> On Jul 30, 2015, at 4:21 AM, Eric Lombrozo wrote:
>
> and a number of the people most intimately familiar with the inner workings of the system (some of whom are in this thread) think that given what we now today about the Bitcoin network, increasing block size externalizes costs in dangerous ways. Remember that total cost includes not just equipment costs but also things like block propagation latency and specifically identified security risks. Some of these security risks were only appreciated relatively recently and were completely unknown in 2009.

I would like (and have been asking) those people to take the time to quantify those costs and write up those risks in a careful way.

I believe the costs and risks of 8MB blocks are minimal, and that the benefits of supporting more transaction FAR outweigh those costs and risks, but it is hard to have a rational conversation about that when even simple questions like 'what is s reasonable cost to run a full node' are met with silence.

I think the benefit of an 8 MB over a 1 MB in terms of utility is marginal (even assuming miners actually produce 8 MB blocks). There are very few use cases that Bitcoin on-chain can support with a small extra factor. I think the market will grow to adapt to whatever is offered anyway.

Bitcoin's advantage over other systems does not lie in scalability. Well-designed centralized systems can trivially compete with Bitcoin's on-chain transactions in terms of cost, speed, reliability, convenience, and scale. Its power lies in transparency, lack of need for trust in network peers, miners, and those who influence or control the system. Wanting to increase the scale of the system is in conflict with all of those. Attempting to buy time with a fast increase is not wanting to face that reality, and treating the system as something whose scale trumps all other concerns. A long term scalability plan should aim on decreasing the need for trust required in off-chain systems, rather than increasing the need for trust in Bitcoin.

Making controversial changes to the network, and not wanting to face the reality that block chain space is a finite resource - whether enforced by a consensus rule or by miner's capacity to process transactions - is a huge treat to Bitcoin's usefulness in the long term.

I think the risks of trying to make a controversial change to the network FAR outweighs the benefits of a small constant factor that "kicks the can down the road".

Let's scale the block size gradually over time, according to technological growth.

--

Pieter