Re: [bitcoin-dev] Block size: It's economics & user preparation & moral hazard

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@gmail.com>]

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On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 2:56 AM, Pieter Wuille <pieter.wuille@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 18, 2015 at 6:11 AM, Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> You present this as if the Bitcoin Core development team is in charge
> >> of deciding the network consensus rules, and is responsible for making
> >> changes to it in order to satisfy economic demand. If that is the
> >> case, Bitcoin has failed, in my opinion.
> >
> > Diverging from the satoshi block size change plan[1] and current
> economics
> > would seem to require a high level of months-ahead communication to
> users.
>
> I don't see any plan, but will you say the same thing when the subsidy
>

Yes, I forgot the link:

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg15366



> dwindles, and mining income seems to become uncertain? It will equally
> be an economic change, which equally well will have been predictable,
> and it will equally well be treatable with a hardfork to increase the
> subsidy.
>

That is a red herring.  Nobody I know has proposed this, and I am opposed
to changing that fundamental.

It is well known that the 1M limit was never intended to stay, unlike 21M
coin limit etc.

1M was set high in the beginning because it is a DoS engineering limit, not
an [accidental] economic policy tool.




> But I am not against a block size increase hard fork. My talk on
> segregated witness even included proposed pursuing a hard fork at a
> slightly later stage.
>

Great!



> But what you're arguing for is that - despite being completely
> expected - blocks grew fuller, and people didn't adapt to block size
> pressure and a fee market, so the Core committee now needs to kick the
> can down the road, because we can't accept the risk of economic
> change. That sounds very much like a bailout to me.
>

I am arguing for continuing what we know works.  We are 100% certain
blocks-not-full-on-avg works, where a "buffer" of space exists between avg
block size and hard limit.

Any other avenue is by definition speculation and risk.  You _think_ you
know what a healthy fee market _should_ be.  Massive damage occurs to
bitcoin if you are wrong - and I listed several

vis expectation, there is clear consensus and expectation that block size
would increase, from 2010 onward.  It was always a question of _when_ not
if.

Sticking with 1M presents clear risk of (a) economic fracture and (b)
community fracture.  It quite clearly risks massive change to an unknown
system at an unknown, unpredictable date in the future.

BIP 102 presents an expected upgrade at a predictable date in the future.

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