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

From: Jeff Garzik <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 2015 01:36:45 -0400

The choice is very real and on-point.  What should the block size limit
be?  Why?

There is a large consensus that it needs increasing.  To what?  By what
factor?

The size limit literally defines the fee market, the whole damn thing.  If
software high priests choose a size limit of 300k, space is scarce, fees
are bid high.  If software high priests choose a size limit of 32mb, space
is plentiful, fees are near zero.  Market actors take their signals
accordingly.  Some business models boom, some business models fail, as a
direct result of changing this unintentionally-added speedbump.  Different
users value adoption, decentralization etc. differently.

The size limit is an economic policy lever that needs to be transitioned
-away- from software and software developers, to the free market.

A simple, e.g. hard fork to 2MB or 4MB does not fix higher level governance
problems associated with actors lobbying developers, even if a cloistered
and vetted Technical Advisory Board as has been proposed.

On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 1:20 AM, Eric Lombrozo <[email-masked]> wrote:

> I definitely think we need some voting system for metaconsensus…but if
> we’re going to seriously consider this we should look at the problem much
> more generally. Using false choices doesn’t really help, though ;)
>
> - Eric Lombrozo
>
>
> On Jun 13, 2015, at 10:13 PM, Jeff Garzik <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 1:08 AM, Eric Lombrozo <[email-masked]>
> wrote:
>
>> 2) BIP100 has direct economic consequences…and particularly for miners.
>> It lends itself to much greater corruptibility.
>>
>>
> What is the alternative?  Have a Chief Scientist or Technical Advisory
> Board choose what is a proper fee, what is a proper level of
> decentralization, a proper growth factor?
>
>
>

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