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From: Mike Hearn <mike@plan99•net>
To: "Jorge Timón" <jtimon@jtimon•cc>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Block Size Increase
Date: Thu, 7 May 2015 18:11:11 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CANEZrP1ay64jryeUyDJ9Y+1C-Bre1U_1xMyuB4cqQprd1-qbCA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CABm2gDpgBNjuPLnFiU2TspgLws7JjWnsxih09JG9bQycraS=sQ@mail.gmail.com>

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>
> It is an argument against my admittedly vague definition of
> "non-controversial change".
>

If it's an argument against something you said, it's not a straw man, right
;)

Consensus has to be defined as agreement between a group of people. Who are
those people? If you don't know, it's impossible to decide when there is
consensus or not.

Right now there is this nice warm fuzzy notion that decisions in Bitcoin
Core are made by consensus. "Controversial" changes are avoided. I am
trying to show you that this is just marketing. Nobody can define what
these terms even mean. It would be more accurate to say decisions are
vetoed by whoever shows up and complains enough, regardless of technical
merit. After all, my own getutxo change was merged after a lot of technical
debate (and trolling) ..... then unmerged a day later because "it's a
shitstorm".

So if Gavin showed up and complained a lot about side chains or whatever,
what you're saying is, oh that's different. We'd ignore him. But when
someone else complains about a change they don't like, that's OK.

Heck, I could easily come up with a dozen reasons to object to almost any
change, if I felt like it. Would I then be considered not a part of the
consensus because that'd be convenient?


> I'm sure that's not what the proponents of the size increase want, and
> I'm not defending 1 MB as a sacred limit  or anything, but my question
> is "where is the limit for them?"
>

20mb is an arbitrary number, just like 1mb. It's good enough to keep the
Bitcoin ecosystem operating as it presently does: gentle growth in usage
with the technology that exists and is implemented. Gavin has discussed in
his blog why he chose 20mb, I think. It's the result of some estimates
based on average network/hardware capabilities.

Perhaps one day 20mb will not be enough. Perhaps then the limit will be
raised again, if there is sufficient demand.

You are correct that "no limit at all" is a possible answer. More
precisely, in that case miners would choose. Gavin's original proposal was
20mb+X where X is decided by some incrementing formula over time, chosen to
approximate expected improvements in hardware and software. That was cool
too. The 20mb figure and the formula were an attempt to address the
concerns of people who are worried about the block size increase:  a
meet-in-the-middle compromise.

Unfortunately it's hard to know what other kinds of meet-in-the-middle
compromise could be made here. I'm sure Gavin would consider them if he
knew. But the concerns provided are too vague to address. There are no
numbers in them, for example:

   - We need more research -> how much more?
   - I'm not against changing the size, just not now -> then when?
   - I'm not wedded to 1mb, but not sure 20mb is right -> then what?
   - Full node count is going down -> then what size do you think would fix
   that? 100kb?
   - It will make mining more centralised -> how do you measure that and
   how much centralisation would you accept?

and so on.

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  reply	other threads:[~2015-05-07 16:11 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 116+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-05-06 22:12 Matt Corallo
2015-05-06 22:30 ` slush
2015-05-06 23:06   ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-05-06 22:44 ` Tier Nolan
2015-05-06 23:12   ` Matt Corallo
2015-05-06 23:33     ` Tier Nolan
2015-05-06 23:41       ` Matt Corallo
2015-05-07  2:16         ` Peter Todd
2015-05-06 23:11 ` Matt Whitlock
2015-05-06 23:13   ` Matt Corallo
2015-05-07  0:00 ` Tom Harding
2015-05-07  0:07 ` Bryan Bishop
2015-05-07  0:37 ` Gregory Maxwell
2015-05-07  1:49 ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07  3:03   ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-08 11:02   ` Thomas Zander
2015-05-08 20:17     ` Aaron Voisine
2015-05-07  3:47 ` Pieter Wuille
2015-05-07  9:25 ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 10:12   ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 10:42   ` Btc Drak
2015-05-07 10:52   ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-07 11:15     ` Andrew
2015-05-07 11:29     ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 12:26       ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-07 14:05         ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 14:18           ` Bryan Bishop
2015-05-07 14:22           ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 14:40           ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 14:52           ` Gavin Andresen
2015-05-07 14:56             ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 15:04             ` Alex Morcos
2015-05-07 15:09               ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 15:12               ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 15:17                 ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 15:29                   ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 15:35                     ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 16:18                       ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-07 16:21                     ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-07 17:29                       ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 19:37                       ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 19:44                         ` Jérémie Dubois-Lacoste
2015-05-07 20:20                         ` Jérémie Dubois-Lacoste
2015-05-07 15:58             ` Matthew Mitchell
2015-05-07 16:47               ` Matthew Mitchell
2015-05-07 17:26             ` Matt Corallo
     [not found]               ` <CABsx9T2vAQyZODRE9apu0R1n=LybssQcuTYD7P3mAQH_Fv6QCQ@mail.gmail.com>
2015-05-07 17:40                 ` [Bitcoin-development] Fwd: " Gavin Andresen
2015-05-07 17:43               ` [Bitcoin-development] " Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 18:03                 ` Btc Drak
2015-05-07 18:06                   ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 18:21                     ` Ross Nicoll
2015-05-07 18:40                     ` Gavin Costin
2015-05-07 18:46                       ` Btc Drak
2015-05-07 19:31                         ` Bernard Rihn
2015-05-07 19:31                     ` Alan Reiner
2015-05-07 19:54                       ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 19:59                         ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-08  1:40                         ` Tom Harding
2015-05-08  2:09                           ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-08  5:13                             ` Tom Harding
2015-05-08  9:43                               ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-08 15:23                               ` Alan Reiner
2015-05-08 14:59                         ` Alan Reiner
2015-05-08 15:49                           ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-13 10:37                             ` Oliver Egginger
2015-05-13 11:25                               ` Angel Leon
2015-05-08 17:17                           ` Andrew
2015-05-08 17:51                             ` Alan Reiner
     [not found]                               ` <CADZB0_bK+YsK8sN-di2pynvjsq5VjSvnEu0-cCGhPqFunyVm7Q@mail.gmail.com>
2015-05-09 12:02                                 ` Andrew
2015-05-09 12:53                                   ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-09 18:33                                     ` Andrew
2015-05-08  1:51                       ` Joel Joonatan Kaartinen
2015-05-08  3:41                       ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 18:38                   ` Chris Wardell
2015-05-07 18:55                     ` Alex Mizrahi
2015-05-07 18:59                     ` Ross Nicoll
2015-05-07 19:03                 ` Matt Corallo
2015-05-07 19:13                   ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 19:34                   ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 21:29                     ` Matt Corallo
2015-05-07 23:05                       ` 21E14
2015-05-07 15:33           ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-07 16:11             ` Mike Hearn [this message]
2015-05-07 16:47               ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-07 16:59                 ` Gavin Andresen
2015-05-07 17:42                   ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 18:05                   ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-07 19:57               ` Btc Drak
2015-05-07 15:39           ` Btc Drak
2015-05-07 13:02       ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 19:14       ` Matt Corallo
2015-05-07 11:55     ` Dave Hudson
2015-05-07 13:40       ` Jorge Timón
2015-05-08  4:46         ` Tom Harding
2015-05-07 14:04   ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 14:32     ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 14:38     ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-07 14:49       ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 15:13         ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-07 15:25           ` Peter Todd
2015-05-07 15:04       ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 15:16         ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-07 15:27           ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 15:33             ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-07 15:47               ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 15:50                 ` Justus Ranvier
2015-05-07 11:20 ` Wladimir J. van der Laan
2015-05-07 11:30   ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-05-07 15:56 ` Jeff Garzik
2015-05-07 16:13   ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-07 16:54 John Bodeen
2015-05-08 20:38 Raystonn .
2015-05-08 20:40 ` Mark Friedenbach
2015-05-08 20:51 Raystonn
2015-05-08 20:55 ` Mark Friedenbach
2015-05-08 21:01 Raystonn

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