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From: Alan Reiner <etotheipi@gmail•com>
To: bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Block Size Increase
Date: Thu, 07 May 2015 15:31:46 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <554BBDA2.7040508@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CANEZrP39jWHLF02z-81Z4+9X1vH5+hMuS=-3ED81=Q1o9U=DKw@mail.gmail.com>

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This *is* urgent and needs to be handled right now, and I believe Gavin
has the best approach to this.  I have heard Gavin's talks on increasing
the block size, and the two most persuasive points to me were:

(1) Blocks are essentially nearing "full" now.  And by "full" he means
that the reliability of the network (from the average user perspective)
is about to be impacted in a very negative way (I believe it was due to
the inconsistent time between blocks).  I think Gavin said that his
simulations showed 400 kB - 600 kB worth of transactions per 10 min
(approx 3-4 tps) is where things start to behave poorly for certain
classes of transactions.  In other words, we're very close to the
effective limit in terms of maintaining the current "standard of
living", and with a year needed to raise the block time this actually is
urgent.

(2) Leveraging fee pressure at 1MB to solve the problem is actually
really a bad idea.  It's really bad while Bitcoin is still growing, and
relying on fee pressure at 1 MB severely impacts attractiveness and
adoption potential of Bitcoin (due to high fees and unreliability).  But
more importantly, it ignores the fact that for a 7 tps is pathetic for a
global transaction system.  It is a couple orders of magnitude too low
for any meaningful commercial activity to occur.  If we continue with a
cap of 7 tps forever, Bitcoin *will* fail.  Or at best, it will fail to
be useful for the vast majority of the world (which probably leads to
failure).  We shouldn't be talking about fee pressure until we hit 700
tps, which is probably still too low. 

You can argue that side chains and payment channels could alleviate
this.  But how far off are they?  We're going to hit effective 1MB
limits long before we can leverage those in a meaningful way.  Even if
everyone used them, getting a billion people onto the system just can't
happen even at 1 transaction per year per person to get into a payment
channel or move money between side chains.

We get asked all the time by corporate clients about scalability.  A
limit of 7 tps makes them uncomfortable that they are going to invest
all this time into a system that has no chance of handling the economic
activity that they expect it handle.  We always assure them that 7 tps
is not the final answer. 

Satoshi didn't believe 1 MB blocks were the correct answer.  I
personally think this is critical to Bitcoin's long term future.   And
I'm not sure what else Gavin could've done to push this along in a
meaninful way.

-Alan


On 05/07/2015 02:06 PM, Mike Hearn wrote:
>
>     I think you are rubbing against your own presupposition that
>     people must find and alternative right now. Quite a lot here do
>     not believe there is any urgency, nor that there is an immanent
>     problem that has to be solved before the sky falls in.
>
>
> I have explained why I believe there is some urgency, whereby "some
> urgency" I mean, assuming it takes months to implement, merge, test,
> release and for people to upgrade.
>
> But if it makes you happy, imagine that this discussion happens all
> over again next year and I ask the same question.
>
>
>
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> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development


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  parent reply	other threads:[~2015-05-07 19:32 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 116+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-05-06 22:12 Matt Corallo
2015-05-06 22:30 ` slush
2015-05-06 23:06   ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-05-06 22:44 ` Tier Nolan
2015-05-06 23:12   ` Matt Corallo
2015-05-06 23:33     ` Tier Nolan
2015-05-06 23:41       ` Matt Corallo
2015-05-07  2:16         ` Peter Todd
2015-05-06 23:11 ` Matt Whitlock
2015-05-06 23:13   ` Matt Corallo
2015-05-07  0:00 ` Tom Harding
2015-05-07  0:07 ` Bryan Bishop
2015-05-07  0:37 ` Gregory Maxwell
2015-05-07  1:49 ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07  3:03   ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-08 11:02   ` Thomas Zander
2015-05-08 20:17     ` Aaron Voisine
2015-05-07  3:47 ` Pieter Wuille
2015-05-07  9:25 ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 10:12   ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 10:42   ` Btc Drak
2015-05-07 10:52   ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-07 11:15     ` Andrew
2015-05-07 11:29     ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 12:26       ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-07 14:05         ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 14:18           ` Bryan Bishop
2015-05-07 14:22           ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 14:40           ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 14:52           ` Gavin Andresen
2015-05-07 14:56             ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 15:04             ` Alex Morcos
2015-05-07 15:09               ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 15:12               ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 15:17                 ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 15:29                   ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 15:35                     ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 16:18                       ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-07 16:21                     ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-07 17:29                       ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 19:37                       ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 19:44                         ` Jérémie Dubois-Lacoste
2015-05-07 20:20                         ` Jérémie Dubois-Lacoste
2015-05-07 15:58             ` Matthew Mitchell
2015-05-07 16:47               ` Matthew Mitchell
2015-05-07 17:26             ` Matt Corallo
     [not found]               ` <CABsx9T2vAQyZODRE9apu0R1n=LybssQcuTYD7P3mAQH_Fv6QCQ@mail.gmail.com>
2015-05-07 17:40                 ` [Bitcoin-development] Fwd: " Gavin Andresen
2015-05-07 17:43               ` [Bitcoin-development] " Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 18:03                 ` Btc Drak
2015-05-07 18:06                   ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 18:21                     ` Ross Nicoll
2015-05-07 18:40                     ` Gavin Costin
2015-05-07 18:46                       ` Btc Drak
2015-05-07 19:31                         ` Bernard Rihn
2015-05-07 19:31                     ` Alan Reiner [this message]
2015-05-07 19:54                       ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 19:59                         ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-08  1:40                         ` Tom Harding
2015-05-08  2:09                           ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-08  5:13                             ` Tom Harding
2015-05-08  9:43                               ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-08 15:23                               ` Alan Reiner
2015-05-08 14:59                         ` Alan Reiner
2015-05-08 15:49                           ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-13 10:37                             ` Oliver Egginger
2015-05-13 11:25                               ` Angel Leon
2015-05-08 17:17                           ` Andrew
2015-05-08 17:51                             ` Alan Reiner
     [not found]                               ` <CADZB0_bK+YsK8sN-di2pynvjsq5VjSvnEu0-cCGhPqFunyVm7Q@mail.gmail.com>
2015-05-09 12:02                                 ` Andrew
2015-05-09 12:53                                   ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-09 18:33                                     ` Andrew
2015-05-08  1:51                       ` Joel Joonatan Kaartinen
2015-05-08  3:41                       ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 18:38                   ` Chris Wardell
2015-05-07 18:55                     ` Alex Mizrahi
2015-05-07 18:59                     ` Ross Nicoll
2015-05-07 19:03                 ` Matt Corallo
2015-05-07 19:13                   ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 19:34                   ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 21:29                     ` Matt Corallo
2015-05-07 23:05                       ` 21E14
2015-05-07 15:33           ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-07 16:11             ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 16:47               ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-07 16:59                 ` Gavin Andresen
2015-05-07 17:42                   ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 18:05                   ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-07 19:57               ` Btc Drak
2015-05-07 15:39           ` Btc Drak
2015-05-07 13:02       ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 19:14       ` Matt Corallo
2015-05-07 11:55     ` Dave Hudson
2015-05-07 13:40       ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-08  4:46         ` Tom Harding
2015-05-07 14:04   ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 14:32     ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 14:38     ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-07 14:49       ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 15:13         ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-07 15:25           ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 15:04       ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 15:16         ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-07 15:27           ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 15:33             ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-07 15:47               ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 15:50                 ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-07 11:20 ` Wladimir J. van der Laan
2015-05-07 11:30   ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-05-07 15:56 ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 16:13   ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 16:54 John Bodeen
2015-05-08 20:38 Raystonn .
2015-05-08 20:40 ` Mark Friedenbach
2015-05-08 20:51 Raystonn
2015-05-08 20:55 ` Mark Friedenbach
2015-05-08 21:01 Raystonn

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