Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Capacity increases for the Bitcoin system.

From: Douglas Roark <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Dec 2015 21:29:16 -0800

On 2015/12/20 20:50, Mark Friedenbach via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> I am fully in support of the plan laid out in "Capacity increases 
> for the bitcoin system".
> 
> This plan provides real benefit to the ecosystem in solving a 
> number of longstanding problems in bitcoin. It improves the 
> scalability of bitcoin considerably.
> 
> Furthermore it is time that we stop bikeshedding, start 
> implementing, and move forward, lest we lose more developers to
> the toxic atmosphere this hard-fork debacle has created.

Another +1 here. While I'd still like to see some sort of short-term
bump happen this year - good points have been raised about SegWit
uptake by wallet devs, for one thing - I really do think this is one
of the last pieces of the puzzle that'll make Bitcoin reasonably
stable and robust. If people have legitimate concerns, that's great,
and they should be addressed. I just worry that more navel-gazing and
bikeshedding will play into the hands of those with less than noble
intentions. That and, due to the somewhat complicated nature of
SegWit, it may take time to get skeptical miners and wallet devs on-boar
d.

While we're talking about capacity increases, I'd like to reiterate
that I do think there should be some sort of short-term bump (Jeff's
BIP 102 or his "BIP 202" variant, Dr. Back's 2/4/8 proposal ("BIP
248"), etc.), hopefully chosen by this summer so that everybody can
start to prepare. I believe the KISS theory will work best. I talked
to a couple of miners at Scaling Bitcoin. It was obvious they
generally prefer simple solutions. (For that matter, if I put my
miner's cap on, I prefer simple solutions too!) The research presented
at Scaling Bitcoin regarding block size formulas was quite interesting
and worthy of discussion. The research was also, IMO, nowhere near
ready for consensus. Work and discussions on that front should
certainly continue and push for a more permanent (final?) block size
solution. I just think that, barring some extraordinary solution that
hasn't been widely discussed yet, a permanent solution isn't feasible
right now. A temporary bump isn't ideal. It's just the only thing I've
seen that strikes me as having any real shot at consensus.

- -- 
- ---
Douglas Roark
Cryptocurrency, network security, travel, and art.
https://onename.com/droark
[email-masked]
PGP key ID: 26623924