Interestingly, since there is no government forcing everyone to run any particular software, it would seem that the "free market" has already decided that a 1 MB block cap is best. At some point in the future that same free market may choose a larger cap, or it may get rid of the cap altogether, but I don't see how a cap is in anyway at odds with the idea that bitcoin is a "free-market experiment".
Things may not be the way that some group of people might want it to be, but free-market doesn't mean "everyone gets to be happy". Unfortunately, an unregulated free market can be a VERY messy thing at times. It is quite possible that we could see transaction fees of $100 worth of bitcoins or more just to get a transaction confirmed within a week, and unconfirmed transactions being regularly "double-spent" days after the original transaction is sent long before we see a change in the cap on blocksize. We could see the exchange rate drop to pennies per bitcoin (or even bitcoins per penny) as people lose interest in a system that they feel excludes them.
A useless and worthless bitcoin could very well be exactly what the free market feels is best. That doesn't mean that Bitcoin isn't a free-market experiment. It just means that bitcoin might prove that an unregulated free market is a disaster.
Or
Perhaps an innovative person will find a way to motivate the free market to force a change. There are people that thought they would be able to motivate change, and they failed. Some of these people think that their own failure is an indication that bitcoin or the free market is a failure, but it is entirely possible that they simply didn't provide the right motivations in the right way to effect market forces in a way that would push changes they desired.
Topic: Blocksize - free market or managed economy? - page 2. (Read 845 times)
Quantus: So I take it your answer is yes, the Bitcoin economy needs some amount of management?
Yes we must limit the number of transactions to artificially increase fees because the block reward subsidy is no longer enough to pay for a robust mining community leading to consolidation and risking our network security.
However even if you feel we have enough security in the mining department we still have a huge issue with our network of full nodes. WE don't have enough and the ones we do have are run on antiquated hardware with pathetic bandwidth and reliability. We run the risk of network collapse if we raise block size at this time because the higher latency of the network would lead to more orphaned blocks, orphaned chains and going back to the mining community issue this would lead to even more benefits for the large pools because small miners can't compete as well when the latency of the network is bad because the large pools have the power to build longer chains in secret. Under these circumstances even if a small miner finds a block he won't be able to get credit for it. Again as network latency grows smaller miners get pushed out of the ecosystem.
Quantus: So I take it your answer is yes, the Bitcoin economy needs some amount of management?
So many threads tonight on this topic.
My copy and pasted opinion.
Bitcoin was never meant to be free, freedom is not free and neither is Bitcoin. As the block reward is cut in half again this Aug 2016 we will be facing further contraction of the mining community. This consolidation is the result of stagnating hardware deployment and low reinvestment. Large corporate entities are restricting deployment of cutting edge mining gear to large farms and this is threatening the social economics of the Bitcoin mining network. By consolidating the best new hardware to only a few locations and reaping the majority of the rewards at lower cost our network as a whole is becoming antiquated. But there is a solution, people don't like it but there is a solution and its the only way Bitcoin will survive. We need higher fees in the rage of 1 to 2 USD per transaction, that or to somehow grow our user base by a factor of 10 fold in the next seven months. We have run out of time the next block subsidy cut will only worsen the current situation, accelerating consolidation of the mining community until only one entity controls it all. We have been operating with a zero minimum transaction fee for years, its time to start paying for our network.
After we hit the 1MB limit (and I hope it comes as soon as possible) micro payments will be pushed off the network as fees rise and as a result more miners will reenter and reinvest in cutting edge hardware leading to a more stable, distributed, forward looking and vibrant mining community.
In time our community will grow thus allowing us to raise the block size, lower fees and allow micro payments once again and implement other features but we must work with the network we have now and not the network we hope to someday have. The Bitcoin community is entering troubled waters, to ensure our survival and to reach our promised land we must grow our user base while raising block size only when fees become prohibitively damaging to adoption. We must sustain our self's until our numbers are so great that any fee however small is enough to support our network but we well never get the chance if our network collapses under its own wight first. We must be prepared for a long winter with slow growth. It may take us decades but our success is inevitable.
My copy and pasted opinion.
Bitcoin was never meant to be free, freedom is not free and neither is Bitcoin. As the block reward is cut in half again this Aug 2016 we will be facing further contraction of the mining community. This consolidation is the result of stagnating hardware deployment and low reinvestment. Large corporate entities are restricting deployment of cutting edge mining gear to large farms and this is threatening the social economics of the Bitcoin mining network. By consolidating the best new hardware to only a few locations and reaping the majority of the rewards at lower cost our network as a whole is becoming antiquated. But there is a solution, people don't like it but there is a solution and its the only way Bitcoin will survive. We need higher fees in the rage of 1 to 2 USD per transaction, that or to somehow grow our user base by a factor of 10 fold in the next seven months. We have run out of time the next block subsidy cut will only worsen the current situation, accelerating consolidation of the mining community until only one entity controls it all. We have been operating with a zero minimum transaction fee for years, its time to start paying for our network.
After we hit the 1MB limit (and I hope it comes as soon as possible) micro payments will be pushed off the network as fees rise and as a result more miners will reenter and reinvest in cutting edge hardware leading to a more stable, distributed, forward looking and vibrant mining community.
In time our community will grow thus allowing us to raise the block size, lower fees and allow micro payments once again and implement other features but we must work with the network we have now and not the network we hope to someday have. The Bitcoin community is entering troubled waters, to ensure our survival and to reach our promised land we must grow our user base while raising block size only when fees become prohibitively damaging to adoption. We must sustain our self's until our numbers are so great that any fee however small is enough to support our network but we well never get the chance if our network collapses under its own wight first. We must be prepared for a long winter with slow growth. It may take us decades but our success is inevitable.
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The more I think about it, the more it seems to me like the only option, if we truly want Bitcoin to be a free market system, is to remove the block size limit altogether. The decision on what kind of transactions to relay and include in blocks would then be left to miners and nodes. IOW, the service providers, who bear the cost of running the Bitcoin network. A fixed block size amounts to a policy-based intervention in the free market, an attempt to improve market efficiency through central planning.
So if we accept the claim above, the question is: Can Bitcoin be run as a free market system, or does it require managing by an authority, either centralized or distributed? How much faith do you have in the free market's ability to protect against spam attacks and to optimize resource usage so that the network neither withers nor bloats until it dies?
Personally, if the conclusion is that Bitcoin's resource usage can't ultimately be left to the market to self-regulate, I think that might be the end of the experiment. It's possible that simply uncapping blocksize right now would be a bad mistake, but if we can't aim to at least do it eventually, I don't see how we can call Bitcoin a free-market experiment in any way.
Am I wrong? Does blocksize capping not equate to central planning?
This is a self-moderated thread. I will moderate for:
-not contributing to the thread. If you don't have anything worthwhile to say, go fill your sig campaign quota elsewhere.
-Being an ass. Stick to the point. Personal attacks and speculation on others' sinister hidden motives will get your post deleted.
If you want to tell me you don't like this moderation, start a new thread.
Edit: If I do delete posts, I'll start a thread in meta to collect them and post a link here. Transparency and all.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The more I think about it, the more it seems to me like the only option, if we truly want Bitcoin to be a free market system, is to remove the block size limit altogether. The decision on what kind of transactions to relay and include in blocks would then be left to miners and nodes. IOW, the service providers, who bear the cost of running the Bitcoin network. A fixed block size amounts to a policy-based intervention in the free market, an attempt to improve market efficiency through central planning.
So if we accept the claim above, the question is: Can Bitcoin be run as a free market system, or does it require managing by an authority, either centralized or distributed? How much faith do you have in the free market's ability to protect against spam attacks and to optimize resource usage so that the network neither withers nor bloats until it dies?
Personally, if the conclusion is that Bitcoin's resource usage can't ultimately be left to the market to self-regulate, I think that might be the end of the experiment. It's possible that simply uncapping blocksize right now would be a bad mistake, but if we can't aim to at least do it eventually, I don't see how we can call Bitcoin a free-market experiment in any way.
Am I wrong? Does blocksize capping not equate to central planning?
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