Re: [bitcoin-dev] Block size: It's economics & user preparation & moral hazard

From: Aaron Voisine <voisine@gmail•com>
To: Pieter Wuille <pieter.wuille@gmail•com>
Cc: Bitcoin development mailing list <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Block size: It's economics & user preparation & moral hazard
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2015 22:26:11 -0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CACq0ZD7PEL4ZaUndvtPOfar=MXp4hwUZfu2xQ_Fph6dOVPLV5w@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAPg+sBi=Mw7UnxG1-0-0ZTRqxrS5+28VmowyYrGP2MAvYiu_pA@mail.gmail.com>

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> You present this as if the Bitcoin Core development team is in charge
> of deciding the network consensus rules, and is responsible for
> making changes to it in order to satisfy economic demand. If that is
> the case, Bitcoin has failed, in my opinion.

Pieter, what's actually happening is that the bitcoin-core release has
become a Schelling point in the consensus game:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schelling_point

Due to the strong incentives for consensus, everyone is looking for an
obvious reference point that they think everyone else will also pick, even
though the point itself isn't critical, only that everyone agree on
whatever point is picked. Like it or not, the bitcoin-core release, and by
extension it's committers have a great degree of influence over what the
community as a whole decides to do. If core screws things up badly enough,
yes, the community will settle on some other focal point for consensus, but
the cost and risk of doing so is high, so there is indeed unavoidable moral
hazard for whoever has control over any such focus point.

Aaron Voisine
co-founder and CEO
breadwallet <http://breadwallet.com>

On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 10:34 AM, Pieter Wuille via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 3:53 PM, Jeff Garzik via bitcoin-dev
> <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > 2) If block size stays at 1M, the Bitcoin Core developer team should
> sign a
> > collective note stating their desire to transition to a new economic
> policy,
> > that of "healthy fee market" and strongly urge users to examine their fee
> > policies, wallet software, transaction volumes and other possible User
> > impacting outcomes.
>
> You present this as if the Bitcoin Core development team is in charge
> of deciding the network consensus rules, and is responsible for making
> changes to it in order to satisfy economic demand. If that is the
> case, Bitcoin has failed, in my opinion.
>
> What the Bitcoin Core team should do, in my opinion, is merge any
> consensus change that is uncontroversial. We can certainly -
> individually or not - propose solutions, and express opinions, but as
> far as maintainers of the software goes our responsibility is keeping
> the system running, and risking either a fork or establishing
> ourselves as the de-facto central bank that can make any change to the
> system would greatly undermine the system's value.
>
> Hard forking changes require that ultimately every participant in the
> system adopts the new rules. I find it immoral and dangerous to merge
> such a change without extremely widespread agreement. I am personally
> fine with a short-term small block size bump to kick the can down the
> road if that is what the ecosystem desires, but I can only agree with
> merging it in Core if I'm convinced that there is no strong opposition
> to it from others.
>
> Soft forks on the other hand only require a majority of miners to
> accept them, and everyone else can upgrade at their leisure or not at
> all. Yes, old full nodes after a soft fork are not able to fully
> validate the rules new miners enforce anymore, but they do still
> verify the rules that their operators opted to enforce. Furthermore,
> they can't be prevented. For that reason, I've proposed, and am
> working hard, on an approach that includes Segregated Witness as a
> first step. It shows the ecosystem that something is being done, it
> kicks the can down the road, it solves/issues half a dozen other
> issues at the same time, and it does not require the degree of
> certainty needed for a hardfork.
>
> --
> Pieter
> _______________________________________________
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> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>

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