Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

> On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 1:08 AM, Eric Lombrozo > wrote: > 2) BIP100 has direct economic consequences…and particularly for miners. It > lends itself to much greater corruptibility. > > > What is the alternative? Have a Chief Scientist or Technical Advisory Board >

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 4:42 PM, Jeff Garzik wrote: > Since you missed it, here is the suggestion again: > http://gtf.org/garzik/bitcoin/BIP100-blocksizechangeproposal.pdf > Reposting as Jeff's mail got eaten by the anti-phishing filters, due to SourceForge's obsolete mailman setup.

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 Notionally, I agree with what I see written here by Jeff, and I appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into this short post to list. On 06/14/2015 08:07 AM, Jeff Garzik wrote: > Exactly -- both block size proponents and block size change > conservat

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 I agree that changes of anything more than trivial are difficult, but I would disagree that they can't be made. It seems that the issue is one of roadblocks and muddling through when a major issue (e.g. the proposal of a hardfork / XT) is confronting

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

> On Jun 14, 2015, at 3:34 AM, Benjamin wrote: > > "The size limit is an economic policy lever that needs to be > transitioned -away- from software and software developers, to the free > market." > > Exactly right. Bitcoin does not have a free market for fee though, and > literally all the disc

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

Exactly -- both block size proponents and block size change conservatives seem to be glossing over this aspect - much to my dismay. Choosing the size limit is choosing the size of a scarce resource. By fiat. It is wrong to think that a "technical consensus" can choose what is best here. The blo

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

Since you missed it, here is the suggestion again: http://gtf.org/garzik/bitcoin/BIP100-blocksizechangeproposal.pdf On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 6:06 AM, Mats Henricson wrote: > Jeff, > > with all due respect, but I've seen you saying this a few times > now, that this decision is oh so difficult and

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

"The size limit is an economic policy lever that needs to be transitioned -away- from software and software developers, to the free market." Exactly right. Bitcoin does not have a free market for fee though, and literally all the discussion so far has neglected some fundamental aspect of this, as

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

Jeff, with all due respect, but I've seen you saying this a few times now, that this decision is oh so difficult and important. But this is not helpful. We all know that. Even I. Make a suggestion, or stay out of the debate! Mats On 06/14/2015 07:36 AM, Jeff Garzik wrote: > The choice is very

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

Economic policy sounds like a dirty word in the context of Bitcoin, but as Jeff Garzik said, choosing a block size cap is unfortunately an economic policy that has to be chosen somehow. Enabling users to incentivise the voting process is an interesting tool to have in the toolbox, but I think it w

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

> > Yes, it does bother (some) people to see the consensus based system > because of the difficulties that can be associated with implementing > it. But that's the way it is. If you don't like consensus based > systems (or decentralized, distributed systems) this is probably the > wrong space for

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

The choice is very real and on-point. What should the block size limit be? Why? There is a large consensus that it needs increasing. To what? By what factor? The size limit literally defines the fee market, the whole damn thing. If software high priests choose a size limit of 300k, space is

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

I definitely think we need some voting system for metaconsensus…but if we’re going to seriously consider this we should look at the problem much more generally. Using false choices doesn’t really help, though ;) - Eric Lombrozo > On Jun 13, 2015, at 10:13 PM, Jeff Garzik wrote: > > On Sun, J

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 1:08 AM, Eric Lombrozo wrote: > 2) BIP100 has direct economic consequences…and particularly for miners. It > lends itself to much greater corruptibility. > > What is the alternative? Have a Chief Scientist or Technical Advisory Board choose what is a proper fee, what is a

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

Chun, With all due respect, there are a couple major differences between BIP34 and BIP66 on the one hand and BIP100 on the other. 1) BIP34 and BIP66 are soft forks. Miners choosing to switch to them will not seriously impact validation rules for non-mining users that do not make the switch. Wi

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 12:55 AM, Chun Wang <1240...@gmail.com> wrote: > To tell you the truth. It is only because most miners are not located > in the West. If Slush, Eligius and BTC Guild still on top 3, the core > developers, including brain-dead Mike Hearn, would be very happy to do > BIP100 j

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

Miner voting, while imperfect, is the least-worst of various solutions which inject market input into the system. It is is known quantity, field tested, and must be sustained, in public, over a time span of months. As this thread shows, stakeholder and direct user voting is nigh impossible to get

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

To tell you the truth. It is only because most miners are not located in the West. If Slush, Eligius and BTC Guild still on top 3, the core developers, including brain-dead Mike Hearn, would be very happy to do BIP100 just like they did BIP34 and BIP66. Shame on you! On Sun, Jun 14, 2015 at 6:20 A

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

What Stephen said is very much along the same lines of my earlier critique. This voting mechanism would be all but unusable to most endusers without some pretty elaborate tools…and unless users are willing to pay substantially higher fees than they’re currently paying, their votes will not reall

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE- Hash: SHA1 A decentralized, distributed application should offer its users decentralized, distributed method of weighing in on the direction of how it evolves as well as having an open development model. The reference to Facebook and Myspace is completely inappl

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

While this idea is theoretically interesting because it involves many stakeholders, rather than just miners, I think in practice this would not work very well. Users don't want to worry about this kind of technicality, they just want to be able to make a transaction and have it be processed. I

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

Adding back the list. Did not intend to remove it. Apologies. On 13 Jun 2015 4:52 pm, Raystonn wrote:Based on my observations, what the majority of Bitcoin users want is a system that can carry more transactions per second than any existing payment system while retaining most of the security of

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

That’s exactly the problem with Bitcoin - it was supposed to be the case that users ARE the miners and node operators…but…alas… > On Jun 13, 2015, at 3:20 PM, Danny Thorpe wrote: > > Please forgive my ignorance, but why should Bitcoin users have a say in block > size limits? It's the miners a

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

Please forgive my ignorance, but why should Bitcoin users have a say in block size limits? It's the miners and Bitcoin node operators that bear the burden of managing large blocks, no? Users voting on network parameters sounds like neighbors voting on how deep my swimming pool should be. Thanks,

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 1:04 PM, Eric Lombrozo wrote: > Miners currently only collect an almost negligible portion of their > revenue from fees. Then they shouldn't care about the block size limit, since an increase in block size (and thus in the number of txs they get fees from) will only incr

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Friday, June 12, 2015 11:01:02 PM Vincent Truong wrote: > RE: miner economics > Miners who have an agenda can forego fees to achieve it and create their > own txns if it is completely txn/user driven. It is better to just count > miners votes and let the user votes be their backing. Just simpli

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

(Sorry for spam, forgot to cc the mailing list) RE: miner economics Miners who have an agenda can forego fees to achieve it and create their own txns if it is completely txn/user driven. It is better to just count miners votes and let the user votes be their backing. Although miners need to inclu

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

Miners currently only collect an almost negligible portion of their revenue from fees. While I certainly welcome any proposals that move us in the direction of defining a smooth metaconsensus process, I think with the curent economics, miners (and especially those with significant hashing power) ha

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

I'm imagining in Peter's proposal it's not the transaction votes that are counted but only the votes in the blocks? So miners get to vote but they risk losing money by having to exclude counter voting transactions. But garbage transactions are no problem at all. Note that users that want to cast a

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

For the purposes of finding the median, halve < same < double. It will only change if a majority of non-apathetic votes are for halve or a majority of non-apathetic votes are for double. On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 11:54 AM, Matt Whitlock wrote: > On Friday, 12 June 2015, at 7:44 pm, Peter Todd wrot

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Friday, 12 June 2015, at 7:44 pm, Peter Todd wrote: > On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 02:36:31PM -0400, Matt Whitlock wrote: > > On Friday, 12 June 2015, at 7:34 pm, Peter Todd wrote: > > > On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 02:22:36PM -0400, Matt Whitlock wrote: > > > > Why should miners only be able to vote for

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Friday, 12 June 2015, at 7:44 pm, Peter Todd wrote: > On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 02:36:31PM -0400, Matt Whitlock wrote: > > On Friday, 12 June 2015, at 7:34 pm, Peter Todd wrote: > > > On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 02:22:36PM -0400, Matt Whitlock wrote: > > > > Why should miners only be able to vote for

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 08:39:21PM +0200, Benjamin wrote: > This is a misguided idea, to say the least. If such a mechanism of of > user input would be possible, one would use it for transaction > verification in the first place. In proof-of-stake outcomes are > determined by vote by stake (that vo

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 02:36:31PM -0400, Matt Whitlock wrote: > On Friday, 12 June 2015, at 7:34 pm, Peter Todd wrote: > > On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 02:22:36PM -0400, Matt Whitlock wrote: > > > Why should miners only be able to vote for "double the limit" or "halve" > > > the limit? If you're going

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

This is a misguided idea, to say the least. If such a mechanism of of user input would be possible, one would use it for transaction verification in the first place. In proof-of-stake outcomes are determined by vote by stake (that vote has very different characteristics than vote by compute power).

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 02:26:20PM -0400, Matt Whitlock wrote: > On Friday, 12 June 2015, at 11:20 am, Mark Friedenbach wrote: > > Peter it's not clear to me that your described protocol is free of miner > > influence over the vote, by artificially generating transactions which they > > claim in th

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Friday, 12 June 2015, at 7:34 pm, Peter Todd wrote: > On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 02:22:36PM -0400, Matt Whitlock wrote: > > Why should miners only be able to vote for "double the limit" or "halve" > > the limit? If you're going to use bits, I think you need to use two bits: > > > > 0 0 = no p

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 02:22:36PM -0400, Matt Whitlock wrote: > Why should miners only be able to vote for "double the limit" or "halve" the > limit? If you're going to use bits, I think you need to use two bits: > > 0 0 = no preference ("wildcard" vote) > 0 1 = vote for the limit to

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

On Friday, 12 June 2015, at 11:20 am, Mark Friedenbach wrote: > Peter it's not clear to me that your described protocol is free of miner > influence over the vote, by artificially generating transactions which they > claim in their own blocks Miners could fill their blocks with garbage transaction

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

Why should miners only be able to vote for "double the limit" or "halve" the limit? If you're going to use bits, I think you need to use two bits: 0 0 = no preference ("wildcard" vote) 0 1 = vote for the limit to remain the same 1 0 = vote for the limit to be halved

Re: [Bitcoin-development] User vote in blocksize through fees

Peter it's not clear to me that your described protocol is free of miner influence over the vote, by artificially generating transactions which they claim in their own blocks, or conforming incentives among voters by opting to be with the (slight) majority in order to minimize fees. Wouldn't it in