Permanently keeping the 1MB (anti-spam) restriction is a great idea ...

[flound1129]

I lol at your post, it shows how self-serving people are, ever tried to ask the miners?? You know the ones that keep the network alive in this competitive environment (not so much now) a market for fees would strenght the network even in the scenario of a total price collapse because you are creating more incentives for mining, and not keeping the vulture industry that dominates it today.

Miners can choose to include or exclude transactions regardless of block size.

A miner can decide for himself if a no-fee transaction is worth including, or a low-fee transaction for that matter.

If a lot of miners agree a low fee or no fee transaction should be excluded, it will take a long time before a transaction will be picked up by a small mining pool.

Miners also need to consider that excluding low fees will mean that the miner pools that do include the low fees will process more transactions (because all the low fee transactions will stack up) and it could be thousands upon thousands of transactions and thousand times a small fee can become quite a large sum.

It's better to sell 1 billion screws and make 0,01 cent profit on each of them than to sell 1 Lamborghini and make $100000 in profit.

Individual miners decide absolutely nothing, other than people operating their own P2Pool node, with a tiny chance of finding a block.

Mining pools are the ones who decide what transactions they will accept.  99+% of the miners could care less about this.

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[gotpetum]

All it takes for transaction fees to go down to ~zero is a benevolent or a malevolent miner occasionally accepting 0 fee transactions.

One miner accepts 0 fee transactions. Why would the other follow their example?

"Occasionally" was bad word choice on my part. If "enough" (1 large or many small) miners are willing to fill 20 MB blocks of ~0 fee transactions, then some bitcoin users will send ~0 fee transactions, and some miners that mine for transaction fees will stop mining, which weakens the security of the bitcoin network.

While this has always been a vulnerability, it seems like increasing the block size limit makes this economic sabotage more potent.

There's no need for other miners to follow their example.

Increasing the block size limit is a poor implementation of PoS.

Bitcoin is not implementing POS. I don't know what gave you that impression.

Increasing the block size limit reduces transaction fees. Eventually, miners are not mining for transaction fees, but mining as stakeholders to maintain the integrity of the blockchain. Only stakeholders mining doing PoW is like a really inefficient PoS.

[flound1129]

the miners decide which transactions are valid and which are not.

Stop saying 'the miners'.  3-4 people decide that.

[AdamCox9]

They should implement a dynamic block size based on the transactions for the past two weeks similar to how the difficulty is handled. This still allows for smaller nodes to participate in the short-term but also allows the network to scale in the long-term. This also makes it so miners get rewards as long as the number of transactions is increasing since the block size will always be a little bit smaller than the number of transactions.

[nakaone]

was it already argued that not raising the block size leads to fractional reserve banking? - this system then basically becomes the same shit as the banking industry.

[R2D221]

If "enough" (1 large or many small) miners are willing to fill 20 MB blocks of ~0 fee transactions,

Why would they be motivated to do so? If there's no motivation, then the rest of the argument does not stand.

then some bitcoin users will send ~0 fee transactions, and some miners that mine for transaction fees will stop mining, which weakens the security of the bitcoin network.

Why would these ones stop mining? They would still be profiting. I don't get it.

Increasing the block size limit reduces transaction fees. Eventually, miners are not mining for transaction fees, but mining as stakeholders to maintain the integrity of the blockchain. Only stakeholders mining doing PoW is like a really inefficient PoS.

What's the logic here? If miners are not mining for transactions fees, they are still mining for the subsidy. Either that or it would be a truly altruistic act. And even if it was, they are not proving their stakes at all. They are still proving they have done some work.

[hdbuck]

was it already argued that not raising the block size leads to fractional reserve banking? - this system then basically becomes the same shit as the banking industry.

not if you hoard your bitcoins.. all hail the new bankers

[mayax]

the miners decide which transactions are valid and which are not.

Stop saying 'the miners'.  3-4 people decide that.

VERY good point. Of course only few people decide that. same as exchanges.

the exchanges have behind the SAME shareholders(4-5). The entire BTC is owned by up to 10 people Funny !

[AdamCox9]

Or, if they made the blocksize a dynamic size and it is always updated to handle 99.9% of the transactions from the past two weeks so that the .1% that pay the least transaction fees might not get written in the next block.

[DeathAndTaxes]

All it takes for transaction fees to go down to ~zero is a benevolent or a malevolent miner occasionally accepting 0 fee transactions.

Today most (all?) miners accept some zero fee transactions.  Yet fees have not gone down to zero.  They is a balance between cost and convenience.  If there wasn't then ATMs, convenience stores, and overnight mail wouldn't exist as services.

If 100% of miners will accept your txn for $0.05 in fees and 10% will accept your txn for free most rational users will still pick $0.05 in fees on many transactions.  Saving $0.05 usually doesn't make sense and in many cases ends up being the more expensive option (due to volatility risk).  We see this dynamic right now in every block.  There are plenty of "high priority" transactions which include a fee despite it not being required by the full nodes.  Unlike low priority transactions which will not be relayed by full nodes unless they include a fee, high priority transactions will be relayed without a fee so they are guaranteed to end up in the memory pool of miners.  At that point it is only a matter of time before they are included in a block.  The amount of space devoted to high priority transactions is however limited and that means transaction times for unpaid transactions are both long and unpredictable.  For many users the short and predictable confirmation times are worth more than the fee.

If someday 10% of the hashrate decided to include free transactions I think the rest of the miners would love that and probably reduce or eliminate the space they currently give away for free to include more paying transactions.

[gotpetum]

If "enough" (1 large or many small) miners are willing to fill 20 MB blocks of ~0 fee transactions,

Why would they be motivated to do so? If there's no motivation, then the rest of the argument does not stand.

then some bitcoin users will send ~0 fee transactions, and some miners that mine for transaction fees will stop mining, which weakens the security of the bitcoin network.

Why would these ones stop mining? They would still be profiting. I don't get it.

They'd stop mining because they wouldn't be profiting. It would be like if Amazon lowered the price of hot cakes to $0. Some other retailers would stop selling hot cakes.

Increasing the block size limit reduces transaction fees. Eventually, miners are not mining for transaction fees, but mining as stakeholders to maintain the integrity of the blockchain. Only stakeholders mining doing PoW is like a really inefficient PoS.

What's the logic here? If miners are not mining for transactions fees, they are still mining for the subsidy. Either that or it would be a truly altruistic act. And even if it was, they are not proving their stakes at all. They are still proving they have done some work.

As the bounty decreases, and if the transaction fees decrease (as a result of block size increasing), then non-stakeholders will have no (or decreasing) incentive to mine. Stakeholders, on the other hand, will need to mine to keep their bitcoins safe. It's no more "truly altruistic" than a bank hiring a security guard to protect its assets.

How much will a stakeholder or saboteurs need to spend on mining to protect / steal $100 in a PoW system? About $99.

How much will a stakeholder need to spend on mining to protect $100 from saboteurs in a PoS system? A lot less than the saboteurs... Right?

tldr; As we move the direct profit incentives for mining, the responsibility for maintaining the integrity of the blockchain will fall on stakeholders. PoW is a great way to distribute the initial coins, but it's a really inefficient way for stakeholders to "vote" on which chain is right.

Right?

[R2D221]

If "enough" (1 large or many small) miners are willing to fill 20 MB blocks of ~0 fee transactions,

Why would they be motivated to do so? If there's no motivation, then the rest of the argument does not stand.

then some bitcoin users will send ~0 fee transactions, and some miners that mine for transaction fees will stop mining, which weakens the security of the bitcoin network.

Why would these ones stop mining? They would still be profiting. I don't get it.

They'd stop mining because they wouldn't be profiting. It would be like if Amazon lowered the price of hot cakes to $0. Some other retailers would stop selling hot cakes.

That's definitely not how it works. You can't just choose which miner will process your transaction.

Increasing the block size limit reduces transaction fees. Eventually, miners are not mining for transaction fees, but mining as stakeholders to maintain the integrity of the blockchain. Only stakeholders mining doing PoW is like a really inefficient PoS.

What's the logic here? If miners are not mining for transactions fees, they are still mining for the subsidy. Either that or it would be a truly altruistic act. And even if it was, they are not proving their stakes at all. They are still proving they have done some work.

As the bounty decreases, and if the transaction fees decrease (as a result of block size increasing), then non-stakeholders will have no (or decreasing) incentive to mine. Stakeholders, on the other hand, will need to mine to keep their bitcoins safe.

This is all based on your assumption that miners will start leaving, which simply isn't true. There's no motivation for them to leave.

[justusranvier]

and if the transaction fees decrease (as a result of block size increasing)

The average block size has been increasing for six years.

Has the average transaction fee revenue increased or decreased over the same period?

Is there anyone in favour of small blocks who has the slightest bit of intellectual integrity whatsoever?

[Uncle Axetime]

and if the transaction fees decrease (as a result of block size increasing)

The average block size has been increasing for six years.

Has the average transaction fee revenue increased or decreased over the same period?

Is there anyone in favour of small blocks who has the slightest bit of intellectual integrity whatsoever?
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gosh rude. why not go and ask them? you know exactly where they are. weird to strut around in this non-place

[gotpetum]

That's definitely not how it works. You can't just choose which miner will process your transaction.

Yeah, if I want my transaction to be picked up by a miner who doesn't require fees, I can just sit patiently.

This is all based on your assumption that miners will start leaving, which simply isn't true. There's no motivation for them to leave.

Miners leave all the time when they're no longer profitable...

[R2D221]

That's definitely not how it works. You can't just choose which miner will process your transaction.

Yeah, if I want my transaction to be picked up by a miner who doesn't require fees, I can just sit patiently.

What? A miner that accepts transactions with no fees is not actively blocking transactions with fees. This point makes no sense.

This is all based on your assumption that miners will start leaving, which simply isn't true. There's no motivation for them to leave.

Miners leave all the time when they're no longer profitable...

Why are they no longer profitable? Your hypothesis about people not wanting to be with them (which, how will they choose? You CAN'T CHOOSE a miner) is incorrect.

[gotpetum]

Has the average transaction fee revenue increased or decreased over the same period?

Is there anyone in favour of small blocks who has the slightest bit of intellectual integrity whatsoever?

Miners aren't currently mining for transaction fees, because of how insignificant they are, so it's not really a good question.

https://blockchain.info/charts/network-deficit

But is "average transaction fee revenue" increasing or decreasing? It's kind of hard to tell...

https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees

I'm not really in favor of small blocks, because I don't like the idea of incentivizing non-stakeholders to maintain the blockchain. I just think that this is a problem better solved with PoS. Let a stakeholder make a 1 GB block, for all I care.

On the other hand, the thought of letting a rando non-stakeholder (e.g., the government) make 1 GB blocks of ~0 fee transactions (or spam) makes me uneasy.

[gotpetum]

What? A miner that accepts transactions with no fees is not actively blocking transactions with fees. This point makes no sense.

Blocking transactions? I don't think anyone was talking about that.

If "enough" miners don't require a fee, then some transactors will not send transactions with a fee, and many others will simply send insignificant fees (like now). Some miners that were mining for a profit will no longer be able to make a profit, and they will stop mining.

Despite what someone else claimed, this does not make confirmations take longer, increasing the price of transactions, and incentivizing more miners to mine, because of the fixed time to mine a block.

Either this will reduce the security of the bitcoin network, or stakeholders will mine "at a loss" to avoid losing their bitcoins.

And, it's silly to make stakeholders do PoW.

Add:

Your hypothesis about people not wanting to be with them

LOL, I didn't make that hypothesis. I don't know what you're talking about :-)

[bambou]

Just in case you were curious about mining bitcoin on other planets..

[RoadStress]

Just in case you were curious about mining bitcoin on other planets..

Don't worry! There will be a SWIFT-a-like sidechain that will regulate interplanetary transfers