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

From: Wang Chun <1240902@gmail•com>
To: Alphonse Pace <alp.bitcoin@gmail•com>
Cc: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Hard fork proposal from last week's meeting
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2017 01:31:36 +0800	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAFzgq-xnXw6efaEurLcgMQQwwr7YitrJ3vZ8i+Ha0MbnVzUKhg@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAMBsKS8oSKS5g8UEyCu18bjzGJWpA+sJEaxBUV9FXAmXhX1ApA@mail.gmail.com>

The basic idea is, let's stop the debate for whether we should upgrade
to 2MB, 8MB or 32MiB. 32MiB is well above any proposals' upper limit,
so any final decision would be a soft fork to this already deployed
release. If by 2020, we still agree 1MB is enough, it can be changed
back to 1MB limit and it would also a soft fork on top of that.

On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 1:23 AM, Alphonse Pace <alp.bitcoin@gmail•com> wrote:
> What meeting are you referring to?  Who were the participants?
>
> Removing the limit but relying on the p2p protocol is not really a true
> 32MiB limit, but a limit of whatever transport methods provide.  This can
> lead to differing consensus if alternative layers for relaying are used.
> What you seem to be asking for is an unbound block size (or at least
> determined by whatever miners produce).  This has the possibility (and even
> likelihood) of removing many participants from the network, including many
> small miners.
>
> 32MB in less than 3 years also appears to be far beyond limits of safety
> which are known to exist far sooner, and we cannot expect hardware and
> networking layers to improve by those amounts in that time.
>
> It also seems like it would be much better to wait until SegWit activates in
> order to truly measure the effects on the network from this increased
> capacity before committing to any additional increases.
>
> -Alphonse
>
>
>
> On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 11:59 AM, Wang Chun via bitcoin-dev
> <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> 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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>
>