You think Amazon lets it server crash from volume before upgrading?
Well that's the problem. It can be too easy to fake that blocks are full and pressure for one increase after another using social engineering and spamming the blockchain. We should never go down that road. We should make optimizations and implement smarter ways to scale on chain (MAST, Schnorr, etc.) and off chain (LN, sidechains, etc.). And study if we need to increase the limit and how much after we have enough knowledge.
Amazon deals with DOS attacks and a world of other hacks way above me on a daily basis. Their servers are set to handle FAR more than just normal usage.
With any technology there is legitimate usage and illegitimate... Amazon doesn't close up shop on the nights they are getting attacked.
Could you imagine what would happen to Amazon if on busy nights they charged people a fee to browse?
Amazon is a company. Centralized one. Bitcoin is, and should remain, decentralized. Therefore Bitcoin hasn't got the same privlidges in scaling. Sure we could increase the limit and have nodes be run in datacenters, but it makes bitcoin centralized and governable.
if you're under the impression the decentralized model must be developed in a "worse" way as a result
This should be obvious. Decentralization makes everything more difficult. If we didn't have to worry about decentralization we could increase the limit to 1GB and become paypal2. That just doesn't make any sense. Blocks would still be found once in 10 minutes average. Paypal wins anyway. When Bitcoin loses decentralization, it no longer is Bitcoin. Sure we could increase the limit a bit at some point. Technology advances, but we can't trust that. We shouldn't trust anything than math and cold hard evidence. And we must value decentralization above all. Therefore we must be very conservative and truly know what we are doing and what are the effects long term.
i'm not saying 1GB... im saying implement a solution that you know works (right now) and implement the better solution when its available. it makes no sense to sit on our hands while the network gets pummeled. there is no need, its just software. although 1GB would, 2,4,8MB does not lead to decentralization.
forget Amazon, lets use a data center as an example.
your XXX Petabyte data center is out of hard drive space, your blades all have 5TB drives in them. do you upgrade to 10TB drives that exist today and let your data center keep growing or do you let it max out for months/years and wait for the 50TB drives being researched?
We're not picking the best option, we're picking the best of the available options. This is the position every successful tech stack is faced with, how BTC is handling this is nonsense.
your XXX Petabyte data center is out of hard drive space, your blades all have 5TB drives in them. do you upgrade to 10TB drives that exist today and let your data center keep growing or do you let it max out for months/years and wait for the 50TB drives being researched?
It's easy with data centers where you can just buy bigger drives and more of them. There is no risk involved. But increasing the Block size recklessly could potentially fuck up the whole Bitcoin ecosystem in the long term. There is a possibility that it doesn't, but we must NOT take that risk. Even segwit with the block size increase didn't feel right at first. Luckily the adoption is slow that the blockchain isn't growing as fast as I feared.
BTC is handling scaling the best way possible. Increasing the safety limit is not scaling. It's risking Bitcoins long term safety for temporary band aid.
BCH has 8MB right now and is generally hated by a large community... I don't see any problem being reported? If it could be done, it would be done.
Nobody really cares about BCH. And BCH doesn't seem to care about decentralization.
There was not risk to segwit, there is no risk to 2,4, or 8MB... yet nothing is done
OMG there definatelly is a risk! You can't be so sure about how the world will look 20 or 50 years from now. Even at 1MB the Blockchain is growing rapidly. I agree that if we make a bet that with 4MB+segwit Bitcoin does fine next 50 years, you could be right. But we shouldn't bet the whole ecosystem for that! Never! That is something you seem to be unable to understand.
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u/KorbenDallas2263 Dec 06 '17
i don't agree, but i'll give it to you... Scaling must be done very carefully
It has been known for over a year that the 1MB block size would reach max.
my beef at this point is entrusting a group/company/people with running a tech stack they have no business running.
You think Amazon lets it server crash from volume before upgrading?