Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Scaling Bitcoin conference micro-report

From: Mike Hearn <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2015 21:43:32 +0100

>
> Let me get this straight. You start this whole debate with a "kick the can
> down the road" proposal to increase the block size to 20MB, which obviously
> would require another hard fork in the future, but if someone else proposes
> a similar "kicka the can" proposal you will outright reject it?
>

Which part of "in the next few years" was unclear?

This seems to be a persistent problem in the block size debates: the
assumption that there are only two numbers, zero and infinity.

BIP101 tops out at 8 gigabyte blocks, which would represent extremely high
transaction rates compared to today. *If* Bitcoin ever became so popular,
it would be a long way in the future, and many things could have happened:

   1. Bitcoin may have become as irrelevant as the Commodore 64 is.
   2. We may have invented upgrades that make Bitcoin 100x more efficient
   than today.
   3. Hardware may have improved so much that it no longer matters.
   4. The world may have been devastated by nuclear war and nobody gives a
   shit about internet currencies anymore, because there is no internet.

It's silly to ignore the time dimension in these decisions. Bitcoin will
not last forever: even if it becomes very successful it will one day it
will be replaced by something better, so it does not have to handle
infinite usage.

But hey, as you bring it up, I'd have been happy with no upper limit at
all. There's nothing magic about 8 gigabytes. I go along with BIP 101
because it is still the only proposal that is both reasonable and
implemented, and I'm willing to compromise.