Fork off

[danielpbarron]

Does keeping the block size lead to less adoption?
Does less adoption lead to a less popular network?
Does a less popular network undermine the value of each bitcoin?

No, no, and no. You're working on the assumption that bitcoin depends on the poor, when it's the poor that depend on bitcoin. Isn't it the 1% that controls most of the wealth in the world? So then how are the other 99% supposed to support the price of bitcoin with their coffee purchases? They don't even have savings, let alone liquid cash to invest in wild speculations. But they will use bitcoin regardless, not because it's faster than credit cards, and not because its fees are lower. They will use bitcoin because it is sound money. Maybe they won't use it directly (tx on the blockchain), but they will have bank accounts with debit cards denominated in bitcoin. Maybe there will even be privately issued paper notes as receipts for a bitcoin deposit (the way dollars used to be with gold). But all of that is for naught if the rules governing bitcoin are allowed to change; it would just be a less efficient version of the Federal Reserve, and I don't think anyone will want to invest in that. Strict adherence to the original set of rules is the best course of action for "mass adoption."

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[xcsler]

Questions for those who want to keep the block size limit:

Does keeping the block size lead to less adoption?
Does less adoption lead to a less popular network?
Does a less popular network undermine the value of each bitcoin?

Bitcoins can be adopted without direct use of the blockchain. The blockchain ultimately keeps all the players above it honest. Off chain solutions allow for transaction scalability while promoting the use of bitcoins with ultimate settlement on the chain.

A secure blockchain secures the network and gives it value. A great payment network without a secure blockchain exists and is called the US dollar. We don't need to recreate that.

Any changes that potentially lead to that value being threatened (eg. failure to keep up with alternative methods) will lead to the failure of Bitcoin. Securing the network can be solved with various methods, hard transaction limit however cannot.

There is only one way to secure the network and that is through decentralized hashing power. Threaten that and you threaten everything that can be built upon it. Bitcoin has no significant alternatives or competitors when it comes to this metric.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Questions for those who want to raise the block size limit:

Does increasing the block size lead to more centralization?
Does increased centralization lead to a less secure network?
Does a less secure network undermine the value of each bitcoin?

If the answer to all 3 questions is 'yes', then it appears that by increasing the block size limit we'll have made it easier to transact something of lesser value. What is the point?

First and foremost, bitcoins must be a monetary foundation and that can only happen if bitcoins themselves have value. Any changes that potentially lead to that value being threatened (eg. centralization) will lead to the failure of Bitcoin.

Centralization of the payment network (off chain solutions) can be kept honest through competition/free market forces, centralization of the underlying money however cannot.

By the same logic we should reduce the block limit down to 125KB right?  The "1MB limit" was simply a round number chosen for crude anti dos type attacks in the early network when mining was very easy.  It was a hack and code solution to the reality that a single malicious user could bloat the blockchain by TBs with essentially no cost and hamper or kill adoption overnight.  

For the record the original client had no 1MB limit on blocks.  It only had a 33,554,432 byte limit on messages and thus no txn or block could be larger than that (because they wouldn't be a valid message).  But they a 25MB txn in a 33.5MB block would have been valid for the first 18 months of the network. Even there it is unknown if that was some design choice or rather just a sanity value (i.e. to prevent an developer error which leads to a number of accidental giant blocks or txns and thus increase the early blockchain by 10000% in a few seconds).  

Also I hope this doesn't kill the cult of the divine megabyte but the commit which added the "1MB limit" wasn't even authored by Satoshi (at least not according to git) and was lumped in casually with a number of other fixes title "fix openssl linkage problems, disable minimize to tray on Linux because it has too many problems including a CPU peg bug"
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/a30b56ebe76ffff9f9cc8a6667186179413c6349

Also this "limit" wasn't much of a limit as it only prevented the client from making >1MB blocks.  A modified client could have created larger blocks and the network would have accepted them as valid.  The network didn't start checking the size of blocks until a couple months later:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/8c9479c6bbbc38b897dc97de9d04e4d5a5a36730

[xcsler]

Does keeping the block size lead to less adoption?
Does less adoption lead to a less popular network?
Does a less popular network undermine the value of each bitcoin?

No, no, and no. You're working on the assumption that bitcoin depends on the poor, when it's the poor that depend on bitcoin. Isn't it the 1% that controls most of the wealth in the world? So then how are the other 99% supposed to support the price of bitcoin with their coffee purchases? They don't even have savings, let alone liquid cash to invest in wild speculations. But they will use bitcoin regardless, not because it's faster than credit cards, and not because its fees are lower. They will use bitcoin because it is sound money. Maybe they won't use it directly (tx on the blockchain), but they will have bank accounts with debit cards denominated in bitcoin. Maybe there will even be privately issued paper notes as receipts for a bitcoin deposit (the way dollars used to be with gold). But all of that is for naught if the rules governing bitcoin are allowed to change; it would just be a less efficient version of the Federal Reserve, and I don't think anyone will want to invest in that. Strict adherence to the original set of rules is the best course of action for "mass adoption."

Nicely said. I was writing my reply at the same time and it seems like we're on the same page.

Many in the community are technologically gifted but lack a firm understanding of hard money and its importance in promoting freedom and global prosperity. Clearly Satoshi understood the importance of hard money.

I'd also love to know the economists that Gavin was referring to in his exchange with Davout. Do you think it was Krugman?

[VectorChief]

However, the block size limit, the tx fees structure and even the infamous 21m limit is where it gets interesting. These things are actually inter-related and not completely orthogonal. If it happens that fees are not able to provide enough incentives in the future to keep the network secure, then introduction of permanent limited inflation would be one of the options on the table, no matter how unpopular it might sound today.

Incredible.. "increasing block size is bad for fees, so we might have to also increase the block reward." How much bitcoin do you even have? Do you think waxing philosophical on things you have no business discussing is a suitable replacement for financial investment? It's easy to say "change all the rules" when you don't have any skin in the game. I'd like to see someone with greater than 10`000 BTC come forward and demand a rules change, not because it would be justified, but because at least they have some business making the demand. The rest of you can buzz off. Do you think I'm worried that you'll take your penny transactions to another scamcoin? I'm not. Good riddance.

I knew it was gonna be controversial, but someone needed to throw that one into the discussion. Bitcoin gains its value not only from the idea of its limited supply, but also from growing adoption. People forget that. If another coin gets more traction while Bitcoin loses momentum it got from its first-mover advantage, then it will have to compete on mere technicalities, which are easy to replicate due to its open-source nature.

Thus Bitcoin needs to keep pace with the market development in order to stay relevant. The fact that PoW-secured blockchain can scale beyond 1Mb per block is not a rocket science. The question is - will it be Bitcoin or something else? If it's something else, what makes you think that Bitcoin will maintain its value?

[davout]

By the same logic we should reduce the block limit down to 125KB right?

Nope. By this logic we don't fix what isn't broken.

[DeathAndTaxes]

By the same logic we should reduce the block limit down to 125KB right?

Nope. By this logic we don't fix what isn't broken.

Your right so we should restore the original unbroken 33,554,432 byte limit on messages (to include blocks) from the original client.

[cbeast]

By the same logic we should reduce the block limit down to 125KB right?

Nope. By this logic we don't fix what isn't broken.

But... full blocks!

[thelibertycap]

However, the block size limit, the tx fees structure and even the infamous 21m limit is where it gets interesting. These things are actually inter-related and not completely orthogonal. If it happens that fees are not able to provide enough incentives in the future to keep the network secure, then introduction of permanent limited inflation would be one of the options on the table, no matter how unpopular it might sound today.

Incredible.. "increasing block size is bad for fees, so we might have to also increase the block reward." How much bitcoin do you even have? Do you think waxing philosophical on things you have no business discussing is a suitable replacement for financial investment? It's easy to say "change all the rules" when you don't have any skin in the game. I'd like to see someone with greater than 10`000 BTC come forward and demand a rules change, not because it would be justified, but because at least they have some business making the demand. The rest of you can buzz off. Do you think I'm worried that you'll take your penny transactions to another scamcoin? I'm not. Good riddance.

I knew it was gonna be controversial, but someone needed to throw that one into the discussion. Bitcoin gains its value not only from the idea of its limited supply, but also from growing adoption. People forget that. If another coin gets more traction while Bitcoin loses momentum it got from its first-mover advantage, then it will have to compete on mere technicalities, which are easy to replicate due to its open-source nature.

Thus Bitcoin needs to keep pace with the market development in order to stay relevant. The fact that PoW-secured blockchain can scale beyond 1Mb per block is not a rocket science. The question is - will it be Bitcoin or something else? If it's something else, what makes you think that Bitcoin will maintain its value?

Growing adoption doesn't mean we need to scale beyond 1MB. Certainly not at this point in time.
Not every coffee purchase needs to be in the blockchain. I doubt bitcoin can support microtransactions anyway, not even with gavin's proposals.
I think many people support the idea of bitcoin as a store of value and want to cut the third party risk of the current monetary system.
Think gold - you buy an ounce, or 1/10ounce. What's the point of paying with gold for a coffee? Only if gold could be sent over the internet....

I understand the other side of things - that it would be nice to have bitcoin supporting even micropayments but lets slow down and think it over first. I mean those changes suggested are still not a final solution to all bitcoin flaws and haven't even touched on more important things like mining centralization. It will make the system even more centralized - there is no doubt about that.

I guess people with the 'Fork it hard' attitude don't hold enough stake or are simply arrogant to the dangers of a hard fork.

[danielpbarron]

Also I hope this doesn't kill the cult of the divine megabyte but the commit which added the "1MB limit" wasn't even authored by Satoshi (at least not according to git) and was lumped in casually with a number of other fixes title "fix openssl linkage problems, disable minimize to tray on Linux because it has too many problems including a CPU peg bug"
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/a30b56ebe76ffff9f9cc8a6667186179413c6349

I don't care who added it or why; the number itself is completely arbitrary. Gavin is not arguing for a permanent replacement of some magic number; he's arguing for increasing the number perpetually. I am not against changing the limit if for some reason in the far future it's figured out that the network would literally halt if left unchanged. It's not the idea that I oppose; it's that there is no such thing as an idea. There are only people: people I trust, and people that I don't trust. And I don't trust Gavin.

[cbeast]

There are only people: people I trust, and people that I don't trust. And I don't trust Gavin.

Open source. We don't need your trust. Thanks anyway.

[xcsler]

Questions for those who want to raise the block size limit:

Does increasing the block size lead to more centralization?
Does increased centralization lead to a less secure network?
Does a less secure network undermine the value of each bitcoin?

If the answer to all 3 questions is 'yes', then it appears that by increasing the block size limit we'll have made it easier to transact something of lesser value. What is the point?

First and foremost, bitcoins must be a monetary foundation and that can only happen if bitcoins themselves have value. Any changes that potentially lead to that value being threatened (eg. centralization) will lead to the failure of Bitcoin.

Centralization of the payment network (off chain solutions) can be kept honest through competition/free market forces, centralization of the underlying money however cannot.

By the same logic we should reduce the block limit down to 125KB right?  The "1MB limit" was simply a round number chosen for crude anti dos type attacks in the early network when mining was very easy (and thus a single malicious user could bloat the blockchain by TBs with essentially no cost).  For the record the original client had no 1MB limit.  It only had a 33,554,432 MB limit on messages and thus no txn or block could be larger than that (because they wouldn't be a valid message).  But they a 25MB txn in a 33.5MB block would have been valid for the first 18 months of the network. Even there it is unknown if that was some design choice or rather just a sanity value (i.e. to prevent an developer error which leads to a number of accidental giant blocks or txns and thus increase the early blockchain by 10000% in a few seconds).  

Also I hope this doesn't kill the cult of the divine megabyte but the commit which added the "1MB limit" wasn't even authored by Satoshi (at least not according to git) and was lumped in casually with a number of other fixes title "fix openssl linkage problems, disable minimize to tray on Linux because it has too many problems including a CPU peg bug"
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/a30b56ebe76ffff9f9cc8a6667186179413c6349

I see Bitcoin as a settlement network akin to how gold was used in the past by governments settling their trade imbalances with other nations. As long as bitcoins can not be counterfeited and they are kept scarce the Bitcoin network will serve its ultimate role as hard money which can't be manipulated. Anything that puts the network's security at risk, such as centralization, should be avoided.

If on chain settlement could only occur once per second I don't think it would be a problem. Clearly a certain number of transactions need to occur. The fact is we have 7 tps and getting consensus on a change this far down the road is proving to be difficult and may undermine trust in Bitcoin.

In terms of my 3 original questions what are your thoughts?

[davout]

By the same logic we should reduce the block limit down to 125KB right?

Nope. By this logic we don't fix what isn't broken.

Your right so we should restore the original unbroken 33,554,432 byte limit on messages (to include blocks) from the original client.

Is Bitcoin currently broken?

[Winston Churchill]

the cult of the divine megabyte

irl lol

the rest of your post is all about history and irrelephant

could you please tell us whether you think Mircea Popescu's plans to doublespend gavincoin/newforkcoin out of existence might work?

[cbeast]

By the same logic we should reduce the block limit down to 125KB right?

Nope. By this logic we don't fix what isn't broken.

Your right so we should restore the original unbroken 33,554,432 byte limit on messages (to include blocks) from the original client.

Is Bitcoin currently broken?

No, but the 'check engine light' is on, or are you the type that ignores it until it's too late?

[VectorChief]

Growing adoption doesn't mean we need to scale beyond 1MB. Certainly not at this point in time.
Not every coffee purchase needs to be in the blockchain. I doubt bitcoin can support microtransactions anyway, not even with gavin's proposals.
I think many people support the idea of bitcoin as a store of value and want to cut the third party risk of the current monetary system.
Think gold - you buy an ounce, or 1/10ounce. What's the point of paying with gold for a coffee? Only if gold could be sent over the internet....

I understand the other side of things - that it would be nice to have bitcoin supporting even micropayments but lets slow down and think it over first. I mean those changes suggested are still not a final solution to all bitcoin flaws and haven't even touched on more important things like mining centralization. It will make the system even more centralized - there is no doubt about that.

I guess people with the 'Fork it hard' attitude don't hold enough stake or are simply arrogant to the dangers of a hard fork.

Value is a moving target.
The less people use something the less valuable it becomes.

I don't think that off-chain/side-chain stuff is the right approach, it introduces backing. It is divide-and-conquer tactics at its best. Fiat was once backed with gold, you know how that turned out. At some point people will realize: "hmm, if i can buy food with these centralized off-chain coins, why do I need those bitcoins anyway?"

I'm not saying "let's change all the rules", but we need to figure out what the rules are and what the game is. In my recent discussions on the forum I've come to believe that money is a dynamic essence. You need to keep up with the flow in order to gain and even maintain value. If Bitcoin doesn't move it will be replaced.

[davout]

No

So shut the fuck up.
Thank you very much :-)

[danielpbarron]

There are only people: people I trust, and people that I don't trust. And I don't trust Gavin.

Open source. We don't need your trust. Thanks anyway.

You are ridiculously foolish to say such a thing. The trust is not towards a black box of unknown contents. Public code is written by people, and verified by people. If there is a disagreement among developers, leading to a fork in a project, users will have to trust one over another. It is not possible to remove trust from a system, and you haven't found some magical replacement for hierarchy.

Fiat was once backed with gold, you know how that turned out.

Yeah, they took all the gold. Let's see them take all the bitcoin.

[cbeast]

No

So shut the fuck up.
Thank you very much :-)

The lemming approach working out for ya?

[cbeast]

Until miners stop merge mining IXC and other shitcoins, I reserve suspicion of ulterior motives.