<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><author_name>npub1l3uf9m4yw2y7x8wyjeswhelsqyy8ql4jaca4nyy6en0s474yadssg69pvv</author_name><author_url>https://nostr.ae/npub1l3uf9m4yw2y7x8wyjeswhelsqyy8ql4jaca4nyy6en0s474yadssg69pvv</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://nostr.ae</provider_url><html>📅 Original date posted:2015-06-26&#xA;📝 Original message:Planning for a hard forks which change the consensus rules (including&#xA;the blocksize limit) is something we can all agree is worthy of time and&#xA;effort.&#xA;&#xA;However there is clearly not consensus sufficient today to deploy a hard&#xA;fork that changs the blocksize without there being serious and&#xA;potentially experiment ending consequences.&#xA;&#xA;For a proposed hard fork to reach a level of consensus necessary to be&#xA;safe requires that there be a clear and self evident course of action.&#xA;&#xA;That simply does not exist on the blocksize limit question.&#xA;&#xA;On 06/26/2015 11:23 AM, Jeff Garzik wrote:&#xA;&gt; Failure to plan now for a hard fork increase 6(?) months in the future&#xA;&gt; produces that lumpy, unpredictable market behavior.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; The market has baked in the years-long behavior of low fees.  From the&#xA;&gt; market PoV, inaction does lead to precisely that, a sudden change over&#xA;&gt; the span of a few months.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; At a higher level, people look at bitcoin and see people delaying,&#xA;&gt; waiting, dawdling until the barn is actually on fire before taking&#xA;&gt; action to put out the fire.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; They see a system that is not responsive to higher level externalities&#xA;&gt; of people &amp; businesses making plans for the future.  Based on current&#xA;&gt; proposal of change-through-inaction, businesses will simply shelve&#xA;&gt; plans to use bitcoin and not bother putting those new users on the&#xA;&gt; network.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; If you wait until the need to increase block size is acute, it is&#xA;&gt; already too late.  (1) Businesses have permanently shelved plans to&#xA;&gt; use bitcoin and (2) change at that point produces _larger_ disruption&#xA;&gt; to the fee market.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; Hard forks require planning many months in advance.  Gavin&#39;s timing is&#xA;&gt; sound, even though the Gavin/Hearn Bitcoin-XT antics were sub-optimal.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 11:12 AM, Pieter Wuille&#xA;&gt; &lt;pieter.wuille at gmail.com &lt;mailto:pieter.wuille at gmail.com&gt;&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     I am not saying that economic change is what we want. Only that it&#xA;&gt;     is inevitable, independent of whether larger blocks happen or not.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     I am saying that acting because of fear of economic change is a&#xA;&gt;     bad reason. The reason for increase should be because of the&#xA;&gt;     higher utility. We need it at some point, but there should be no rush.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     I do understand that we want to avoid a *sudden* change in&#xA;&gt;     economic policy, but I&#39;m generally not too worried. Either fees&#xA;&gt;     increase and they get paid, and we&#39;re good. But more likely is&#xA;&gt;     that some uses just move off-chain because the block chain does&#xA;&gt;     not offer what they need. That&#39;s sad, but it is inevitable at any&#xA;&gt;     size: some uses fit, some don&#39;t.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     -- &#xA;&gt;     Pieter&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;     On Jun 26, 2015 7:57 PM, &#34;Jeff Garzik&#34; &lt;jgarzik at gmail.com&#xA;&gt;     &lt;mailto:jgarzik at gmail.com&gt;&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;         It is not &#34;fear&#34; of fee pressure.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;         1) Blocks are mostly not-full on average.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;         2) Absent long blocks and stress tests, there is little fee&#xA;&gt;         pressure above the anti-spam relay fee metric, because of #1.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;         3) As such, inducing fee pressure is a delta, a change from&#xA;&gt;         years-long bitcoin economic policy.  Each time we approach the&#xA;&gt;         soft limit, Bitcoin Core increases the soft limit to prevent&#xA;&gt;         &#34;full&#34; blocks.  Mike Hearn et. al. lobbies miners to upgrade.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;         (note - this is not an endorsement of these actions - it is a&#xA;&gt;         neutral observation)&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;         4) Inaction leads to consistent fee pressure as the months&#xA;&gt;         tick on and system volume grows; thus, inaction leads to&#xA;&gt;         economic policy change.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;         5) Economic policy change leads to market and software&#xA;&gt;         disruption.  The market and software - notably wallets - is&#xA;&gt;         not prepared for this.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;         6) If you want to change economic policy, that&#39;s fine.  But be&#xA;&gt;         honest and admit you are arguing for a change, a delta from&#xA;&gt;         current market expectations and behavior.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;         7) It is critical to first deal with what _is_, not what you&#xA;&gt;         wish the world to be.  You want a fee market to develop. &#xA;&gt;         There is nothing wrong with that desire.  It remains a delta&#xA;&gt;         from where we are today, and that is critically relevant in a&#xA;&gt;         $3b+ market.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;         On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 7:09 AM, Pieter Wuille&#xA;&gt;         &lt;pieter.wuille at gmail.com &lt;mailto:pieter.wuille at gmail.com&gt;&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             Hello all,&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             here I&#39;m going to try to address a part of the block size&#xA;&gt;             debate which has been troubling me since the beginning:&#xA;&gt;             the reason why people seem to want it.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             People say that larger blocks are necessary. In the long&#xA;&gt;             term, I agree - in the sense that systems that do not&#xA;&gt;             evolve tend to be replaced by other systems. This&#xA;&gt;             evolution can come in terms of layers on top of Bitcoin&#39;s&#xA;&gt;             blockchain, in terms of the technology underlying various&#xA;&gt;             aspects of the blockchain itself, and also in the scale&#xA;&gt;             that this technology supports.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             I do, however, fundamentally disagree that a fear for a&#xA;&gt;             change in economics should be considered to necessitate&#xA;&gt;             larger blocks. If it is, and there is consensus that we&#xA;&gt;             should adapt to it, then there is effectively no limit&#xA;&gt;             going forward. This is similar to how Congress voting to&#xA;&gt;             increase the copyright term retroactively from time to&#xA;&gt;             time is really no different from having an infinite&#xA;&gt;             copyright term in the first place. This scares me.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             Here is how Gavin summarizes the future without increasing&#xA;&gt;             block sizes in PR 6341:&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             &gt; 1. Transaction confirmation times for transactions with&#xA;&gt;             a given fee will rise; very-low-fee transactions will fail&#xA;&gt;             to get confirmed at all.&#xA;&gt;             &gt; 2. Average transaction fee paid will rise&#xA;&gt;             &gt; 3. People or applications unwilling or unable to pay the&#xA;&gt;             rising fees will stop submitting transactions&#xA;&gt;             &gt; 4. People and businesses will shelve plans to use&#xA;&gt;             Bitcoin, stunting growth and adoption&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             Is it fair to summarize this as &#34;Some use cases won&#39;t fit&#xA;&gt;             any more, people will decide to no longer use the&#xA;&gt;             blockchain for these purposes, and the fees will adapt.&#34;?&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             I think that is already happening, and will happen at any&#xA;&gt;             scale. I believe demand for payments in general is nearly&#xA;&gt;             infinite, and only a small portion of it will eventually&#xA;&gt;             fit on a block chain (independent of whether its size is&#xA;&gt;             limited by consensus rules or economic or technological&#xA;&gt;             means). Furthermore, systems that compete with Bitcoin in&#xA;&gt;             this space already offer orders of magnitude more capacity&#xA;&gt;             than we can reasonably achieve with any blockchain&#xA;&gt;             technology at this point.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             I don&#39;t know what subset of use cases Bitcoin will cater&#xA;&gt;             to in the long term. They have already changed - you see&#xA;&gt;             way less betting transactions these days than a few years&#xA;&gt;             ago for example - and they will keep changing, independent&#xA;&gt;             of what effective block sizes we end up with. I don&#39;t&#xA;&gt;             think we should be afraid of this change or try to stop it.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             If you look at graphs of block sizes over time (for&#xA;&gt;             example, http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=498), it seems to me&#xA;&gt;             that there is very little &#34;organic&#34; growth, and a lot of&#xA;&gt;             sudden changes (which could correspond to changing&#xA;&gt;             defaults in miner software, introduction of popular&#xA;&gt;             sites/services, changes in the economy). I think these can&#xA;&gt;             be seen as the economy changing to full up the available&#xA;&gt;             space, and I believe these will keep happening at any size&#xA;&gt;             effectively available.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             None of this is a reason why the size can&#39;t increase.&#xA;&gt;             However, in my opinion, we should do it because we believe&#xA;&gt;             it increases utility and understand the risks; not because&#xA;&gt;             we&#39;re afraid of what might happen if we don&#39;t hurry up.&#xA;&gt;             And from that point of view, it seems silly to make a huge&#xA;&gt;             increase at once...&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             -- &#xA;&gt;             Pieter&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;             _______________________________________________&#xA;&gt;             bitcoin-dev mailing list&#xA;&gt;             bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&#xA;&gt;             &lt;mailto:bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&gt;&#xA;&gt;             https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; _______________________________________________&#xA;&gt; bitcoin-dev mailing list&#xA;&gt; bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&#xA;&gt; https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev&#xA;&#xA;-------------- next part --------------&#xA;An HTML attachment was scrubbed...&#xA;URL: &lt;http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150626/6adbfdb4/attachment-0001.html&gt;</html></oembed>