Hi Adam,

I am still confused about whether you actually support an increase in the block size limit to happen right now. As you agree that this "layer 2" you speak of doesn't exist yet, and won't within the next 10-12 months (do you agree that actually?), can you please state clearly that you will support Gavin's patch once posted? As Gavin's work takes some ideas from BIP100 but does/soon will have some code associated with it.

I think there's been some confusion here.

I, at least, have never argued that other systems can never happen. Never is a long time, and I myself maintain a payment channels implementation. These things have their place.

The argument is solely around the need to raise the block size now and not allow the existing layer 1 to gum up and fall over.

If Stroem or Lightning or other block chains or Coinbase or secure hardware tokens or whatever take off and people start moving bitcoins around that way - fine. If they're choosing it of their own free will I have no issue with that, nor does anyone else, I suspect.

However you don't seem fully confident that people actually will choose whatever is being cooked up as "layer 2", if left to their own devices. Indeed it's impossible for anyone to know that, as no "layer 2" actually exists. Any such implementation could have all sorts of flaws that lead to it not gaining traction.

 

As you know from the discussion with myself and Gavin a few days ago on IRC, neither of us believe any such constructive process exists. There is another thread to discuss the lack of such a process.

 

Oh please. Conspiracy theories, now, Adam? My position has been consistent for years. I don't care whether the figure is 20 or something else (looks like it'll be lucky 8 instead), but I have always been clear that the limit must rise.

But for the avoidance of doubt: the answer is no.

Gavin is paid by MIT. The MIT deal gives Gavin complete independence.

I am currently self employed and most of income comes from a client that is actually interested in Lighthouse. Luckily they have given me some leeway to do general Bitcoin development as well, which this business falls under. I would much rather be working on Lighthouse than this, and so would they.

But seeing as you've gone there - let me flip this around. Blockstream has a very serious conflict of interest in this situation. I am by no means the first to observe this. You are building two major products:

The problem is that rather than letting the market decide between ordinary Bitcoin and Lightning, you are attempting to strangle the regular Bitcoin protocol because you don't trust people to spontaneously realise that they should be using your companies products.

I know that many of you guys had these views before joining Blockstream. I am not saying you are being paid to have views you didn't previously have. I realise that birds of a feather flock together. 

Regardless, that conflict of interest DOES exist, whether you like it or not, because if you succeed in running Bitcoin out of capacity your own company stands to benefit from selling consulting and services around your preferred solutions.

 

With respect to user rights: all the polling done so far suggests users who are paying attention strongly support increasing the block size. For example:

Q: "Should the bitcoin block size be raised in the next two years"

A: 92% yes

Additionally, many Bitcoin users have explicitly delegated handling the technical details to someone else, like a payment processor or their wallet developers. Those people are nearly all sure that the block size limit should rise too.

So please don't engage in idle speculation about "users vs companies". They aren't some kind of opposing forces. Companies live for their users, and many of those companies were formed by long time Bitcoin users.

And finally, the Bitcoin social contract is not defined by whatever random state the code was in at the time Gavin decided to focus on research. Both Gavin and I have been working on Bitcoin longer than you, Gregory or Peter Todd. The social contract was and still is defined by the project's founding vision - written down in words.

Heck, if Satoshi had spent another hour or two on his original size limiter patch this entire dispute would never have happened. He'd have put in some kind of automatic timeout or limit riser because the plan was to remove it all along, and then it'd be you guys arguing for putting a limit in place, Gavin would object, it'd be controversial and nothing would happen. But Satoshi never anticipated this bizarre attempt to turn the project into something else and so figured he'd just remove it himself later. Too bad.