Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Fwd: Block size following technological growth

From: Thomas Zander <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 07 Aug 2015 18:06:09 +0200

On Thursday 6. August 2015 20.52.28 Pieter Wuille via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> It's about reduction of trust. Running a full node and using it verify your
> transactions is how you get personal assurance that everyone on the network
> is following the rules. And if you don't do so yourself, the knowledge that
> others are using full nodes and relying on them is valuable. Someone just
> running 1000 nodes in a data center and not using them for anything does
> not do anything for this, it's adding network capacity without use.
> 
> That doesn't mean that the full node count (or the reachable full node
> count even) are meaningless numbers. They are an indication of how hard it
> is (for various reasons) to run/use a full node, and thus provide feedback.
> But they are not the goal, just an indicator.

You make a logical fallacy;

I would agree that nodes are there for people to stop trusting someone that 
they have no trust-relationship with.

But your conclusion that low node count is an indication that its hard to run 
one discards your own point.  You forget the point that running a node is only 
needed if you don't know anyone you can trust to run it for you.  I'm pretty 
darn sure that this will have a bigger effect on nodecount than how hard it 
is.
Or, in other words, without a need to run a node you can't judge the 
difficulty of why there aren't more running.

>From another mail;
On Thursday 6. August 2015 17.26.11 Pieter Wuille via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Maybe. But I believe that it is essential to not take unnecessary risks,
> and find a non-controversial solution.

This is a very political answer; it doesn't actually say anything since 
'unnecessary' is a personal judgment. Everyone will agree with you, but that 
doesn't mean anything.

-- 
Tom Zander