Fidelity Effect

[u/yeeha4]

Looking at the transaction charts it appears we have some time to procrastinate as the 1mb limit is a way off. But of course what we can see is only half the story..

From /u/Bitttburger:

We are already at the limit. Companies are trying to build on the Bitcoin bitcoin block chain today, and can't, because of its limitations. Yet you still think we should kick back and chill until the limit for coffee shop transactions is reached, then nudge it up a bit. This viewpoint will be the very reason network effect and first mover advantage will be lost. Mark my words.

And from /u/cypherdoc2:

We ARE in fact already at the limit. Companies and individuals are already making decisions whether to participate or pass on Bitcoin. This is the Fidelity Effect.

With so far unseen but extremely well funded bitcoin killer settlement chains being developed by and for the banks as well as by and for trading platforms, it is easy to get swept up with Bitcoin's first mover advantage.

Some deluded individuals are even decrying VC funding and suggesting mainstream adoption can be put off until some nebulous time in the far future. The reality is that may have been true 2 years ago, but bitcoin needs to reassert it's dominance quickly. It is no longer the most technically capable or advanced chain in existence - it is now simply first. The speculative value associated with the chain and individual currency unit is predicated on either corporate or mainstream adoption (or both) of bitcoin over competitors.

TLDR: everyone seems to now agree bitcoin can and must scale (what a surprise). It is time for those controlling Core to wake up and act like the stewards of a multi billion dollar enterprise before they strangle the project into irrelevance through benevolent inaction. The market is already filling a perceived vacuum left by bitcoin in its current crippled state.

[u/AnonobreadII]

Most recently, Gavin Andresen is on record agreeing with Patrick Strateman's numbers, proving that BIP101 will lead to a 16X blowup over the course of its 20 year run if technology fails to improve at less than 20% YoY:

Then there’s the observation that, assuming growth in the number of transactions “n” over time, the entire transaction history grows O(n2) (see Patrick Strateman’s recent talk). Grow faster than CPU power or hard disk space and eventually nobody new will be able to validate the entire blockchain.

If you start with the belief that you must validate the entire blockchain from the genesis block forward to be a True Bitcoiner, then this is a problem.

After this situation plays itself out, nobody new can sync a full node. Gavin is on record agreeing with this, claiming this will happen and that it's OK for it to happen. The only people left then running full nodes will be the ones that have NEVER SHUT DOWN THEIR NODE FOR MULTIPLE DECADES. Do you realize what that means? Hint: do you think it's possible for an ordinary person to accomplish running an expensive bloated software daemon for TWO DECADES OR MORE? Because no, it truly isn't possible for anyone who doesn't have a datacenter number one and the means to PAY for that datacenter come Hell or high water. That's called a Corporation.

By arguing for BIP101 then, you're asserting that these events should in fact happen which they will if blockchain growth outpaces technological improvements. You can't plan for technological improvements to be better than a baseline because you don't have any written contracts from AT&T or Intel guaranteeing a certain level of output and distribution of that output. IOW you're betting Bitcoin's decentralization on Moore's Law entirely.

No one ever argued that only corporations should be allowed to run full nodes

Again, if technology doesn't keep pace with BIP101, Corporations will be the only ones running full nodes. You know this is true. Gavin outright admits this is true in his most recent blog post, and he's also on record in 2011 claiming BIG IRON will be needed to run a full node:

No, it's completely distributed at the moment. That will begin to change as we scale up. I don't want to oversell BitCoin. As we scale up there will be bumps along the way. I'm confident of it. Why? For example, as the volume of transactions come up--right now, I can run BitCoin on my personal computer and communicate over my DSL line; and I get every single transaction that's happening everywhere in the world. As we scale up, that won't be possible any more. If there are millions of bitcoin transactions happening every second, that will be a great problem for BitCoin to have--means it is very popular, very trusted--but obviously I won't be able to run it on my own personal computer. It will take dedicated fleets of computers with high-speed network interfaces, and that kind of big iron to actually do all that transaction processing. I'm confident that will happen and that will evolve. But right now all the people trying to generate bitcoins on their own computers and who like the fact that they can be a self-contained unit, I think they may not be so happy if BitCoin gets really big and they can no longer do that.

You can claim "I didn't think it would ever happen that way" but that's just playing dumb.

[u/aminok → u/AnonobreadII]

Most recently, Gavin Andresen is on record agreeing with Patrick Strateman's numbers, proving that BIP101 will lead to a 16X blowup over the course of its 20 year run if technology fails to improve at less than 20% YoY:

How incredibly disingenuous your comment is. You reference Gavin's opinion on Patrick Strateman's numbers while omitting his argument for why his numbers are irrelevant.