I did not make this post to undermine satoshi. I cannot do that because I respect him so much. He created what I call financial revolution. He is the reason I am here today.
I asked this question because of my curiosity on why bitcoin block size was made 1mb. On wanting to know why Satoshi kept it at 1mb, I started a research and I saw a post in this forum dated 3rd October, 2010 by Jeff with username Jgarzik.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.15121 (I recommend you read it, so that you may justify my question)
Jgarzik wrote a code suggesting that the bitcoin block size should be increase to match paypal’s average transaction rate.
Few minutes later Theymos observed that applying the patch will make Jeff incompatible with other bitcoin clients.
At this time Satoshi came in in support of Theymos, see his statement.
+1 theymos. Don't use this patch, it'll make you incompatible with the network, to your own detriment.
We can phase in a change later if we get closer to needing it
From Satoshi’s reply you can see that he saw that there will be need to increasing the block size in the future. But he believed that it was too early for a hard fork or maybe when we get to the bridge we will cross it or some other reasons.
Jeff didn’t give up easily, he gave more reasons for the proposed increase and was actually supported by majority of the user under that thread.
What made me to question how liberal Satoshi was is, after reading this reply by caveden he didn’t change his decision.
I'm very uncomfortable with this block size limit rule. This is a "protocol-rule" (not a "client-rule"), what makes it almost impossible to change once you have enough different softwares running the protocol. Take SMTP as an example... it's unchangeable.
I think we should schedule a large increase in the block size limit right now while the protocol rules are easier to change. Maybe even schedule an infinite series of increases, as we can't really predict how many transactions there will be 50 years from now.
My question:
- What did you think made Satoshi keep the block at 1mb and did not consider to change it?
- In his statement “if we get closer to needing it, we will phase it”. Will there be a time for such change again, or it has been done already?