Look, if we’re going to declare something an emergency, we cannot on the one hand say things like: "I strongly believe bitcoin has no place in the world if the fee raise much higher than a few cents per typically-sized transaction”, and on the other declare that there is an emergency worth redefining what *Bitcoin is* because the average txn fee is on the order of 7 cents [1] and has remained reasonable for some time [2]. If you’d like to understand what a qualifying emergency looks like, read the links: > http://bitledger.info/why-a-hard-fork-should-be-fought-and-its-not-evil-to-discuss/ > > And here: > > http://bitledger.info/hard-fork-risks-and-why-95-should-be-the-standard/ In terms of scaling, we are nowhere close to an emergency. Scaling is priority #4, maybe, and it’s being taken care of. Meanwhile, we should be directing our attention one the more pressing and serious concerns like mining centralization & privacy. Mining centralization is a serious issue. It is *not cool* that 4 dudes (and 1 government) have the power to redefine what Bitcoin is *right now*. Relevant post with suggestions for fixing that: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/44kwf0/the_hardfork_that_bitcoin_really_needs_not/czrh3na As far as I can tell, P2Pool & GBT are not the same thing, but I’ve been told that P2Pool might use GBT in some way, even though it’s listed on the wiki as not using it. [3] A hard fork would ideally enforce decentralized mining pools somehow so that transaction selection is done at the edges instead of the center. Cheers, Greg [1] http://www.cointape.com/ [2] https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees [3] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Comparison_of_mining_pools > On Feb 8, 2016, at 4:54 PM, Chris Priest wrote: > >> Also, if you’re going to do a hard fork, you’d better make the most of it as hard forks must be a *rare* world-is-ending-if-we-don’t-do-it thing > > In my opinion, the network publishing more than 1MB worth of > transactions while the limit is still 1MB *is* an emergency worthy of > a hard fork. > > If that's not an emergency, then what is? > > I strongly believe bitcoin has no place in the world if the fee raise > much higher than a few cents per typically-sized transaction. > > On 2/8/16, Tao Effect via bitcoin-dev > wrote: >> Hard forks should always come in response to some major crisis that all >> participants can agree is an actual crisis, as per the excellent rational >> here: >> >> http://bitledger.info/why-a-hard-fork-should-be-fought-and-its-not-evil-to-discuss/ >> >> And here: >> >> http://bitledger.info/hard-fork-risks-and-why-95-should-be-the-standard/ >> >> Also, if you’re going to do a hard fork, you’d better make the most of it as >> hard forks must be a *rare* world-is-ending-if-we-don’t-do-it thing >> (otherwise Bitcoin cannot be considered decentralized in any sense of the >> word). >> >> So for any sort of hard fork, be sure to address the real threats and >> challenges that are facing Bitcoin today: >> >> 1. Mining centralization. >> 2. Privacy. >> >> Best regards, >> Greg Slepak >>