Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Block Size Increase

From: Mike Hearn <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 7 May 2015 16:05:41 +0200

>
> If his explanation was "I will change my mind after we increase block
>
size", I guess the community should say "then we will just ignore your
> nack because it makes no sense".
>

Oh good! We can just kick anyone out of the consensus process if we think
they make no sense.

I guess that means me and Gavin can remove everyone else from the developer
consensus, because we think trying to stop Bitcoin growing makes no sense.

Do you see the problem with this whole notion? It cannot possibly work.
Whenever you try and make the idea of developer consensus work, what you
end up with is "I believe in consensus as long as it goes my way". Which is
worthless.

> One thing is the Bitcoin core project where you could argue that the 5
> committers decide (I don't know why Wladimir would have any more
> authority than the others).
>

Because he is formally the maintainer.

Maybe you dislike that idea. It's so .... centralised. So let's say Gavin
commits his patch, because his authority is equal to all other committers.
Someone else rolls it back. Gavin sets up a cron job to keep committing the
patch. Game over.

You cannot have committers fighting over what goes in and what doesn't.
That's madness. There must be a single decision maker for any given
codebase.

> Ok, so in simple terms, you expect people to have to pay enormous fees
> and/or wait thousands of blocks for their transactions to get included
> in the chain. Is that correct?
>

No. I'll write an article like the others, it's better than email for more
complicated discourse.

As others have said, if the answer is "forever, adoption is always the most
> important thing" then we will end up with an improved version of Visa.
>

This appears to be another one of those fundamental areas of disagreement.
I believe there is no chance of Bitcoin ending up like Visa, even if it is
wildly successful. I did the calculations years ago that show that won't
happen:

    https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

Decentralisation is a spectrum and Bitcoin will move around on that
spectrum over time. But claiming we have to pick between 1mb blocks and
"Bitcoin = VISA" is silly.

Peter:   your hypocrisy really is bottomless, isn't it? You constantly
claim to be a Righteous Defender of Privacy, but don't even hesitate before
publishing hacked private emails when it suits you.

Satoshi's hacker had no illusions about your horrible personality, which is
why he forwarded that email to you specifically. He knew you'd use it. You
should reflect on that fact. It says nothing good about you at all.