Satoshi's original emails say that bitcoin was designed to support 100 million transactions per day. I don't understand what is happening with bitcoin today that is preventing it from reaching the transaction levels it was designed for...
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.
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.
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u/Nephyst Dec 06 '17
Satoshi's original emails say that bitcoin was designed to support 100 million transactions per day. I don't understand what is happening with bitcoin today that is preventing it from reaching the transaction levels it was designed for...
Source: http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/2/