Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Dynamically Controlled Bitcoin Block Size Max Cap [BIP 1xx - Draft]

From: Peter Todd <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2015 13:37:44 -0700

On Tue, Aug 25, 2015 at 04:26:23PM -0400, Matt Whitlock wrote:
> On Tuesday, 25 August 2015, at 1:16 pm, Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> > What would you think of an approach like John Dillon's proposal to
> > explicitly give the economic majority of coin holders a vote for the max
> > blocksize? Miners could still vote BIP100 style for what max they were
> > willing to use, limited in turn by the vote of the economic majority.
> 
> What fraction of coin holders do you suppose will vote? And, of those, what fraction have the technical knowledge to make an informed vote? It would be like polling Toyota truck owners to see whether the 2017 Tacoma should increase its engine's cylinder displacement by 10%. Ordinary users just aren't going to be able to vote meaningfully, and most won't respond to the poll at all.

Note that you can make the % of voters required adapt dyanmically to voter
interest. Also, your example is rather misleading, as car buyers *do*
make those kinds of decisions though various market mechanisms. Equally,
you can make the same criticism of democracy in general.

An interesting idea would be to design a voting mechanism such that only
users with access to validating nodes be able to vote - a fundemental
requirement for users to fully participate in Bitcoin's goverance.

-- 
'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
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