Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Incorporating block validation rule modifications into the block chain

From: Gregory Maxwell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2013 07:42:07 -0800

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 6:58 AM, Raph Frank <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> Bitcoin is not a democracy— it quite intentionally uses the consensus
>> mechanism _only_ the one thing that nodes can not autonomously and
>> interdependently validate (the ordering of transactions).
> So, how is max block size to be decided then?

In one sense it already is decided— there is a protocol rule
implementing a hard maximum, and soft rules for lower targets.  If
it's to be changed it would only be by it being obvious to almost
everyone that it should _and_ must be.  Since, in the long run,
Bitcoin can't meet its security and decenteralization promises without
blockspace scarcity to drive non-trivial fees and without scaling
limits to keep it decenteralized— it's not a change that could be made
more lightly than changing the supply of coin.

I hope that should it become necessary to do so that correct path will
be obvious to everyone, otherwise there is a grave risk of undermining
the justification for the confidence in the immutability of any of the
rules of the system.