Re: [bitcoin-dev] The need for larger blocks

From: Pieter Wuille <pieter.wuille@gmail•com>
To: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@gmail•com>
Cc: bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] The need for larger blocks
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 2015 20:12:54 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAPg+sBg=sn7djO_8H16NDg7S7m7_0eTcrgLVofMWQ2ANz+jw9w@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CADm_Wca+ow4pMzN7SyKjsMdFo0wuUerYYjf5xKs5G_2Q2PzMmA@mail.gmail.com>

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I am not saying that economic change is what we want. Only that it is
inevitable, independent of whether larger blocks happen or not.

I am saying that acting because of fear of economic change is a bad reason.
The reason for increase should be because of the higher utility. We need it
at some point, but there should be no rush.

I do understand that we want to avoid a *sudden* change in economic policy,
but I'm generally not too worried. Either fees increase and they get paid,
and we're good. But more likely is that some uses just move off-chain
because the block chain does not offer what they need. That's sad, but it
is inevitable at any size: some uses fit, some don't.

-- 
Pieter
 On Jun 26, 2015 7:57 PM, "Jeff Garzik" <jgarzik@gmail•com> wrote:

> It is not "fear" of fee pressure.
>
> 1) Blocks are mostly not-full on average.
>
> 2) Absent long blocks and stress tests, there is little fee pressure above
> the anti-spam relay fee metric, because of #1.
>
> 3) As such, inducing fee pressure is a delta, a change from years-long
> bitcoin economic policy.  Each time we approach the soft limit, Bitcoin
> Core increases the soft limit to prevent "full" blocks.  Mike Hearn et. al.
> lobbies miners to upgrade.
>
> (note - this is not an endorsement of these actions - it is a neutral
> observation)
>
> 4) Inaction leads to consistent fee pressure as the months tick on and
> system volume grows; thus, inaction leads to economic policy change.
>
> 5) Economic policy change leads to market and software disruption.  The
> market and software - notably wallets - is not prepared for this.
>
> 6) If you want to change economic policy, that's fine.  But be honest and
> admit you are arguing for a change, a delta from current market
> expectations and behavior.
>
> 7) It is critical to first deal with what _is_, not what you wish the
> world to be.  You want a fee market to develop.  There is nothing wrong
> with that desire.  It remains a delta from where we are today, and that is
> critically relevant in a $3b+ market.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 7:09 AM, Pieter Wuille <pieter.wuille@gmail•com>
> wrote:
>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> here I'm going to try to address a part of the block size debate which
>> has been troubling me since the beginning: the reason why people seem to
>> want it.
>>
>> People say that larger blocks are necessary. In the long term, I agree -
>> in the sense that systems that do not evolve tend to be replaced by other
>> systems. This evolution can come in terms of layers on top of Bitcoin's
>> blockchain, in terms of the technology underlying various aspects of the
>> blockchain itself, and also in the scale that this technology supports.
>>
>> I do, however, fundamentally disagree that a fear for a change in
>> economics should be considered to necessitate larger blocks. If it is, and
>> there is consensus that we should adapt to it, then there is effectively no
>> limit going forward. This is similar to how Congress voting to increase the
>> copyright term retroactively from time to time is really no different from
>> having an infinite copyright term in the first place. This scares me.
>>
>> Here is how Gavin summarizes the future without increasing block sizes in
>> PR 6341:
>>
>> > 1. Transaction confirmation times for transactions with a given fee
>> will rise; very-low-fee transactions will fail to get confirmed at all.
>> > 2. Average transaction fee paid will rise
>> > 3. People or applications unwilling or unable to pay the rising fees
>> will stop submitting transactions
>> > 4. People and businesses will shelve plans to use Bitcoin, stunting
>> growth and adoption
>>
>> Is it fair to summarize this as "Some use cases won't fit any more,
>> people will decide to no longer use the blockchain for these purposes, and
>> the fees will adapt."?
>>
>> I think that is already happening, and will happen at any scale. I
>> believe demand for payments in general is nearly infinite, and only a small
>> portion of it will eventually fit on a block chain (independent of whether
>> its size is limited by consensus rules or economic or technological means).
>> Furthermore, systems that compete with Bitcoin in this space already offer
>> orders of magnitude more capacity than we can reasonably achieve with any
>> blockchain technology at this point.
>>
>> I don't know what subset of use cases Bitcoin will cater to in the long
>> term. They have already changed - you see way less betting transactions
>> these days than a few years ago for example - and they will keep changing,
>> independent of what effective block sizes we end up with. I don't think we
>> should be afraid of this change or try to stop it.
>>
>> If you look at graphs of block sizes over time (for example,
>> http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=498), it seems to me that there is very
>> little "organic" growth, and a lot of sudden changes (which could
>> correspond to changing defaults in miner software, introduction of popular
>> sites/services, changes in the economy). I think these can be seen as the
>> economy changing to full up the available space, and I believe these will
>> keep happening at any size effectively available.
>>
>> None of this is a reason why the size can't increase. However, in my
>> opinion, we should do it because we believe it increases utility and
>> understand the risks; not because we're afraid of what might happen if we
>> don't hurry up. And from that point of view, it seems silly to make a huge
>> increase at once...
>>
>> --
>> Pieter
>>
>>
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>>
>

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