The burden of persuasion would be showing that the proposed solution adequately addresses the problems without creating new problems.
And yet conveniently that can't be shown at all if a larger blocksize is never put on the testnet. An easy way to delay a proposal indefinitely is for the developers to simply never test it.
That is a fair enough comment, yet my understanding is that a BIP is submitted, and then voted on and then if it is approved it can go to the next stage (such as coding and testing). Of course there could be provisional approvals or there could be denials.
If a BIP is not approved, then the person who submitted the proposal needs to fix it to address any concerns that were raised and to resubmit it. If s/he does not know the reason that the BIP was not approved then s/he needs to proactively attempt to figure that out by asking questions and interacting.
My understanding is that none of the BIPs related to XT, Classic and/or BU had gotten past the initial stages of approval.. in order to even get to the testnet and there had been some laziness in follow-up and tweaking and/or making various arguments in order to get them to testnet, and therefore, proponents of those big block changes did not back up their claims with either sufficient evidence of a problem or sufficient logic in order to get some kind of agreement to go to the testnet stage.
Are you saying that there was some kind of disallowance of BIPS to get to the testnet level (whether intentional or inadvertent). My understanding is that they complain and go to other systems rather than attempting to go through the proper procedures for submitting BIPs... Part of their reasons for not going through the process remains unclear, but it could be that they are just engaging in shit stirring, rather than seriously going through a vetting process to actually have their proposals implemented.
Furthermore, if your proposals, include language that attempts to radically change governance (rather than merely focusing on technical issues and possible problems), then it becomes a lot harder to get others to agree to changes in the governance when those proposed governance changes could cause precedence that completely undermine bitcoin (by making bitcoin too malleable and too easy to change by any tom, dick or harry - including status quo anti-bitcoin folks).
That's not the argument at all. The concern is that while optimisations like SegWit are welcome, that's not going to be enough over the long term.
You are trying to frame the argument into something that is convenient for you about some hypothetical long term that is pie in the sky.
The fact of the matter is that we have what we have now, and then we have various proposals. When seg wit was publically proposed in December 2015, it largely had no opposition, and even various XT and classic supporters, such as Gavin Andressen and Jeff Garzik were largely in agreement that seg wit was a good path forward, and accordingly, seg wit continued to be vetted and tested and got to various levels of going live, including going live for the purpose of signaling in mid November 2016.
So yeah, we don't know what the fuck seg wit is going to bring until it actually becomes a practice, and there are a lot of scaling issues that it addresses that may cause no need for further changes for a considerable time into the future.
Seg wit is actually on the table and those other various hardlimit increases are merely points of whinery - that have not been officially tested and implemented... apparently BU is being tested in a live way, rather than being put on the test net first.
And again, whose fault is it that larger blocks aren't being put on the testnet by the devs themselves?
I don't know? You tell me? Who? I am sure if someone wanted to write the code and test it, then it would be put on the testnet, unless the criticism and concerns about the larger blocks are something other than testing it?
Part of the concern might be that it does not even matter if bigger blocks test out, if they are not necessary, then why go through the testing, when they can be tested and implemented at some time when they are actually needed (for example if fees go up or if transaction times become negatively affected)...
I want to see SegWit implemented, but I don't want to see it used as a smokescreen to deny or block other ideas.
I am glad that you are interested in seg wit being implemented, and I don't know why you need to have so much skepticism about supposed ulterior motives...
If seg wit ends up solving all problems (but I doubt it), then why not accept that.. instead of wanting to make up a problem that does not exist. If there is a problem, then the prudent thing to do would be to look at what is the problem exactly and then figure out various possible solutions and then to implement the better of the possible solutions (or even the best solution, if that is possible), but if there are shortcomings in some potential solutions, then there might be disagreement about what is better and what is the better way forward. At this point, it still seems that seg wit is the best intermediate step forward, but there is no denial that at some point an actual hard increase in the block limit may be a good and better next step forward.. but that does not seem to be the case at the moment, so why just make a block limit increase when it is not necessary (as seemed to be your initial suggestion to just go to 1.25mb as a kind of compromise - which just seems ridiculous, if it is not really solving anything except for maybe temporarily appeasing unjustifiable and unsubstatiated whiners).
Why is that such a difficult concept for you (and others) to grasp?
I am not sure about what I am supposedly having a hard time grasping. I don't claim to be any kind of expert, but you have not really pointed out anything that is beyond my grasp, have you? Maybe if we assume that the blocksize limit needs to be increased, then I cannot grasp that assumption because it does not seem to have a basis beyond a bunch of folks claiming that it needs to be increased without providing either sufficient evidence or logic for such ongoing baseless and whining claims?
If the end goal is to force a significant proportion of transactions into payment channels like Lightning, or off-chain altogether, that would be a serious concern.
I doubt that there is any one set of end goals. Seg wit allows for all kinds of builds, including the ones that you listed, but it also addresses other issues including but not limited to scaling, better sidechains, maleability and quadradic calculations (whatever the fuck that means)... There are a lot of folks that build on bitcoin in its present state and in its future state, but some of the future is unclear, so there is risk involved.. and sometimes, we are not really going to know whether some other fix needs to be undertaken in order to address something that comes up with seg wit or if it does not end up performing as anticipated or if there are changes in adoption or attacks by governments and/or financial institutions. I doubt that there is exactly any kind of end goal because these kinds of matters are decentralized and people have all kinds of ideas about how they might build on something or use it or even not use it. You seem to be assuming much more conspiracy than likely exists in any kind of going along with or approving of seg wit.
It's not "merely whinery" if you understood the potential for abuse. So kindly check your tone, before your condescension leads me to call you arrogant.
I think that my tone was appropriate for whatever I was addressing. Yeah, sure sometimes in writing, any of us might not go back and review our text or the way that we may have said something, but referring to some of the big blocker folks as unsubstantiated "whiners" is likely not going too far based on a lot of the unsubstantiated whining that I have seen and engaged with on the big blocker topic.
I doubt that I was referring to you.. not yet, anyhow in respect to whining... hahahahaha. I usually will only go on the attack if I feel that I was personally attacked without reason.. or if I think that you are purposefully engaging in a kind of conduct that is disingenuous... and I am not afraid to do it... On the other hand, I doubt that you should reasonably conclude that I have attempted to attack you on any kind of personal level, and I am not even really familiar with your posting history or anything like that. I am mostly merely attempting to stay substantive and respond specifically to points that you made.. maybe I don't do the greatest job in the world and maybe I add a bit too much flavor, here or there, but I am not attempting to avoid any substance that I might be able to attempt to address (and maybe learn something along the way, too?)
People calling SegWit a scaling "solution" are completely overselling its potential.
It is currently on the table, and would likely bring bitcoin forward in a variety of ways, including some addressing of scaling... good enough and largely noncontroversial... except whiners seeming to want to sabatoge it without any real good reasons.
Not interested in sabotaging it, just being realistic.
Fair enough. I doubt that we can judge everyone in any particular camp as being locked in or even being the same as someone else in that camp. Accordingly, there can be a lot of variability and sometimes any of us might evolve our positions to some extent when we engage in these thread dialogues or even disagree with folks who may mostly be in the same camp as us.
It will help, but the problem doesn't magically go away after it gets implemented.
Who is arguing that all the problems are going to go away? Let's get seg wit implemented, and then go from there.. rather than saying there is something better out there without actually having anything on the table.
As long as we do "go from there", that's fine. But it needs to be something more than optimisations, that also doesn't involve forcing transactions off-chain. It has to remain open and permissionless. Those qualities will be under threat if transactions on the main chain become a privileged or exclusive domain.
Aren't we too early to judge if privileged or exclusive is going to be any kind of meaningful outcome in a post seg wit world? Sure, matters are going to evolve under the market, but if such an privileged and exclusive domain were to evolve, it seems that it would take several years for such to evolve (probably more than 5 years minimum, but I don't know). Anyhow if such a privileged and exclusive system were to evolve on the bitcoin main chain over 5 years or so, then as individuals we can also adjust our behaviors and shop around or whatever. I doubt that your scenario is very likely making bitcoin exclusive to the rich and elite.. I think that the exact opposite is what bitcoin is offering, and personal banking remains a considerably great threat to mainstream institutions, and I doubt that seg wit is really undermining any of that secure immutable decentralized value storage and transfer.. and the market will likely take a while to play out in terms of how much it costs to engage in various kinds of transactions.
It's merely the first step among many to address the scaling issue. Eventually, we'll need SegWit, Lightning, sidechains, atomic cross-chain transactions, a larger (preferably adaptive) blocksize and whatever else proves effective at easing the mempool load whilst not sacrificing node decentralisation or the open and permissionless nature of the network.
"eventually"? O.k.... so you are conceding that nothing is really needed?
Why throw the baby out with the bathwater? You want to wait with seg wit for some reason? What is your proposal? Seg wit is already there. and already ready to make bitcoin more robust. You have something against making bitcoin more robust?
Where are you getting that notion from? Again, happy to see what SegWit can do, but it's evident that more needs to be done afterwards.
While maybe I had mistakenly pegged you (from your comments) as one of those who is saying block limit size increase first (and opposing seg wit until a blocksize limit increase is implemented)?
It's probable we're going to be waiting quite a while for some of the proposals like Lightning, sidechains and atomic cross-chain transactions.
I understand that there are already quite a few companies and individuals looking at potential ways to monetize some of this and also just to attempt to make some of it work.. so some of the various second level solutions may be further along than we think.. but I am not really claiming to know too much about this and sometimes some of the companies and individuals will keep some of their ideas secret because they may want to be the first to market on their particular spin.
So, sooner or later, like it or not, we're going to be looking at blocksize again. My guess is "sooner".
You may be correct. I do kind of watch some of this stuff, and sometimes there are obvious spam attacks on the network, but I remain a bit unclear about whether an actual hard limit increase would actually fix the problem more than it causes additional problems. I doubt that I am technical enough to really understand.. but I do make quite a few transactions on the blockchain, so I do have some personal and ongoing experiences with delayed transactions and fees.. and sometimes we may need to adjust our own personal systems in order to accommodate the sometimes delays (especially when we can identify spam attacks that seem to be occurring that could cause our transaction to take 2 days rather than 1 hour to go through).
Who is myopic?
some hypothetical long term that is pie in the sky.
Erm... apparently you, right there. We need to consider the long term. Bollocks to your pie in the sky. Focusing on the short term at the expense of the long term is myopic.
hahahahahaha... I will have to take that as a kind of joke. I doubt that I am saying to never focus on the long term, but some of your proclamations come off as the XT proposals.. remember? There was kind of a timeline with set increments of increasing the blocksize limits.. and emphasizing that we must focus on the future.. blah blah blah... Even if such proclamations sounded good upon first impression, it seem to have failed and refused to address some of the downsides to such exponential scaling. Furthermore, both XT and classic (and the same is true with BU), framed issues as technical while having the additional goal of changing consensus thresholds. Maybe any of those blocksize increase proposals would be more palatable if they actually were really focuses and fixes of technical issues rather than muddying the water with changes in consensus (and big blocker proponents have an ongoing tendency to refuse to clean up their proposals and to remove those low threshold consensus aspects).. so yeah, maybe I did overstate the who cares about the future aspect, but I do get folks who are sometimes seeming to focus on something that might occur 100 years from now, and I usually say.. so fucking what.. because it might occur and it might not because 100 years from now is a long time into the future and it is much less important than considering shorter term and more pressing circumstances.