Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

From: Jeff Garzik <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2015 00:56:22 -0400

Miner voting, while imperfect, is the least-worst of various solutions
which inject market input into the system.  It is is known quantity, field
tested, and must be sustained, in public, over a time span of months.  As
this thread shows, stakeholder and direct user voting is nigh impossible to
get right.

Choosing block size is fundamentally a central bank directive shaping the
fee market.  Whatever actor or algorithm or natural equilibrium picks the
block size, that choice will dictate the level of competition for fees, the
level of scarcity of an economically scarce resource.  Picking the block
size advantages some businesses over others, some business models over
others.  Software (and software devs) should not be the ones picking that
limit.

Checks-and-balances are also important.  BIP 100 notably includes two steps
at which user input is visibly and actively injected:   1) hard fork to
enable, and 2) a second hard fork if the system is to scale beyond 32MB.
The network users (not miners) twice approve the system.  Further, one must
remember all the basic miner incentives that do align with users, notably
that of maintaining the value of bitcoin tokens as their primary income
stream.

On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 12:16 AM, Stephen <[email-masked]>
wrote:

> While this idea is theoretically interesting because it involves many
> stakeholders, rather than just miners, I think in practice this would not
> work very well. Users don't want to worry about this kind of technicality,
> they just want to be able to make a transaction and have it be processed.
>
> In addition, while this gives stakeholders some weight with the fees they
> supply, these fees are marginal compared to the block size subsidy. If this
> proposal were actually implemented, I think miners would vote for whatever
> they think is best, and users would not contradict them with their votes to
> ensure a fast confirmation time. Users are incentivized to be in agreement
> with miners because the miners provide them with the confirmations they
> need, but fees do not provide a great incentive for miners to be in
> agreement with users, and likely won't for some time.
>
> Best,
> Stephen
>
>
>
>
> > On Jun 12, 2015, at 2:11 PM, Peter Todd <[email-masked]> wrote:
> >
> > Jeff Garzik recently proposed that the upper blocksize limit be removed
> > entirely, with a "soft" limit being enforced via miner vote, recorded by
> > hashing power.
> >
> > This mechanism within the protocol for users to have any influence over
> > the miner vote. We can add that back by providing a way for transactions
> > themselves to set a flag determining whether or not they can be included
> > in a block casting a specific vote.
> >
> > We can simplify Garzik's vote to say that one of the nVersion bits
> > either votes for the blocksize to be increased, or decreased, by some
> > fixed ratio (e.g 2x or 1/2x) the next interval. Then we can use a
> > nVersion bit in transactions themselves, also voting for an increase or
> > decrease. Transactions may only be included in blocks with an
> > indentical vote, thus providing miners with a monetary incentive via
> > fees to vote according to user wishes.
> >
> > Of course, to cast a "don't care" vote we can either define an
> > additional bit, or sign the transaction with both versions. Equally we
> > can even have different versions with different fees, broadcast via a
> > mechanism such as replace-by-fee.
> >
> >
> > See also John Dillon's proposal for proof-of-stake blocksize voting:
> >
> >
> https://www.mail-archive.com/[email-masked]/msg02323.html
> >
> > --
> > 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
> > 0000000000000000127ab1d576dc851f374424f1269c4700ccaba2c42d97e778
> >
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > _______________________________________________
> > Bitcoin-development mailing list
> > [email-masked]
> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> [email-masked]
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>

-- 
Jeff Garzik
Bitcoin core developer and open source evangelist
BitPay, Inc.      https://bitpay.com/