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It doesn't matter what Satoshi said five years ago, it matters what he would say now, given what we've learned about Bitcoin since. His old opinions are less a

It doesn't matter what Satoshi said five years ago, it matters what he would say now, given what we've learned about Bitcoin since. His old opinions are less and less informed each year. Increasing block size utilization has series tradeoffs for decentralization, privacy and reliability. Each year we learn and understand those tradeoffs better. Pro block-size increase people never seem to directly address them though, just talk around them and imply they don't matter. They do matter, a great deal.

thomasrognon 7y ago
I don't think Satoshi's opinion would be any different now. Decentralization as a primary goal and maximizing it at all costs is a narrative that grew after he left. It was originally a means to an end and things just needed to be decentralized enough to be resilient. Relevant Satoshi quote: The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale. That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server. The design supports letting users just be users. The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be. Those few nodes will be big server farms. The rest will be client nodes that only do transactions and don't generate. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  The problem with that quote is that if "the rest" of the client nodes also can't validate, then Bitcoin is centralized and completely pointless. Mining is already effectively centralized, the only check and balance against collusion of miners is a robust and engaged community of users running full nodes. The client nodes have to validate in addition to only doing transactions. Satoshi doesn't say that in his comment. But the faster the block size growth, the faster it gets to "every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server", and the fewer and fewer run full validating nodes. His comment is self-contradictory.
jotto 7y ago
Do you have any recommended links/reading on this? (better understanding on the tradeoffs)
lawn 7y ago
What you meant to say is the propaganda has tried, and quite successfully, to make his opinions seem less informed each year. It's funny you say that pro block-size increase people don't understand the decentralization, privacy and reliability trade-off, while the people against a block-size increase have never defined or quantified these trade-offs. And very often they also have the notion that "everyone must run a full node" that implies they don't have a good understanding of Bitcoin at all.
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  It’s a complex socio-economic-technical system, which probably can’t be perfectly quantified. Same as with the weather or the larger economy. We can understand it to some degree, but lack of perfectly predictive models does not invalidate these concerns, as you imply. “Everyone must run a full node” is aspirational but not realistic. It’s nevertheless extremely valuable to continue working on ways of reducing the expense of running full nodes. MimbleWimble, Coda and others are doing a good job of exploring that problem space, as are some projects in Bitcoin that may take longer deploy. When HN first started discussing Bitcoin almost a decade ago, the smartest skeptics here main objection was the obvious one that a distributed database where all the data is replicated across every node and which grows infinitely is likely not viable. They were right then and right now, it’s a hard problem and arguably the main existential risk to Bitcoin. Throwing caution to wind so Bitcoin can have fast payments Now at the expense of failing at sound money later is short-sighted and irresponsible.
  - lawn 7y ago
    > It’s nevertheless extremely valuable to continue working on ways of reducing the expense of running full nodes. And nobody will claim otherwise. But there's always a trade-off, and focusing only on reducing the expense is severely misguided. > Throwing caution to wind so Bitcoin can have fast payments Now at the expense of failing at sound money later is short-sighted and irresponsible. The funny thing is, the inaction of the Bitcoin devs have made it fail at one of the core features of money. You cannot consider it to be acceptable, as fees are so expensive they price out a lot of people. Money should be easy to move around, and you should be able to buy large and small things with it. Yet this is somehow preferable, because doing otherwise would make Bitcoin "fail at sound money", whatever that means.

thomasrognon 7y ago

I don't think Satoshi's opinion would be any different now. Decentralization as a primary goal and maximizing it at all costs is a narrative that grew after he left. It was originally a means to an end and things just needed to be decentralized enough to be resilient. Relevant Satoshi quote: The current system where every user is a network node is not the intended configuration for large scale. That would be like every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server. The design supports letting users just be users. The more burden it is to run a node, the fewer nodes there will be. Those few nodes will be big server farms. The rest will be client nodes that only do transactions and don't generate. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

SkyMarshal 7y ago
The problem with that quote is that if "the rest" of the client nodes also can't validate, then Bitcoin is centralized and completely pointless. Mining is already effectively centralized, the only check and balance against collusion of miners is a robust and engaged community of users running full nodes. The client nodes have to validate in addition to only doing transactions. Satoshi doesn't say that in his comment. But the faster the block size growth, the faster it gets to "every Usenet user runs their own NNTP server", and the fewer and fewer run full validating nodes. His comment is self-contradictory.

jotto 7y ago

Do you have any recommended links/reading on this? (better understanding on the tradeoffs)

lawn 7y ago

What you meant to say is the propaganda has tried, and quite successfully, to make his opinions seem less informed each year. It's funny you say that pro block-size increase people don't understand the decentralization, privacy and reliability trade-off, while the people against a block-size increase have never defined or quantified these trade-offs. And very often they also have the notion that "everyone must run a full node" that implies they don't have a good understanding of Bitcoin at all.

SkyMarshal 7y ago
It’s a complex socio-economic-technical system, which probably can’t be perfectly quantified. Same as with the weather or the larger economy. We can understand it to some degree, but lack of perfectly predictive models does not invalidate these concerns, as you imply. “Everyone must run a full node” is aspirational but not realistic. It’s nevertheless extremely valuable to continue working on ways of reducing the expense of running full nodes. MimbleWimble, Coda and others are doing a good job of exploring that problem space, as are some projects in Bitcoin that may take longer deploy. When HN first started discussing Bitcoin almost a decade ago, the smartest skeptics here main objection was the obvious one that a distributed database where all the data is replicated across every node and which grows infinitely is likely not viable. They were right then and right now, it’s a hard problem and arguably the main existential risk to Bitcoin. Throwing caution to wind so Bitcoin can have fast payments Now at the expense of failing at sound money later is short-sighted and irresponsible.
- lawn 7y ago
  > It’s nevertheless extremely valuable to continue working on ways of reducing the expense of running full nodes. And nobody will claim otherwise. But there's always a trade-off, and focusing only on reducing the expense is severely misguided. > Throwing caution to wind so Bitcoin can have fast payments Now at the expense of failing at sound money later is short-sighted and irresponsible. The funny thing is, the inaction of the Bitcoin devs have made it fail at one of the core features of money. You cannot consider it to be acceptable, as fees are so expensive they price out a lot of people. Money should be easy to move around, and you should be able to buy large and small things with it. Yet this is somehow preferable, because doing otherwise would make Bitcoin "fail at sound money", whatever that means.