Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[thezerg]

...

tvbcof, in an alternate universe where we were ALREADY dropping 50MB blocks or so every 10 minutes your arguments would be very sound.  But you can run a full node on a freakin' Raspberry PI!  This very premature limiting of the blockchain size, coupled with Blockstream's possibly competitive technologies, is what makes us cry foul.

We don't need to shunt Bitcoin off into a settlement-only currency just yet.  We could grow 50 times greater before we have to think about doing that, and there is tremendous value in doing so.  For one, it would allow all the layered technologies time to develop.  And also, we'd probably have 50-100x more users, which IMHO pushes bitcoin over the mass adoption chasm.


I think we are at the polarization point in this debate where people are making "arguments" that they barely even believe themselves -- on both sides.  And no one is actually responding to the other side's concerns.  For example, I have not read any response to the problem that if bitcoin becomes a settlement currency it will centralize because the only people who will care to run full nodes will be companies who do settlement.

At this point further discussion is useless.  So we shall proceed with the fork and/or BIP 100 and hope to gain a clear majority.  If that point comes you'll have an interesting choice: you'll be on an old fork that is essentially an altcoin with (as you just described above) significant technical limitations.  So your fork will have neither technical or largest-user advantage.  In such a situation, I hope that you will choose to come over to the majority fork.

[1713914237]

1713914237

[1713914237]

1713914237

[1713914237]

1713914237

[Adrian-x]

i've always said that when it comes down to federated server pegged SC's, go right ahead.  it doesn't change the protocol so i don't worry.

It can be the leverage that causes the protocol to effectively change by replacement of Core. A pegged side chain that is undeniably superior to Bitcoin Core could suck all the BTC out of Core and that pegged side chain could have the spvp implemented. That isn't a guarantee of it happening, but from my perspective the odds are quite high. One of the attributes that raises the odds of such is the resistance to changing the protocol of Core. Thus any undeniably superior tech is unlikely to be politically implementable in Core.

I repeat that a consensus algorithm which can't be 50% attacked has an even better odds of catapulting Core, because it won't be vulnerable in its infancy.

This journey has been like playing a strategy game. I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

this is where you are so wrong! what is superior? Bitcoin is not defined by a hierarchy of superiority, its defined by a juxtaposition of incentives that create a network of people that benefit from those incentives and so the tool is created it's spreads natural like a virus. Those who see value in the tool can use it those who don't use other tools like fiat, alts or gold or whatever they think is hierarchically superior.

the only reason a "superior" sidechain can exist is because the incentives inherent in the Bitcoin protocol have been changed and a bigger network of users could by some engendering supersede Bitcoins network in size, the result is if that were to happen yes all the Bitcoin value would be sucked out.

So superior is defined only as something all those non thinking masses you want to heard believe is better, it doesn't have to be better in any way that's important to me, in fact by your definition of "superior" could even apply to an inflationary sidechain that is followed by the economic majority, with a little manipulation from TPTB, bitcoiners would move there bitcoin over just to survive.

if you want to test whether or not your idea had market appeal use a Spin-off, if you want to co opt Bitcoin and leverage its first mover advantage promote centralized development and Sidechains. The problem is your competing with the actual TPTB for the succeeding SC, not the free market.

[TPTB_need_war]

I think we are at the polarization point in this debate where people are making "arguments" that they barely even believe themselves -- on both sides.  And no one is actually responding to the other side's concerns.  For example, I have not read any response to the problem that if bitcoin becomes a settlement currency it will centralize because the only people who will care to run full nodes will be companies who do settlement.

At this point further discussion is useless.

Agreed...

This argument even exists because either direction on the block side decision is flawed, that is if we only are stuck with the current PoW algorithm.

[cypherdoc]

...
We can't hope to guess at what anyone from back then would think about the current state of the world, though we do know that e.g. the current mining ecosystem would have been regarded as a system failure from the original precepts; and we also know that decentralization and autonomy were principle motivations for the creation of the system in the first place.
...

Perhaps you're forgetting the below, but we do have a number of Satoshi quotes that are relevant to today's discussion:

Right.  Otherwise we couldn't have a finite limit of 21 million coins, because there would always need to be some minimum reward for generating.  In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes.  I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume.

(emphasis added)

...
While I don't think Bitcoin is practical for smaller micropayments right now, it will eventually be as storage and bandwidth costs continue to fall.  If Bitcoin catches on on a big scale, it may already be the case by that time.  Another way they can become more practical is if I implement client-only mode and the number of network nodes consolidates into a smaller number of professional server farms.  Whatever size micropayments you need will eventually be practical.  I think in 5 or 10 years, the bandwidth and storage will seem trivial.
...

(emphasis added)

Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe
for users to use Simplified Payment Verification (section to check for
double spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or
about 12KB per day.  Only people trying to create new coins would need to run
network nodes.  At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the
network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to
specialists with server farms of specialized hardware.

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg09964.html
(emphasis added)

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.

I read these in aggregate to indicate that Satoshi thought Bitcoin should eventually support a high number of transactions (even very low "micro" transactions), and that consolidation of network resources (nodes and miners) was both inevitable and workable in order to achieve that *primary* goal of high-adoption rate and a large number of on-chain transactions.

I'm not saying with any absolute that Satoshi was right (though I tend to think he was), but if we're going to be discussing "original precepts", let's look at the relevant statements.

excellent post.

and don't expect gmax or any of the 1MB crowd to actually respond coherently to it.  they never do.

[TPTB_need_war]

i've always said that when it comes down to federated server pegged SC's, go right ahead.  it doesn't change the protocol so i don't worry.

It can be the leverage that causes the protocol to effectively change by replacement of Core. A pegged side chain that is undeniably superior to Bitcoin Core could suck all the BTC out of Core and that pegged side chain could have the spvp implemented. That isn't a guarantee of it happening, but from my perspective the odds are quite high. One of the attributes that raises the odds of such is the resistance to changing the protocol of Core. Thus any undeniably superior tech is unlikely to be politically implementable in Core.

I repeat that a consensus algorithm which can't be 50% attacked has an even better odds of catapulting Core, because it won't be vulnerable in its infancy.

This journey has been like playing a strategy game. I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

this is where you are so wrong! what is superior? Bitcoin is not defined by a hierarchy of superiority, its defined by a juxtaposition of incentives that create a network of people that benefit from those incentives and so the tool is created it's spreads natural like a virus. Those who see value in the tool can use it those who don't use other tools like fiat, alts or gold or whatever they think is hierarchically superior.

the only reason a "superior" sidechain can exist is because the incentives inherent in the Bitcoin protocol have been changed and a bigger network of users could by some engendering supersede Bitcoins network in size, the result is if that were to happen yes all the Bitcoin value would be sucked out.

So superior is defined only as something all those non thinking masses you want to heard believe is better, it doesn't have to be better in any way that's important to me, in fact by your definition of "superior" could even apply to an inflationary sidechain that is followed by the economic majority, with a little manipulation from TPTB, bitcoiners would move there bitcoin over just to survive.

if you want to test whether or not your idea had market appeal use a Spin-off, if you want to co opt Bitcoin and leverage its first mover advantage promote centralized development and Sidechains. The problem is your competing with the actual TPTB for the succeeding SC, not the free market.

If you believe largest size = maximum ROI, then you don't have much experience as an investor or you haven't learned from your experience. If you believe that the largest system always subsumes the smaller, fasting growing (in percentage terms) system, then you fail to study history.

If you haven't forgotten there are three reasons people invest in Bitcoin:

1) Gain wealth

2) Change the world according to their ideology

3) Protect their future wealth against a burgeoning totalitarianism

Superior means technology, marketing, and ecosystem kicking Buttcon's a$$ on all of those key attributes.

For example, Buttcon can not do micropayments now. That is an immediate opening for example. But it is not the only one. I (or let's say the group I'm delegating to) won't reveal the entire hand of cards just yet...

If you view the world's wealth as a pie, then the earliest investors gain the largest slice of the pie. The NWO coin is the dying paradigm. Large but dying. It will expropriate all the wealth it sucks into it.

Stay in Buttcon and you will end up a pauper at the end of it all. With pegged side chains, you have potential outlet to great wealth.

Edit: the larger a system becomes, especially a political system like this, the more difficult it becomes to make any changes to it. It will become more and more brittle over time. You have no experience at all with software and scaling if you don't understand clearly that Bitcoin core is doomed long-term. You must have outlets for innovation, else you will end up with an inescapable morass. Nothing scales monolithically. Only the End-to-end principle scales and Bitcoin core doesn't have it.

[cypherdoc]

i'm really glad to see Fred Wilson continiuing to push this.  and eventually, they will.  great for decentralization:

Banks and Brokerages Should Be Mining The Blockchain

http://avc.com/2015/06/banks-and-brokerages-should-be-mining-the-blockchain/

[tvbcof]

...

tvbcof, in an alternate universe where we were ALREADY dropping 50MB blocks or so every 10 minutes your arguments would be very sound.  But you can run a full node on a freakin' Raspberry PI!  This very premature limiting of the blockchain size, coupled with Blockstream's possibly competitive technologies, is what makes us cry foul.

The last time I ran bitcoind in support mode (allowing incoming 8333) was on a soekris router which is comparable to an RPI.  That was many years ago, and while it worked, it was very close to not 'working fine'.  Granted, leveldb and some other optimizations have happened since then which helped but things were pushing the envelope, and that is ignoring considerations such at UTXO size and network capacity.  Since I won't allow UPnP on my network and won't run bitcoind on an important machine, I need a sacrifice machine to run it.  I'm currently stuck on satellite here at home which pretty much precludes supporting the network even at the 1MB setting due to total data constraints.  To run bitcoind I have to arrange a remote system that I can trust and that is something of a challenge for a suspicious and careful person.  I'm not about to sacrifice the time and money in support of Bitcoin when the likes of Andresen and Hearn are hanging around trying to kill it.

We don't need to shunt Bitcoin off into a settlement-only currency just yet.  We could grow 50 times greater before we have to think about doing that, and there is tremendous value in doing so.  For one, it would allow all the layered technologies time to develop.  And also, we'd probably have 50-100x more users, which IMHO pushes bitcoin over the mass adoption chasm.

To understand my thoughts you need to understand that I consider joe-sixpack users to be a liability on all fronts.  'Outrunning regulation' is laughable to me, and idiots do more harm than good when they try to run critical systems.  Multibitch users are not helpful to the network and, as I say, not helpful in the 'critical mass' equation since Bitcoin with it's batch-mode native function is simply not competitive as an exchange currency and never will be a big factor there.  IOW, the kinds of percentages we need for anything remotely resembling 'critical mass' are completely pie-in-the-sky.  Even if Bitcoin worked worth a shit here, a lot of people love big brother and would hate Bitcoin for that reason anyway.  All Bitcoin traction does is to attract attack from TPTB by virtue of it's positive attributes such as lack of counter-party risk.

Time and time again we see idiots losing their money to criminals and hucksters.  Being a Bitcoin enthusiast has been like watching a fight between a skilled boxer and a punching bag and I don't see that changing as long as idiots are using Bitcoin in it's native form.

Sidechains breaks the single-point-of-failure problem which vexes a 'one-size-fits-all' solution and pushes the critical infrastructure support role to people who can handle it.  It also pushes the benefits of a counter-party-risk free solution down to the masses.  Nobody can stop the masses from giving their money to shysters but it's very possible to arrange for the sidechain operates themselves to have a tough time robbing their users (unlike general alts.)

Am I an 'elitist'?  Fuck ya.  At the end of the day, though, my goal is to have everyone who wants to be able to enjoy the benefits of distributed crypto-currencies.  I just don't want to see Bitcoin ruined in the process of trying to achieve this...but am prepared to deal with this eventuality if that's the way the cookie is to crumble.

[cypherdoc]

still posturing bullish.  apparently there is a bot chewing thru 2BTC buys every 30 sec?

[rocks]

...
We can't hope to guess at what anyone from back then would think about the current state of the world, though we do know that e.g. the current mining ecosystem would have been regarded as a system failure from the original precepts; and we also know that decentralization and autonomy were principle motivations for the creation of the system in the first place.
...

Perhaps you're forgetting the below, but we do have a number of Satoshi quotes that are relevant to today's discussion:

Right.  Otherwise we couldn't have a finite limit of 21 million coins, because there would always need to be some minimum reward for generating.  In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes.  I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume.

(emphasis added)

...
While I don't think Bitcoin is practical for smaller micropayments right now, it will eventually be as storage and bandwidth costs continue to fall.  If Bitcoin catches on on a big scale, it may already be the case by that time.  Another way they can become more practical is if I implement client-only mode and the number of network nodes consolidates into a smaller number of professional server farms.  Whatever size micropayments you need will eventually be practical.  I think in 5 or 10 years, the bandwidth and storage will seem trivial.
...

(emphasis added)

Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe
for users to use Simplified Payment Verification (section to check for
double spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or
about 12KB per day.  Only people trying to create new coins would need to run
network nodes.  At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the
network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to
specialists with server farms of specialized hardware.

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg09964.html
(emphasis added)

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.

I read these in aggregate to indicate that Satoshi thought Bitcoin should eventually support a high number of transactions (even very low "micro" transactions), and that consolidation of network resources (nodes and miners) was both inevitable and workable in order to achieve that *primary* goal of high-adoption rate and a large number of on-chain transactions.

I'm not saying with any absolute that Satoshi was right (though I tend to think he was), but if we're going to be discussing "original precepts", let's look at the relevant statements.

Thank you, just booked marked this post for future reference.

[rocks]

..............

excellent post.

and don't expect gmax or any of the 1MB crowd to actually respond coherently to it.  they never do.

gmaxwell and the others simply ignore every single sensible counter argument to their statements. There has been no discussion with them, other than statements that they are the experts and we should listen to them, said as they themselves make what can best be described as misleading statements at best.

[TPTB_need_war]

To understand my thoughts you need to understand that I consider joe-sixpack users to be a liability on all fronts...

Time and time again we see idiots losing their money to criminals and hucksters.  Being a Bitcoin enthusiast has been like watching a fight between a skilled boxer and a punching bag and I don't see that changing as long as idiots are using Bitcoin in it's native form.

Sidechains breaks the single-point-of-failure problem which vexes a 'one-size-fits-all' solution and pushes the critical infrastructure support role to people who can handle it.  It also pushes the benefits of a counter-party-risk free solution down to the masses.  Nobody can stop the masses from giving their money to shysters but it's very possible to arrange for the sidechain operates themselves to have a tough time robbing their users (unlike general alts.)

Am I an 'elitist'?  Fuck ya.  At the end of the day, though, my goal is to have everyone who wants to be able to enjoy the benefits of distributed crypto-currencies.  I just don't want to see Bitcoin ruined in the process of trying to achieve this...but am prepared to deal with this eventuality if that's the way the cookie is to crumble.

This guy is consistently getting me to listen carefully.

Kudos. You've refined my plans. And I think I am entirely in alignment with your stated views (thus far).

Btw, just because you want to stay only in BTC, doesn't mean others won't want to speculate on higher ROI and the potential to jump back in time and front run your early investment in BTC. And they might be correct. One thing you have to contemplate is that an altcoin could be structured to benefit from the pegged side chain BTC investment it (yes an altcoin that is also a pegged side chain) and offer a higher ROI on its own coin. You might assert you'd opt for the pegged side chain clone that eliminated the side coin atribute, but market dynamics may not play nicely with your desire.

[rocks]

Sidechains breaks the single-point-of-failure problem which vexes a 'one-size-fits-all' solution and pushes the critical infrastructure support role to people who can handle it.  It also pushes the benefits of a counter-party-risk free solution down to the masses.  Nobody can stop the masses from giving their money to shysters but it's very possible to arrange for the sidechain operates themselves to have a tough time robbing their users (unlike general alts.)

The entire point of Bitcoin is to push the critical infrastructure support role to a decentralize DAC that no people handle or control and that has no single point of failure.

Your entire argument is contrary to the very purpose of Bitcoin and most people's participation in the project. If Bitcoin become becomes dependent on SCs that manage risk for people to protect them from their own mistakes, then we are back into FRN land, where we are all protected and coddled for the minor fee of being slowly boiled alive in the FEDs inflationary pot.

[sickpig]

Mike Hearn's infallible logic:

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34206292/

bottomline is you skeptics can disrespect him all day long but the smart among us will listen and think about the content of what he says.

Quite lengthy reply from Adam:

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34208939/

worth reading, though.

edit: fix typo

[TPTB_need_war]

If Bitcoin become becomes dependent on SCs that manage risk for people to protect them from their own mistakes, then we are back into FRN land, where we are all protected and coddled for the minor fee of being slowly boiled alive in the FEDs inflationary pot.

Is Coinbase, Circle, Paypal etc on Bitcoin's chain any different?

And side chains don't have to be centralized systems. His point is that BTC discipline can enforce the right choices of technology thus protecting the masses from their incorrect choices (in altcoins and also wallet technology, etc). Right now the only way to innovate is altcoins which most BTC doesn't vote on.

Everything consistently flies over your head.

[mrhelpful]

still posturing bullish.  apparently there is a bot chewing thru 2BTC buys every 30 sec?

a comment regarding on the bot of an exchange.

can those somehow be stopped? i know its a bit naive to ask, but like I wish there was some sort of gridlock to prevent bots like that.

[rocks]

Mike Hearn's infallible logic:

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34206292/

bottomline is you skeptics can disrespect him all day long but the smart among us will listen and think about the content of what he says.

Quite lengthy reply from Adam:

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34208939/

worth reding, though.

Remember this quote by Adam when the time comes that they make their proposal to change the Bitcoin protocol to enable LN and SCs.

As you can probably tell I think a unilateral fork without wide-scale consensus from the technical and business communities is a deeply inadvisable.

The bar to add LN and SC enabling protocol changes is wide-scale consensus. If a small number of participants disagree, it doesn't happen by their own logic. Additionally these protocol changes significantly change what Bitcoin fundamentally is much more than a simple 20MB blocksize change.

Something tells me though that their tune will be different then.

Edit: I think this comment by Mike sums up the need here.

If Bitcoin runs out of capacity *it will break and many of our users will leave*. That is not an acceptable outcome for myself or the many other wallet, service and merchant developers who have worked for years to build an ecosystem around this protocol.

Mike is pointing out that Bitcoin is the entire ecosystem, not just the development board. In fact if you totaled the amount of work and effort put in to build Bitcoin I think it would work out to be less than 1% bitcoin devs and >99% everyone else. There has been a tremendous amount of effort put in to build Bitcoin that goes far beyond and outside of the bitcoin core. But the devs are ignoring that and acting as if Bitcoin is their project and they own it and have put the most amount of work behind it. I think this is telling, and demonstrates the need for systems controlled by users.

[TPTB_need_war]

Mike Hearn's infallible logic:

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34206292/

bottomline is you skeptics can disrespect him all day long but the smart among us will listen and think about the content of what he says.

Quite lengthy reply from Adam:

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34208939/

worth reding, though.

I agree with the following quote. Leadership is necessary at the start, but dangerous predicament to be in and a leader better have an escape plan...

Governance

The rest of the developers are wise to realise that they do not want
exclusive control, to avoid governance centralising into the hands of
one person, and this is why they have shared it with a consensus
process over the last 4 years.  No offence but I dont think you
personally are thinking far enough ahead to think you want personal
control of this industry.  Maybe some factions dont trust your
motives, or they dont mind, but feel more assured if a dozen other
people are closely reviewing and have collective review authority.

Edit:

I know you want scale bitcoin, as I said everyone here does. I think
what you're experiencing is that you've had more luck explaining your
pragmatic unilateral plan to non-technical people without peer review,
and so not experienced the kind of huge pushback you are getting from
the technical community.  The whole of bitcoin is immensely
complicated such that it takes an uber-geek CS genius years to
catchup, this is not a slight of any of the business people who are
working hard to deploy Bitcoin into the world, its just complicated
and therefore not easy to understand the game-theory, security,
governance and distributed system thinking.  I have a comp sci PhD in
distributed systems, implemented p2p network systems and have 2
decades of applied crypto experience with a major interest in
electronic cash crypto protocols, and it took me a several years to
catchup and even I have a few hazy spots on low-level details, and I
addictively into read everything I could find.  Realistically all of
us are still learning, as bitcoin combines so many fields that it
opens new possibilities.

Lol, now I don't feel so bad about my early Bitcoin 101 mistakes. I got through most of them in a matter of weeks.

As I said you can not scale a O(n^2) broadcast network by changing
constants, you need algorithmic improvements.

Yup.

[Erdogan]

RFC: #Bitcoin core BIP 100 draft, v0.8.1:
http://gtf.org/garzik/bitcoin/BIP100-blocksizechangeproposal.pdf …
Changes:  32MB explicit cap (versus implicit), tighten language

https://twitter.com/jgarzik/status/610494283334860800

is voting confined to miners?

Miners vote by encoding ‘BV’+BlockSizeRequestValue into coinbase scriptSig, e.g.
“/BV8000000/” to vote for 8M. Votes are evaluated by dropping bottom 20% and top
20%, and then the most common floor (minimum) is chosen.

You could say that miners are the vendors of block space, and the users demand it and signals it by their actual fees. An interesting point in the document, in fact creating a market where not only the fees, but also the block size is dynamic. As we close in on the physical limits of the system, many years from now, the block size increments will have to stop, and fees will limit the demand. Sounds ok to me.

[Adrian-x]

Mike Hearn's infallible logic:

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34206292/

bottomline is you skeptics can disrespect him all day long but the smart among us will listen and think about the content of what he says.

Quite lengthy reply from Adam:

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34208939/

worth reding, though.

Remember this quote by Adam when the time comes that they make their proposal to change the Bitcoin protocol to enable LN and SCs.

As you can probably tell I think a unilateral fork without wide-scale consensus from the technical and business communities is a deeply inadvisable.

The bar to add LN and SC enabling protocol changes is wide-scale consensus. If a small number of participants disagree, it doesn't happen by their own logic. Additionally these protocol changes significantly change what Bitcoin fundamentally is much more than a simple 20MB blocksize change.

Something tells me though that their tune will be different then.

Edit: I think this comment by Mike sums up the need here.

If Bitcoin runs out of capacity *it will break and many of our users will leave*. That is not an acceptable outcome for myself or the many other wallet, service and merchant developers who have worked for years to build an ecosystem around this protocol.

Mike is pointing out that Bitcoin is the entire ecosystem, not just the development board. In fact if you totaled the amount of work and effort put in to build Bitcoin I think it would work out to be less than 1% bitcoin devs and >99% everyone else. There has been a tremendous amount of effort put in to build Bitcoin that goes far beyond and outside of the bitcoin core. But the devs are ignoring that and acting as if Bitcoin is their project and they own it and have put the most amount of work behind it. I think this is telling, and demonstrates the need for systems controlled by users.

your last point is especially pertinent, its the investments made by all the network of users possibly the majority of them have bought and held Bitcoin running up to $1000 and down again, they are the heroes that make the network. The majority of them have been delta a sucker punch, while a small group of Developers feel they have earned the right to decide how to direct the potential $3B experiment we have all bought into.

its not a centralized experiment but a decentralized one, and that applies to the Bitcoin Core.  

[Adrian-x]

RFC: #Bitcoin core BIP 100 draft, v0.8.1:
http://gtf.org/garzik/bitcoin/BIP100-blocksizechangeproposal.pdf …
Changes:  32MB explicit cap (versus implicit), tighten language

https://twitter.com/jgarzik/status/610494283334860800

is voting confined to miners?

Miners vote by encoding ‘BV’+BlockSizeRequestValue into coinbase scriptSig, e.g.
“/BV8000000/” to vote for 8M. Votes are evaluated by dropping bottom 20% and top
20%, and then the most common floor (minimum) is chosen.

You could say that miners are the vendors of block space, and the users demand it and signals it by their actual fees. An interesting point in the document, in fact creating a market where not only the fees, but also the block size is dynamic. As we close in on the physical limits of the system, many years from now, the block size increments will have to stop, and fees will limit the demand. Sounds ok to me.

Sounds good to me too, I'm in.
it is through this lens (your post above) that i see Gavins "ridiculous" idea of decreasing the 10 Minute Block time. Say blocks are limited to internet packets and packets are limited to 32MB, and blocks are larger than 32MB, a situation could arise where blocks don't propagate as packets become lost in the Internet. 

if a technical limitation had to prevent blocks from hitting a particular size, one way to keep the system functional would be to reduce block time.