The hardfork will make Gavincoin plummet to zero

[Buffer Overflow]

If Gavin doesn't update the bitcoin core with a more realistic block cap size, then you can sure someone else will.

I'm imagining an epic shitstorm when there is 100 different forks of the original Bitcoin, all claiming to be the one and only true to the holy satoshi, all incompatible to each other. People would even trade them against each other and there is a race to decimate the competition by dumping as many pre-fork coins as possible.
Probably won't happen, but is the thought that counts.

I agree.

[thejaytiesto]

Fuck sakes, if Satoshi was so smart why the hell didn't he add 20 MB by default? he would have saved us from this mess. Geeeeez.

Satoshi had no limit on block sizes at all.   From block 1 it was legal to have a 2MB, 20MB, even 33MB block.   There was a 33.5MB limit on message length and since blocks are transmitted as a single message it would have limited blocks to only 33.5MB but even this wasn't a hard limit as new message type could have been added which transmitted blocks in other ways (i.e. header & txn hashes vs full transactions).

The 1MB "limit" was added as a temporary anti-spam measure 18 months later.   There was no voting, no significant discussion, and the commit wasn't made by Satoshi.  It actually was combined with a bunch of other unrelated changes and not even well documented at the time.  There is nothing which indicates this was a core design decision that Bitcoin would perpetually be limited to 1MB.

Isn't it time for satoshi to come back and bring some consensus?
I would like to hear his views on the current state of things.
Maybe if he says "guys its time to fork 20" there will be a consensus and people will be reasonable.

[Buffer Overflow]

Isn't it time for satoshi to come back and bring some consensus?

That's the problem, he would have too much power. I think that would only cause more problems. He's long gone, we will have to sort it out ourselves.

[bitcoin revo]

It could be $0 one day, but then again, it could be $10,000
Anyways I expect it to last at least 10 years at minimum, but who knows. Satoshi is still out there right? If he ever creates "Bitcoin 2.0" I'll jump the boat for the founder.

[a fool and his money ...]

It could be $0 one day, but then again, it could be $10,000
Anyways I expect it to last at least 10 years at minimum, but who knows. Satoshi is still out there right? If he ever creates "Bitcoin 2.0" I'll jump the boat for the founder.

maybe he already did 

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

Isn't it time for satoshi to come back and bring some consensus?

That's the problem, he would have too much power. I think that would only cause more problems. He's long gone, we will have to sort it out ourselves.

Sometimes communities need a genius leader to re-order it and put some common sense on it. Im pretty sure Satoshi's words would be common sense.

[RodeoX]

I don't see what the big deal is. We have hard forked before and it was a non-event, despite all the dire prediction then also. 

[HarmonLi]

How is limiting the amount of a single block beneficial for the coin? You could also go for a coin with lower block-rates. This all just doesn't make any sense. Limiting the block-size is just arbitrarily crippling the flexibility of Bitcoin.

[periander]

What i dont understant is the certainty that both coins/forks are gonna live. If lets say 80% of all Hashingpower switch to the new Fork the old work will get stuck at a very high difficulty so transactions will take 100 minutes. This will cause more miners to switch until the fork is practically death/useless.

And i think if a fork will ever happen it will be made sure that at least 80% of the miners are behind this decision.

[HarmonLi]

What i dont understant is the certainty that both coins/forks are gonna live. If lets say 80% of all Hashingpower switch to the new Fork the old work will get stuck at a very high difficulty so transactions will take 100 minutes. This will cause more miners to switch until the fork is practically death/useless.

And i think if a fork will ever happen it will be made sure that at least 80% of the miners are behind this decision.

Well, that's the beauty. If the 'old' version really retains 20% of the hashing power and people do keep it alive, the difficulty will adjust itself accordingly after some time. If more and more people actually switch to the 'new' version, the hard fork was indeed 'successful'. Thing is: It doesn't matter

[Muuurrrrica!]

What i dont understant is the certainty that both coins/forks are gonna live. If lets say 80% of all Hashingpower switch to the new Fork the old work will get stuck at a very high difficulty so transactions will take 100 minutes. This will cause more miners to switch until the fork is practically death/useless.

And i think if a fork will ever happen it will be made sure that at least 80% of the miners are behind this decision.

Well, that's the beauty. If the 'old' version really retains 20% of the hashing power and people do keep it alive, the difficulty will adjust itself accordingly after some time. If more and more people actually switch to the 'new' version, the hard fork was indeed 'successful'. Thing is: It doesn't matter

or people switch back to the original bitcoin because gavincoin is just a pain in the ass.

[periander]

What i dont understant is the certainty that both coins/forks are gonna live. If lets say 80% of all Hashingpower switch to the new Fork the old work will get stuck at a very high difficulty so transactions will take 100 minutes. This will cause more miners to switch until the fork is practically death/useless.

And i think if a fork will ever happen it will be made sure that at least 80% of the miners are behind this decision.

Well, that's the beauty. If the 'old' version really retains 20% of the hashing power and people do keep it alive, the difficulty will adjust itself accordingly after some time. If more and more people actually switch to the 'new' version, the hard fork was indeed 'successful'. Thing is: It doesn't matter

Thats the point: this might not be the case. Lets asume that the next adjustment is like 10 Days away. If you only have 20% hashing power left that means, it would take 100days! This will scare away even more hashing power which will lead to even more time needed. So technically: yes a single CPU miner might can mine its way to the next adjustment but this may take years or decades. After all this time, even if the old fork got adjusted noone is interested in it anymore.

[HarmonLi]

What i dont understant is the certainty that both coins/forks are gonna live. If lets say 80% of all Hashingpower switch to the new Fork the old work will get stuck at a very high difficulty so transactions will take 100 minutes. This will cause more miners to switch until the fork is practically death/useless.

And i think if a fork will ever happen it will be made sure that at least 80% of the miners are behind this decision.

Well, that's the beauty. If the 'old' version really retains 20% of the hashing power and people do keep it alive, the difficulty will adjust itself accordingly after some time. If more and more people actually switch to the 'new' version, the hard fork was indeed 'successful'. Thing is: It doesn't matter

or people switch back to the original bitcoin because gavincoin is just a pain in the ass.

Then it's been decided that the majority doesn't want a larger block size! What's the problem? Bitcoin is the epitome of democracy when it comes to currencies! People decide with their hashing power. Beautiful!

[HarmonLi]

What i dont understant is the certainty that both coins/forks are gonna live. If lets say 80% of all Hashingpower switch to the new Fork the old work will get stuck at a very high difficulty so transactions will take 100 minutes. This will cause more miners to switch until the fork is practically death/useless.

And i think if a fork will ever happen it will be made sure that at least 80% of the miners are behind this decision.

Well, that's the beauty. If the 'old' version really retains 20% of the hashing power and people do keep it alive, the difficulty will adjust itself accordingly after some time. If more and more people actually switch to the 'new' version, the hard fork was indeed 'successful'. Thing is: It doesn't matter

Thats the point: this might not be the case. Lets asume that the next adjustment is like 10 Days away. If you only have 20% hashing power left that means, it would take 100days! This will scare away even more hashing power which will lead to even more time needed. So technically: yes a single CPU miner might can mine its way to the next adjustment but this may take years or decades. After all this time, even if the old fork got adjusted noone is interested in it anymore.

Yeah, if it only retains 10%, it may take a while, sure. But you've said it yourself: Things take care of themselves: If the long block time really turns people off, they'll switch back to the new chain - problem solved. It doesn't matter what happens, people decide what they want to happen and the majority wins - or both chains co-exist. It's beautiful.

[FenixRD]

Satoshi had no limit on block sizes at all ... There was a 33.5MB limit on message length and since blocks are transmitted as a single message it would have limited blocks to only 33.5MB but even this wasn't a hard limit as new message type could have been added which transmitted blocks in other ways (i.e. header & txn hashes vs full transactions).

The 1MB "limit" was added as a temporary anti-spam measure 18 months later ... the commit wasn't made by Satoshi.

Yep. Good enough for me. I'm of a mindset that you "don't change the original design unless there is hard evidence of a need". I'm against Gavin's plan simply because the numbers are arbitrary, and I don't like arbitrary. I'm in favor of rolling back to the original message length limitation and letting the miners determine block length based on their internal cost/benefit analysis using fees and orphan probability.

I don't want a "new" blocksize; I want the old blocksize back. When that gets full, we can discuss it further, and it'll be for the same reason that one day, we'll need to extend the decimal precision to allow division of satoshis.

[HarmonLi]

Satoshi had no limit on block sizes at all ... There was a 33.5MB limit on message length and since blocks are transmitted as a single message it would have limited blocks to only 33.5MB but even this wasn't a hard limit as new message type could have been added which transmitted blocks in other ways (i.e. header & txn hashes vs full transactions).

The 1MB "limit" was added as a temporary anti-spam measure 18 months later ... the commit wasn't made by Satoshi.

Yep. Good enough for me. I'm of a mindset that you "don't change the original design unless there is hard evidence of a need". I'm against Gavin's plan simply because the numbers are arbitrary, and I don't like arbitrary. I'm in favor of rolling back to the original message length limitation and letting the miners determine block length based on their internal cost/benefit analysis using fees and orphan probability.

I don't want a "new" blocksize; I want the old blocksize back. When that gets full, we can discuss it further, and it'll be for the same reason that one day, we'll need to extend the decimal precision to allow division of satoshis.

I think we may have to decide on a phrasing here. Being against Gavin can mean two things: "Against an increased maximum block size of 10 MB" or "Against any maximum block size". I think passing this 'problem' or rather decision onto the miners is the best way to go!

[FenixRD]

I think we may have to decide on a phrasing here. Being against Gavin can mean two things: "Against an increased maximum block size of 10 MB" or "Against any maximum block size". I think passing this 'problem' or rather decision onto the miners is the best way to go!

Right. I'm against his current plan of arbitrary increases. I'm not for NO maximum, but this is semantics -- there is also a max and min difficulty, etc. So, I'm for the max being de facto because of the protocol spec, as with difficulty.

Anti-spam measures need only exist to prevent DOS. (There might be an argument for preventing bandwidth-based centralization as well.) This can be managed via fees, which should be made algorithmic instead of arbitrary, as well.



To remind the thread, most pools cap blocks at 750k right now. (If you don't know why they'd do this, you really shouldn't be commenting on blocksize at all, without more understanding of how this all works!) This isn't going to change with the 1MB cap removed. The economics of Bitcoin will not really change with a blocksize increase.

So, tl;dr my recommendation is remove the 1MB cap; allow message length to be the current upper bound -- don't just drop another new arbitrary cap in place.

[BillyBobZorton]

I still dont get how there are people supporting 1MB forever. Whats the point? dont you see its a dead end? I dont even get why this is a discussion.

[RodeoX]

I still dont get how there are people supporting 1MB forever. Whats the point? dont you see its a dead end? I dont even get why this is a discussion.

I guess it starts with thinking every god dammed thing is a conspiracy of some sort. Add to that a lack of understanding about the protocol and you have "Gavincoin" plummeting to zero. 

[FenixRD]

I still dont get how there are people supporting 1MB forever. Whats the point? dont you see its a dead end? I dont even get why this is a discussion.

There is at least one good reason, one which at the least I and Peter Todd support. It's an authoritarian one, though. (And thus, as above, I'm not really for a limit.)

Necessity is mother of all invention, and there are a shit-ton of things than can and are being made to aggregate transactions in different ways, ways which have different incentive, economic, and security implications. This impending limit has caused a great deal of thinking and research on sidechains, treechains, and several other things.

For this reason, while I'm for removal of the limit, I'm in no great hurry to see it happen, until TT1C (time-to-1st-confirmation) begins to be detrimentally impacted. So I've stumped a bit on the "leave it alone" side in some places.

So why am I here? (1) we're nearing where it could start non-negligibly impacting TT1C soon; and most of all (2) so long as this is getting debated hotly, I must insist that if it is to be changed, don't just replace 1MB with another dumb limit!

edit: So in any case there's no good reason for 1MB forever, which was your phrasing. In fact there's no good reason to have a blocksize limit while having a mintxfee; they solve the same problem.