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

From: David Vorick <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2017 11:57:19 -0400

On Mar 29, 2017 9:50 AM, "Martin Lízner via bitcoin-dev" <
[email-masked]> wrote:

Im tending to believe, that HF is necessary evil now.

I will firmly disagree. We know how to do a soft-fork blocksize increase.
If it is decided that a block size increase is justified, we can do it with
extension blocks in a way that achieves full backwards compatibility for
all nodes.

Barring a significant security motivation, there is no need to hardfork.

I am also solidly unconvinced that increasing the blocksize today is a good
move, even as little as SegWit does. It's too expensive for a home user to
run a full node, and user-run full nodes are what provide the strongest
defence against political manuveuring.

When considering what block size is acceptable, the impact of running
bitcoin in the background on affordable, non-dedicated home-hardware should
be a top consideration.

Disk space I believe is the most significant problem today, with RAM being
the second most significant problem, and finally bandwidth consumption as
the third most important consideration. I believe that v0.14 is already too
expensive on all three fronts, and that block size increases shouldn't be
considered at all until the requirements are reduced (or until consumer
hardware is better, but I believe we are talking 3-7 years of waiting if we
pick that option).