Topic: Bitcoin XT - Officially #REKT (also goes for BIP101 fraud) - page 202. (Read 378996 times)

The questions are:

- Do we want the block size limit to continue to serve its original purpose as an anti-spam measure?  

- Or do we want the block size limit to serve a political goal of reducing the cost to run full nodes?

From an economics perspective, I suppose it's a matter of whether the economic loss due to the production quota on block space is outweighed by reduction of some negative externality (a lower ratio of nodes / users, I suppose).  




There is more discussion on this here: http://bitco.in/forum/threads/gold-collapsing-bitcoin-up.16/page-12#post-392

Lifting it completely is not an option. Your logic about the constant need for re-adjustment is sound. Personally, my hope is that the blocksize is kept as low as possible until different payment channels such as Lightining and other safe & efficient off chain solutions (OpenTransactions?) are made available and easy to use. When we reach that point I would consider it reasonable to freeze the block size forever.

If you care enough this is an excellent read by Greg Maxwell on why we need to proceed with caution:
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-May/007880.html

Not far off, heh.  Some are extremely concerned that increasing the blocksize too quickly could lead to mining and node centralisation, but it's difficult to predict how serious a problem it would actually be.  Some are obviously less concerned and are pushing for larger increases in case the masses come knocking and there isn't enough space to accommodate them.  There are also a small number of people expressing more militant views that Bitcoin should become more of an asset for a privileged few rather than a global currency and argue for a permanent 1MB blocksize, but I sincerely hope this isn't the way we proceed.  It's quite difficult to tell apart who is concerned about centralisation and who thinks it should be an asset class, because they all seem to present the same arguments.  So the entire thing seems to have devolved into a "1mb vs 8mb" mud-slinging contest which isn't proving very productive.

It seems like any of the proposals would work and it's turned into a big head game. Why don't they just take the cap out completely? It was put in to avoid spamming the blockchain. Obviously we're not worried about spam any longer or they wouldn't raise it at all. If we are still worried about spam then that problem will just reappear in a few years after a bunch of the increases go into effect. I still don't get all the excitement about it. Seems like much ado about nothing.

The 1MB'ers will be forked off 2016.

I'm a little worried that in the future happens the same with bitcoin forks to what happened to GNU/Linux and Android. Google has turned an open source OS that advocates for freedom, free sharing among a collaborative community and privacy of its users to something that spies and monetizes you. Now most android apps ask permission to access your id, your phone no., google account data, etc. And you don't have the choice to install open source programs available to the Linux community that should work in Android because is based on linux distros. Android is being used by millions of users in barely five years of existence while Linux has a small percentage of the user community in its 20+ years of existence.

I hope it doesn't end happening the same in the cryptocoin world and the majority of the population end up using something like ETH while BTC becomes a cryptocoin used in niche markets for libertarians and tech savvy people. Usually people are attracted to fancy and flashy features while disregarding their own privacy or liberty in the long term, human nature I guess so I'm not very optimistic in that regard. I see all this turmoil as attacks to something governments and corporations can't control yet and maybe we'll end with a "controlled" cryptocoin a simple reedition of the dollar.

There's a huge difference. Gavin has proposed that we start with 8 MB blocks in 2016 and double every two years. In other words, this BIP(101) is based on speculation.
BIP100, proposed by Jeff Garzik has something else in mind. "Allow miners to cast votes on the block chain every 3 months for their preferred max block size. Throw out the top and bottom 20% of the votes and choose the lowest of the remainder as the max block size, increasing or decreasing from current by no more than 50% each time."

In the meantime another proposal has received it's official number, BIP105.

You are spreading nonsense again and completely diverting my arguement with useless links that are not related at all. I solely talking about the miners, and fact is that there is ZERO support for XT.

I appreciate the responses. I viewed the links and it appears like a bunch of drama built up around puffy dev egos and private business with a stake. I guess I'll just have to wait and see who's six gun has a longer barrel. Thanks again.

For now but it could change. Saying zero support is outright misinformation.

I'd really love if that could be true but no. BIP101 (or XT for that matter) is highway to centralized hell.

Sounds about right. Not enough support to be relevant.

Both are decentralized.

Between the two extremes it's the difference between Bitcoin running on Google datacenters or staying decentralized.

What?

https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/
http://xt.coin.dance

Close but no cigar  

The first few sentences are quite correct. You might want to add that the imaginary 100 million users are supposedly unlike the existing majority of Bitcoin holders in that they can't wait to fill up the blockchain with transactions from the plethora of retail use cases at their disposition.

The Chinese are not the one who decided on the 8mb increase and in fact most of them are apparently against it. The lucky 8mb number is actually a story made up by Mike Hearn and Gavin to try to sell the increase to miners. Suffice to say it didn't quite work out as planned.

As for sidechains they are not an actual scaling solution so that statement doesn't hold.

I can't be bothered with giving you a full rundown but this reddit post provide so needed context if you care: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3ilbit/mike_hearn_responds_to_xt_critics/cuhpil1

Thanks
What's the difference between the different proposals? Is it a huge difference or are people being drama queens?

No. That's not entirely correct. The story is hard to sammarize at this point. Gavin proposed the controversial BIP101 which was rejected and thus he teamed up with Hearn. XT came to life as a potential fork. In the meantime new proposals started coming ip, most notably, BIP100. You can track support of various proposals on blocktrail. Current BIP100 is leading with ~60% support. XT has zero support now.

I've stayed out of this debate because I really don't understand it. Maybe one of you can explain it to me. Here's what I see.

Everyone is delusional and believes there are 100 million users out there in the ether just dying to use Bitcoin but can't because the current limit keeps it from being used (Satoshidice proved that to be false long ago). We have to find a fix for this spam restriction issue within the next year or chicken little is going to fall from the sky and take a giant shit on Bitcoin. There's a couple of ways to do it that involve different levels of increase. The Chinese (mining majority) want an 8mb increase because 8 is a lucky number in China and their bandwidth isn't good enough to support a larger change. Part of the tiny dev team want sidechains to do it because they work for a company that will profit from it. Another part wants to raise the cap some and another part wants to raise it a lot.

Am I close at all and if not what am I missing?

 

Everything fine over here...

We are fucked with XT and we are fucked with 1MB blocks. Solution: A reasonable blocksize increase with blockstream. Unfortunately it seems you have to choose between decentralization of nodes or low fees for everyone (at the expense of centralizing the nodes).