permissionless and trustless system, there is no notion of rogue force ; only of immutability, and failure of immutability.

[Amph]

it doesn't make sense to ask satoshi, the whole bitcoin thing is based on consensus, which is the point of decentralization, having one man decide anything go against this, therefore the opinion of satoshi is pointless

Satoshi already commented a bit on the blocksize debate here:
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010238.html

this wasn't him at all, and it was already debunked long time ago, the last message form satoshi is in 2010, every other after that it's not him or there is not proof that it's him

[deisik]

no more rogue miners sticking around and putting grit in the Bitcoin machine).

To be honest, I don't see any rogue miners.  I see miners do exactly what their job is: maintaining the integrity of the protocol and the consensus history.  I see a lot of non-miners wanting to deviate from the agreed-upon protocol, but miners resisting to that is their job in the eco system.  So, if any rogue forces, it are those wanting change, I'd say - even though in a permissionless and trustless system, there is no notion of rogue force ; only of immutability, and failure of immutability

Many people are already thinking of the asics baron Jihan Wu as a Bill Gates of mining

Do you deny that Microsoft had been and is (likely) still using nefarious tactics to subdue competition? I remember how in the early 2000's they had launched a massive smear campaign in mass media against Linux severely distorting facts in their favor (or rather "facts"). Ultimately, miners are rogue not because they are just rogue in and of themselves but because the current system of confirming Bitcoin transactions is rogue (as well as inefficient), and now the evidence of this has become overwhelming and omnipresent

[dinofelis]

Ultimately, miners are rogue not because they are just rogue in and of themselves but because the current system of confirming Bitcoin transactions is rogue (as well as inefficient), and now the evidence of this has become overwhelming and omnipresent

I fully agree with that statement.  What we have now is the logical consequence of the initial design.

[KennyR]

So instead of 10 minutes between blocks we will have to wait 200 minutes, i.e. roughly 3 hours for a few weeks.

Well, "a few weeks" is 20 weeks if it happened mid-period, or, what, 4 months.  If it happened at the beginning of a period, that would become 40 weeks, or some 8 months.

With a block every 3 hours, that comes down to a transaction capacity as if the blocks were not 1 MB now, but rather 50 KB, during 4 or 8 months, followed by another period where things improve somewhat.

Of course, nothing would stop people at that point from doing a hard fork, and modifying the difficulty by hand

And you can be pretty sure that people will quickly switch to this "fork"

Depends on how many of them are then around !  Who will decide ?  What if there are now 10 different versions of that fork ?

If such scenario has got created surely entire network might be a failed experiment. The controllability too might have beena big issue, because everyone will organise a group and make them support creating a destabilises situation to reach consensus.

[dinofelis]

If such scenario has got created surely entire network might be a failed experiment. The controllability too might have beena big issue, because everyone will organise a group and make them support creating a destabilises situation to reach consensus.

I wouldn't consider that a failed experiment, on the contrary.  The more different crypto chains there are, the better: more competition, less monopoly, more decentralization, less speculation in the long term (because continual forking kills all hopes of "moon"), less singular points of failure.

[Iranus]

If such scenario has got created surely entire network might be a failed experiment. The controllability too might have beena big issue, because everyone will organise a group and make them support creating a destabilises situation to reach consensus.

I wouldn't consider that a failed experiment, on the contrary.  The more different crypto chains there are, the better: more competition, less monopoly, more decentralization, less speculation in the long term (because continual forking kills all hopes of "moon"), less singular points of failure.

If there are more crypto chains, that isn't always a good thing.  People need long-term speculation and the security of knowing that if they leave their money in a currency, it'll stay for a long time.

Bitcoin is the master chain.  The reason that not everyone through their money into DASH or something is because they know that the price is pretty unstable and it might go down in the long term.  People hold their money in fiat, and even though they know the value will go down a little bit because of inflation, they feel like they have enough security and they know where it's going to go.  Hundreds of chains isn't going to help more money go into cryptocurrency, if the lines are too blurred there won't be much money in crypto at all.