Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] The Excessive-Block Gate: How a Bitcoin Unlimited Node Deals With Large Blocks

From: Tom Zander <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Nov 2016 16:01:16 +0100

On Friday, 25 November 2016 20:45:20 CET Sergio Demian Lerner wrote:
> I now think my reasoning and conclusions are based on a false premise:
> that BU block size policies for miners can be heterogeneous.

Agreed.
 
> There can't be short forks because forks are not in the best interest of
> the honest miner majority. All miners need to announce and follow the same
> block size policy to prevent short forks.

What you appear to want to say is that it is in everyones best interest to 
avoid short forks.
Its impossible to guarentee they can't happen, but very possible to minimize 
them.
 
> If block size negotiations are meant to be open and carried on on-chain,
> then it's much better to let miners increase or decrease the block size
> limit by 1% per block (such as what Ethereum does with the gas limit).

No, there are no block-size-negotiations on chain.

The blockchain is used here for one purpose, to state the position of 
individual miners. But what may not be clear is that you can use this as a 
time-stamped way to hold them to it. Which means that if they lie (by 
rejecting a block), everyone in the world will be able to individually 
verify that fact and their credibility will be affected.

Which will not help their case next time any block size negotiations will 
happen.
-- 
Tom Zander
Blog: https://zander.github.io
Vlog: https://vimeo.com/channels/tomscryptochannel