A summary list of all concerns related to rising the block size

We've identified a fundamental disagreement in:

- The block size maximum consensus rule serves to limit mining centralization

But as said I believe at least 2 different formal proofs can be produced that in fact this is the case. One of them (the one I'm working on) remains true even after superluminal communication, free unlimited global bandwidth and science fiction snarks. But let's just list the concerns first.

I believe there's 2 categories:

1) Increasing the block size may increase centralization.

- Mining centralization will get worse (for example, China's aggregate
hashrate becomes even larger)
   - Government control in a single jurisdiction could enforce
transaction censorship and destroy irreversibility of transactions
      - Some use cases that rely on a decentralized chain (like
trustless options) cannot rely on Bitcoin anymore.
      - Reversible transactions will have proportional fees rather
than flat ones.
         - Some use cases that rely on flat fees (like remittance) may
not be practical in Bitcoin anymore
- The full node count will decrease, leaving less resources to serve SPV nodes.

2) Trying to avoid "hitting the limit" permanently minimizes minimum fees (currently zero) and fees in general

- If fees' block reward doesn't increase enough, the subsidy block reward may become insufficient to protect the irreversibility of the system at some point in time, and the system is attacked and destroyed at that point in time - Miners will continue to run noncompetitive block creation policies (ie accepting free transactions) - More new Bitcoin businesses may be created based on unsustainable assumptions and consequently fail. - "Free transactions bitcoin marketing" may continue and users may get angry when they discover they have been lied about the sustainability of that property and the reliability of free transactions.

Please suggest more concerns or new categories if you think they're needed.

On Wednesday 12. August 2015 12.28.39 Jorge Timón wrote:

> But let's just list the concerns first.

Concerns?

I have never heard of "develop-by-concerns"? Is that similar to fire fighting management? To that I have this reply; http://www.aleanjourney.com/2009/07/stop-fighting-fires.html

Your question makes sure that the proper answers don't fit. And that may be why you are getting frustrated because I've given a lot of reasons why a blocksize increase is needed soon, and none of them show up in your list...

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010120.html

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010129.html

And various others; I'm not going to bother pasting URLs, you probably have them already.

Point is, Bitcoin is a growing network, with a growing amount of transactions and we KNOW we will get into problems when the block consistently get full. How do we know? Because of the old guys in this list having the experience that this always happens, because anyone in the IT business can tell you the same.

We have started LN to cope with this growth, but this won't be enough since it just won't handle all usecases and thus the on-chain growth will continue. For instance remittances and cross-border purchases. We need both LN as well as bigger blocks.

> I have never heard of "develop-by-concerns"? Is that similar to
> fire fighting management?
> To that I have this reply;
> http://www.aleanjourney.com/2009/07/stop-fighting-fires.html

A set of goals is needed and then you develop road maps. At that point you can propose specific changes that fit within a road map.

Russ

On Wed, Aug 12, 2015 at 6:41 PM, Thomas Zander via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation•org> wrote:

> On Wednesday 12. August 2015 12.28.39 Jorge Timón wrote:
>> But let's just list the concerns first.
>
> Concerns?

Yes, concerns or risks. Feel free to bike-shed the word.

> I have never heard of "develop-by-concerns"? Is that similar to
> fire fighting management?
> To that I have this reply;
> http://www.aleanjourney.com/2009/07/stop-fighting-fires.html

I'm not the manager of Bitcoin Core nor the Bitcoin consensus rules. I'm just trying to separate "dogs from cats" (if you allow me the analogy) in another random attempt to move the discussion into more productive territories. I wouldn't be doing this if I didn't felt we have advance identifying and understanding each other's concerns better. If you think this thread is useless you don't need to participate.

> Your question makes sure that the proper answers don't fit.
> And that may be why you are getting frustrated because I've given a lot of
> reasons why a blocksize increase is needed soon, and none of them show up
> in your list...
>
> http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010120.html
>
> http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010129.html
>
> And various others; I'm not going to bother pasting URLs, you probably have
> them already.
>
> Point is, Bitcoin is a growing network, with a growing amount of transactions
> and we KNOW we will get into problems when the block consistently get full.
> How do we know? Because of the old guys in this list having the experience
> that this always happens, because anyone in the IT business can tell you the
> same.
>
> We have started LN to cope with this growth, but this won't be enough since it
> just won't handle all usecases and thus the on-chain growth will continue. For
> instance remittances and cross-border purchases.
> We need both LN as well as bigger blocks.

This thread is for "guardian dogs". To discuss to mouses catches we're missing, I've created the other almost-identically-titled thread: http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010188.html The title of this one doesn't contain a "not" like the other one. You missed (imagined?) that little detail.

In other words, if you want to contribute to this thread, think about "things that could go wrong if we rise the consensus block size maximum". Judging from your strong conviction about the need of an urgent size rise, probably you have thought hard about this before concluding that there's not risk for your favorite proposed size (2MB, 8MB, 8GB, 20GB?). Note that even if you are certain that those risks aren't a concern at this scale, identifying and somehow estimating or measuring (if that's even possible) the risks will be useful for future increases.