<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><author_name>npub17ty4mumkv43w8wtt0xsz2jypck0gvw0j8xrcg6tpea25z2nh7meqf4qgyd</author_name><author_url>https://nostr.ae/npub17ty4mumkv43w8wtt0xsz2jypck0gvw0j8xrcg6tpea25z2nh7meqf4qgyd</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://nostr.ae</provider_url><html>📅 Original date posted:2015-05-07&#xA;📝 Original message:&gt;&#xA;&gt; Can you please elaborate on what terrible things will happen if we&#xA;&gt; don&#39;t increase the block size by winter this year?&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I was referring to winter next year. 0.12 isn&#39;t scheduled until the end of&#xA;the year, according to Wladimir. I explained where this figure comes from&#xA;in this article:&#xA;&#xA;https://medium.com/@octskyward/bitcoin-s-seasonal-affective-disorder-35733bab760d&#xA;&#xA;It&#39;s a fairly simple estimate based on previous growth patterns.&#xA;&#xA;Because I love wild guesses and mine is that full 1 MB blocks will not&#xA;&gt; happen until June 2017.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;OK, it could be. But do you think this debate will play out significantly&#xA;differently if you are right, I am wrong, and we have this discussion next&#xA;summer instead? Because in several years of watching these debates, I&#xA;haven&#39;t seen much change in them.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; We&#39;ve successfully reached consensus for several softfork proposals&#xA;&gt; already.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Are you sure about that?&#xA;&#xA;What if Gavin popped up right now and said he disagreed with every current&#xA;proposal, he disagreed with side chains too, and there would be no&#xA;consensus on any of them until the block size limit was raised.&#xA;&#xA;Would you say, oh, OK, guess that&#39;s it then. There&#39;s no consensus so might&#xA;as well scrap all those proposals, as they&#39;ll never happen anyway. Bye bye&#xA;side chains whitepaper.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; I just hope that by  &#34;What we need to see right now is leadership&#34; you&#xA;&gt; don&#39;t mean something like &#34;when Gaving and Mike agree it&#39;s enough to&#xA;&gt; deploy a hardfork&#34; when you go from vague to concrete.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;No. What I meant is that someone (theoretically Wladimir) needs to make a&#xA;clear decision. If that decision is &#34;Bitcoin Core will wait and watch the&#xA;fireworks when blocks get full&#34;, that would be showing leadership .....&#xA;albeit I believe in the wrong direction. It would, however, let people know&#xA;what&#39;s what and let them start to make longer term plans.&#xA;&#xA;This dillydallying around is an issue - people just make vague points that&#xA;can&#39;t really be disagreed with (more nodes would be nice, smaller pools&#xA;would also be nice etc), and nothing gets done.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; &#34;no bitcoin long term it&#39;s broken long term but that&#39;s far away in the&#xA;&gt; future so let&#39;s just worry about the present&#34;.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I never said Bitcoin is broken in the long term. Far from it - I laid out&#xA;my ideas for what will happen when the block subsidy dwindles years ago.&#xA;&#xA;But yes, it&#39;s hard for me to care overly much about what happens 30 years&#xA;from now, for the same reason you probably care more about what happens&#xA;tomorrow than what happens after you are dead. The further into the future&#xA;you try and plan, the less likely your plans are to survive unscathed.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; What you want to avoid at all cost (the block size actually being&#xA;&gt; used), I see as the best opportunity we have to look into the future.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I think I see one of the causes of disagreement now.&#xA;&#xA;I will write more on the topic of what will happen if we hit the block size&#xA;limit soon, maybe this evening. I have some other tasks to do first.&#xA;&#xA;Regardless, I don&#39;t believe we will get any useful data out of such an&#xA;event. I&#39;ve seen distributed systems run out of capacity before. What will&#xA;happen instead is technological failure followed by rapid user abandonment&#xA;that pushes traffic back below the pressure threshold .... and those users&#xA;will most likely not come back any time soon.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; Ok, this is my plan: we wait 12 months, hope that your estimations are&#xA;&gt; correct (in case that my guess was better than yours, we keep waiting&#xA;&gt; until June 2017) and start having full blocks and people having to&#xA;&gt; wait 2 blocks for their transactions to be confirmed some times.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;I disagree that&#39;d be the outcome, but good, this is progress. Now we need&#xA;to hear something like that from Wladimir, or whoever has the final say&#xA;around here.&#xA;&#xA;With respect to the fee market: I think it&#39;s fairer to say Gavin wants a&#xA;market to exist, and he also wants supply to be plentiful. 20mb limit&#xA;doesn&#39;t actually mean every block will be 20mb the day after, no more than&#xA;they&#39;re all 1mb today. Miners may discover that if they go beyond 5mb they&#xA;have too many orphans and then propagation speed will have to be optimised&#xA;to break through the next bottleneck. Scaling is always about finding the&#xA;next bottleneck and removing it, ideally, before you hit it.&#xA;-------------- next part --------------&#xA;An HTML attachment was scrubbed...&#xA;URL: &lt;http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20150507/c1f84cb2/attachment.html&gt;</html></oembed>