I am not saying that economic change is what we want. Only that it is inevitable, independent of whether larger blocks happen or not.
I am saying that acting because of fear of economic change is a bad reason. The reason for increase should be because of the higher utility. We need it at some point, but there should be no rush. I do understand that we want to avoid a *sudden* change in economic policy, but I'm generally not too worried. Either fees increase and they get paid, and we're good. But more likely is that some uses just move off-chain because the block chain does not offer what they need. That's sad, but it is inevitable at any size: some uses fit, some don't. -- Pieter On Jun 26, 2015 7:57 PM, "Jeff Garzik" <jgar...@gmail.com> wrote: > It is not "fear" of fee pressure. > > 1) Blocks are mostly not-full on average. > > 2) Absent long blocks and stress tests, there is little fee pressure above > the anti-spam relay fee metric, because of #1. > > 3) As such, inducing fee pressure is a delta, a change from years-long > bitcoin economic policy. Each time we approach the soft limit, Bitcoin > Core increases the soft limit to prevent "full" blocks. Mike Hearn et. al. > lobbies miners to upgrade. > > (note - this is not an endorsement of these actions - it is a neutral > observation) > > 4) Inaction leads to consistent fee pressure as the months tick on and > system volume grows; thus, inaction leads to economic policy change. > > 5) Economic policy change leads to market and software disruption. The > market and software - notably wallets - is not prepared for this. > > 6) If you want to change economic policy, that's fine. But be honest and > admit you are arguing for a change, a delta from current market > expectations and behavior. > > 7) It is critical to first deal with what _is_, not what you wish the > world to be. You want a fee market to develop. There is nothing wrong > with that desire. It remains a delta from where we are today, and that is > critically relevant in a $3b+ market. > > > > > > > > > On Fri, Jun 26, 2015 at 7:09 AM, Pieter Wuille <pieter.wui...@gmail.com> > wrote: > >> Hello all, >> >> here I'm going to try to address a part of the block size debate which >> has been troubling me since the beginning: the reason why people seem to >> want it. >> >> People say that larger blocks are necessary. In the long term, I agree - >> in the sense that systems that do not evolve tend to be replaced by other >> systems. This evolution can come in terms of layers on top of Bitcoin's >> blockchain, in terms of the technology underlying various aspects of the >> blockchain itself, and also in the scale that this technology supports. >> >> I do, however, fundamentally disagree that a fear for a change in >> economics should be considered to necessitate larger blocks. If it is, and >> there is consensus that we should adapt to it, then there is effectively no >> limit going forward. This is similar to how Congress voting to increase the >> copyright term retroactively from time to time is really no different from >> having an infinite copyright term in the first place. This scares me. >> >> Here is how Gavin summarizes the future without increasing block sizes in >> PR 6341: >> >> > 1. Transaction confirmation times for transactions with a given fee >> will rise; very-low-fee transactions will fail to get confirmed at all. >> > 2. Average transaction fee paid will rise >> > 3. People or applications unwilling or unable to pay the rising fees >> will stop submitting transactions >> > 4. People and businesses will shelve plans to use Bitcoin, stunting >> growth and adoption >> >> Is it fair to summarize this as "Some use cases won't fit any more, >> people will decide to no longer use the blockchain for these purposes, and >> the fees will adapt."? >> >> I think that is already happening, and will happen at any scale. I >> believe demand for payments in general is nearly infinite, and only a small >> portion of it will eventually fit on a block chain (independent of whether >> its size is limited by consensus rules or economic or technological means). >> Furthermore, systems that compete with Bitcoin in this space already offer >> orders of magnitude more capacity than we can reasonably achieve with any >> blockchain technology at this point. >> >> I don't know what subset of use cases Bitcoin will cater to in the long >> term. They have already changed - you see way less betting transactions >> these days than a few years ago for example - and they will keep changing, >> independent of what effective block sizes we end up with. I don't think we >> should be afraid of this change or try to stop it. >> >> If you look at graphs of block sizes over time (for example, >> http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=498), it seems to me that there is very >> little "organic" growth, and a lot of sudden changes (which could >> correspond to changing defaults in miner software, introduction of popular >> sites/services, changes in the economy). I think these can be seen as the >> economy changing to full up the available space, and I believe these will >> keep happening at any size effectively available. >> >> None of this is a reason why the size can't increase. However, in my >> opinion, we should do it because we believe it increases utility and >> understand the risks; not because we're afraid of what might happen if we >> don't hurry up. And from that point of view, it seems silly to make a huge >> increase at once... >> >> -- >> Pieter >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> bitcoin-dev mailing list >> bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org >> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev >> >> >
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