Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proposed alternatives to the 20MB stepfunction

From: Pieter Wuille <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 May 2015 10:59:11 -0700

On May 28, 2015 10:42 AM, "Raystonn ." <[email-masked]> wrote:
>
> I agree that developers should avoid imposing economic policy.  It is
dangerous for Bitcoin and the core developers themselves to become such a
central point of attack for those wishing to disrupt Bitcoin.

I could not agree more that developers should not be in charge of the
network rules.

Which is why - in my opinion - hard forks cannot be controversial things. A
controversial change to the software, forced to be adopted by the public
because the only alternative is a permanent chain fork, is a use of power
that developers (or anyone) should not have, and an incredibly dangerous
precedent for other changes that only a subset of participants would want.

The block size is also not just an economic policy. It is the compromise
the _network_ chooses to make between utility and various forms of
centralization pressure, and we should treat it as a compromise, and not as
some limit that is inferior to scaling demands.

I personally think the block size should increase, by the way, but only if
we can do it under a policy of doing it after technological growth has been
shown to be sufficient to support it without increased risk.

-- 
Pieter