{"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:2015-05-07\n📝 Original message:On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 1:29 PM, Mike Hearn \u003cmike at plan99.net\u003e wrote:\n\u003e I was referring to winter next year. 0.12 isn't scheduled until the end of\n\u003e the year, according to Wladimir. I explained where this figure comes from in\n\u003e this article:\n\u003e\n\u003e https://medium.com/@octskyward/bitcoin-s-seasonal-affective-disorder-35733bab760d\n\u003e\n\u003e It's a fairly simple estimate based on previous growth patterns.\n\nOk, thanks.\n\n\u003e\u003e We've successfully reached consensus for several softfork proposals\n\u003e\u003e already.\n\u003e\n\u003e\n\u003e Are you sure about that?\n\nYes, Peter Todd gave more details.\n\n\u003e What if Gavin popped up right now and said he disagreed with every current\n\u003e proposal, he disagreed with side chains too, and there would be no consensus\n\u003e on any of them until the block size limit was raised.\n\u003e\n\u003e Would you say, oh, OK, guess that's it then. There's no consensus so might\n\u003e as well scrap all those proposals, as they'll never happen anyway. Bye bye\n\u003e side chains whitepaper.\n\nWell, yes, it is true that \"universally uncontroversial\" (which is\nwhat I think the requirement should be for hard forks) is a vague\nqualifier that's not formally defined anywhere.\nI guess we should only consider rational arguments. You cannot just\nnack something without further explanation.\nIf his explanation was \"I will change my mind after we increase block\nsize\", I guess the community should say \"then we will just ignore your\nnack because it makes no sense\".\nIn the same way, when people use fallacies (purposely or not) we must\nexpose that and say \"this fallacy doesn't count as an argument\".\nBut yeah, it would probably be good to define better what constitutes\na \"sensible objection\" or something. That doesn't seem simple though.\n\n\u003e\u003e I just hope that by  \"What we need to see right now is leadership\" you\n\u003e\u003e don't mean something like \"when Gaving and Mike agree it's enough to\n\u003e\u003e deploy a hardfork\" when you go from vague to concrete.\n\u003e\n\u003e\n\u003e No. What I meant is that someone (theoretically Wladimir) needs to make a\n\u003e clear decision. If that decision is \"Bitcoin Core will wait and watch the\n\u003e fireworks when blocks get full\", that would be showing leadership .....\n\u003e albeit I believe in the wrong direction. It would, however, let people know\n\u003e what's what and let them start to make longer term plans.\n\u003e\n\u003e This dillydallying around is an issue - people just make vague points that\n\u003e can't really be disagreed with (more nodes would be nice, smaller pools\n\u003e would also be nice etc), and nothing gets done.\n\nWell, there's two different things here.\nOne thing is the Bitcoin core project where you could argue that the 5\ncommitters decide (I don't know why Wladimir would have any more\nauthority than the others).\nBut what the bitcoin network itself does it's very different because\nunlike the bitcoin core software project, the Bitcoin network is\ndecentralized.\nIf the people with commit access go nuts and decide something that's\nclearly stupid or evil, people can just fork the project because it is\nfree software.\nYou cannot be forced to use specific features of free software, you\ncan always remove them and recompile, that's the whole point.\nSo, no, there's no authority to decide on hardforks and that's why I\nthink that only clearly uncontroversial things can get through as\nhardforks.\n\n\u003e\u003e What you want to avoid at all cost (the block size actually being\n\u003e\u003e used), I see as the best opportunity we have to look into the future.\n\u003e\n\u003e\n\u003e I think I see one of the causes of disagreement now.\n\u003e\n\u003e I will write more on the topic of what will happen if we hit the block size\n\u003e limit soon, maybe this evening. I have some other tasks to do first.\n\u003e\n\u003e Regardless, I don't believe we will get any useful data out of such an\n\u003e event. I've seen distributed systems run out of capacity before. What will\n\u003e happen instead is technological failure followed by rapid user abandonment\n\u003e that pushes traffic back below the pressure threshold .... and those users\n\u003e will most likely not come back any time soon.\n\nOk, so in simple terms, you expect people to have to pay enormous fees\nand/or wait thousands of blocks for their transactions to get included\nin the chain.\nIs that correct?\n\n\u003e\u003e Ok, this is my plan: we wait 12 months, hope that your estimations are\n\u003e\u003e correct (in case that my guess was better than yours, we keep waiting\n\u003e\u003e until June 2017) and start having full blocks and people having to\n\u003e\u003e wait 2 blocks for their transactions to be confirmed some times.\n\u003e\n\u003e\n\u003e I disagree that'd be the outcome, but good, this is progress. Now we need to\n\u003e hear something like that from Wladimir, or whoever has the final say around\n\u003e here.\n\nAs said above there's no authority to decide on what Bitcoin the p2p\nnetwork does. Again, that's the whole point.\nBut, yes, I agree that both sides understanding each other better is progress.\n\n\u003e With respect to the fee market: I think it's fairer to say Gavin wants a\n\u003e market to exist, and he also wants supply to be plentiful. 20mb limit\n\u003e doesn't actually mean every block will be 20mb the day after, no more than\n\u003e they're all 1mb today. Miners may discover that if they go beyond 5mb they\n\u003e have too many orphans and then propagation speed will have to be optimised\n\u003e to break through the next bottleneck. Scaling is always about finding the\n\u003e next bottleneck and removing it, ideally, before you hit it.\n\nI'm sure he wants a fee market to eventually exist as well.\nBut it seems that some people would like to see that happening before\nthe subsidies are low (not necessarily null), while other people are\nfine waiting for that but don't want to ever be close to the scale\nlimits anytime soon.\nI would also like to know for how long we need to prioritize short\nterm adoption in this way. As others have said, if the answer is\n\"forever, adoption is always the most important thing\" then we will\nend up with an improved version of Visa.\nBut yeah, this is progress, I'll wait for your more detailed\ndescription of the tragedies that will follow hitting the block\nlimits, assuming for now that it will happen in 12 months.\nMy previous answer to the nervous \"we will hit the block limits in 12\nmonths if we don't do anything\" was \"not sure about 12 months, but\nwhatever, great, I'm waiting for that to observe how fees get\naffected\".\nBut it should have been a question \"what's wrong with hitting the\nblock limits in 12 months?\""}