Agreed, this thread is venturing somewhat out of scope for the list. Please can we redirect philosophical discussion to another forum/list such as bitcoin-discuss, which can be found at https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-discuss Repost of the bitcoin-dev posting guidelines are: - Posts must concern development of bitcoin protocol. - Posts should be technical or academic in nature. - Generally encouraged: patches, notification of pull requests, BIP proposals, academic paper announcements. And discussions that follow. - Generally discouraged: shower thoughts, wild speculation, jokes, +1s, non-technical bitcoin issues, rehashing settled topics without new data, moderation concerns. - Detailed patch discussion generally better on a GitHub PR. - Meta-discussion is better on bitcoin-discuss. On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 8:13 PM, alp alp via bitcoin-dev < bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > >Only the majority needs to consent, though what is considered a majority > varies depending on the context (95%, 75%, 51%). Nowhere does it say > "everyone needs to agree". > > There's a pretty huge gap between 90% and nearly 100%. 90% excluding 10% > only 7 times results in only 48% of the original base. > > >If a small dissenting minority can block all forward progress then > bitcoin is no longer interesting. > > Your definition of forward may be different than other users. > > >Is that really the bitcoin that you want to be a part of? > > Yes, I chose Bitcoin because it relies on a strictly held consensus > mechanism and not one that changes on the whims of the majority. We have > tens of dozens of political currencies for that. > > >When the 1MB cap was implemented it was stated specifically that we > could increase it when we needed it. The white paper even talks about > scaling to huge capacity. Not sure where you got the idea that we all > agreed to stay at 1MB forever, I certainly didn't. It was never stated or > implied that we could change the coin cap later(please cite if I'm > mistaken). > > The community has not agreed that it is needed at this time. Perhaps they > will change their mind at some point in the future. We have also learned a > great deal since the publication of the initial whitepaper, such as the > unstable state without a backlog or subsidy. Fortunately, participation in > this system is voluntary, and you are free to leave at any time. > > This seems to be venturing quite off topic, and perhaps would be better > suited for the bitcoin-discuss list. > > On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 1:56 PM, Andrew Johnson > wrote: > >> If a small dissenting minority can block all forward progress then >> bitcoin is no longer interesting. What an incredibly simple attack >> vector... >> >> No need to break any cryptography, find a bug to exploit, build tens of >> millions of dollars in mining hardware, spend lots of bitcoin on fees to >> flood the network, or be clever or expend any valuable resources in any >> way, shape, or form. >> >> Just convince(or pay, if you do want to expend some resources) a few >> people(or make up a few online personas) to staunchly refuse to accept >> anything at all and the entire system is stuck in 2013(when we first >> started widely discussing a blocksize increase seriously). >> >> Is that really the bitcoin that you want to be a part of? >> >> When the 1MB cap was implemented it was stated specifically that we could >> increase it when we needed it. The white paper even talks about scaling to >> huge capacity. Not sure where you got the idea that we all agreed to stay >> at 1MB forever, I certainly didn't. It was never stated or implied that we >> could change the coin cap later(please cite if I'm mistaken). >> >> >> On Feb 8, 2017 12:16 PM, "alp alp" wrote: >> >> Doing nothing is the rules we all agreed to. If those rules are to be >> changed,nearly everyone will need to consent. The same rule applies to the >> cap, we all agreed to 21m, and if someone wants to change that, nearly >> everyone would need to agree. >> >> >> On Feb 8, 2017 10:28 AM, "Andrew Johnson" >> wrote: >> >> It is when you're talking about making a choice and 6.3x more people >> prefer something else. Doing nothing is a choice as well. >> >> Put another way, if 10% supported increasing the 21M coin cap and 63% >> were against, would you seriously consider doing it? >> >> On Feb 8, 2017 9:57 AM, "alp alp" wrote: >> >>> 10% is not a tiny minority. >>> >>> On Feb 8, 2017 9:51 AM, "Andrew Johnson" >>> wrote: >>> >>>> You're never going to reach 100% agreement, and stifling the network >>>> literally forever to please a tiny minority is daft. >>>> >>>> On Feb 8, 2017 8:52 AM, "alp alp via bitcoin-dev" < >>>> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: >>>> >>>> 10% say literally never. That seems like a significant >>>> disenfranchisement and lack of consensus. >>>> >>>> On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 2:25 PM, t. khan via bitcoin-dev < >>>> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: >>>> >>>>> On Mon, Feb 6, 2017 at 2:53 PM, Luke Dashjr wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> On Monday, February 06, 2017 6:19:43 PM you wrote: >>>>>> > >My BIP draft didn't make progress because the community opposes >>>>>> any block >>>>>> > >size increase hardfork ever. >>>>>> > >>>>>> > Luke, how do you know the community opposes that? Specifically, how >>>>>> did you >>>>>> > come to this conclusion? >>>>>> >>>>>> http://www.strawpoll.me/12228388/r >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> That poll shows 63% of votes want a larger than 1 MB block by this >>>>> summer. How do you go from that to "the community opposes any block >>>>> increase ever"? It shows the exact opposite of that. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> > >Your version doesn't address the current block size >>>>>> > >issues (ie, the blocks being too large). >>>>>> > >>>>>> > Why do you think blocks are "too large"? Please cite some evidence. >>>>>> I've >>>>>> > asked this before and you ignored it, but an answer would be >>>>>> helpful to the >>>>>> > discussion. >>>>>> >>>>>> Full node count is far below the safe minimum of 85% of economic >>>>>> activity. >>>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Is this causing a problem now? If so, what? >>>>> >>>>> >>>>>> Typically reasons given for people not using full nodes themselves >>>>>> come down >>>>>> to the high resource requirements caused by the block size. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> The reason people stop running nodes is because there's no incentive >>>>> to counteract the resource costs. Attempting to solve this by making blocks >>>>> *smaller* is like curing a disease by killing the patient. (Incentivizing >>>>> full node operation would fix that problem.) >>>>> >>>>> - t.k. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> bitcoin-dev mailing list >>>>> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org >>>>> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev >>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> _______________________________________________ >>>> bitcoin-dev mailing list >>>> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org >>>> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev >>>> >>>> >>>> >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > bitcoin-dev mailing list > bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev > >