Re: [bitcoin-dev] Block size following technological growth

From: "Jorge Timón" <jtimon@jtimon.cc>
To: Pieter Wuille <pieter.wuille@gmail.com>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Block size following technological growth
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 2015 17:12:19 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CABm2gDrHjfkC+whh3Vh2LZNdSR1WSAXpNitR-jEdxtbKj7J25g@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAPg+sBj-wA1DMrwkQRWnzQoB5NR-q=2-5=WDAAUYfSpXRZSTqw@mail.gmail.com>

1) Unlike previous blocksize hardfork proposals, this uses median time
instead of block.nTime for activation. I like that more but my
preference is still using height for everything. But that discussion
is not specific to this proposal, so it's better if we discuss that
for all of them here:
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-July/009731.html

2) I think uncontroversial hardforks should also take miner
confirmation into account, just like uncontroversial softforks do. We
cannot make sure other users have upgraded before activating the
chain, but we can know whether miners have upgraded or not. Having
that tool available, why not use it. Of course other hardforks may not
care about miners' upgrade state. For example "anti-miner hardforks,
see https://github.com/jtimon/bips/blob/bip-forks/bip-forks.org#asic-reset-hardfork
But again, this is common to all uncontroversial hardforks, so it
would probably better to discussed it in
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-June/008936.html
(gmaxwell assigned to bip99 to my bip draft).

3) As commented to you privately, I don't like to make any assumptions
about technological advancements (much less on economical growth). I
don't expect many people to agree with me here (I guess I've seen too
many "peak oil" [or more generally, peak energy production] plus I've
read Nietzsche's "On the utility and liability of history for life"
[1]; so considering morals, technology or economics as "monotonic
functions" in history is simply a ridiculous notion to me), but it's
undeniable that internet connections have improved overall around the
world in the last 6 years. I think we should wait for the
technological improvements to happen and then adapt the blocksize
accordingly. I know, that's not a "definitive solution", we will need
to change it from time to time and this is somewhat ugly.
But even if I'm the only one that considers a "technological
de-growth" possible, I don't think is wise to rely on pseudo-laws like
Moore's or Nielsen’s so-called "laws".
Stealing a quote from another thread:

"Prediction is difficult, especially about the future." - Niels Bohr

So I would prefer a more limited solution like bip102 (even though I
would prefer to have some simulations leading to  a concrete value
(even if it's bigger) rather than using 2MB's arbitrary number.

Those are my 3 cents.

[1] https://philohist.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/nietzsche-uses-history.pdf

On Thu, Jul 30, 2015 at 4:25 PM, Pieter Wuille via bitcoin-dev
<bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> here is a proposal for long-term scalability I've been working on:
> https://gist.github.com/sipa/c65665fc360ca7a176a6
>
> Some things are not included yet, such as a testnet whose size runs ahead of
> the main chain, and the inclusion of Gavin's more accurate sigop checking
> after the hard fork.
>
> Comments?
>
> --
> Pieter
>
>
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