Topic: is Greg Maxwell wrong about the block increase? - page 6. (Read 4413 times)

Well, how would you define it? For me, bitcoin's value is in being a decentralized, transferable token in limited supply. Essential to maintaining that definition is robust network security (and by proxy, a strong emphasis on consensus).

Do you believe that at no point, exponential scaling might result in serious threats to a) decentralization, and b) network security? Keep in mind that bitcoin has never scaled beyond a 1MB block limit (of course, on average it is nowhere near reaching this limit to begin with), and BIP 101 suggests scaling 8000x.

Paying the market price for a scarce unit is not censorship. You wanna make it free we get it but that's just not possible. "Trade offs"

Maybe we stop wasting everyone's time and you recognize increasing the block size is not how Bitcoin is going to scale.

Behaving like an imbecile arguing to ignorance has certain limits. You are crossing them.

Bitcoin is about censorship free money. For everything else there's Mastercard.

Why scaling bitcoin would make it be less censorship-free?
One can also argue than having to pay 100$ fee just to send a transaction is a form of censorship and exclusion. Anyhow, bitcoin is much more than just censorship-free money.

Holliday,

I hear what you are saying about urgency. 
Yes, consensus may be easier when the
situation is more dire.  It's also easier to
motivate oneself to finally see the dentist
when one's teeth are falling out.  Waiting
till there is "a standing backlog" seems to
be as far extreme as you can get. 

As far as Mike Hearn, I do not dispute
that he has said questionable things.
Still, he brings up a point that overloading
the nodes may be problematic.

Greg has always made a lot of sense to me. He seems to understand the inner workings of Bitcoin far better than most.


It's challenging because many of us believe there is no urgency. Instead of some kludgy hack, we would prefer something which promotes both a healthy fee market and decentralization. If I was to err, I would err on the side of decentralization.


Have you taken the time to read some of the other things Heam has said? There are some real gems in there. Here are two of my favorites regarding fees and block size.



So... we will secure the network with "network assurance contracts". We'll does anyone have an example of a functioning "network assurance contract" or should we just go along with Heam and hope for the best? I guess people simply paying fees for their transactions is a ridiculous idea. Let's not K.I.S.S., let's make it far more complicated than it needs to be! Complication certainly helps with decentralization, right?

I think most "bitcoiners" have been spoiled by the early high block subsidy days of free to near free transactions. I know I've sung the praises of low cost transactions in the past. Yet, Bitcoin is censorship-proof money. How much are you willing to pay for that? I'm personally willing to pay upwards of $100 per transaction and wait a week or more for it to clear simply because I know that it can't be stopped by an authority or middleman. Of course, I don't think using censorship-proof money in order to buy my morning coffee is the best tool for the job. It's like using a chainsaw to cut down a dandelion. I'm perfectly happy with centralized solutions for daily spending. What we need is the Bitcoin system to function as censorship-proof money when we actually need censorship-proof money!

A lot of people on this forum act like there are no trade-offs in life. Can we have censorship-proof money that scales like VISA? Probably not. So mainstreamers better be careful what they ask for.

If, in the future, there is a technological way to achieve censorship-proof money that scales like VISA, I'm all for it. I personally don't think that massive blocks are the correct answer at this time. If we need to make slight adjustments to the maximum block size to buy us some time, so be it.

400kb actually 

Talk is cheap. Blocks are still at 1 mb.

Of course you are not actually addressing any of my questions.

How do you describe his inaction? Can you provide a detailed outlook of his work in the last 3 months? Have you been reading bitcoin-wizards, the dev list or the entirety of his posts on reddit?



Everyone sees through you. You're a sham

I think you are trolling and understand perfectly well what a "backlog" of transactions is.

So i'll troll right back at you:  If you're incapable of reading Greg's original post and
making intelligent contributions, then please leave the conversation to the adults.

The block size limit.



You must be kidding right? Will you trust anybody on the street with your money under the presumption of innocence? Only a clown would.

Can you explain the backlog comment? It's context and what it entails?

You're quoting a couple of lines out of a dozen paragraphs and expect us to take and judge these comments at face value?

Regardless of the conflict of interest, just looking at Greg's arguments at face value,
they don't strike me as compelling.

Their inaction? Inaction toward what exactly?

What happened to presumption of innocence? How do you expect them to prove they don't have ill intentions?!?

You're a clown.

Maybe you are right but their inaction speaks louder than any argument they could make at the moment. It's up to them to prove they don't have ill intention even if they are in such position. So far so good they have done nothing to prove it.

You're only demonstrating that you're incapable of a basic level of understanding.

1. Those Core devs had open concerns about raising the block size limit before Blockstream. So their position clearly isn't a consequence of Blockstream's existence.

2. Both sidechains and the lightning network (and LN did not come from Blockstream) would benefit from bigger blocks, so if anything the supposed "conflict of interest" should have caused them to change their opinion.

Now, do you understand those two very basic points or should I type them slower?

It doesn't change anything to the fact that most Core developers being employed by Blockstream are in a questionable conflict of interest.

I've seen people from Blockstream argue that bigger blocks would be good for them. Since you're obviously paying close attention to this debate, I'm sure you're familiar with those arguments.

I see a lot of this silly fingerpointing at Blockstream. It sometimes makes me inclined to respond with:

You know, you guys are trying to hand over the Benevolent Dictator role to someone with ties to Google, right? I mean -- Google -- you've heard of them, right? You talk about "21 million dollars" at Blockstream. You realize how tiny that is compared to Google. And and the corresponding spy agencies in other countries. You know that, right? Are you guys fucking stupid, or what?

Now, I don't respond that way, because I don't see any evidence that Mike Hearn's time at Google is nefarious -- just as there's no evidence that Blockstream is trying to "cripple" Bitcoin. But you guy's will go on saying it. And I'll go on not accusing Mike Hearn of being a Google NSA MI6 mole. But I have to say, you guys make it really difficult to like you. I am honestly starting to think that some of you are just bad people. Bad dishonest people.

yep, but it is good for blockstreams business 

What would you define standing backlog as? We've already seen backlogs forming during the stress tests. There were some difficulties with low fee transaction speeds but overall it was nothing close to 'jeopardizing' bitcoin. In theory, a backlog could start forming at any given time, but right now most blocks aren't even filled.

Killer app, monetary crisis, mass marketeer, successful remittance company, bull market kickoff....

Just to add to your example.