On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 3:12 PM, Gavin Andresen <gavinandresen@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Aug 4, 2015 at 7:27 AM, Pieter Wuille via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

I would say that things already demonstrately got terrible. The mining landscape is very centralized, with apparently a majority depending on agreements to trust each other's announced blocks without validation.

And that is a problem... why?

If miners need to form alliances of trusting each other's blocks without validation to overcome the inefficiencies of slow block propagation, I think we have a system that is in direct conflict with the word "permissionless" that you use later.
 
As Bitcoin grows, pieces of the ecosystem will specialize. Satoshi's original code did everything: hashing, block assembly, wallet, consensus, network. That is changing, and that is OK.

Specialization is perfectly fine.

I believe that if the above would have happened overnight, people would have cried wolf. But somehow it happened slow enough, and "things kept working".

I don't think that this is a good criterion. Bitcoin can "work" with gigabyte blocks today, if everyone uses the same few blockchain validation services, the same few online wallets, and mining is done by a cartel that only allows joining after signing a contract so they can sue you if you create an invalid block. Do you think people will then agree that "things got demonstratebly worse"?

Don't turn Bitcoin into something uninteresting, please.

Why is what you, personally, find interesting relevant?

I find it interesting to build a system that has potential to bring about innovation.

I understand you want to build an extremely decentralized system, where everybody participating trusts nothing except the genesis block hash.

That is not true, I'm sorry if that is the impression I gave.

I see centralization and scalability as a trade-off, and for better or for worse, the block chain only offers one trade-off. I want to see technology built on top that introduces lower levels of trust than typical fully centralized systems, while offering increased convenience, speed, reliability, and scale. I just don't think that all of that can happen on the lowest layer without hurting everything built on top. We need different trade-offs, and the blockchain is just one, but a very fundamental one.

I think it is more interesting to build a system that works for hundreds of millions of people, with no central point of control and the opportunity for ANYBODY to participate at any level. Permission-less innovation is what I find interesting.

That sounds amazing, but do you think that Bitcoin, as it exists today, can scale to hundreds of millions of users, while retaining any glimpse of permission-lessness and decentralization? I think we need low-trust off-chain systems and other innovations to make that happen.


And I think the current "demonstrably terrible" Bitcoin system is still INCREDIBLY interesting.

I'm happy for you, then.

--
Pieter