Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

From: Eric Lombrozo <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 2015 21:50:39 -0700

What Stephen said is very much along the same lines of my earlier critique. This voting mechanism would be all but unusable to most endusers without some pretty elaborate tools…and unless users are willing to pay substantially higher fees than they’re currently paying, their votes will not really count all that much. And it’s not all that clear that most users would really be able to make very rational economic decisions even having elaborate tools. More likely, a small group would figure out ways to exploit this for their own benefit - at everyone else’s expense.

- Eric Lombrozo

> On Jun 13, 2015, at 9:16 PM, Stephen <[email-masked]> wrote:
> 
> While this idea is theoretically interesting because it involves many stakeholders, rather than just miners, I think in practice this would not work very well. Users don't want to worry about this kind of technicality, they just want to be able to make a transaction and have it be processed.
> 
> In addition, while this gives stakeholders some weight with the fees they supply, these fees are marginal compared to the block size subsidy. If this proposal were actually implemented, I think miners would vote for whatever they think is best, and users would not contradict them with their votes to ensure a fast confirmation time. Users are incentivized to be in agreement with miners because the miners provide them with the confirmations they need, but fees do not provide a great incentive for miners to be in agreement with users, and likely won't for some time.
> 
> Best,
> Stephen
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jun 12, 2015, at 2:11 PM, Peter Todd <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> 
>> Jeff Garzik recently proposed that the upper blocksize limit be removed
>> entirely, with a "soft" limit being enforced via miner vote, recorded by
>> hashing power.
>> 
>> This mechanism within the protocol for users to have any influence over
>> the miner vote. We can add that back by providing a way for transactions
>> themselves to set a flag determining whether or not they can be included
>> in a block casting a specific vote.
>> 
>> We can simplify Garzik's vote to say that one of the nVersion bits
>> either votes for the blocksize to be increased, or decreased, by some
>> fixed ratio (e.g 2x or 1/2x) the next interval. Then we can use a
>> nVersion bit in transactions themselves, also voting for an increase or
>> decrease. Transactions may only be included in blocks with an
>> indentical vote, thus providing miners with a monetary incentive via
>> fees to vote according to user wishes.
>> 
>> Of course, to cast a "don't care" vote we can either define an
>> additional bit, or sign the transaction with both versions. Equally we
>> can even have different versions with different fees, broadcast via a
>> mechanism such as replace-by-fee.
>> 
>> 
>> See also John Dillon's proposal for proof-of-stake blocksize voting:
>> 
>> https://www.mail-archive.com/[email-masked]/msg02323.html
>> 
>> --
>> 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
>> 0000000000000000127ab1d576dc851f374424f1269c4700ccaba2c42d97e778
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