<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><author_name>npub19jx6yq5fyvvcn3zlf0f60kr78q7wq5fy5qd9yqlqwumlqqcfc8rsl7fxhj</author_name><author_url>https://nostr.ae/npub19jx6yq5fyvvcn3zlf0f60kr78q7wq5fy5qd9yqlqwumlqqcfc8rsl7fxhj</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://nostr.ae</provider_url><html>📅 Original date posted:2015-08-07&#xA;📝 Original message:Peter&#39;s proposal undercuts matching blocksize growth to technological&#xA;progress not limiting centralization pressure.  They are somewhat related,&#xA;but I want to be clear on what I originally stated.  I would also point out&#xA;that Peter&#39;s proposal lacks this technical criteria as well.&#xA;&#xA;That being said, I think designing any growth rates on theoretical&#xA;centralization pressure is not sensible and Peter&#39;s proposal rightly&#xA;excludes it and attempts instead for a very gradual increase over time&#xA;attempting to match blocksize growth that is consistent with technological&#xA;bandwidth growth.  The problem is that it ignores the last 6 years (we are&#xA;already &#34;behind&#34;) and underestimates bandwidth and storage growth. (See&#xA;Nielsen&#39;s law which states 50% and has held for 30 years).&#xA;&#xA;Peter seems to be of the belief that since bitcoin will never be able to&#xA;handle all the world&#39;s transactions we should instead &#34;...decrease the need&#xA;for trust required in off-chain systems...&#34;.  This is akin to basing all&#xA;the world&#39;s transactions on a small settlement layer, much like balancing a&#xA;pyramid upside down it will topple.&#xA;&#xA;I&#39;m of the belief that the &#34;reasonable node&#34; test is a simple enough test&#xA;to maintain decentralization.&#xA;&#xA;A raspberry pie 2 node on reasonable Internet connection with a reasonable&#xA;hard drive can run a node with 8 or 20mb blocks easily.&#xA;&#xA;As Peter&#39;s proposal indicates, &#34;If over time, this growth factor is beyond&#xA;what the actual technology offers, the intention should be to soft fork a&#xA;tighter limit.&#34;  I wholeheartedly agree, which is why we should plan to be&#xA;ahead of the curve...not behind it.&#xA;On Aug 7, 2015 2:15 PM, &#34;Mark Friedenbach&#34; &lt;mark at friedenbach.org&gt; wrote:&#xA;&#xA;&gt; Surely you have some sort of empirical measurement demonstrating the&#xA;&gt; validity of that statement? That is to say you&#39;ve established some&#xA;&gt; technical criteria by which to determine how much centralization pressure&#xA;&gt; is too much, and shown that Pieter&#39;s proposal undercuts expected progress&#xA;&gt; in that area?&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 12:07 PM, Ryan Butler &lt;rryananizer at gmail.com&gt;&#xA;&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; Clarification...&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; These are not mutually exclusive.  We can design an increase to blocksize&#xA;&gt;&gt; that increases available space on chain AND follow technological&#xA;&gt;&gt; evolution.  Peter&#39;s latest proposal is way too conservative on that front.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; And given Peter&#39;s assertion that demand is infinite there will still be a&#xA;&gt;&gt; an ocean of off chain transactions for the likes of blockstream to address.&#xA;&gt;&gt; On Aug 7, 2015 1:57 PM, &#34;Ryan Butler&#34; &lt;rryananizer at gmail.com&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Who said anything about scaling bitcoin to visa levels now?  We&#39;re&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; talking about an increase now that scales into the future at a rate that is&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; consistent with technological progress.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Peter himself said &#34;So, I think the block size should follow&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; technological evolution...&#34;.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; The blocksize increase proposals have been modeled around this very&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; thing.  It&#39;s reasonable to increase the blocksize to a point that a&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; reasonable person, with reasonable equipment and internet access can run a&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; node or even a miner with acceptable orphan rates.  Most miners are spv&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; mining anyways.  The 8 or even 20 MB limits are within those parameters.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; These are not mutually exclusive.  We can design an increase to&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; blocksize that addresses both demand exceeding the available space AND&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; follow technological evolution.  Peter&#39;s latest proposal is way too&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; conservative on that front.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; On Aug 7, 2015 1:25 PM, &#34;Mark Friedenbach&#34; &lt;mark at friedenbach.org&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; Please don&#39;t put words into Pieter&#39;s mouth. I guarantee you everyone&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; working on Bitcoin in their heart of hearts would prefer everyone in the&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; world being able to use the Bitcoin ledger for whatever purpose, if there&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; were no cost.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; But like any real world engineering issue, this is a matter of&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; tradeoffs. At the extreme it is simply impossible to scale Bitcoin to the&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; terrabyte sized blocks that would be necessary to service the entire&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; world&#39;s financial transactions. Not without sacrificing entirely the&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; protection of policy neutrality achieved through decentralization. And as&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; that is Bitcoin&#39;s only advantage over traditional consensus systems, you&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; would have to wonder what the point of such an endeavor would be.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; So *somewhere* you have to draw the line, and transactions below that&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; level are simply pushed into higher level or off-chain protocols.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; The issue, as Pieter and Jorge have been pointing out, is that&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; technical discussion over where that line should be has been missing from&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; this debate.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 10:47 AM, Ryan Butler via bitcoin-dev &lt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; Interesting position there Peter...you fear more people actually using&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; bitcoin.  The less on chain transactions the lower the velocity and the&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; lower the value of the network.  I would be careful what you ask for&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; because you end up having nothing left to even root the security of these&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; off chain transactions with and then neither will exist.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; Nobody ever said you wouldn&#39;t run out of capacity at any size.  It&#39;s&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; quite the fallacy to draw the conclusion from that statement that block&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; size should remain far below a capacity it can easily maintain which would&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; bring more users/velocity/value to the system.  The outcomes of both of&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; those scenarios are asymmetric.  A higher block size can support more users&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; and volume.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; Raising the blocksize isn&#39;t out of fear.  It&#39;s the realization that we&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; are at a point where we can raise it and support more users and&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; transactions while keeping the downsides to a minimum (centralization etc).&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; On Aug 7, 2015 11:28 AM, &#34;Pieter Wuille via bitcoin-dev&#34; &lt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 5:55 PM, Gavin Andresen &lt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; gavinandresen at gmail.com&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 11:16 AM, Pieter Wuille &lt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; pieter.wuille at gmail.com&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; I guess my question (and perhaps that&#39;s what Jorge is after): do&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; you feel that blocks should be increased in response to (or for fear of)&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; such a scenario.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; I think there are multiple reasons to raise the maximum block size,&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; and yes, fear of Bad Things Happening as we run up against the 1MB limit is&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; one of the reasons.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; I take the opinion of smart engineers who actually do resource&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; planning and have seen what happens when networks run out of capacity very&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; seriously.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; This is a fundamental disagreement then. I believe that the demand is&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; infinite if you don&#39;t set a fee minimum (and I don&#39;t think we should), and&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; it just takes time for the market to find a way to fill whatever is&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; available - the rest goes into off-chain systems anyway. You will run out&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; of capacity at any size, and acting out of fear of that reality does not&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; improve the system. Whatever size blocks are actually produced, I believe&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; the result will either be something people consider too small to be&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; competitive (&#34;you mean Bitcoin can only do 24 transactions per second?&#34;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; sounds almost the same as &#34;you mean Bitcoin can only do 3 transactions per&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; second?&#34;), or something that is very centralized in practice, and likely&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; both.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; And if so, if that is a reason for increase now, won&#39;t it be a&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; reason for an increase later as well? It is my impression that your answer&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; is yes, that this is why you want to increase the block size quickly and&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; significantly, but correct me if I&#39;m wrong.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; Sure, it might be a reason for an increase later. Here&#39;s my message&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; to in-the-future Bitcoin engineers:  you should consider raising the&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; maximum block size if needed and you think the benefits of doing so (like&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; increased adoption or lower transaction fees or increased reliability)&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; outweigh the costs (like higher operating costs for full-nodes or the&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; disruption caused by ANY consensus rule change).&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; In general that sounds reasonable, but it&#39;s a dangerous precedent to&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; make technical decisions based on a fear of change of economics...&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; --&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; Pieter&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; _______________________________________________&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; bitcoin-dev mailing list&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; _______________________________________________&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; bitcoin-dev mailing list&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;-------------- next part --------------&#xA;An HTML attachment was scrubbed...&#xA;URL: &lt;http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150807/21260f13/attachment.html&gt;</html></oembed>