{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","author_name":"npub16wtdr5grjycaw37553u5vvlfq09rwxhzz4kler6pz952a7ny6mtqslgem7","author_url":"https://nostr.ae/npub16wtdr5grjycaw37553u5vvlfq09rwxhzz4kler6pz952a7ny6mtqslgem7","provider_name":"njump","provider_url":"https://nostr.ae","html":"📅 Original date posted:2015-08-11\n📝 Original message:On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 9:28 AM, Pieter Wuille via bitcoin-dev \u003c\nbitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org\u003e wrote:\n\n\u003e On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 5:55 PM, Gavin Andresen \u003cgavinandresen at gmail.com\u003e\n\u003e wrote:\n\u003e\n\u003e\u003e I think there are multiple reasons to raise the maximum block size, and\n\u003e\u003e yes, fear of Bad Things Happening as we run up against the 1MB limit is one\n\u003e\u003e of the reasons.\n\u003e\u003e\n\u003e\u003e I take the opinion of smart engineers who actually do resource planning\n\u003e\u003e and have seen what happens when networks run out of capacity very seriously.\n\u003e\u003e\n\u003e\n\u003e This is a fundamental disagreement then. I believe that the demand is\n\u003e infinite if you don't set a fee minimum (and I don't think we should), and\n\u003e it just takes time for the market to find a way to fill whatever is\n\u003e available - the rest goes into off-chain systems anyway. You will run out\n\u003e of capacity at any size, and acting out of fear of that reality does not\n\u003e improve the system.\n\u003e\n\nI think the case for increasing block size can be made without appealing to\nfear of unknown effects of a fee market developing. I agree with you that\nthe most likely outcome is that fees will rise to a new equilibrium as\ncompetition for block space increases, and some use cases will get priced\nout of the market. If fees rise high enough, the effects of this can be\npretty bad though. I get the sense that you don't think high fees are that\nbad / low fees are that good.\n\nCan you let me know which of these statements related to low fees you\ndisagree with?\n\n(0) Bitcoin's security will eventually have to be paid for almost entirely\nvia txn fees.\n\n(1) A future in which lots of users are making on chain txns and each\npaying 5 cents/tx is more sustainable than one in which a smaller number of\nusers are paying $3/tx, all else being equal (pretend the centralization\npressures are very low in both instances, and each scenario results in the\nsame amount of total tx fees).\n\n(2) It's important that Bitcoin become widely used to protect the network\nagainst regulators (note how political pressure from users who like Uber\nhave had a huge effect on preventing Uber from being banned in many\nlocations).\n\n(3) There are potentially a lot of valuable use cases that can benefit from\nBitcoin's decentralization which can work at 5 cents / tx but are nonviable\nat $3 / tx. Allowing fees to stay at $3 / tx and pricing out all the viable\nuse cases between $3 and 5 cents / tx would likely result in a significant\nloss of utility for people who want these use cases to work.\n\n(4) The Lightning Network will be a lot less appealing at $3 / tx than 5\ncents / tx, because it'll require much larger anchor txn values to\nsufficiently amortize the costs of the Bitcoin tx fees, and having to pay\n$3 each time your counter-party misbehaves is somewhat painful.\n\n(5) Assuming that Bitcoin is somewhat likely to end up in the \"lots of\nusers, lower fees\" situation described in (1), it's important that people\ncan experiment with low fee use cases now so that these use cases have time\nto be discovered, be improved, and become popular before Bitcoin's security\nrelies exclusively on fees.\n\n\nFinally, here's a type of question that devs on this list really don't like\nanswering but which I think is more informative than almost any other: If\nyou knew that hard forking to 4 MB soon would keep fees around 5 cents\n(with a fee market) for the next two years, and that remaining at 1 MB\nwould result in fees of around $1 for the next two years, would you be in\nfavor of the 4 MB hard fork? (I know our knowledge of the decentralization\nrisks isn't very complete now, but assume you had to make a decision given\nthe state of your knowledge now).\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150811/af01b4aa/attachment-0001.html\u003e"}