Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 37. (Read 2032247 times)

For whatever reason, you seem to keep  ignoring the very answers to your fears that I and guys like Peter have been detailing to you in excruciating detail over and over again.

Sure.  

Why do we have a consensus layer in the first place?  It is a way for us to agree on what transactions are valid and what transactions are invalid.  For example, we all agree that Alice shouldn't be able to move Bob's coins without a valid signature, and that Bob shouldn't be able to create coins out of thin air.  The consensus layer is about obvious stuff like that.  In order for Bitcoin to function as sound money, we need to agree on "black-or-white" rules like this that define which transactions are valid and which are invalid.

Notice that the paragraph above discusses valid and invalid transactions.  No where did I say anything about blocks.  That's because we only really care about transactions in the first place!  In fact, how can a block be invalid just because it includes one too many valid transactions?  

Satoshi added the 1 MB limit as an anti-spam measure to deal with certain limitations of Bitcoin's transport layer--not as a new rule for what constitutes a valid transaction.  We should thus think of every block that is exclusively composed of valid transactions as itself valid.  The size of the block alone should not make it invalid.  Instead, if a block is too big, think of it as likely to be orphaned (a "gray" rule) rather than as invalid (a black-or-white rule).  Perhaps above a certain block size, we're even 100% sure that a block will be orphaned; still we should view it as a valid block!  It will be orphaned because the transport layer was insufficient to transport it across the network--not because there was anything invalid about it.

Yes that is the question of course. My question has always been if we get rid of the 1 MB what do we do about spam control. One answer is "don't worry be happy" arguing, in effect, that the original cap was unnecessary. I'm not sure I buy it.

We already have a fee market.

But it isn't one that is very competitive yet.

Basically do we keep 1 MB cap and create a competitive fee market or raise the limit with some mechanism and eliminate the need for a competitive fee market while not turning users away and being forced to use intermediaries as payment channels.

It answered the question of whether a fee market will collapse under certain conditions, with some simplifying assumptions about the network. I don't believe it answered (or even asked) the questions surrounding decentralization at all. You can have a fee market (in fact it is the most obvious case of one) with a single node serving the entire world. Obviously that is not a desirable outcome and nothing in his paper addresses it (nor tries to, which is fine -- that what's what papers do, they don't need to answer every question).

Did you have any thoughts after reading Peter R's paper? It seemed to describe the major issues as they are in their current form.

Lots of math and tons of variables to reference. I found myself going back to the definition of VARs page constantly to follow his logic/math/etc.

yep, didn't think you'd be able to see the difference.

one being outright censorship that attempts to suppress discussion of the most important debate in the community today about Bitcoins future direction, ie the XT fork, and the other a nobody cares spammy personal slander attack that only started when i began speaking out in favor of bigger blocks.  not to mention by a coward who hides behind an anonymous identity.

Certainly not


I hope you are right but I don't really know if there is.

Most of these ideas that get thrown out are stuff that seems like a good idea but nobody can make a rigorous argument why they won't break.

Well is good the same as perfect?

I believe there is a good solution but not a perfect one. Sounds like the solution may be a moving target (dynamic in nature).

I meant screwed on the assumption that the 1 MB is about to fill up and cause problems.

But has anyone considered that a good solution may not even exist? Bitcoin is a new thing that has never been done before and is not a law of nature that Bitcoin must "work" in general (for example at larger scale).

In my experience in building software, often problems that get the kick-the-can treatment don't end up having good solutions later either. Maybe 1MB was satoshi kicking-the-can?

I'm not claiming this, just asking the question.

How are we screwed if we have time to try to find solutions?

No, I suspect he meant to add other mechanisms to control in-block spam in its place (or at least I might say, hoped to, but may not have known how to do it), but never got to it and no one else picked up that work either. Now we are kind of screwed.

Yes, you have been essentially advocating the same thing.  

We could take this idea further: in addition to the drop-down menu where node operators and miners select the max block size they'll accept, we could add two new features to improve communication of their decisions:

  1.  The max block size selected by a node would be written into the header of any blocks the node mines.

  2.  The P2P protocol would be extended so that nodes could poll other nodes to find out their block size limit.

This would be a highly decentralized way of coming to consensus in a very flexible and dynamic manner.  

It would be a recognition that the block size limit is not part of the consensus layer, but rather part of the transport layer, as sickpig suggested:


The network would dynamically determine the max block size as the network evolves by expressing the size of the blocks they will accept with the drop-down menu on their client.

So…is this a good idea?  If there are no obvious "gotchas" then perhaps we should write up a BIP.

Did you think Satoshi put that limit in at 1MB to be there forever?

Why would that logically make sense. Does spam no longer exist? Do you expect it to eventually not exist?

Peter R's idea of a per-node block size is intriguing. I'm still pondering it.

So, is a monero a unique collectible unlike anything the world has seen since gold? Yes or No!

yep, didn't think you'd be able to see the difference.

one being outright censorship that attempts to suppress discussion of the most important debate in the community today about Bitcoins future direction, ie the XT fork, and the other a nobody cares spammy personal slander attack that only started when i began speaking out in favor of bigger blocks.  not to mention by a coward who hides behind an anonymous identity.

Most supporters of not changing the block size max limit (or even having one) forget that Satoshi originally put in that 1 MB limit as simply that: an anti-spam measure.

So doesn't that mean it would eventually be removed?