Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 383. (Read 2032266 times)

Matt Corallo, Blockstream co-founder, just sent an email with the subject "Block Size Increase" on btc dev mailing list , you could read it all here:

http://sourceforge.net/p/bitcoin/mailman/message/34090292/

quoting the relevant part:


bold is mine

The new proposal is similar to Satoshi's original 2010 example where the max block size increases after a predetermined block height (115,000).
Instead, Gavin has code allowing a one-off increase, blocks up to 20MB which are later than a predetermined timestamp (1st March 2016 00:00:00 UTC). Block timestamps can only vary +/- a couple of hours from UTC. The advantage is that everyone will know the date by which they need to have their full node upgraded. Working with block height means that the cut-over could vary, a couple of weeks earlier or later, depending on difficulty changes.

Hopefully, this will get unanimous consensus in core dev (the 5 people with commit access) so that there is not a split. In theory Gavin could commit this change and someone else reverse it in an "edit war". That would be a sad situation. However, Gavin has a trump card which means he *should* be able to prevail even if he were to be in a minority of 4:1 against. Satoshi gave him the key to broadcast alerts to all the instances of BitcoinCore. So, he could fork the code and create, say "Bitcoin20", and advise all BitcoinCore users that they need to upgrade to Bitcoin20 (or BitcoinXT). I really hope it does not come to that.

He has consulted many stakeholders and indications are that major miners, exchanges, wallet providers, 3rd party services, and BitcoinXT will be on-board with the change. Those that want to see how 1MB affects fees might get their wish, because March 2016 is a fair way off and there may be long periods of nearly-full 1MB blocks. The resulting problems for ordinary users will create an avalanche of demand for the 20MB change, or Bitcoin20, if that is what it takes.

It is worth repeating: just because the max block size increases does not mean the blocks immediately get bigger. The 1st 20MB block may be 5 years away.

edit: the last point about future limit changes. Yes, other hard-forks may be necessary, however, 20MB is large enough that it buys time for alternative scaling methods to be fully developed and implemented, such as the Lightning Networks.

last minute stick save $DJT +12.9.  still concerning.  we're very close.

we all have our indicators, methods with which to analyze the markets.  i like Dow Theory and cycle analysis so we'll see.

https://i.imgur.com/jBdgjHn.png

 I don't see any bearish signs yet. 200day EMA (white) still rising and price is above it. It has served as big big support 5 times.

However I do agree with your DXY bearish. Time for correction.

They have a true romance, but Eve is always trying to spoil it.

justusranvier, thanks for sharing and explaining this work in this thread

been waiting for this since 09

Those sexy diagrams are a helpful addition.

I've always enjoyed the ongoing romance of Alice and Bob.

Added some diagrams which should greatly enhance understanding of the protocol:

https://github.com/justusranvier/rfc/blob/payment_code/bips/bip-pc01.mediawiki

big, big trouble:

I hope he does.  I very strongly advocated AGAINST ALL his previous proposals.
I'd have sold out of the fork and stayed on the 1mb chain until a better solution was made.
He answered all my concerns with this one.  I'm on board.

It does little enough and gives us room to develop the necessary pieces for getting further.

with a $940 high 

well, waddaya know.  i just plunked in GBTC into my TOS and got this!  $550/BTC!!!

everything US going down now.  that should only mean one thing for Bitcoin, UP:

$DJI catching down to the $DJT with $DJT about to go off the cliff.  get out the popcorn:

I have come to understand that a lot of people drag their feet because they doubt the technical feasibility of the system. So yes, 20 MB blocks, or just the prospect of them, is bullish!

Cypherdoc while I still am "for" sidechains from a technical perspective, I'm beginning to think that you are correct that sidechains (etc) presents a conflict of interest for some core devs.  Ideally one could make bitcoin the best that it can be and use sidechains for things that are impossible for bitcoin to do.  However resistance to the 20MB change seems to me like people want bitcoin to be reduced to Gold's role -- backing a lot of other layers (lightning network, changetip, certain sidechains) that are what is actually used.  This opens up space for these other layers to make money.

And so we will end up with the all the same issues with services we have today because these for-profit corporate backed layers will be taking their piece of the pie, limiting transactional freedom, and confiscating balances at the whim of TPTB.

My guess is that this blogging avalanche of Gavin's is basically his way of saying that he's going to fight this one "to the death".

my sense is that major financial institutions and payment processors understand that Bitcoin is not scalable at 1MB.  therefore, they don't feel particularly threatened; yet.  this leads to investors large and small similarly being skeptical.  by lifting the limit, or by taking a baby step to 20MB, suddenly Bitcoin can be shown to scale.  once that realization kicks in, i suspect you will see a flood of investor capital into the coin itself, driving the price up, and subsequently encouraging an entirely new round of investment in merchant providers and mining companies.

Re: The centralization discussion

I think it is important to remember that the most important aspect of bitcoin that needs to remain decentralized is mining (not pools), and that block size has no impact on miners since they already operate through pools.

For bitcoin to succeed, it needs to be used and managed directly by individuals. Not through 3rd party services. If bitcoin is primarily used through 3rd parties it will go the way of gold and eventually be co-opted and destroyed.

For bitcoin to be used directly P2P nodes need to be able to scale to much higher transaction throughput than VISA does today and maintain a massive history. I do not believe this is possible in a fully distributed manner. It will require centralization & specialization to the point where even companies such as coinbase may not maintain their own nodes but subscribe to node services run as cloud services.

But this is OK as long as mining stays distributed and there are some small number of public service nodes that monitor the full history and people trust to flag issues (think an MIT node, an EFF node, an Isle of Mann node, etc).

The distributed security mechanism of bitcoin (i.e. mining) was really the novel invention satoshi came up with. This distributed security is what bitcoin is. As long as it remains distributed we are OK. The other aspects (i.e. nodes) probably need to become more centralized if we want bitcoin to be used directly at a massive global scale.

i fail to see what is preventing "the masses" to adopt bitcoin now.

How hard forking bitcoin would change this

i put this video up last month where Gavin clearly telegraphs what is happening now.  he said he might have to throw his weight around which is what he is now doing.  and he has the credibility to do so.  but you have to back up around 2y to understand why he's doing this.  my conspiratorial mind says this is when gmax first hatched the idea of Blockstream and started working on gathering up most of the other core devs into the scheme.  since that time, nothing substantial has gotten done around the core protocol as solex pointed out above. i say it's b/c Blockstream stands to make billions if tx's are forced off MC to SC's.  it's also the time when gmax started hitting Reddit and the forum about the SC idea.  while Gavin has always been respectful and even slightly positive about SC's, i don't think he's fully on board with the idea and i've pointed out subtle examples of such.  and for good reasons as i, and you, have tried to articulate in many settings.  but my point is, this is the setting around which his blog posts are occurring;  it's now time to open up Bitcoin to the masses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIafZXRDH7w