{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub1kf0ppcjaguxekg24yx6smgxlu73qn0k8lm0t2wrqc0scpl7u3sgsmf3f58","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub1kf0ppcjaguxekg24yx6smgxlu73qn0k8lm0t2wrqc0scpl7u3sgsmf3f58","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2015-06-26\n📝 Original message:It is not \"fear\" of fee pressure.\n\n1) Blocks are mostly not-full on average.\n\n2) Absent long blocks and stress tests, there is little fee pressure above\nthe anti-spam relay fee metric, because of #1.\n\n3) As such, inducing fee pressure is a delta, a change from years-long\nbitcoin economic policy.  Each time we approach the soft limit, Bitcoin\nCore increases the soft limit to prevent \"full\" blocks.  Mike Hearn et. al.\nlobbies miners to upgrade.\n\n(note - this is not an endorsement of these actions - it is a neutral\nobservation)\n\n4) Inaction leads to consistent fee pressure as the months tick on and\nsystem volume grows; thus, inaction leads to economic policy change.\n\n5) Economic policy change leads to market and software disruption.  The\nmarket and software - notably wallets - is not prepared for this.\n\n6) If you want to change economic policy, that's fine.  But be honest and\nadmit you are arguing for a change, a delta from current market\nexpectations and behavior.\n\n7) It is critical to first deal with what _is_, not what you wish the world\nto be.  You want a fee market to develop.  There is nothing wrong with that\ndesire.  It remains a delta from where we are today, and that is critically\nrelevant in a $3b+ market.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nOn Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 7:09 AM, Pieter Wuille \u003cpieter.wuille at gmail.com\u003e\nwrote:\n\n\u003e Hello all,\n\u003e\n\u003e here I'm going to try to address a part of the block size debate which has\n\u003e been troubling me since the beginning: the reason why people seem to want\n\u003e it.\n\u003e\n\u003e People say that larger blocks are necessary. In the long term, I agree -\n\u003e in the sense that systems that do not evolve tend to be replaced by other\n\u003e systems. This evolution can come in terms of layers on top of Bitcoin's\n\u003e blockchain, in terms of the technology underlying various aspects of the\n\u003e blockchain itself, and also in the scale that this technology supports.\n\u003e\n\u003e I do, however, fundamentally disagree that a fear for a change in\n\u003e economics should be considered to necessitate larger blocks. If it is, and\n\u003e there is consensus that we should adapt to it, then there is effectively no\n\u003e limit going forward. This is similar to how Congress voting to increase the\n\u003e copyright term retroactively from time to time is really no different from\n\u003e having an infinite copyright term in the first place. This scares me.\n\u003e\n\u003e Here is how Gavin summarizes the future without increasing block sizes in\n\u003e PR 6341:\n\u003e\n\u003e \u003e 1. Transaction confirmation times for transactions with a given fee will\n\u003e rise; very-low-fee transactions will fail to get confirmed at all.\n\u003e \u003e 2. Average transaction fee paid will rise\n\u003e \u003e 3. People or applications unwilling or unable to pay the rising fees\n\u003e will stop submitting transactions\n\u003e \u003e 4. People and businesses will shelve plans to use Bitcoin, stunting\n\u003e growth and adoption\n\u003e\n\u003e Is it fair to summarize this as \"Some use cases won't fit any more, people\n\u003e will decide to no longer use the blockchain for these purposes, and the\n\u003e fees will adapt.\"?\n\u003e\n\u003e I think that is already happening, and will happen at any scale. I believe\n\u003e demand for payments in general is nearly infinite, and only a small portion\n\u003e of it will eventually fit on a block chain (independent of whether its size\n\u003e is limited by consensus rules or economic or technological means).\n\u003e Furthermore, systems that compete with Bitcoin in this space already offer\n\u003e orders of magnitude more capacity than we can reasonably achieve with any\n\u003e blockchain technology at this point.\n\u003e\n\u003e I don't know what subset of use cases Bitcoin will cater to in the long\n\u003e term. They have already changed - you see way less betting transactions\n\u003e these days than a few years ago for example - and they will keep changing,\n\u003e independent of what effective block sizes we end up with. I don't think we\n\u003e should be afraid of this change or try to stop it.\n\u003e\n\u003e If you look at graphs of block sizes over time (for example,\n\u003e http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=498), it seems to me that there is very little\n\u003e \"organic\" growth, and a lot of sudden changes (which could correspond to\n\u003e changing defaults in miner software, introduction of popular\n\u003e sites/services, changes in the economy). I think these can be seen as the\n\u003e economy changing to full up the available space, and I believe these will\n\u003e keep happening at any size effectively available.\n\u003e\n\u003e None of this is a reason why the size can't increase. However, in my\n\u003e opinion, we should do it because we believe it increases utility and\n\u003e understand the risks; not because we're afraid of what might happen if we\n\u003e don't hurry up. And from that point of view, it seems silly to make a huge\n\u003e increase at once...\n\u003e\n\u003e --\n\u003e Pieter\n\u003e\n\u003e\n\u003e _______________________________________________\n\u003e bitcoin-dev mailing list\n\u003e bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\n\u003e https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev\n\u003e\n\u003e\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150626/4d6992ee/attachment.html\u003e"}