Topic: Please do not change MAX_BLOCK_SIZE - page 2. (Read 13023 times)

Use a VPN and now you can. Use a paid VPN.

Even the Internet has a backbone and couldn't be completely decentralized. I think even in the best case there will be supernodes. I don't have a problem with the idea if the supernodes can be spread out across many nations and it's international. No government will control it. But I don't think it's going to be a completely flat evenly distributed thing because that seems impossible.

I think that it is just the opposite.  If Bitcoin continues to lose nodes and become increasingly centralized as the capitalization required to run at these capacities increases, the value proposition as a robust solution which is able to withstand attack will be severely damaged.

OTOH, if Bitcoin remains highly decentralized and becomes the value base for second tier or 'off chain' providers, I have no trouble at all seeing stunningly high valuations.

Remember, it is perfectly possible to for second tier processors to both prove their reserve, and to lock it such that they need their customers need approval in order to use it.  This contrasts sharply with the murky and inflationary nature of our mainstream economic solutions of today.

 edit: grammatical fix

So how are we supposed to buy stuff?  Sure you can somehow pool them into bulk transactions but I fail to understand your alternative.

Because math says you can't. If Bitcoin cannot do microtransactions it wont scale. If Bitcoin cannot do many tps it wont scale. Some guy here said 10MB, why not? Another said 10-100MB, I can agree with that as well but I think 10MB is more conservative. 1MB just doesn't make any sense.

If max block size isn't made larger then how will Bitcoin handle the flood of transactions  it may take to reach $1000 or $10,000 a coin? Changes have to be made and 10 months is a good timespan to expect to have to make them.

Let me quote the poster who originated this idea:



Microtransactions are a necessity. Without facilitating microtransactions Bitcoin cannot grow to it's full potential. $1000 a coin, $5000 a coin, $10,000 a coin, or more, are all possible only through large amounts of microtransactions.

Look, let's be clear about this. Bitcoin did not come about in a vacuum. This technology was not invented on its own. It was invented with a background of collapsing fiat currencies, in an era where fiat currencies have failed.

Right now, technology is not there to allow the bitcoin system to be completely decentralized. Because a P2P system cannot scale to accommodate all the tiniest mBTC transactions at current VISA bandwidth.

So the market will innovate to get round this. I believe the system I've described is what will happen, of course it could go another way. But in any case all the people who are predicting bitcoin will die due to scaling issues, will be proved wrong.

Eventually at some point in the future, perhaps technology will evolve so that more transactions can be shared on the blockchain (ie. transaction costs will come down). However I have already posted about how bitcoin is not scalable (storage & bandwidth are not unlimited, Moore's law is not a law).

The key thing to realize here? The world will soon need a currency like bitcoin. Bitcoin was not invented in a vacuum. We are heading for a serious collapse in the dollar and all other fiat currencies. Global governments have been proved incapable of managing their currencies and money supply. The end is near.

Sounds like a business plan.

But do you really think that you can predict what the network will decide to do? Or are you still one of those who belive that it won't be the network to decide?
Or maybe, abstracting from a religion of network: how much would you be willing to bet that what you think will happen, will actually happen?
Because I, for instance, I don't know. Though, I do know that the network does not seem to be having any incentive to increase MAX_BLOCK_SIZE. At least not now.
I'm glad to be silently assured by some people that it wont happen without asking miners for a conscious vote, but I still think that making sure that miners vote consciously should be the main target of a real bitcoin foundation. Instead of making fun of people, who are actually doing their job, though in a kind of an underground. If the main principle of the project becomes an underground - where are we?

We are entering bitcoin 2.0

The next evolution of bitcoin will be moving away from its decentralized nature towards centralized nodes.

Firstly, as blockchain grows, mining will become more expensive because of increased bandwidth and storage requirements.

It will become more expensive to make decentralized bitcoin transactions because the supply/demand dynamic will change - there will be more transactions, with less miners to store them.

Therefore there will be a new market for 'off-chain' transactions. A centralized network of off-chain transactions will evolve for transactions such as, pay 0.003 BTC to buy a coke from a vending machine. People will prefer to use off-chain transactions because it will be cheaper than using the blockchain.

This will all be driven by a change in the transaction supply/demand dynamic and an increase in transaction fees.

I believe the bitcoin network will evolve to accommodate this.

As far as blocksize limit goes, I think it needs to be raised, clearly.

I'm sure as bitcoin grows and changes, the developers will have to modify the protocol more. The modifications will be chosen by the politics of bitcoin and the demands of the userbase.

In short, its my opinion that much evolution will happen naturally with bitcoin to accommodate a larger userbase.

This will all happen with a background of collapsing FIAT currencies and broader government recognition/adoption of bitcoin. Governments will eventually recognize it is in their interest to support bitcoin and they will not prevent its evolution. If they try to stop it, they will not succeed.

IMHO, if the SHA gets broken (so when you can do the reverse function using limited resources), then we can as well assume that bitcoin got broken, because from that moment on, you will be able to replace any existing transaction inside the chain. So then, instead of changing the POW function, it would probably be just more efficient and more fair to start a new currency.

But if it only gets broken in a meaning that it will suddenly be i.e. 1e10 times easier to calc the hash - then it isn't really broken, but rather optimized.
New mining h/w will appear, smashing the old one, the difficulty will adjust, and you can as well continue with SHA...

And as far as I understand SHA, it is quite proven that the function cannot be reversed. From a popular science point of view, reversing SHA is much less possible than time travels

My best hypothesis is that Dan said that for 'attention whore' reason, but also to light a fire under those who need to be thinking about this stuff.  And it has had that effect...or something has.

The primitive proof-of-work based on sha256 has had the effect of lending enough credibility to the system to allow it to get big enough to make some people some money.  But it's weaknesses are becoming apparent to a segment of the community.  Whether a more well thought out scheme to keep Bitcoin credible into the future can be transplanted in at this point will be an interesting thing to observe.

OTOH, there may be other reasons why it is not worth the bother.  That is to say, if there is no real hope of Bitcoin remaining de-centralized then who cares what the proof-of-work scheme happens to be?  If a battle between Titans decides who's property it becomes, I personally could not care less which one happens to win it.

Sorry I don't speak English that well - I have to guess what it means and hope that it wasn't too insulting

So you believe that there is an actual bitcoin elite, and I am deprecating their titles by giving it to any freak who thinks that he can just change the protocol without asking the miners?

In such case: can I get the list, please? Otherwise how am I supposed to know who I can call the elite of bitcoin, and who I cannot..


Yeah, I said that, only using different words. But it wont change not because nobody will try - it wont change because the network won't let it.
Surely some people will try - the only question is 'is it only Dan?'

Then you rage against figments of your imagination.  You should stop doing that.  It is a very clear sign that your tinfoil hat is on too tight.

P.S.   Barring some catastrophic break in SHA, something that advances our knowledge of cryptography by a couple of decades overnight, there is no chance of a change in the POW system this year.  Anyone that tells you otherwise is a deluded attention whore (Hi Dan!), or doesn't really understand how bitcoin works.

Well, if you watch the video, he even said that he already discussed changing of the POW function with others, during a "great meeting", though he did not want to give their names.
So either he was lying, or he indeed did not want to disclose a conspiracy. Or maybe he was just fantasizing...

Either way it happened at the very same conference where Gaving was working out a consensus among the people who know better than anyone else why we must push to increase the block size.

Hehe. I'm willing to call "elite of bitcoin" anyone who considers himself as such..
And he surely does, if you listen to him. And he even got an applause.

That's debatable.  But he certainly isn't important here.

I nearly shot beer out my nose when you called him "elite of bitcoin".

No, I don't.
Though when I put his name into Google a wiki article appears on top, so I guess he must be somehow important

You don't actually know who Dan is, do you?

There is a brilliant article at www.thegenesisblock.com that starts with a quote from the conference.


I think the above quote wraps up pretty well some concerns that people have been trying to discuss in this topic (though only to meet a wall of silence).

So, what do the elite of bitcoin do seeing that the network's genius design is not going to let them put their dirty hands on the protocol?
They announce plan B: the proof-of-work function must change... and that is also not a discussion!
And why it must change?
Because it's just wrong that one dude (meaning some guy in China who they don't know) has more voting power than they do altogether, while they are supposed to be the bitcoin ruling elite...

Well, let me tell you something, mr Kaminsky.
The one dude at least has done something to build an infrastructure that protects this network from governments, while you were conspiring with a bunch eggheads on how to capture it for yourself using the very means that the network was designed to prevent. And the design is so fine, that it will surely prevent it, so keep dreaming...
Yesterday the one dude turned out to be much smarter than you and there is no reason to assume that he won't be smarter than you tomorrow, so even if you don't value his contribution into the security of the network, at least have a decency to show some respect towards people smarter than you.

You want to change the bitcoin's POW function, and you think that you can just do it, because you have an entitlement to pull patches and tag sources on the github, and the ownership of bitcoin.org domain? 
Be my guest, man - I'll gladly see your disappointment when you smash onto the Satoshi's great wall. Although, I would rather advise you to just stop wasting your time, and if you are not interested in the real bitcoins, better go back to using US dollars already today - that will save you a lot of wasted efforts and further disappointments.

Who's saying that? I'm certainly not.

What I'm saying is that we should learn from what has been effective so far: It's far easier to protect a technology from regulatory attack, including marginal or dissident uses of that technology, if it's embedded enough in common, lawful, everyday commercial activities to be hard to attack without incurring serious collateral damage.

It follows that if we want to protect Bitcoin from regulatory attack (most plausibly at the fiat exchange end, but also potentially more exotic things like trying to force 51% of miners to taint coins or government subsidizing mining nodes to do that itself) we should be optimizing for fast, massive, widespread commercial adoption. Which means cheap transactions, and lots of them.

I was involved with the internet in the mid 90's an following some of the cypherpunks work, but was not involved aside from piddling around with early versions of PGP and such.  I've been a politically aware US citizen since that time.

I can tell you that there have been notable shifts in popular opinion and expectations over this 20 year preriod.  There have been even more significant shifts on how the internet is used and viewed.

If you get complacent and think that what the cypherpunks achieved is sufficient to stand in stone forever more, you may very well be in for a rude awakening.  Certainly the Obama admin does not accept that military grade encryption is without a backdoor to assist  our fearless leaders in protecting us is the right path forward (see the EFF story I posted.)

As I mentioned, it is clear that we need SSL and probably SSH for business reasons.  That is NOT the same thing as needing these two to be capable of resisting 'authorized' analysis.  If you are going to stand up and say you don't trust the FBI, NSA, etc, your message is not going to resonate with either the legislative bodies or a healthy percentage of the population who is scared shitless by the 'Christmas bomber.'

They did indeed, and the way they won it points to how we'll win this one. You build systems that everybody else uses and make them essential to the operation of the economy. Everybody depends on SSH and SSL, you can't censor dissidents without censoring everyone.

Metaphorically, you take the world's payment systems hostage, so that nobody can shoot Bitcoin without shooting something they care about.

Legitimate payments of taxpaying businesses, right there on the blockchain. Loads of them. Every corporation that owns a congressman should want to protect bitcoin. Every organization that mobilizes large numbers of voters should want to protect bitcoin. If someone suggests attacking the network to try to taint coins or cause some other kind of mischief, whether it's by creating regulations or setting up rival government-run nodes, they should get angry phone calls from every donor from Amazon to Walmart, and every charity from the NRA to the Salvation Army.

Bitcoin can do this, as long as we don't break the feature that makes it attractive to the great majority of people out there who will never be libertarians. And that feature is UNBELIEVABLY CHEAP ONLINE PAYMENTS.