<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>Hello all,<br><br></div>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.<br><br></div>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.<br><br></div>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.<br><br></div>Here is how Gavin summarizes the future without increasing block sizes in PR 6341:<br><br>> 1. Transaction confirmation times for transactions with a given fee
will rise; very-low-fee transactions will fail to get confirmed at all.<br>> 2. Average transaction fee paid will rise<br>> 3. People or applications unwilling or unable to pay the rising fees will stop submitting transactions<br>> 4. People and businesses will shelve plans to use Bitcoin, stunting growth and adoption<br><br></div>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."?<br><br></div>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.<br><br>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.<br><br></div>If you look at graphs of block sizes over time (for example, <a href="http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=498" target="_blank">http://rusty.ozlabs.org/?p=498</a>),
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.<br><br></div>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...<br><br>-- <br></div>Pieter<br><br></div>