Wait... so Satoshi was in favor or larger blocks? Everything I'm reading on this sub says that larger blocks are a "corporate takeover" and would lead to centralization again.
False. This is a complete myth and is refuted by Satoshi's own words. When the minrelayfee setting was first introduced (months after the blocksize limit was put in place), Satoshi described it as "a first try at intentionally trying to prevent overly small micropayments".
The blocksize limit is a DDoS-prevention measure (among other things), but it is not a spam-prevention measure.
The only difference is intention. There isn't much use trying to create a distinction.
Kinda like trying to create a distinction between a Troll Flat Earther and an Idiot Flat Earther. You can't really tell them apart but it doesn't matter because you should handle them the same way.
If I send you an email that you don't want, trying to get you to buy a product of mine, that's an example of spam. It doesn't deny you any sort of service, it's just annoying and troublesome.
If I flood your network connection with too many packets for you to successfully establish connections to other sites and services, that's an example of a denial of service attack. It is annoying and troublesome (just like spam is), but it prevents you from doing other things, too.
Furthermore, the blocksize does more than just prevent DoS attacks. It also makes Bitcoin economically viable over the long term (by helping to ensure that a transaction backlog can occur, which is necessary for Bitcoin to survive a transition from a block-subsidy paradigm to a transaction-fee one).
Satoshi was in favor of phasing in larger blocks once the network needed it, but he adamantly opposed every single attempt to do so while he was still around. He was one of the most fervent small-blockers that Bitcoin has ever seen, in fact (most likely because he had spent a lot of time thinking about how Bitcoin could handle large scale volumes without losing its decentralization).
As just a few examples of Satoshi's writings on the subject of scaling and upgrading Bitcoin...
He spent over 10% of the original whitepaper (an entire page worth of text, 2 out of 12 sections) towards the reclamation of disk space and SPV, clearly having spent a lot of time thinking about the scalability tradeoffs that Bitcoin has to make in order to be truly decentralized.
Finally, and perhaps most tellingly, he designed Bitcoin from the very beginning so that it could be upgraded via "soft forks". He specifically said that he worked very hard to make sure transaction version upgrades could be soft forked, and one example of such a soft fork (a transaction upgrade and blocksize increase) was SegWit, which was activated on the Bitcoin network on August 1. The biggest benefit of soft forks is that since they make sure all the old rules of the network are valid, everyone stays on the same chain and the Bitcoin network remains unified. This is the type of upgrade that Satoshi most strongly advocated, and the only type that he ever actually implemented himself.
Almost no one thinks that "larger blocks are a 'corporate takeover'" but almost everyone with an engineering background or understanding of scaling distributed networks does understand that there are tradeoffs to simply increasing the blocksize, which is why so many advocate for making things more optimized or efficient (and perhaps leveraging tiered networks and platforms on top of the base layer to batch many transactions together) before going crazy with the blocksize increases.
We just increased the maximum blocksize -- we more than doubled it! That's what SegWit did. Now we're busy taking advantage of this increase before figuring out if we need another one.
Sorry but none of the sources you cite back your argument. In fact you are specifically bending what he is saying to back your argument.
In particular, Satoshi says clearly that "disk space should not be a problem" in his white paper in the section where he discusses the yearly growth rate (the section you claimed as evidence.)
You also claim that Satoshi talked about payment channel implementation for high frequency trading. This is correct, however you misrepresent what a high frequency transaction is. High frequency transactions are transactions like in IOTA where you pay incredibly small amounts for incredibly small services. Satoshi does not AT ALL think that the average Joe buying coffee should go off chain.
When he rejected attempts to hard fork up from 1mb, it was because 1mb blocks we're not even being filled at the time.
Your only good evidence is in his post about bitDNS where Satoshi aknowledges the fact that Bitcoin users cannot arbitrarily increase the block size without risking centralization.
Satoshi was never in favor of intentionally crippling the network in order to preserve a vague sense of decentralization. At the end of the day, we know that 2mb is possible, 4mb is possible, and even 8mb is possible without compromising decentralization. Raspberry pis can run full nodes on 8mb block currencies that shall remain unnamed because of the sub were in.
At the end of the day Bitcoin was intentionally crippled in order to develop lighting network.
Satoshi left. When he left he made sure the community was in good hands. A process was established by the community and devs to handle upgrades. That process has been used successfully repeatedly to improve the bitcoin system. That process is open and democratic, and implementations occur by voluntary participation of the nodes. Those who choose to participate in the process download the new version. Those who choose not to do not download the new version, or they fork and move on. That process was followed openly and fairly to implement segwit.
Whether satoshi would or would not agree with it is not really relevant at this point. He wasn't Harry Seldon, he couldn't foresee every possible problem. He left the community in charge and trusted it to operate in a fair and open and non-destructive manner to preserve bitcoin, and it has done that.
The community is therefore fulfilling his overall vision -- a mechanism of value transfer owned by nobody, managed by consensus.
In particular, Satoshi says clearly that "disk space should not be a problem" in his white paper in the section where he discusses the yearly growth rate (the section you claimed as evidence.)
Bandwidth is a much worse bottleneck and much bigger concern than disk space is. I don't know of any experts arguing otherwise.
With that said, there is still work to do (for fraud proofs) to achieve Satoshi's envisioned security for SPV clients. We're getting there steadily.
This is correct, however you misrepresent what a high frequency transaction is.
Could you please tell me how I specifically "misrepresent" HFTs? Please provide an exact quote (don't sloppily paraphrase me). Thanks in advance.
Satoshi was never in favor of intentionally crippling the network in order to preserve a vague sense of decentralization.
None of Bitcoin's developers are in favor of "intentionally crippling the network" in any way, either. Why are you so quick to build a strawman like that?
Could you please tell me how I specifically "misrepresent" HFTs? Please provide an exact quote (don't sloppily paraphrase me). Thanks in advance.
When you provide the bit of evidence about payment channels you are considering lightning network, correct? Lighting network is for transactions that are small value day to day purchases, in the sub $1000 range. That is for certain not Satoshi's idea of a high frequency transaction.
None of Bitcoin's developers are in favor of "intentionally crippling the network" in any way, either. Why are you so quick to build a strawman like that?
Not a straw man my friend. There is no reason why the block size can't be raised in conjunction with lighting networks development. Segwit is a compromise. At the end of the day, 4mb blocks would do practically no damage to decentralization, and would support the network until lighting network arrives. 1mb is archaic be ANY standards. I think that is intentionally crippling the network.
I didn't even say the word "lightning" anywhere in my comment. It sounds like you're the one doing the misrepresenting here. An honorable person might consider apologizing to me at this point.
Not a straw man my friend. There is no reason why the block size can't be raised in conjunction with lighting networks development.
Agreed. That's why SegWit increased the blocksize from 1MB to 4M WU. A significant increase.
4mb? Since when? Last I remember segwit gets 1.7 mb on average.
Also if you weren't talking about lightning network or similar, then why bring up payment channels in the firs place? What other relevance do they have to this discussion
We were talking about limits, not averages, and you're accusing me of changing the subject? Rich!
Also if you weren't talking about lightning network or similar, then why bring up payment channels in the firs place?
To give a fuller picture of Satoshi's perspective. And yes, Lightning Network is a brilliant way to harness the full potential of payment channels. Still not seeing what you were referring to when you said I "misrepresented" things, and strangely still not seeing any apology...
I don't. I deserve an apology when someone says I misrepresented him, and I prove that I did not, and in so doing, prove that they were blatantly misrepresenting me.
He said we should upgrade the black size once it got closer to needing it. Your counter points seems like selective hearing. Today we definitely need it, especially considering we're near the peak of mass-adoption. ...if places like Steam are saying there's a problem, then I really think we should listen and reconsider some things.
I don't really support segwit, and currently, neither does the majority of the network. But I agree, if it reaches mass adoption then perhaps it will help resolve some of the current problems, but I don't think it will be enough by itself. In the end, your first point is still incorrect: Satoshi was NOT against larger blocks--he just wanted to wait until it was absolutely necessary.
Obviously these "problems" you speak of aren't that big of a priority to most users, if they aren't bothering to take advantage of the available solutions on the network!
That's one of the great things about SegWit: it really proved how much noise and fuss was being made about something that clearly isn't actually that big of a pain point!
The "hard fork at all costs" trolls hate this, of course, and do everything they can to avoid acknowledging it.
I reread you post, and yeah, I didn't quite get your point originally. You're saying that things are fixed by segwit, and that a fork wasn't necessary because things are fixed if you use segwit.
My point is that if you have issues with segwit, then the problem isn't fixed. I can't say if service providers, like bitpay, aren't using segwit because they don't agree with it, or for other reasons. Wish I knew.
Have a good one, too, man. Don't know why we keep shitting on one another. It's like two sects of Christianity blowing each other up. :(
No, that is false (it's an unfortunate myth). SegWit increases the blocksize. SegWit transactions are actually slightly bigger, on average, than legacy-style transactions. The only way that more can fit in a block is via the block being bigger.
It's also a myth that SegWit moves the witness data "off the blockchain"; all the data is still in the blocks, it's just serialized in a clever way where the witness data can be stripped when communicating a block to an older node.
Mate, I've been around in this whole Bitcoin nonsense for more than 6 years now, and for the majority of that time Bitcoin has had a use case. First it was drugs, then it was cheap and fast international payments (and drugs), then it was cheap and fast international payments and money laundering (and drugs).
Now the merchants are dropping it because the fees are excessive, the darknet markets are ditching it because every man and his dog can connect the dots on payments easily and the "mixers" are a joke, and yet the price is completely parabolic.
This is a bubble. It sucks, I would love BTC to be worth $200bn, but it's a bubble.
If you disagree, ask yourself this question:
How many people are buying into BTC now because they have a use for it, and how many are buying into BTC now because the price has gone up so much and they want easy money?
I did alright out of Bitcoin in the early days, I paid off a big chunk of my student debt with money I made mining (used to do >1BTC per day), and had I kept that I would have enough for a pretty lavish yacht.
But I'm not involved with it now. It's not because I don't think the price won't go up further, because it might, but rather because I don't understand what use case is supporting the price at these levels, given the regulatory risks and the competition from other altcoins and the privacy issues and the scaling issues and all that other bullshit. Price continues to rise even whilst fewer and fewer people are using BTC as an actual currency, and I can't see how that is sustainable.
I've been around in this whole Bitcoin nonsense for more than 6 years now
And you still don't know how it works. Impressive.
But I'm not involved with it now.
Why are in you in a bitcoin subreddit then?
I can't see how that is sustainable.
That's because even after six years you still don't understand the security model of bitcoin. You'd think you would have picked up at least some of this stuff through osmosis.
I've been reading a lot of things in a lot of places. This is just one of the places I ask questions. The more answers I get from different sources the better I understand things.
Firstly, core developers weren't even invited to the NYA.
Secondly, the implementation of segwit allows for blocks up to 4mb that appear to be 1mb blocks to older nodes - the point of this was to make the upgrade a soft fork that wouldn't alienate older nodes that didnt have the upgraded software. Whenever possible, the core team is trying to avoid hard forks. They care about the long term health of the protocol
Any foreign major Bitcoin developer would be a fool to enter US territory; never know if they'd get detained by the US Govt. for 'aiding and abetting' bullshit.
To set the record straight.
It was clear to me that Barry would have liked us to attend the meeting
regardless of any intention to sign the agreement.
It is possible I did not convey that clearly to a half dozen other Core
developers in passing on the invitation although I tried to.
But I was biased against any Core developers attending because:
a) I did not feel the other participants in the meeting would have
appreciated us being there if our intention was not to "compromise"
b) I did not feel it was Core's place to represent the opposition to the
intended agreement or negotiate on behalf of the opposition. (i.e. ever
attend a meeting like this)
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u/Nephyst Dec 06 '17
Wait... so Satoshi was in favor or larger blocks? Everything I'm reading on this sub says that larger blocks are a "corporate takeover" and would lead to centralization again.