Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Fees and the block-finding process

From: Michael Naber <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Aug 2015 15:56:45 -0500

I'm not sure whether removing the limit at the protocol-level would lead to
government by miners who might reject blocks which were too big, but I
probably wouldn't want to take that risk. I think we should probably keep a
block size limit in the protocol, but that we should increase it to be as
high as "technology can provide." Toward that: I don't necessarily think
that node-count in and of itself should be the metric for evaluating what
technology can provide, as much as the goal that the chain be inexpensive
to validate given the capabilities of present technology -- so if I can
lease a server in a datacenter which can validate the chain and my total
cost to do that is just a few dollars, then we're probably ok.

Of course there's also the issue that we maintain enough geographic /
political distribution to keep the network reliable, but I think we're far
from being in danger on the reliability front. So maybe my criteria that
the chain be validated at low cost is the wrong focus, but if it is than
what's the appropriate criteria for deciding whether it's safe by standards
of "today's technology" to raise the limit at the protocol level?

On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 2:53 PM, Jorge Timón <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> On Aug 11, 2015 9:37 PM, "Michael Naber" <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> > Hitting the limit in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing. The
> question at hand is whether we should constrain that limit below what
> technology is capable of delivering. I'm arguing that not only we should
> not, but that we could not even if we wanted to, since competition will
> deliver capacity for global consensus whether it's in Bitcoin or in some
> other product / fork.
>
> You didn't answer the 2 questions...
> Anyway, if we don't care about centralization at all, we can just remove
> the limit: that's what "technology can provide".
> Maybe in that case it is developers who move to a decentralized
> competitor...
>
> > On Tue, Aug 11, 2015 at 2:27 PM, Jorge Timón <[email-masked]> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> On Aug 11, 2015 8:46 PM, "Michael Naber" <[email-masked]> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > Hi Jorge: Many people would like to participate in a global consensus
> network -- which is a network where all the participating nodes are aware
> of and agree upon every transaction. Constraining Bitcoin capacity below
> the limits of technology will only push users seeking to participate in a
> global consensus network to other solutions which have adequate capacity,
> such as BitcoinXT or others. Note that lightning / hub and spoke do not
> meet requirements for users wishing to participate in global consensus,
> because they are not global consensus networks, since all participating
> nodes are not aware of all transactions.
> >>
> >> Even if you are right, first fees will raise and that will be what
> pushes people to other altcoins, no?
> >> Can we agree that the first step in any potentially bad situation is
> hitting the limit and then fees rising as a consequence?
> >
> >
>