Published on: 2015-05-31T10:01:53+00:00
Eric Lombrozo agrees with Drak's assessment that politics are inevitable in any consensus protocol seeking dynamism. He argues that while the block size discussion is necessary, it is only serving as an example of the political issues that need to be addressed. Lombrozo suggests that external input may be required, such as a vote or hashing power. He also proposes building the dynamics of hard forks into the model rather than avoiding them altogether. Lombrozo acknowledges that hard forks are easy, but the difficulty lies in merging different branches. He suggests learning from git and designing the network to allow for merging.On May 31st, 2015 Matt Whitlock sent an email discussing Gavin's proposal to move Bitcoin forward with his own proposal, regardless of the agreement of other Bitcoin Core committers. While some miners and merchants may support the idea of larger blocks, there is a substantial risk that it could fail, so until there is actual consensus among the technical community it is best not to take the risk. The proposal is to gradually raise the block size limit using an approximately smooth function, without a step discontinuity, from 1 MB to 20 MB over the course of several years, beginning next March. It would be far more helpful if we focused on stuff that helps enable level 2 technologies so that Bitcoin can actually scale. Extending blocksize now would be nothing more than a political move. In order for bitcoin to survive, changes must be based on well thought out and discussed technical merits and not the result of political pressure.The current hard cap of 1 MB block is not enough to handle the increasing transaction volume as more and more people use Bitcoin. The proposed solution is to increase the block size hard cap to 20 MB, but this may not be a permanent fix as the need for larger blocks may arise again in the future. The possibility of other solutions like micropayment channels and offchain transactions that can easily function with 1 MB blocks is also considered. There are concerns about the proposed solution dividing Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin Core into different consensus and creating two altcoins instead of one Bitcoin. Matt Whitlock proposes an alternative solution to gradually raise the block size limit using an approximately smooth function from 1 MB to 20 MB over the course of several years, beginning next March. This gradual increase will allow time to discuss and fix any problem that may arise without panicking. Whitlock believes that ignoring the immediate problem is too risky and that if significantly larger blocks cause a serious problem for Bitcoin, then not making any change to Bitcoin Core will virtually assure that Bitcoin XT takes over. He proposes a way to satisfy both those who want larger blocks and those who want to be extremely cautious about changing the fundamental economic parameters of Bitcoin.Matt Whitlock has proposed a gradual increase in the block size limit of Bitcoin to avoid sudden changes that could potentially damage the currency. He acknowledges that Bitcoin could face problems if it does not raise the block size limit, but he believes that Gavin's proposal to suddenly increase the limit is too risky. Matt suggests using a linear growth function to smoothly adjust the block size limit from 1 MB to 20 MB over several years, beginning next March. His proposal aims to satisfy both those who want larger blocks and those who are cautious about changing the fundamental economic parameters of Bitcoin. Matt offers to implement this proposal and submit a pull request to Bitcoin Core.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T12:54:53.487586+00:00