<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><author_name>npub1r3san9v5njl6798hvauyu9ntm6r9c7u8s0t65wls58gpfdcvqp5sa48d0u</author_name><author_url>https://nostr.ae/npub1r3san9v5njl6798hvauyu9ntm6r9c7u8s0t65wls58gpfdcvqp5sa48d0u</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://nostr.ae</provider_url><html>📅 Original date posted:2015-08-07&#xA;📝 Original message:Please don&#39;t put words into Pieter&#39;s mouth. I guarantee you everyone&#xA;working on Bitcoin in their heart of hearts would prefer everyone in the&#xA;world being able to use the Bitcoin ledger for whatever purpose, if there&#xA;were no cost.&#xA;&#xA;But like any real world engineering issue, this is a matter of tradeoffs.&#xA;At the extreme it is simply impossible to scale Bitcoin to the terrabyte&#xA;sized blocks that would be necessary to service the entire world&#39;s&#xA;financial transactions. Not without sacrificing entirely the protection of&#xA;policy neutrality achieved through decentralization. And as that is&#xA;Bitcoin&#39;s only advantage over traditional consensus systems, you would have&#xA;to wonder what the point of such an endeavor would be.&#xA;&#xA;So *somewhere* you have to draw the line, and transactions below that level&#xA;are simply pushed into higher level or off-chain protocols.&#xA;&#xA;The issue, as Pieter and Jorge have been pointing out, is that technical&#xA;discussion over where that line should be has been missing from this debate.&#xA;&#xA;On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 10:47 AM, Ryan Butler via bitcoin-dev &lt;&#xA;bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&gt; wrote:&#xA;&#xA;&gt; Interesting position there Peter...you fear more people actually using&#xA;&gt; bitcoin.  The less on chain transactions the lower the velocity and the&#xA;&gt; lower the value of the network.  I would be careful what you ask for&#xA;&gt; because you end up having nothing left to even root the security of these&#xA;&gt; off chain transactions with and then neither will exist.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; Nobody ever said you wouldn&#39;t run out of capacity at any size.  It&#39;s quite&#xA;&gt; the fallacy to draw the conclusion from that statement that block size&#xA;&gt; should remain far below a capacity it can easily maintain which would bring&#xA;&gt; more users/velocity/value to the system.  The outcomes of both of those&#xA;&gt; scenarios are asymmetric.  A higher block size can support more users and&#xA;&gt; volume.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; Raising the blocksize isn&#39;t out of fear.  It&#39;s the realization that we are&#xA;&gt; at a point where we can raise it and support more users and transactions&#xA;&gt; while keeping the downsides to a minimum (centralization etc).&#xA;&gt; On Aug 7, 2015 11:28 AM, &#34;Pieter Wuille via bitcoin-dev&#34; &lt;&#xA;&gt; bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 5:55 PM, Gavin Andresen &lt;gavinandresen at gmail.com&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; On Fri, Aug 7, 2015 at 11:16 AM, Pieter Wuille &lt;pieter.wuille at gmail.com&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; wrote:&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; I guess my question (and perhaps that&#39;s what Jorge is after): do you&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; feel that blocks should be increased in response to (or for fear of) such a&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; scenario.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; I think there are multiple reasons to raise the maximum block size, and&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; yes, fear of Bad Things Happening as we run up against the 1MB limit is one&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; of the reasons.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; I take the opinion of smart engineers who actually do resource planning&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; and have seen what happens when networks run out of capacity very seriously.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; This is a fundamental disagreement then. I believe that the demand is&#xA;&gt;&gt; infinite if you don&#39;t set a fee minimum (and I don&#39;t think we should), and&#xA;&gt;&gt; it just takes time for the market to find a way to fill whatever is&#xA;&gt;&gt; available - the rest goes into off-chain systems anyway. You will run out&#xA;&gt;&gt; of capacity at any size, and acting out of fear of that reality does not&#xA;&gt;&gt; improve the system. Whatever size blocks are actually produced, I believe&#xA;&gt;&gt; the result will either be something people consider too small to be&#xA;&gt;&gt; competitive (&#34;you mean Bitcoin can only do 24 transactions per second?&#34;&#xA;&gt;&gt; sounds almost the same as &#34;you mean Bitcoin can only do 3 transactions per&#xA;&gt;&gt; second?&#34;), or something that is very centralized in practice, and likely&#xA;&gt;&gt; both.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; And if so, if that is a reason for increase now, won&#39;t it be a reason&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; for an increase later as well? It is my impression that your answer is yes,&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; that this is why you want to increase the block size quickly and&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt; significantly, but correct me if I&#39;m wrong.&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; Sure, it might be a reason for an increase later. Here&#39;s my message to&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; in-the-future Bitcoin engineers:  you should consider raising the maximum&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; block size if needed and you think the benefits of doing so (like increased&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; adoption or lower transaction fees or increased reliability) outweigh the&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; costs (like higher operating costs for full-nodes or the disruption caused&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt; by ANY consensus rule change).&#xA;&gt;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; In general that sounds reasonable, but it&#39;s a dangerous precedent to make&#xA;&gt;&gt; technical decisions based on a fear of change of economics...&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; --&#xA;&gt;&gt; Pieter&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&gt; _______________________________________________&#xA;&gt;&gt; bitcoin-dev mailing list&#xA;&gt;&gt; bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&#xA;&gt;&gt; https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev&#xA;&gt;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&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;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;-------------- next part --------------&#xA;An HTML attachment was scrubbed...&#xA;URL: &lt;http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150807/760afe4f/attachment-0001.html&gt;</html></oembed>