Topic: Permanently keeping the 1MB (anti-spam) restriction is a great idea ... (Read 105069 times)

The forum didn't exist when that conversation was happening.  I've always assumed these discussions were via email or some other medium.  There aren't any transcripts that I'm aware of.

Is there a link to original post where Hal Finney and Satoshi discuss the block size limit and DoS attacks?

For what it's worth: 

I'm the guy who went over the blockchain stuff in Satoshi's first cut of the bitcoin code.  Satoshi didn't have a 1MB limit in it. The limit was originally Hal Finney's idea.  Both Satoshi and I objected that it wouldn't scale at 1MB.  Hal was concerned about a potential DoS attack though, and after discussion, Satoshi agreed.  The 1MB limit was there by the time Bitcoin launched.  But all 3 of us agreed that 1MB had to be temporary because it would never scale.

Several attempted "abuses" of the blockchain under the 1MB limit have proved Hal right about needing the limit at least for launching purposes.  A lot of people wanted to piggyback extraneous information onto the blockchain, and before miners (and the community generally) realized that blockchain space was a valuable resource they would have allowed it.  The blockchain would probably be several times as big a download now if that limit hadn't been in place, because it would have a lot of random 1-satoshi transactions that exist only to encode information for altcoins etc.

At this point I don't think random schmoes who would allow just any transaction are getting a  lot of blocks. The people who have made a major investment in hashing power are doing the math to figure out which tx are worthwhile to include because block propagation time (and therefore the risk of orphan blocks) is proportional to block size. So at this point I think blockchain bloat as such is no longer likely to a problem, and the 1MB limit is no longer necessary.  It has been more-or-less replaced by a profitability limit that motivates people to not waste blockchain bandwidth, and miners are now reliably dropping transactions that don't pay fees. 

You were involved in Bitcoin at the time of launch?

For what it's worth: 

I'm the guy who went over the blockchain stuff in Satoshi's first cut of the bitcoin code.  Satoshi didn't have a 1MB limit in it. The limit was originally Hal Finney's idea.  Both Satoshi and I objected that it wouldn't scale at 1MB.  Hal was concerned about a potential DoS attack though, and after discussion, Satoshi agreed.  The 1MB limit was there by the time Bitcoin launched.  But all 3 of us agreed that 1MB had to be temporary because it would never scale.

Several attempted "abuses" of the blockchain under the 1MB limit have proved Hal right about needing the limit at least for launching purposes.  A lot of people wanted to piggyback extraneous information onto the blockchain, and before miners (and the community generally) realized that blockchain space was a valuable resource they would have allowed it.  The blockchain would probably be several times as big a download now if that limit hadn't been in place, because it would have a lot of random 1-satoshi transactions that exist only to encode information for altcoins etc.

At this point I don't think random schmoes who would allow just any transaction are getting a  lot of blocks. The people who have made a major investment in hashing power are doing the math to figure out which tx are worthwhile to include because block propagation time (and therefore the risk of orphan blocks) is proportional to block size. So at this point I think blockchain bloat as such is no longer likely to a problem, and the 1MB limit is no longer necessary.  It has been more-or-less replaced by a profitability limit that motivates people to not waste blockchain bandwidth, and miners are now reliably dropping transactions that don't pay fees. 

Was going to but was posting from my phone. I just was able to retrieve the info from my desktop. It kinda flew under the radar indeed. Here goes:



https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12620721

Holy shit indeed, that's sad

2nd'd

There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again.

Holy shit, I was half joking. And such a cliché thing to do too. That means he scammed in exactly the same way goat did, issuing a security. I thought the days of GLBSE were over. Thanks for the info.

Holy shit, I was half joking. And such a cliché thing to do too. That means he [Gerald Davis, aka Death&Taxes] scammed in exactly the same way goat did, issuing a security. I thought the days of GLBSE were over. Thanks for the info. ...

Was going to but was posting from my phone. I just was able to retrieve the info from my desktop. It kinda flew under the radar indeed. Here goes:



https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.12620721

Secondly, I'm not aware of any blatant scammery that Gerald was involved in.  I may just not be paying close enough attention, so if you wish to expand on your statement that would be interesting.

Gerald Davis a.k.a. DeathAndTaxes of BitSimple (BitSimple.com) and Tangible Cryptography (tangiblecryptography.com) sought out and accepted $600,000 in fiat and bitcoin from investors in January 2014. These funds were acquired by selling stock in Tangible Cryptography and were to be invested in BitSimple.com.

BitSimple.com shut down bank transfer operations in May 2014. The investors were not informed until August 2014. Mr. Davis was asked to consider dissolving the company in August 2014 after he reported a theft of around $25,000 and no banking accounts. Gerald Davis did not respond and failed to communicate to shareholders from August 2014 to January 2015. During this time a six figure amount of US dollars was redirected to Mr. Davis and members of his family.

In February 2015 Gerald asked us to vote for a company dissolution and scheduled the fist company meeting. The shareholders refused to vote for dissolution because promised finical reports were not delivered.

Gerald Davis then asked for more time due to personal reasons and this was granted. However at this time Gerald Davis is no longer communicating or responding to investors.

The BitSimple fiasco
Somewhere in early January 2014 (during a chat about immersion cooled high-density ASICs) DaT incidentally told me that he was collecting money for a seed funding of his BitSimple exchange service. I did not even thought about it twice but agreed to buy what is left and ended with 390k from a total of 1200k series A shares. With the total sum of $600k collected, my payment was a $195k equivalent in BTC. Iirc, all of the handful investors paid in BTC, which made this seed funding the first processed completely in the BTC domain. Shares were managed by the gust platform.

I was very well aware of the involved risk, but at the same time I felt it is not worse than putting my coins into pre-orders of mining equipment or into doubious bitcoin companies. After being defrauded and betrayed by so many, my hope was straight and simple: if there is one person to remain honest, it must be DaT - if he did not, it was time to leave this community.

What happened thereafter is what OP is reporting. I was very disappointed to realize that Gerald managed to spend the collected funds mostly to pay his employed family-members - even if most of the time the exchange was not operational due to a missing bank account. Even if this might be legal, it is very unethical and puts him and his intentions in a very suspicious light. Still, I was willing to accept this as business failure when the company is dissolved and remaining assets were distributed to investors (which would give us back some 15%). But shortly after the investors agreed to do so, DaT stopped communicating and is not reachable any more for the past 6 months.


This is a sad ending for a bright shining star.

You too, Gerald?

He did actually

So the OP is gone forever? The biggest and most knowledgable Bitcoin advocate from back in the day is gone forever from the "official" Bitcoin forum. wtf

He didn't end up being a scammer like cypherdoc or goat did he?

On Topic: Keeping the spam restriction is a great idea. Probably not forever.

 


XT #REKT

But soonish. Core's (blockthestream inc.) attempt to take over bitcoin got REKT.
They got competition by implementations that are ready for the next bubble.
Developer centralization is over. Totalitarianism doesn't work here.

Not only that, downstream users, rely on Bitcoin Core because they know it has the expertise and stability. XT has nothing, in the short time of it’s existence, hardly any changes have been merged, and what has been has deep technical flaws. Meanwhile Bitcoin Core has made literally hundreds of improvements.

That will happen eventually, but Not Tonight Dear.