<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><author_name>npub1kf0ppcjaguxekg24yx6smgxlu73qn0k8lm0t2wrqc0scpl7u3sgsmf3f58</author_name><author_url>https://nostr.ae/npub1kf0ppcjaguxekg24yx6smgxlu73qn0k8lm0t2wrqc0scpl7u3sgsmf3f58</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://nostr.ae</provider_url><html>📅 Original date posted:2015-07-22&#xA;📝 Original message:On Wed, Jul 22, 2015 at 9:52 AM, Pieter Wuille via bitcoin-dev &lt;&#xA;bitcoin-dev at lists.linuxfoundation.org&gt; wrote:&#xA;&#xA;&gt; Some people have called the prospect of limited block space and the&#xA;&gt; development of a fee market a change in policy compared to the past. I&#xA;&gt; respectfully disagree with that. Bitcoin Core is not running the Bitcoin&#xA;&gt; economy, and its developers have no authority to set its rules. Change in&#xA;&gt; economics is always happening, and should be expected. Worse, intervening&#xA;&gt; in consensus changes would make the ecosystem more dependent on the group&#xA;&gt; taking that decision, not less.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;This completely ignores *reality*, what users have experienced for the past&#xA;~6 years.&#xA;&#xA;&#34;Change in economics is always happening&#34; does not begin to approach the&#xA;scale of the change.&#xA;&#xA;For the entirety of bitcoin&#39;s history, absent long blocks and traffic&#xA;bursts, fee pressure has been largely absent.&#xA;&#xA;Moving to a new economic policy where fee pressure is consistently present&#xA;is radically different from what users, markets, and software have&#xA;experienced and *lived.*&#xA;&#xA;Analysis such as [1][2] and more shows that users will hit a &#34;painful&#34;&#xA;&#34;wall&#34; and market disruption will occur - eventually settling to a new&#xA;equilibrium after a period of chaos - when blocks are consistently full.&#xA;&#xA;[1] http://hashingit.com/analysis/34-bitcoin-traffic-bulletin&#xA;[2] http://gavinandresen.ninja/why-increasing-the-max-block-size-is-urgent&#xA;&#xA;First, users &amp; market are forced through this period of chaos by &#34;let a fee&#xA;market develop&#34; as the whole market changes to a radically different&#xA;economic policy, once the network has never seen before.&#xA;&#xA;Next, when blocks are consistently full, the past consensus was that block&#xA;size limit will be increased eventually.  What happens at that point?&#xA;&#xA;Answer - Users &amp; market are forced through a second period of chaos and&#xA;disruption as the fee market is rebooted *again* by changing the block size&#xA;limit.&#xA;&#xA;The average user hears a lot of noise on both sides of the block size&#xA;debate, and really has no idea that the new &#34;let a fee market develop&#34;&#xA;Bitcoin Core policy is going to *raise fees* on them.&#xA;&#xA;It is clear that&#xA;- &#34;let the fee market develop, Right Now&#34; has not been thought through&#xA;- Users are not prepared for a brand new economic policy&#xA;- Users are unaware that a brand new economic policy will be foisted upon&#xA;them&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; So to point out what I consider obvious: if Bitcoin requires central&#xA;&gt; control over its rules by a group of developers, it is completely&#xA;&gt; uninteresting to me. Consensus changes should be done using consensus, and&#xA;&gt; the default in case of controversy is no change.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;False.&#xA;&#xA;All that has to do be done to change bitcoin to a new economic policy - not&#xA;seen in the entire 6 year history of bitcoin - is to stonewall work on&#xA;block size.&#xA;&#xA;Closing size increase PRs and failing to participate in planning for a&#xA;block size increase accomplishes your stated goal of changing bitcoin to a&#xA;new economic policy.&#xA;&#xA;&#34;no [code] change&#34;... changes bitcoin to a brand new economic policy,&#xA;picking economic winners &amp; losers.  Some businesses will be priced out of&#xA;bitcoin, etc.&#xA;&#xA;Stonewalling size increase changes is just as much as a Ben Bernanke/FOMC&#xA;move as increasing the hard limit by hard fork.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; My personal opinion is that we - as a community - should indeed let a fee&#xA;&gt; market develop, and rather sooner than later, and that &#34;kicking the can&#xA;&gt; down the road&#34; is an incredibly dangerous precedent: if we are willing to&#xA;&gt; go through the risk of a hard fork because of a fear of change of&#xA;&gt; economics, then I believe that community is not ready to deal with change&#xA;&gt; at all. And some change is inevitable, at any block size. Again, this does&#xA;&gt; not mean the block size needs to be fixed forever, but its intent should be&#xA;&gt; growing with the evolution of technology, not a panic reaction because a&#xA;&gt; fear of change.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; But I am not in any position to force this view. I only hope that people&#xA;&gt; don&#39;t think a fear of economic change is reason to give up consensus.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Actually you are.&#xA;&#xA;When size increase progress gets frozen out of Bitcoin Core, that just&#xA;*increases* the chances that progress must be made through a contentious&#xA;hard fork.&#xA;&#xA;Further, it increases the market disruption users will experience, as&#xA;described above.&#xA;&#xA;Think about the users.  Please.&#xA;-------------- next part --------------&#xA;An HTML attachment was scrubbed...&#xA;URL: &lt;http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150722/fb24245a/attachment-0001.html&gt;</html></oembed>