Topic: Mike Hearn response to "An Open Letter to the Bitcoin Community" - page 2. (Read 2709 times)

I agree with that statement... but as I have little to zero contact or influence with Gavin (although he might be reading this), there's not much I can personally do.

As long as it takes to ensure that we are approaching network security responsibly. The idea of full blocks/fee market pales in comparison to the potential losses that will be incurred when exponential scaling causes unexpected threats to security.

If BIP101 supporters came around to a more responsible, incremental approach that is line with real transaction growth -- not transaction growth that they want to happen -- this issue would be a lot less controversial.

I started another thread "is Greg Maxwell wrong about the blocksize" where I give my thoughts on his blocksize comments.

The conflict of interest, while relevant, isn't critical to showing a clear failure to act.  In other words, regardless of
their motives, the core team hasn't come to a consensus, despite some very reasonable proposals (BIP 102) and
in fact have argued nothing should be done until there is a backlog. 

While you may feel Gavin is on the deep end of the pool, Greg is certainly on the other extreme.

If a solution is obviously needed consensus will be easy establish once we've taken the time to lay out the proper alternatives for implementation.

It is absolutely reasonable to stay as long as possible under current limit and reaching it so far has caused nothing but healthy fee pressure.

Understand that there is still a ton of spam transactions on the network daily which could be better handled off-chain for their absolutely don't need the security of Bitcoin.

I think that in order to establish that point about their "business interests", you need to prove that their objections to the solutions proposed to date are without merit. (I also wouldn't mind an explanation as to how Blockstream's business model works and why they are incentivized against increasing block size. I have done a moderate level of research, but I would like to hear from BIP101 supporters why they are so confident that there is a clear conflict of interest here.)

I don't think it is unreasonable that devs don't explicitly support one proposal or another at this point. I think these discussions need to be further fleshed out. The most responsible approach is to poke as many holes as you can in every proposal, and see if the result is robust enough to move forward. If you look at how this debate unfolded, it should be clear why devs aren't joining "Team BIP100" or "Team BIP102" or "Team BIP103." Doing so just results in more sectarian debate, which tends not to be about technical merit. Ie. this gets us nowhere.

The situation is not nearly as urgent as people are making it out to be. We won't be pushing the limit for a year or more, and even then, a temporary fee market is preferable to rolling out an update when there may be legitimate concerns about how it may adversely affect network security.

I think BIP102 is the most reasonable solution put forth thus far. I think any exponential scaling is dangerous (certainly when it is not warranted by real capacity needs), as it puts the protocol into untested conditions where new problems will surely arise. An incremental, gradual process is far superior, as it allows us to a) move forward with scaling without b) jeopardizing network security to unprecedented extent.

However, I don't consider myself to be on "Team BIP102" because I don't want to be biased against potentially better solutions that may arise, and I want to see more rigorous debate, with more emphasis on the technical issues of scaling. Less politics and accusations of nefarious intention, more discussion of technical merits.


Like this.

~11.5months  

Failure? How?

I don't see how the Bitcoin network running smoothly as it stands (which it wouldn't if it wasn't for their work) is a failure?

In 12 months, average blocksize will be about 1mb on the current trajectory,
never mind spikes, unforseen circumstances, and the many months time
needed for consensus and rollout.

How long do you think we should wait?

And what do you mean here by timely? Are there any deadlines that the devs should meet so as to ensure that there would be no problems in bitcoin? As far as I know, there is none, only a few groups are forcing the issue that we need to 'scale' things and because of that we need bigger blocks. Yes, we do need them in the future, but not anytime soon.

Core should clearly revise their priorities then. Their prioritizations are an obvious failure. No one could argue with that.

There is no bingo. What got us here is Core failing to deliver a solution in a timely manner.

Core is the problem, nothing else. Accusing the market that might be ready to make a move and that is sending clear signals is just immature.

Blockstream was never meant as a transaction scaling solution. Liar.

Well that's part of the problem.  

No, I don't think they were getting paid in working for Bitcoin.

Gavin and 2 other people were getting paid for working on Bitcoin (formerly by the Bitcoin foundation) now from MIT.

Greg and those guys I don't think were being paid so they formed a company and their
plan was to tackle the scalability challenges and they had a certain plan and mindset about it.

And now that they took VC money, they are even more biased that their way is the way to
scale bitcoin.


 

Bingo.

This is another irrelevant point I see raised often. This discussion is about scaling. It only bears fruit if we approach this as if increased block capacity will actually be used. If we all agree that 1MB blocks will never be filled, why even bother discussing this at all?

One thing that I think BIP101 supporters don't realize is that there may be future incentives that encourage filling block capacity. And while most people assume that organic adoption will be the cause, that is not necessarily the case.

The first manifestation of this: the blockchain stress test. In this case, economic disincentives be damned, in order to bloat blocks. So here we have a situation where we argue in favor increasing the block size limit due to the argument that organic adoption is happening and is exponential (that is quite a controversial statement, too). But in reality, blocks are being filled with spam transactions that are intended to do nothing but fill capacity. Meanwhile, bigger and bigger blocks --> bigger and bigger block propagation delays --> higher and higher volumes of orphaned blocks. Then there is the possibility of hardware and bandwidth limitations not improving to the extent demanded by BIP101's scaling schedule. More importantly are the problems that have not made themselves apparent yet -- as conditions at 1MB =/= conditions at 8GB. A more reasonable middle ground that is in tune with actual transaction growth will allow us to deal with the issues that come with scaling in real time, rather than on a prescribed schedule determined by Moore's Law, which could easily outrun our abilities to maintain network security. (I have still yet to see a compelling reason why Moore's Law has any relevance here, anyway)

So, we might be inviting blockchain bloat without even achieving the sort of organic adoption implied by BIP101. And we will be jeopardizing network security in the process. This is part of the danger of allowing for potential scaling that bears no relevance to actual growth in transaction volume.

What's outrageous is you keep spreading the same lies you disingenuous troll.

Devs have not refused any increase, they are actively considering how to best proceed. You're just a goddamn liar.

We've continuously demonstrated the block size has no impact on their business interests how long can you wave it away?


Seriously, how can you look at yourself in the mirror.

I know that, but don't these guys get paid well in working for bitcoin? I don't like either sides, and I don't judge ad hominem, but these Core guys should do what's right for all and not what's right for their pocket. Same thing with Hearn and Gavin. If they want centralization, just create their own coin and not involve bitcoin or whatsoever. This problem just set drawbacks on bitcoin and are not actually helping in anyway.

You can't comprehend that they are in the business of Bitcoin extensibility and that they took $21M in venture capital and that they really want the main chain to scale as little as possible?

2 MB seems plausible for the next year or so, and I've been following the stance of Core devs and XT devs. So far, Core devs made some interesting points, also XT especially in increasing the block size limit to scale. But what I cannot comprehend to is why the heck does these Core guys don't want to increase the blocks even with just a single megabyte? Workshops? What are we going to do with that? I'd say find a solution, not delay this problem by months or weeks before you Core guys talk again.