Bitcoin 20MB Fork

[inBitweTrust]

If there is no upper limit, any miner founding blocks from time to time can bloat the chain, so you can bloat the network with not so much hashrate? You will pile some more weight on it each time you found a block you will be abble to add 20MB for now and x1.4 more each years

miners as anti spam works well unless it's miners that spam, but this spam would be stopped by the limit...

This is somewhat true except, the spam would be inconsequential unless you had a large amount of hashrate so really isn't that big of a concern but one could impose a minimum tx fee to discourage this attack.

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[NxtChg]

If the miners still control which transactions to include in blocks than ultimately they decide upon the limit. Is your concern more to deal with the miners and you prefer the developers to impose restrictions upon the market to remove the ability for miners to process more transactions?

The problem here is that Bitcoin is designed in such a way that there is no counterparty to miners when it comes to transmission and storage costs, so it seems impossible to add a truly free-market price discovery mechanism.

So there are 2 other options: impose a hard limit by protocol rules or change the rules to alter financial incentives somehow so it's not profitable for miners to generate big blocks.

This could be done if the prices remained stable (see my previous idea, for example), but unfortunately Bitcoin price relative to everything else is externality, which cannot be accounted for by the protocol rules alone. And since no free-market solution seems to be available, the problem seems to be impossible to solve efficiently right now.

Increasing the block limit is simply kicking the can down the road and buying some time to figure out what to do.

(I am for it, by the way).

[inBitweTrust]

So there are 2 other options: impose a hard limit by protocol rules or change the rules to alter financial incentives somehow so it's not profitable for miners to generate big blocks.

There are network considerations which balance miners desire to either spam or take in more tx fees and discourage them from generating big blocks due to the risk of generating orphans.

Are your concerns more to do with the future when block reward becomes an insignificant incentive compared to tx fees?

[NxtChg]

Are your concerns more to do with the future when block reward becomes an insignificant incentive compared to tx fees?

Yep. But it's also not clear what will happen if there's 20 MB space available and there's enough "dust" transactions to fill it.

Would they? Why not? More money, might outweigh the costs for miners if fee/byte is high enough.

But everybody else won't get that "fee/byte" profit, so they will "pick up the tab" in a sense.

[inBitweTrust]

How one would impose a fee where it's the attaquer that will mine the block ?

Let's think, I have X% of hashrate (it's goldfinger attack, I'm here to attack just to hit the system, not to profit directly)

I will find X% of blocks (that are today around 333KB) and replace all of them with 20MB blocks)

A little % of hashrate will cause a big % of blockchain space usage increase...

True, but this could also easily be identified and prevented after the fact where minimal damage was created unless the attacker had a bulk of the hash rate and than they may as well perform a 51% attack.

Lets discuss a possible scenario:

Attacker invests in 10 million dollars (at least) to control 5% of the total hashrate and than proceeds to fill up an average of 7 blocks a day to 20 MB where the average is 1MB in said example creating an extra 133MB a day in extra bloat on the blockchain, 931MB a week,. The attack would be identified fairly quickly(at most in one week) and the wild investment to simply bloat the blockchain would only add less than 1GB of bloat, hardly a concern for such an unusual attack.

The larger concern would be if 2 to 4 of the largest mining pools were infiltrated or compromised but in such scenarios bloat would be the least of our problems and the solutions to protect against this weakness is a whole other conversation which IMHO is much more important. We essentially have a 4 of 7 mining pool multisig protecting our network right now which is far more frightening than the concerns raised in this thread.

[danielpbarron]

Keep advocating for maybe a compromise, 5MB STATIC limit for me is fine

Perhaps you need to go back and read this:

XII. The current 1Mb limit is arbitrary. We want to change it. Please ignore the fact that the discussion is about whether to change or not to change, and please ignore that the onus is on whoever proposes change to justify it. Instead, buy into our pretense that the discussion is about "which arbitrary value". Because we're idiots, and so should be you!

Go away.

If there is no upper limit, any miner founding blocks from time to time can bloat the chain, so you can bloat the network with not so much hashrate? You will pile some more weight on it each time you found a block you will be abble to add 20MB for now and x1.4 more each years

miners as anti spam works well unless it's miners that spam, but this spam would be stopped by the limit...

This is somewhat true except, the spam would be inconsequential unless you had a large amount of hashrate so really isn't that big of a concern but one could impose a minimum tx fee to discourage this attack.

Nope.

XI. Raising the limit doesn't force the blocks to be filled. It just gives miners the option to make bigger blocks should market conditions make it to their advantage to do so.

This is not how economics work. Quoting Buffettⁱ :

The domestic textile industry operates in a commodity business, competing in a world market in which substantial excess capacity exists. Much of the trouble we experienced was attributable, both directly and indirectly, to competition from foreign countries whose workers are paid a small fraction of the U.S. minimum wage. But that in no way means that our labor force deserves any blame for our closing. In fact, in comparison with employees of American industry generally, our workers were poorly paid, as has been the case throughout the textile business. In contract negotiations, union leaders and members were sensitive to our disadvantageous cost position and did not push for unrealistic wage increases or unproductive work practices. To the contrary, they tried just as hard as we did to keep us competitive. Even during our liquidation period they performed superbly. (Ironically, we would have been better off financially if our union had behaved unreasonably some years ago; we then would have recognized the impossible future that we faced, promptly closed down, and avoided significant future losses.)

Over the years, we had the option of making large capital expenditures in the textile operation that would have allowed us to somewhat reduce variable costs. Each proposal to do so looked like an immediate winner. Measured by standard return-on-investment tests, in fact, these proposals usually promised greater economic benefits than would have resulted from comparable expenditures in our highly-profitable candy and newspaper businesses.

But the promised benefits from these textile investments were illusory. Many of our competitors, both domestic and foreign, were stepping up to the same kind of expenditures and, once enough companies did so, their reduced costs became the baseline for reduced prices industrywide. Viewed individually, each company's capital investment decision appeared cost-effective and rational; viewed collectively, the decisions neutralized each other and were irrational, just as happens when each person watching a parade decides he can see a little better if he stands on tiptoes.

After each round of investment, all the players had more money in the game and returns remained anemic. Thus, we faced a miserable choice: huge capital investment would have helped to keep our textile business alive, but would have left us with terrible returns on ever-growing amounts of capital. After the investment, moreover, the foreign competition would still have retained a major, continuing advantage in labor costs. A refusal to invest, however, would make us increasingly non-competitive, even measured against domestic textile manufacturers. I always thought myself in the position described by Woody Allen in one of his movies: "More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness, the other to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly."

For an understanding of how the to-invest-or-not-to-invest dilemma plays out in a commodity business, it is instructive to look at Burlington Industries, by far the largest U.S. textile company both 21 years ago and now. In 1964 Burlington had sales of $1.2 billion against our $50 million. It had strengths in both distribution and production that we could never hope to match and also, of course, had an earnings record far superior to ours. Its stock sold at 60 at the end of 1964; ours was 13.

Burlington made a decision to stick to the textile business, and in 1985 had sales of about $2.8 billion. During the 1964-85 period, the company made capital expenditures of about $3 billion, far more than any other U.S. textile company and more than $200-per-share on that $60 stock. A very large part of the expenditures, I am sure, was devoted to cost improvement and expansion. Given Burlington's basic commitment to stay in textiles, I would also surmise that the company's capital decisions were quite rational.

Nevertheless, Burlington has lost sales volume in real dollars and has far lower returns on sales and equity now than 20 years ago. Split 2-for-1 in 1965, the stock now sells at 34-on an adjusted basis, just a little over its $60 price in 1964. Meanwhile, the CPI has more than tripled. Therefore, each share commands about one-third the purchasing power it did at the end of 1964. Regular dividends have been paid but they, too, have shrunk significantly in purchasing power.

This devastating outcome for the shareholders indicates what can happen when much brain power and energy are applied to a faulty premise. The situation is suggestive of Samuel Johnson's horse: "A horse that can count to ten is a remarkable horse, not a remarkable mathematician." Likewise, a textile company that allocates capital brilliantly within its industry is a remarkable textile company, but not a remarkable business.

My conclusion from my own experiences and from much observation of other businesses is that a good managerial record (measured by economic returns) is far more a function of what business boat you get into than it is of how effectively you row (though intelligence and effort help considerably, of course, in any business, good or bad). Some years ago I wrote: "When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact." Nothing has since changed my point of view on that matter. Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

So, no : infinite blocks to not give "the miners" any sort of option, because "the miners" as a collective noun do not exist. There exist individual miners exclusively, and the incentives of individuals are, should the Gavin scam actually be implemented, firmly oriented towards destroying the commons that is Bitcoin.

There's no way out of this problem, and simple ignorance of economy or game theory is not a solution.

[sed]

I wish I knew were to look for an alternative discussion thread on this topic.  This one is too long and flamey, imo.  I read the original blogposts, but I haven't seen any blogposts since.

[danielpbarron]

I wish I knew were to look for an alternative discussion thread on this topic.  This one is too long and flamey, imo.  I read the original blogposts, but I haven't seen any blogposts since.

The discussion is over. There will be no hard-fork. This thread serves only to create the illusion that the matter is unresolved.

[Gavin Andresen]

This is where my conversation with Gavin fell apart.  He was not able to acknowledge the concept of a too-high limit.  His reasoning was that since the limit was only one-sided (blocks with size above it are prevented) that it couldn't be too high.

Huh what?

I am not proposing infinitely sized blocks, so I obviously acknowledge the concept of a too-high limit as being plausible.

If you want to continue the conversation, please be very explicit about what problem you think needs solving, and how whatever solution you're proposing solves that problem.

We might agree or disagree on both of those points, but we won't have a productive conversation if you can't say what problem you are trying to solve.

To summarize my position: I see one big problem that need solving:

Supporting lots (millions, eventually billions) of people transacting in Bitcoin.
  Ideally at as low a cost as possible, as secure as possible, and in the most decentralized and censorship-resistant way possible.

It is hard to get consensus on HOW to solve that problem, because no solution is obviously lowest cost, most secure, and most decentralized all at the same time, and different people assign different weights to the importance of those three things.

My bias is to "get big fast" -- I think the only way Bitcoin thrives is for lots of people to use it and to be happy using it. If it is a tiny little niche thing then it is much easier for politicians or banks to smother it, paint it as "criminal money", etc. They probably can't kill it, but they sure could make life miserable enough to slow down adoption by a decade or three.

"Get big fast" has been the strategy for a few years now, ever since the project became too famous to fly under the radar of regulators or the mainstream press.

The simplest path to "get big fast" is allowing the chain to grow. All the other solutions take longer or compromise decentralization (e.g. off-chain transactions require one or more semi-trusted entities to validate those off-chain transactions). I'm listening very carefully to anybody who argues that a bigger chain will compromise security, and those concerns are why I am NOT proposing an infinite maximum block size.

There is rough consensus that the max block size must increase. I don't think there is consensus yet on exactly HOW or WHEN.

[sed]

I wish I knew were to look for an alternative discussion thread on this topic.  This one is too long and flamey, imo.  I read the original blogposts, but I haven't seen any blogposts since.

The discussion is over. There will be no hard-fork. This thread serves only to create the illusion that the matter is unresolved.

I see.  I had that feeling (not that there would be no hard-fork, but a feeling that it was already decided one way or another).  Where did the actual discussion take place?  Where did Gavin relent?

[Cryddit]

So there are 2 other options: impose a hard limit by protocol rules or change the rules to alter financial incentives somehow so it's not profitable for miners to generate big blocks.

FWIW, there is already a financial incentive that makes it unprofitable for miners to generate big blocks.

Bigger blocks have a longer relay time, hence a higher chance of becoming orphaned blocks.  If someone else's block reaches more nodes than yours in a race, it costs you the fees and the block subsidy.

I'm not entirely sure that we still need a block size limit.  Getting a 'spam block' these days would seem to require someone, or some combination, to have invested adequate resources in hashing to get a block, but still not value the fees or block subsidy.  That's a very plausible scenario during bootstrap (or for an altcoin), but the hashing resources required to get Bitcoin blocks are huge, and I don't think trolls will invest that much money just for lulz.

[danielpbarron]

I wish I knew were to look for an alternative discussion thread on this topic.  This one is too long and flamey, imo.  I read the original blogposts, but I haven't seen any blogposts since.

The discussion is over. There will be no hard-fork. This thread serves only to create the illusion that the matter is unresolved.

I see.  I had that feeling (not that there would be no hard-fork, but a feeling that it was already decided one way or another).  Where did the actual discussion take place?  Where did Gavin relent?

It took place in #bitcoin-assets, and he relented here.

[inBitweTrust]

My bias is to "get big fast" -- I think the only way Bitcoin thrives is for lots of people to use it and to be happy using it. If it is a tiny little niche thing then it is much easier for politicians or banks to smother it, paint it as "criminal money", etc. They probably can't kill it, but they sure could make life miserable enough to slow down adoption by a decade or three.

I completely support this strategy, and it has nothing to do with treating Bitcoin as an impatient short term speculative investment, as profit is secondary to some of the real goals and principles of this project.

Getting "Big fast" will not only protect us from more countries making bitcoin completely illegal(4-5 at the moment- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_Bitcoin_by_country ), but also protect us from competing alts, protect us from competing corporate interests, and help shield more journalists/whistleblowers/political dissidents/ect from  being attacked by states.

This is the exact same reason why Jacob Applebaum wants everyday users to use TOR and host their own relay and the reason why I will be selling as many legal goods on OpenBazaar when it leaves Beta. We need to protect nonviolent voluntary transactions using the network that may be considered unfavorable or illegal in certain oppressive countries around the world.

[tvbcof]

I'm still holding hope for a better proposal that isn't too complex.

A dynamic proposal that allows the "anti-spam" limit to increase and decrease may allow us to continue to search for other solutions while we have the backstop in place so we don't hit a crisis may be a good idea.

This is where my conversation with Gavin fell apart.  He was not able to acknowledge the concept of a too-high limit.  His reasoning was that since the limit was only one-sided (blocks with size above it are prevented) that it couldn't be too high.

You, I and others, can see the fallacy of this in a moment, but he seems willing to ignore it.  I have good confidence in his programming.  I like the way he codes, it is tight and clean.  He is a great software engineer, and he has tested the software so that it works with large blocks.
As a protocol engineer he may be able to improve.  He has set himself up as the curator of ideas, and decides which have merit and which do not.  He was wise enough to revise this aspect of his proposal for the protocol once already, so he can hear some criticisms and respond.
This is why I hold some hope for him yet and have not given up on him.

When I've heard Gavin speak in public I immediately guess that at some point(s) in the guy's career his engineer's cube was right next to an incompletely insulated meeting room.  He caught snippets of the business people's conversations, and picked up some buzz words, but little more.  Where some engineers who find ourselves in such distracting situations laugh at the absurdity of much of the nonsense, other's reactions are different for whatever underlying set of reasons.  Gavin seems of the latter group to me.  And in being hoisted into his present position he seeks to emulate the behaviors and thought processes he imagines on the other side of the wall.

I would say that this is a tough break for Bitcoin, but the story is still in play.  When the final chapter is written it may end up the case that the existence, place, and time of Mr. Andresen in Bitcoin's history was key to it's success and/or it's failure.

[danielpbarron]

My bias is to "get big fast" -- I think the only way Bitcoin thrives is for lots of people to use it and to be happy using it. If it is a tiny little niche thing then it is much easier for politicians or banks to smother it, paint it as "criminal money", etc. They probably can't kill it, but they sure could make life miserable enough to slow down adoption by a decade or three.

Bitcoin isn't for everybody.

V. The fork is needed because otherwise some people won't be able to use Bitcoin.

Bitcoin isn't for everybody. Creating something useful that everyone can use is an exercise in trying to create something that's useful but worthless. Such a thing may exist, in the sense perpetuum mobile may exist. As far as the science of physics goes, they do not.

Should blocks ever become full, older coinbases will be prioritized over newer coinbases, and larger mining fees and transactions prioritized over smaller mining fees and smaller transactions. This means that someone who wishes to pay for very little with Bitcoin will be forced to use something else, so to speak is forced to "give his seat" to someone richer. This is exactly the point and the intent of Bitcoin : to force the poor to yield to the rich, unversally, as a matter of course.

You may not like this, but that is entirely an emotional problem of yours, which you're welcome to resolve any way you can : stop being poor, take a lot of pills, whatever. You may try to solve it by attempting to make it impossible for the rich to construct tools that they will then use to force you to yield to them, but this will necessarily not work : being rich means by definition they have more resources than you, and whatever you devise they can make a counter.

If you are more practically inclined, and having understood, accepted and come to terms with your fundamental human inferiority as it flows from your poverty, some solutions to your predicament of "I wish to buy myself a basket" have already been discussed :

For the reasons noted and for many other reasons I am pretty much satisfied that Bitcoin is not nor will it ever be a direct means of payment for retail anything. You may end up paying for a month's worth of coffee vouchers at your favourite coffee shop via Bitcoin (so shop scrip built on top of Bitcoin), you may end up settling your accounts monthly at the restaurant in Bitcoin (so store credit built on top of Bitcoin), you will probably cash into whatever local currency from Bitcoin (be it Unified Standard Dubaloos or Universally Simplified Dosidoes or whatever else) but all that is entirely different a story.

Run along now, back to playing in the mud with the other naked kids in your village. Bitcoin's just not for your kind.

There is rough consensus that the max block size must increase. I don't think there is consensus yet on exactly HOW or WHEN.

Good for you, too bad you're irrelevant.

XIV. We all agree.

Good for you, too bad you're irrelevant. Bitcoin is about money and about power, not about opinion and social media. You can agree until you are blue in the face, that's not what makes a difference. Your public humiliation on this score - in case your shepherd be dumb enough to actually take the field and be humiliatedⁱⁱ - should be instructive for you.

Take notice on the why and the how you don't matter, understand why "MP doesn't cater to my idiocy which makes me want to support anything else" doesn't actually do anything, break through the shell of your own idiocy and start actually developing as a human being already. Going by your infantile behaviour this is clearly the first time you had the chance, but going by the messy state of the world around you it might actually be your last, too. Try and make the best of the very little you have at your disposal.

[inBitweTrust]

I would say that this is a tough break for Bitcoin, but the story is still in play.  When the final chapter is written it may end up the case that the existence, place, and time of Mr. Andresen in Bitcoin's history was key to it's success and/or it's failure.

While he has been a valuable asset to our community, I am not aware that he is involved in any mining thus he has ultimately no say in whether this fork goes through or not. There seems to be this misunderstanding or mythology being proposed that he is foisting this upon the community when a majority (as can be demonstrated from this poll ) agree with him and many others have been suggesting thus, including Satoshi himself from years ago.

If anything I think the developers (Including Gavin) are being too patient and we should set some predefined schedules of a few more testing phases and than come to a more detailed consensus within the next couple months based upon how exactly this hard fork is going to be implemented because it will likely happen despite the chagrin you may have from the outcome.

We should set a deadline where others have an opportunity to submit their detailed suggested proposals and tests as Gavin has done with the scalability roadmap, than have another deadline where we can discuss and study the proposals, than go through with it.

P.s... I understand that users and full nodes will vote upon which fork they choose, but you may as well be considered an alt if you don't have the hashing power backing your chain because any remnant chain that doesn't perform their own fork to at least adjust difficulty manually will immediately be dead in the water overnight.

[danielpbarron]

I would say that this is a tough break for Bitcoin, but the story is still in play.  When the final chapter is written it may end up the case that the existence, place, and time of Mr. Andresen in Bitcoin's history was key to it's success and/or it's failure.

While he has been a valuable asset to our community, I am not aware that he is involved in any mining thus he has ultimately no say in whether this fork goes through or not.

"The miners decide if a hard fork happens" is a fallacy that has already been covered in this thread.

VII. The minersⁱ decide.

No, they do not. The miners make some minor decisions in Bitcoin, but major decisions such as block forks are not at their disposition alone, and this for excellent reasons you'll readily understand if you stop and think about it.

There are two specific methods to control miners on this matter, which will make the scamcoin Gavin is trying to replace everyone's Bitcoin with only replace some people's Bitcoin. The first and most obvious is that irrespective of what miners mine, each single full node will reject illegal blocks. This is a fact. If all the miners out there suddenly quit Bitcon and go mine Keiser's Aurora scamcoin instead, from the perspective of the Bitcoin network hash rate simply dropped and that's all. There's absolutely no difference between Keiser's scamcoin and Gavin's scam coin as far as the network is concerned : while one's a scammer that I humiliatingly defeated in the past whereas the other a scammer that I humiliatingly defeat in the future, this makes no difference for Bitcoin. As far as anyone will be able to perceive, miners simply left.

The second and perhaps not as obvious has nevertheless been discussed at length on multiple occasions on #bitcoin-assets. Consider this terse explanation from March. 2013.

mircea_popescu: whoever has enough money to matter is likely to pick one chain for whatever reason
mircea_popescu: since fork means btc can be spent independently on either chain
mircea_popescu: he will sell his btc on one and perhaps buy on the other.
mircea_popescu: as a result prices will rapidly diverge, panicking the mass of users, and the fork is economically resolved.

The situation here is aggravated by the fact that the fork proposed is not simply nondeterministic behaviourⁱⁱ, and so the holdings on the two chains aren't notionally equivalent. Instead, all the holdings on the Bitcoin chain are accepted as valid on both Bitcoin and Gavincoin, but holdings on Gavincoin are rejected by Bitcoin. Consequently, everyone involved with the fork is writing options to everyone in Bitcoin, free of charge. That they have no ready way to finance these should be obvious, and consequently the grim prospects of the Gavin side of the fork should be just as obvious. At least, to people who understand economy to any degree.

To summarize, the miners will mine the chain that makes them the most money. Do you think you can provide more support than MP? The guy is a billionaire.

[DooMAD]

My bias is to "get big fast" -- I think the only way Bitcoin thrives is for lots of people to use it and to be happy using it. If it is a tiny little niche thing then it is much easier for politicians or banks to smother it, paint it as "criminal money", etc. They probably can't kill it, but they sure could make life miserable enough to slow down adoption by a decade or three.

Bitcoin isn't for everybody.

It is.  And it will continue to be when everyone has left you behind.  I love how you think you'll still have some kind of financial ecosystem that's going to consist of you, your fellow MP fanboys and literally no one else.

V. The fork is needed because otherwise some people won't be able to use Bitcoin.

Bitcoin isn't for everybody. Creating something useful that everyone can use is an exercise in trying to create something that's useful but worthless. Such a thing may exist, in the sense perpetuum mobile may exist. As far as the science of physics goes, they do not.

Should blocks ever become full, older coinbases will be prioritized over newer coinbases, and larger mining fees and transactions prioritized over smaller mining fees and smaller transactions. This means that someone who wishes to pay for very little with Bitcoin will be forced to use something else, so to speak is forced to "give his seat" to someone richer. This is exactly the point and the intent of Bitcoin : to force the poor to yield to the rich, unversally, as a matter of course.

You may not like this, but that is entirely an emotional problem of yours, which you're welcome to resolve any way you can : stop being poor, take a lot of pills, whatever. You may try to solve it by attempting to make it impossible for the rich to construct tools that they will then use to force you to yield to them, but this will necessarily not work : being rich means by definition they have more resources than you, and whatever you devise they can make a counter.

If you are more practically inclined, and having understood, accepted and come to terms with your fundamental human inferiority as it flows from your poverty, some solutions to your predicament of "I wish to buy myself a basket" have already been discussed :

For the reasons noted and for many other reasons I am pretty much satisfied that Bitcoin is not nor will it ever be a direct means of payment for retail anything. You may end up paying for a month's worth of coffee vouchers at your favourite coffee shop via Bitcoin (so shop scrip built on top of Bitcoin), you may end up settling your accounts monthly at the restaurant in Bitcoin (so store credit built on top of Bitcoin), you will probably cash into whatever local currency from Bitcoin (be it Unified Standard Dubaloos or Universally Simplified Dosidoes or whatever else) but all that is entirely different a story.

Run along now, back to playing in the mud with the other naked kids in your village. Bitcoin's just not for your kind.

There is rough consensus that the max block size must increase. I don't think there is consensus yet on exactly HOW or WHEN.

Good for you, too bad you're irrelevant.

XIV. We all agree.

Good for you, too bad you're irrelevant. Bitcoin is about money and about power, not about opinion and social media. You can agree until you are blue in the face, that's not what makes a difference. Your public humiliation on this score - in case your shepherd be dumb enough to actually take the field and be humiliatedⁱⁱ - should be instructive for you.

Take notice on the why and the how you don't matter, understand why "MP doesn't cater to my idiocy which makes me want to support anything else" doesn't actually do anything, break through the shell of your own idiocy and start actually developing as a human being already. Going by your infantile behaviour this is clearly the first time you had the chance, but going by the messy state of the world around you it might actually be your last, too. Try and make the best of the very little you have at your disposal.

Every word out of your and MP's mouths is disgusting.  Your vision for Bitcoin is disgusting.  Everything about you is disgusting.  I can't wait for everyone decent to prove to you just how wrong you are about everything you've said in all the threads and blog posts about this fork.

19:16:20 gavinandresen: Ok, if y’all are interested in keeping Bitcoin an exclusive little club… then okey dokey, we have a fundamental difference of opinion on where the project should go.

Keep up the good work, Gavin.  Those of us who aren't elitist crackpots are with you all the way.

[tvbcof]

- snipped for clarity -

I fast-fingered my previous comment before noticing that you were still active in this thread.  I apologize for this (but don't retract my comments of course.)

Here is my contention and, respectfully, where I think you go wrong:

My bias is to "get big fast" -- I think the only way Bitcoin thrives is for lots of people to use it and to be happy using it. If it is a tiny little niche thing then it is much easier for politicians or banks to smother it, paint it as "criminal money", etc. They probably can't kill it, but they sure could make life miserable enough to slow down adoption by a decade or three.

The powers that be will do all of these things for one simple reason:  All of these negatives are perfectly true and then some.  There are other things which are true as well, of course, or I doubt that either you or I would be involved with it.  That does not matter.  It will be attacked for all that it is.  The negatives will be played up for PR reasons while the positives will be at the driving motives behind the attacks.  I also suggest that Bitcoin was recognized long ago as being to potentially damaging for the attacks to be left in the hands of amateurs.

I think you are simply flat wrong as an engineer, systems analyst, politician, or historian to think that somehow growth is the best strategy to thwart the attacks.  We'll have to outgrow the power of the world's entrenched powers to win on brute strength, and that will never be allowed.

[Come-from-Beyond]

Did the recent changes in Bitcoin core make it impossible to have a fork? If the core downloads headers and finds the best chain and at some moment it sees that block size is greater than 1 Mb - will it try to jump to a chain with lower cumulative difficulty?