Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Block Size Increase

From: Alan Reiner <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 May 2015 10:59:34 -0400

This isn't about "everyone's coffee".  This is about an absolute minimum
amount of participation by people who wish to use the network.   If our
goal is really for bitcoin to really be a global, open transaction
network that makes money fluid, then 7tps is already a failure.  If even
5% of the world (350M people) was using the network for 1 tx per month
(perhaps to open payment channels, or shift money between side chains),
we'll be above 100 tps.  And that doesn't include all the
non-individuals (organizations) that want to use it.

The goals of "a global transaction network" and "everyone must be able
to run a full node with their $200 dell laptop" are not compatible.  We
need to accept that a global transaction system cannot be
fully/constantly audited by everyone and their mother.  The important
feature of the network is that it is open and anyone *can* get the
history and verify it.  But not everyone is required to.   Trying to
promote a system where the history can be forever handled by a low-end
PC is already falling out of reach, even with our miniscule 7 tps. 
Clinging to that goal needlessly limits the capability for the network
to scale to be a useful global payments system

On 05/07/2015 03:54 PM, Jeff Garzik wrote:
> On Thu, May 7, 2015 at 3:31 PM, Alan Reiner <[email-masked]
> <mailto:[email-masked]>> wrote:
>  
>
>     (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. 
>
>  [...]
>
> 1) Agree that 7 tps is too low
>
> 2) Where do you want to go?  Should bitcoin scale up to handle all the
> world's coffees? 
>
> This is hugely unrealistic.  700 tps is 100MB blocks, 14.4 GB/day --
> just for a single feed.  If you include relaying to multiple nodes,
> plus serving 500 million SPV clients en grosse, who has the capacity
> to run such a node?  By the time we get to fee pressure, in your
> scenario, our network node count is tiny and highly centralized.
>
> 3) In RE "fee pressure" -- Do you see the moral hazard to a
> software-run system?  It is an intentional, human decision to flood
> the market with supply, thereby altering the economics, forcing fees
> to remain low in the hopes of achieving adoption.  I'm pro-bitcoin and
> obviously want to see bitcoin adoption - but I don't want to sacrifice
> every decentralized principle and become a central banker in order to
> get there.
>