{"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:2015-07-30\n📝 Original message:I'm re-reading and I have many spelling errors, sorry.\n\nOn Fri, Jul 31, 2015 at 3:21 AM, Jorge Timón \u003cjtimon at jtimon.cc\u003e wrote:\n\u003e On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 10:53 PM, Tom Harding \u003ctomh at thinlink.com\u003e wrote:\n\u003e\u003e On 7/30/2015 11:14 AM, Jorge Timón wrote:\n\u003e\u003e\u003e The blocksize limit (your \"production quota\") is necessary for\n\u003e\u003e\u003e decentralization, not for having a functioning fee market.\n\u003e\u003e\n\u003e\u003e\u003e If we can agree that hitting the limit will JUST cause higher fees and\n\u003e\u003e\u003e not bitcoin to fail, puppies to die or the sky to turn purple I think\n\u003e\u003e\u003e that's a great step forward in this debate.\n\u003e\u003e\n\u003e\u003e It's interesting how people see things differently.  I think your first\n\u003e\u003e statement above represents a great step forward in the debate.  Unlike\n\u003e\u003e Adam Back, you state that a block size limit is not necessary to create\n\u003e\u003e a functioning fee market.\n\u003e\n\u003e Yes, Adam Back and I some times see things differently, and that's fine.\n\u003e Many times, we realize later that we're saying the same thing with\n\u003e different words and we're just discussing about terminology. That's\n\u003e not an exclusive problem we have, it's a universal communication\n\u003e problem. That's why math (which is nothing but a language) was\n\u003e invented: to never discuss about terminology, to force any used\n\u003e concept to be defined beforehand.\n\u003e Sorry for the distraction, but I think this is one of those times.\n\u003e Whether \"hitting the limit\" is \"necessary\" (I bet he never said\n\u003e \"strictly necessary\") or just \"helpful\" is not very relevant. I think\n\u003e Adam and I agree that hitting the limit wouldn't be bad, but actually\n\u003e good for an young and immature market like bitcoin fees.\n\u003e Apart from the dubious time-preference premium (dubious because in\n\u003e most cases is just wallet's defaults and not users in a hurry),\n\u003e transactions are basically free if you are willing to wait (and\n\u003e apparently not that much).\n\u003e\n\u003e If I was a miner and you want me to include your transaction for free,\n\u003e you're asking me to give you money, which I would prefer to do\n\u003e directly if you are a friend or a non-profit organization that I like\n\u003e or whatever rather than giving you money through bitcoin fee\n\u003e discounts.\n\u003e By including your transaction, I'm increasing the probability of my\n\u003e mined block being orphaned and you're not willing to give me even a\n\u003e single satoshi in exchange.\n\u003e Today, in practice, one satoshi fee and no fee at all are treated\n\u003e exactly the same by most (maybe all?) miners, which if you ask me, I\n\u003e find very ~~unfair~~ economically absurd.\n\u003e\n\u003e Are all miners just stupid?\n\u003e Not necessarily, they just don't care about fees or transactions at all.\n\u003e Who is to blame? Certainly not the value chosen for the block size\n\u003e limit, it's clearly the subsidy's fault: subsidy is all miners care\n\u003e about (by the way, that's also the illness behind the SPV-mining\n\u003e symptom). I am very worried about excessive mining subsidies (if you\n\u003e knew how worried the freicoin community was [and still is] about this\n\u003e problem, even if freicoin probably has one of the lowest mining\n\u003e subsidies out there [currently and perpetually annual 5% of the\n\u003e monetary base]...).\n\u003e And I think that \"hitting the limit\" is not a catastrophe at all, but\n\u003e rather an opportunity to motivate miners to start caring more about\n\u003e transactions and fees (in proportion to what they care about).\n\u003e And if the limit is increased later and fees fall again, that's fine,\n\u003e because miners' will already be more prepared for the next time we\n\u003e \"hit the limit\".\n\u003e Anyway, maybe that hope is irrelevant, but what I'm convinced about is\n\u003e that rising non-fast-confirmation mining fees above zero is not a bad\n\u003e thing.\n\u003e\n\u003e\u003e As to your second statement, unfortunately for immediate harmonious\n\u003e\u003e relations, I was merely separating out the elevated fee market concern,\n\u003e\u003e not at all saying it is the only or even the biggest concern with\n\u003e\u003e limited capacity.  Alan Reiner, Ryan X. Charles and others have\n\u003e\u003e eloquently explained how restrictive a 1MB limit is, even with \"layer 2\".\n\u003e\n\u003e To be honest, I've only followed those were assuming the worse case\n\u003e for optimization: bitcoin global monetary monopoly.\n\u003e If I remember correctly, they were aiming for something around 170 MB,\n\u003e but in any case, any value for the constant is completely arbitrary to\n\u003e me at this point, including 1 MB. I'm deeply offended when I feel\n\u003e included in the \"1MBers group\" because I don't feel like that at all.\n\u003e To be honest, I have no idea what the correct value should be, all I\n\u003e know it's a trade-off in a monotonic function:\n\u003e\n\u003e f(blocksize) = decentralization\n\u003e\n\u003e\u003e What's missing from the decentralization dialog is a quantitative\n\u003e\u003e measure of decentralization.\n\u003e\n\u003e You are completely right: there's no defined measurable unit for\n\u003e \"decentralization\" (\"p2pness\", whatever bitcoin has that wasn't\n\u003e possible before pow-based distributed consensus).\n\u003e And I'm afraid we will never have such a measurable unit. Maybe the\n\u003e best definition of the property we're trying to capture is just \"the\n\u003e opposite of centralization\", assuming centralization is easier to\n\u003e define.\n\u003e The best we have now are pool percentages, number of nodes,\n\u003e subsidy/fee ratio (as said, this influences things like SPV mining)\n\u003e How all that gets to...?\n\u003e\n\u003e g(many unrelated matrics) = centralization\n\u003e\n\u003e I don't really think anybody knows, but no matter what your\n\u003e interpretation of some Japanese-named dude on the internet's words\n\u003e (aka bitcoin sacred history) are, if you think 3 validating nodes is\n\u003e enough for a \"p2p\" monetary network.\n\u003e It is very possible that decentralization(blocksize) =\n\u003e decentralization(blocksize+1) for many values of blocksize, but I\n\u003e think the burden of the proof that decentralization(current_blocksize)\n\u003e ~= decentralization(current_blocksize+1) is on those who propose\n\u003e ++current_blocksize.\n\u003e But I think ANY metric for centralization would be welcomed right now.\n\u003e In fact, it doesn't need to be a function of blocksize, it can be a\n\u003e function of maxBlockSigops or maybe even maxBlockInputs or\n\u003e maxBlockOuputs.\n\u003e But if we don't want to have any consensus limit to centralization\n\u003e bitcoin has already fail (and doesn't need expensive proof of work).\n\u003e\n\u003e\u003e Why not slam users with higher fees now, if we accept that they may be\n\u003e\u003e necessary someday? For the same reasons you don't ask a child, age 5, to\n\u003e\u003e work in a factory.\n\u003e\n\u003e It is a certainty that fees will be necessary someday: bitcoin's\n\u003e seigniorage is limited to 21 M to subsidize mining, and we know that\n\u003e won't last forever. Expensive proof of work (that centralized systems\n\u003e lack) must be paid for somehow.\n\u003e Who's child am I asking to work in a factory? I feel I'm missing\n\u003e something there."}