Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hard fork proposal from last week's meeting

From: Jared Lee Richardson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2017 01:45:14 -0700

> That said, for that to be alleviated we
could simply do something based on historical transaction growth (which
is somewhat linear, with a few inflection points),

Where do you get this?  Transaction growth for the last 4 years averages to
+65% per year and the last 2 is +80% per year.  That's very much not linear.

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Matt Corallo via bitcoin-dev <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> Not sure what "last week's meeting" is in reference to?
>
> Agreed that the hard fork should be well-prepared, but I think its
> dangerous to think that a hard fork as agreed upon would be a simple
> relaxation of the block size. For example, Johnson Lau's previous
> proposal, Spoonnet, which I think is probably one of the better ones,
> would be incompatible with these rules.
>
> I, of course, worry about what happens if we cannot come to consensus on
> a number to soft fork down to, potentially significantly risking miner
> profits (and, thus, the security of Bitcoin) if a group is able to keep
> things "at the status quo". That said, for that to be alleviated we
> could simply do something based on historical transaction growth (which
> is somewhat linear, with a few inflection points), but that number ends
> up being super low (eg somewhere around 2MB at the next halving, which
> SegWit itself already provides :/.
>
> We could, of course, focus on designing a hard fork's activation and
> technical details, with a very large block size increase in it (ie
> closer to 4/6MB at the next halving or so, something we at least could
> be confident we could develop software for), with intention to soft fork
> it back down if miner profits are suffering.
>
> Matt
>
> On 03/28/17 16:59, Wang Chun via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> > I've proposed this hard fork approach last year in Hong Kong Consensus
> > but immediately rejected by coredevs at that meeting, after more than
> > one year it seems that lots of people haven't heard of it. So I would
> > post this here again for comment.
> >
> > The basic idea is, as many of us agree, hard fork is risky and should
> > be well prepared. We need a long time to deploy it.
> >
> > Despite spam tx on the network, the block capacity is approaching its
> > limit, and we must think ahead. Shall we code a patch right now, to
> > remove the block size limit of 1MB, but not activate it until far in
> > the future. I would propose to remove the 1MB limit at the next block
> > halving in spring 2020, only limit the block size to 32MiB which is
> > the maximum size the current p2p protocol allows. This patch must be
> > in the immediate next release of Bitcoin Core.
> >
> > With this patch in core's next release, Bitcoin works just as before,
> > no fork will ever occur, until spring 2020. But everyone knows there
> > will be a fork scheduled. Third party services, libraries, wallets and
> > exchanges will have enough time to prepare for it over the next three
> > years.
> >
> > We don't yet have an agreement on how to increase the block size
> > limit. There have been many proposals over the past years, like
> > BIP100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 109, 148, 248, BU, and so
> > on. These hard fork proposals, with this patch already in Core's
> > release, they all become soft fork. We'll have enough time to discuss
> > all these proposals and decide which one to go. Take an example, if we
> > choose to fork to only 2MB, since 32MiB already scheduled, reduce it
> > from 32MiB to 2MB will be a soft fork.
> >
> > Anyway, we must code something right now, before it becomes too late.
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