>It follows then, that if we make a decision now which destroys that property, which makes it possible to censor bitcoin, to deny service, or to pressure miners into changing rules contrary to user interests, then Bitcoin is no longer interesting. You asked to be convinced of the need for bigger blocks. I gave that. What makes you think bitcoin will break when more people use it? Sent on the go, excuse the brevity.
On Mon, Aug 10, 2015 at 11:31 PM, Thomas Zander via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
On Monday 10. August 2015 23.03.39 Mark Friedenbach wrote: I'm sorry, I really don't want to sound like a jerk, but not a single word of that mattered. Yes we all want Bitcoin to scale such that every person in the world can use it without difficulty. However if that were all that we cared about then I would be remiss if I did not point out that there are plenty of better, faster, and cheaper solutions to finding global consensus over a payment ledger than Bitcoin. Architectures which are algorithmically superior in their scaling properties. Indeed they are already implemented and you can use them today: https://www.stellar.org/ http://opentransactions.org/ So why do I work on Bitcoin, and why do I care about the outcome of this debate? Because Bitcoin offers one thing, and one thing only which alternative architectures fundamentally lack: policy neutrality. It can't be censored, it can't be shut down, and the rules cannot change from underneath you. *That* is what Bitcoin offers that can't be replicated at higher scale with a SQL database and an audit log. It follows then, that if we make a decision now which destroys that property, which makes it possible to censor bitcoin, to deny service, or to pressure miners into changing rules contrary to user interests, then Bitcoin is no longer interesting. We might as well get rid of mining at that point and make Bitcoin look like Stellar or Open-Transactions because at least then we'd scale even better and not be pumping millions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere from running all those ASICs. On the other side, 3Tb harddrives are sold, which take 8Mb blocks without Straw man, storage is not an issue. You can buy broadband in every relevant country that easily supports the Neither one of those assertions is clear. Keep in mind the goal is to have Bitcoin survive active censorship. Presumably that means being able to run a node even in the face of a hostile ISP or government. Furthermore, it means being location independent and being able to move around. In many places the higher the bandwidth requirements the fewer the number of ISPs that are available to service you, and the more visible you are. It may also be necessary to be able to run over Tor. And not just today's Tor which is developed, serviced, and supported by the US government, but a Tor or I2P that future governments have turned hostile towards and actively censor or repress. Or existing authoritative governments, for that matter. How much bandwidth would be available through those connections? It may hopefully never be necessary to operate under such constraints, except by freedom seeking individuals within existing totalitarian regimes. However the credible threat of doing so may be what keeps Bitcoin from being repressed in the first place. Lose the capability to go underground, and it will be pressured into regulation, eventually. To the second point, it has been previously pointed out that large miners stand to gain from larger blocks, for the same basic underlying reasons as selfish mining. The incentive is to increase blocks, and miners are able to do so at will and without cost. I would not be so certain that we wouldn't see large blocks sooner than that. We should get the inverted bloom filters stuff (or competing products) working This is basically already deployed thanks to Matt's relay network. Further improvements are not going to have dramatic effects. Remember 8Gb/block still doesn't support VISA/Mastercard. No, it doesn't. And 8GB/block is ludicrously large -- it would absolutely, without any doubt destroy the very nature of Bitcoin, turning it into a fundamentally uninteresting reincarnation of the existing financial system. And still be unable to compete with VISA/Mastercard. So why then the pressure to go down a route that WILL lead to failure by your own metrics? I humbly suggest that maybe we should play the strengths of Bitcoin instead -- it's trustlessness via policy neutrality. Either that, or go work on Stellar. Because that's where it's headed otherwise. |
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