{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub1fx98zxt3lzspjs5f4msr0fxysx5euucm29ghysryju7vpc9j0jzqtcl2d8","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub1fx98zxt3lzspjs5f4msr0fxysx5euucm29ghysryju7vpc9j0jzqtcl2d8","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2015-08-30\n📝 Original message:On Sun, Aug 30, 2015 at 7:13 PM,  \u003cjl2012 at xbt.hk\u003e wrote:\n\u003e This is based on the assumption that miners would always like to use up the\n\u003e last byte of the available block size. However, this is just not true:\n\u003e\n\u003e 1. The 6 year blockchain history has shown that most miners have a soft cap\n\u003e with their block size.\n\u003e\n\u003e 2. Chinese miners, controlling 60% of the network, rejected Gavin's initial\n\u003e 20MB proposal and asked for 8MB:\n\u003e http://cointelegraph.com/news/114577/chinese-mining-pools-propose-alternative-8-mb-block-size\n\u003e [...]\n\nNo, I'm not making such assumption. I'm focusing on what they CAN do,\nwhile suspending judgement on their good will and not trying to\npredict their future behavior from historic behaviour.\nWith 60% of the hashrate, you can easily get 100% by orphaning\neverybody else's blocks. More importantly, being under the same\njurisdiction they can be forced to behave in certain way (for example,\ncensor transactions) by law.\nI'm very worried about the current situation no matter how benevolent\ncurrent miners are. Thus weakening the only limit to mining\ncentralization that we have at the consensus rule level seems\nextremely risky at this point.\n\n\u003e For many reasons miners may want to have a smaller block size, which we\n\u003e don't need to list them here. Although they can limit it by a softfork or\n\u003e even 51% attack, it is a very violent process. Why don't we just allow them\n\u003e to vote for a lower limit?\n\u003e\n\u003e So I think the right way is to choose a mining-centralization-safe limit,\n\u003e and let it free float within a range based on miner's vote. If we are lucky\n\u003e enough to have some responsible miners, they will keep it as low as\n\u003e possible, until the legitimate tx volume catches up. Even in the worst case,\n\u003e the block size is still mining-centralization-safe. The upper limit may\n\u003e increase linearly, if not exponentially, until we find a better long-term\n\u003e solution. (sort of a combination of BIP100 and 101, with different\n\u003e parameters)\n\nMy point is, a \"soft cap\" determined by miners clearly doesn't protect\nus from mining centralization: the \"hard cap\" does.\nKnowing that, and given that miners can currently set their own policy\nblock size maximum, what does this \"voting on a lower limit\" achieve?\nWhat are the gains? Why are we \"lucky\" if they keep the lower one as\nlow as possible?\n\n\u003e For the matter of \"urgency\", I agree with you that there is no actual\n\u003e urgency AT THIS MOMENT. However, if a hardfork may take 5 years to deploy\n\u003e (as you suggested), we really have the urgency to make a decision now.\n\nThank you for admitting it is not urgent!\nI suggested 5 years for the concrete hardfork in bip99 because it's\nclearly non-urgent and I wanted to be very conservative. I'm happy to\nreduce that to say, 1 year (specially given that the change is very\nsimple to implement).\nFor a simple block size change (like, say bip102) 1 year (maybe 6\nmonths + miner's confirmation) is probably more than enough as well.\nAnd we can always deploy an urgency hardfork if it is necessary.\n\n\u003e Actually, the main point is not urgency but uncertainty. We have debated for\n\u003e 5 years. Why won't we have 5 more years of debate, plus 5 years of\n\u003e deployment delay? Are we sticking to 1MB for 10 years? In that case Bitcoin\n\u003e Core must be abandoned by the economic majority and a Schism fork must\n\u003e occur.\n\nFortunately we haven't been discussing this for 5 years, I don't know\nwhere you get that from.\nA schism fork it's certainly always a possibility but I would only\nconsider it after an urgency hardfork (once the issue becomes urgent)\nfails due to not being uncontroversial.\nWould you agree with me on that?\nWhat would be your criterion for considering an increase in block size urgent?\n\nMine is: we should consider a block increase only when minimum market\nfees for transactions to be mined (currently zero satoshis) increase\nabove a high fee (admittedly undefined, but certainly greater than\nzero).\nEven if it's \"urgent\", I think we should only increase the maximum if,\nat the same time, the new size can be considered safe\nmining-centralization-wise (unfortunately we don't have any metric to\nmeasure that nor enough tools to realistically simulate different\nsizes in different network topologies at the moment). But once we have\nthem, the next discussion will be much simpler, so I don't see the\nneed for block size maximum that changes over time (neither\nexponentially nor linearly).\n\nWould you agree with me that mining centralization should be the most\nimportant criterion when changing the block size maximum rule rather\nthan the level of minimum fees?\nIf the community can't agree on this, I'm afraid there will be a\nschism hardfork eventually. Another possibility is that those who\naren't concerned with mining centralization start their own altcoin\n(centralizedcoin? ), maybe a spinoff [\nhttps://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=563972.0 ] if they want to\nkeep Bitcoin's utxo at the moment of the separation.\n\nBut if the community agrees with this and just disagrees on the\nmaximum block size consensus rule having any effect on mining\ncentralization (like Gavin and I disagree), we should calm down and\nuse scientific processes to find out what the relation between the two\nactually is (if there's any relation at all).\n\nWould you agree with me on this?"}