Please do not change MAX_BLOCK_SIZE

[amincd]

You don't - I do.
Lets just stop here, then.

Why did you even post this discussion if you intend to ignore anyone has a different opinion on the issue?

Let's look at the facts:

• Satoshi Nakamoto did not want the 1 MB block limit to be in place forever. When he created it, it was intended to be a temporary measure.
• Nakamoto stated even before he released the software that specialists would eventually need to run nodes when resource requirements increased. He had no intention of seeing Bitcoin throttled and turned into a "high powered money" transfer network
• Bitcoin's original mission was to be a digital cash. $30 transaction fees would make that impossible
• Bitcoin was never designed to be able to be run through node Tor forever

You can't force Bitcoin into something it wasn't planned to be. Bitcoin needs to scale and allow digital cash transactions for people all over the world, not be turned into an experiment on combining expensive p2p transactions with digital banks.

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[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Yes - let's just assume you have no arguments and that you are wrong.
And then we can stop.

No, my friend, I'm not going to admit that I am wrong, since I'm right, but feel free to keep talking to yourself, if that makes you feel superior

I'm not talking to myself. I am talking because that increases the probability of reversing effects of your stupid propaganda.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

You don't - I do.
Lets just stop here, then.

Why did you even post this discussion if you intend to ignore anyone has a different opinion on the issue?

Let's look at the facts:

• Satoshi Nakamoto did not want 1 MB block limit. When he created it, it was intended to be a temporary measure.
• Nakamoto stated even before he released the software that specialists would eventually need to run nodes when resource requirements increased. He had no intention of seeing Bitcoin throttled and turned into a "high powered money" transfer network
• Bitcoin's original mission was to be a digital cash. $30 transaction fees would make that impossible
• Bitcoin was never designed to be able to be run through node forever

QFT.

[piotr_n]

Why did you even post this discussion if you intend to ignore anyone has a different opinion on the issue?

Why? Isn't it obvious? To ask the devs to not increase the MAX_BLOCK_SIZE.
I definitely did not post this discussion to keep repeating myself, over and over again, on the 9th page already.
I'm not the kind of an empty talker person, as your friend here

[amincd]

You could have just PMed them if you wanted to ignore any counter-arguments.

[solex]

You could have just PMed them if you wanted to ignore any counter-arguments.

He could have asked Gavin in person at the conference!

It would be a huge threat to the network, and thus to the currency itself.

Piotr - did you even bother to try to talk to Gavin about what you think is a huge threat to Bitcoin?

[piotr_n]

You could have just PMed them if you wanted to ignore any counter-arguments.

Yeah, like you could have PMed me with this message. Why didn't you?

Your friend did not bring any arguments that would not have been addressed on the previous pages of this topic.
Though he repeated them with a significant dose of arrogance, so he just doesn't deserve my answer.

[piotr_n]

Piotr - did you even bother to try to talk to Gavin about what you think is a huge threat to Bitcoin?

Do you think that Gavin doesn't read this forum?
Plus, if the number will change, it surely won't be by Gavin's decision only, so taking about it with him only would be just stupid and counterproductive.

At the other hand: what's your problem with me opening this topic? Why are you so upset?

[solex]

Piotr - did you even bother to try to talk to Gavin about what you think is a huge threat to Bitcoin?

Do you think that Gavin doesn't read this forum?
Plus, if the number will change, it surely won't be by Gavin's decision only, so taking about it with him only would be just stupid and counterproductive.

At the other hand: what's your problem with me opening this topic? Why are you so upset?

I'm not upset, just now satisfied that you have not brought any new arguments to the table to further what was discussed in the many prior threads on this subject.

[piotr_n]

I'm not upset, just now satisfied that you have not brought any new arguments to the table to further what was discussed in the many prior threads on this subject.

And will be discussed repeatedly, more and more often in the future, as the block size gets to its limit, so better prepare to be even more unsatisfied.

Unless the decision is made only among developers and it happens somehow secretly, but surely I hope not...

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

I'm not the kind of an empty talker person, as your friend here

Please stop calling me "friend". I am not your friend.

[kjj]

Virtually every bitcoin user already uses third parties, and trusts them to some extent.  Doing so is a trade, cost for risk.  In the future, I expect it to be even more complicated.  Imagine a credit card denominated in bitcoin.  With that, you'd be paying for them to assume transaction risk for you, while right now the model is mostly the opposite with you getting a discount for assuming the risk that the third party may bail with your bitcoins.

Right now trusting third parties is an optional choice that a user can make. In a scenario in which the demand for transactions exceeds the protocol-specified limit they won't have a choice - the only way average people will be able to use Bitcoin at all is to let a third party hold their coins for them. At this point Bitcoin is dead because it's become just another Dwolla or PayPal.

Bitcoin's main innovation is not that you hold your own dollars.

The mad scientist in me thinks that we should wait until the 1 MB limit is met and sustained for a while before we raise it.  That way we'd get some real world experience with how the system (including the people!) react.

Imagine an accelerating car driving into a brick wall. One day the number of users and transactions will be increasing exponentially and then suddenly the growing user base will be rationed to a fixed number of daily transactions. It won't matter how much the users are willing to pay in transaction fees or how much the miners are willing to provide a higher transaction rate - the network will be limited to a constant number of transactions. It's madness to blindly assume that Bitcoin will continue to be useful and in adoption after its use case is fundamentally reversed.

Right now the demand for transactions is below MAX_BLOCK_SIZE, so effectively we have no limit. What we're looking at right now is how users and miners behave with "infinite" block sizes. Users are willing to pay fees, and the fee revenue grows proportionally with the transaction rate. We don't have to speculate about this because the real data is available. Allowing Bitcoin growth to suddenly hit an artificial limit really is playing mad scientist with what will be at that point a multi-billion dollar economy. Incidentally that kind of central planning is exactly what many people are adopting Bitcoin to getaway from and you're ready to pull the rug out from under them right when they least expect it.

I can imagine all sorts of things.  What I'd prefer is to have some data so that I can spend less time imagining.

The brick wall thing seems like a particularly silly analogy.  People are already competing for block space with fees.  Why are people doing that when block space is effectively infinite?  Why are miners encouraging that when the fees are so meaningless in comparison to the subsidy?  It seems like the car hit a wall of jello a couple of miles before hitting the brick wall.

Where you see a brick wall, I see a ramp.  The way ahead gets steeper when we hit the block size cap, but nothing stops or explodes.  If the demand for transactions stays steady or increases, then on-chain transactions will get more expensive, which makes off-chain transactions cheaper by comparison.  What I want to know is, how much cheaper?  How well will people innovate?  Are people willing to pay enough in fees to keep mining going as the subsidy declines?  What is the actual marginal cost of including a transaction?  How will that change over time?

There are a lot of question marks between where we are and where we want to be.  It seems imprudent to assume that they will all be resolved to our liking.

[justusranvier]

The brick wall thing seems like a particularly silly analogy.  People are already competing for block space with fees.  Why are people doing that when block space is effectively infinite?  Why are miners encouraging that when the fees are so meaningless in comparison to the subsidy?  It seems like the car hit a wall of jello a couple of miles before hitting the brick wall.

The brick wall is analogy is accurate because It's the difference between being able to send transactions and not being able to send transactions. Right now all the users who want to send Bitcoins can do so because the total demand is lower than the protocol limit.

Once the blocks fill up we'll get to a situation that changes.  If more than 5000 people want to send a transaction in the same 10 minute interval they won't all be allowed to do so, no matter how much they are all willing to pay in fees. The ability to use Bitcoin will be rationed to a fixed number of entities.

What I want to know is, how much cheaper?  How well will people innovate?  Are people willing to pay enough in fees to keep mining going as the subsidy declines?  What is the actual marginal cost of including a transaction?  How will that change over time?

There are a lot of question marks between where we are and where we want to be.  It seems imprudent to assume that they will all be resolved to our liking.

It's complete economic and historical ignorance to assume the best way to answer any of those questions is with central planning in the form of transaction rationing.

Miners will mine if they can obtain a market price for their services that is acceptable to them. Users will initiate transactions if the price if sending transactions is acceptable to them. Not only is there no need to second guess price discovery by trying to calculate the marginal cost of handling a transactions and using that as the basis of a magic number in the protocol but also succeeding at such a strategy is probably impossible.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

The brick wall thing seems like a particularly silly analogy.  
There are a lot of question marks between where we are and where we want to be.  It seems imprudent to assume that they will all be resolved to our liking.

It's complete economic and historical ignorance to assume the best way to answer any of those questions is with central planning in the form of transaction rationing.

1000 times this.

I know rationing from my personal experience living in a part of the USSR. Imagine standing in line for 6 hours with your mother just to get meat for Christmas...
I would advise anybody who does not get what "rationing" means and what it leads to to try that. It should be an enlightening experience.

The less centralization & control, the better. Let the market decide.

[piotr_n]

The less centralization, the better. Let the market decide.

I think we can easily agree on this.

The problem though, is that for me the market is a transactions fee market - expressed in BTC...
While for you it is obviously a hardware & bandwidth market - expressed in USD.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

The less centralization, the better. Let the market decide.

I think we can easily agree on this.

The problem though, is that for me the market if a tx fee market, expressed in BTC, while for you it is hardware & bandwidth market, expressed in USD.

That is also compatibile with definition of freedom.
People are free to buy more powerful hardware and internet connections.

But freedom does not mean that everybody has to afford it. You are free to work hard & earn money to buy a more powerful computer and more bandwidth.

[piotr_n]

That is also compatibile with definition of freedom.
People are free to buy more powerful hardware and internet connections.

But freedom does not mean that everybody has to afford it. You are free to work hard & earn money to buy a more powerful computer and more bandwidth.

I don't care about your freedom, man, neither about your definition of it.
I am not a religious person and as you said yourself, you are not even my friend.

All I care about is for Bitcoin to succeed in a long term - you put USD requirements over running a node and you are giving the power back, to the very same people that Satoshi was trying to escape from with his great invention.

[Anon136]

ok so the problem is everyone can not be expected to audit every transaction. So what we need to do is figure out how many transactions people would like to make and divide it by the total resources available for auditing transactions and in a perfect world each transaction would have that many resources dedicated towards auditing it.

so we It seems like what we need is a way for people to add useful security to the network while auditing only a portion of all transactions. This could be done by introducing a new bitcoin clone every time transaction fees became supra-optimally expensive, but this would cause inflation and heterogeneity in the money supply.

so then the ultimate question is how do we allow people to help to secure the network with out needing to download every transaction while avoiding solutions that introduce inflation and heterogeneity into the money supply.

tell me if i have this right!

[piotr_n]

tell me if i have this right!

yes, I think you have it right.
and once again I'd like to recall what kjj had mentioned before; that we have an option to just wait and see what happens after the block reached its limit. and then we should only act upon it, if we find it still necessary.
I don't think it will be necessary though, since the tx fees in the main chain will intensify the bitcoin support infrastructure to quickly built itself up, not only allowing cheap transactions, but also making them faster and more reliable than they are today.
I'm willing to bet on it, if you want

[amincd]

All I care about is for Bitcoin to succeed in a long term - you put USD requirements over running a node and you are giving the power back, to the very same people that Satoshi was trying to escape from with his great invention.

Making the 1 MB block size limit permanent to push transaction fees to $30 would put Bitcoin in the hands of banks.

Satoshi believed running a node would eventually require a lot of bandwidth and hard disk space, and would only be done by specialists. Running a high-bandwidth node is a lot easier than running a trusted bank and is less centralized. A node doesn't need to know your private key. A bank does.