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Bitcoin's creator thought the block size should be raised and nodes would end up in server farms. Whether you agree with this or not, that was the original visi

Bitcoin's creator thought the block size should be raised and nodes would end up in server farms. Whether you agree with this or not, that was the original vision of Bitcoin. Now, start-ups pivot, and it's great that there are experiments, but BTC should not have used the Bitcoin name to do this. That is the point being made.

nullc 6y ago
That is really misleading, in one of Satoshi's last public messages he wrote: > Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg28917 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg289... There has always been a challenging trade-off here, which is presumably why he limited the size in the first place. This trade-off was widely acknowledged in the community going back essentially as far as records do. And as time has gone on we've only learned more about how some ideas don't work. For example, Satoshi believed businesses would run nodes to verify their own transactions-- but we've found in practice few do, instead outsourcing it to centralized third parties often with dubious security practices.
- CryptoPunk 6y ago
  Why don't you quote all of the instances where he endorsed large blocks? You're singling out one expression of mildly small-block sentiment and overlooking multiple expressions of strongly large-block sentiment by Satoshi.
  - nullc 6y ago
    There aren't any? He _implemented_ the block size limit, nothing forced him to. Had he wanted it to change automatically he could have coded it that way. Instead, he tended to describe the design as being mostly set in stone. When someone tried to remove the limit he urgently yelled at them to stop (and stated if it were ever needed it could be phased in). I'm sure that his, like everyone elses, understanding of the requirements evolved over time too. Meanwhile, scaling Bitcoin via layers was endorsed explicitly by essentially every technical voice in the space for years until some got wrapped up with scammers. Satoshi even built specific affordances for payment channels directly into the transaction format, and was the first person to describe their use.
    - CryptoPunk 6y ago
      Here: "At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware. A server farm would only need to have one node on the network and the rest of the LAN connects with that one node." - November, 2008 Here: "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." -July, 2010 Here: "It would be nice to keep the [block chain] files small as long as we can. The eventual solution will be to not care how big it gets. But for now, while it’s still small, it’s nice to keep it small so new users can get going faster. When I eventually implement client-only mode, that won’t matter much anymore. (note to readers, "client-only mode" refers to SPV mode)" - August, 2010 Here: "The existing Visa credit card network processes about 15 million Internet purchases per day worldwide. Bitcoin can already scale much larger than that with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost. It never really hits a scale ceiling." - in an email to Mike Hearn Are you really unfamiliar with these, or think they're not worthy of your reader's attention?
      - nullc 6y ago
        The first was discussing mining. The second is saying not literally every user, similar to the third. (and in fact said it would be best to keep things as small as possible for as long as possible!) The last was in a message thread that discussed using payment channels. So I do not agree with your claim that they unambiguously supported your position, moreover they were made much earlier-- before there was much practical experience. I already pointed out his last comment on the subject...
        CryptoPunk 6y ago
        >>The first was discussing mining. There's no evidence to suggest it's discussing mining. It's directly in response to a criticism of the Bitcoin design, where a correspondent argues that everyone validating everything to ensure the transactions they receive are valid will get too costly in computing resources. This is the email that the quoted statement was responding to: http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/014815.html http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November... >To detect and reject a double spending event in a timely manner, one must have most past transactions of the coins in the transaction, which, naively implemented, requires each peer to have most past transactions, or most past transactions that occurred recently. If hundreds of millions of people are doing transactions, that is a lot of bandwidth - each must know all, or a substantial part thereof. So it's unambiguously about validation. Why would you claim otherwise? And the last known statements Satoshi made on it were in emails to Mike Hearn, like this one, from December 29 2010: >>A higher limit can be phased in once we have actual use closer to the limit and make sure it's working OK. >>Eventually when we have client-only implementations, the block chain size won't matter much. Until then, while all users still have to download the entire block chain to start, it's nice if we can keep it down to a reasonable size. >>With very high transaction volume, network nodes would consolidate and there would be more pooled mining and GPU farms, and users would run client-only. With dev work on optimising and parallelising, it can keep scaling up. >>Whatever the current capacity of the software is, it automatically grows at the rate of Moore's Law, about 60% per year. That is much more clearly his preference/vision than the brief reference to the community turning tyrannical about block sizes, and it was more recent.
- SnowProblem 6y ago
  It looks to me like he's describing a trend he disagrees with. Nobody would describe their own vision as "tyrannical".

nullc 6y ago

That is really misleading, in one of Satoshi's last public messages he wrote: > Bitcoin users might get increasingly tyrannical about limiting the size of the chain so it's easy for lots of users and small devices. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg28917 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1790.msg28917#msg289... There has always been a challenging trade-off here, which is presumably why he limited the size in the first place. This trade-off was widely acknowledged in the community going back essentially as far as records do. And as time has gone on we've only learned more about how some ideas don't work. For example, Satoshi believed businesses would run nodes to verify their own transactions-- but we've found in practice few do, instead outsourcing it to centralized third parties often with dubious security practices.

CryptoPunk 6y ago
Why don't you quote all of the instances where he endorsed large blocks? You're singling out one expression of mildly small-block sentiment and overlooking multiple expressions of strongly large-block sentiment by Satoshi.
- nullc 6y ago
  There aren't any? He _implemented_ the block size limit, nothing forced him to. Had he wanted it to change automatically he could have coded it that way. Instead, he tended to describe the design as being mostly set in stone. When someone tried to remove the limit he urgently yelled at them to stop (and stated if it were ever needed it could be phased in). I'm sure that his, like everyone elses, understanding of the requirements evolved over time too. Meanwhile, scaling Bitcoin via layers was endorsed explicitly by essentially every technical voice in the space for years until some got wrapped up with scammers. Satoshi even built specific affordances for payment channels directly into the transaction format, and was the first person to describe their use.
  - CryptoPunk 6y ago
    Here: "At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware. A server farm would only need to have one node on the network and the rest of the LAN connects with that one node." - November, 2008 Here: "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." -July, 2010 Here: "It would be nice to keep the [block chain] files small as long as we can. The eventual solution will be to not care how big it gets. But for now, while it’s still small, it’s nice to keep it small so new users can get going faster. When I eventually implement client-only mode, that won’t matter much anymore. (note to readers, "client-only mode" refers to SPV mode)" - August, 2010 Here: "The existing Visa credit card network processes about 15 million Internet purchases per day worldwide. Bitcoin can already scale much larger than that with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost. It never really hits a scale ceiling." - in an email to Mike Hearn Are you really unfamiliar with these, or think they're not worthy of your reader's attention?
    - nullc 6y ago
      The first was discussing mining. The second is saying not literally every user, similar to the third. (and in fact said it would be best to keep things as small as possible for as long as possible!) The last was in a message thread that discussed using payment channels. So I do not agree with your claim that they unambiguously supported your position, moreover they were made much earlier-- before there was much practical experience. I already pointed out his last comment on the subject...
      - CryptoPunk 6y ago
        >>The first was discussing mining. There's no evidence to suggest it's discussing mining. It's directly in response to a criticism of the Bitcoin design, where a correspondent argues that everyone validating everything to ensure the transactions they receive are valid will get too costly in computing resources. This is the email that the quoted statement was responding to: http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/014815.html http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November... >To detect and reject a double spending event in a timely manner, one must have most past transactions of the coins in the transaction, which, naively implemented, requires each peer to have most past transactions, or most past transactions that occurred recently. If hundreds of millions of people are doing transactions, that is a lot of bandwidth - each must know all, or a substantial part thereof. So it's unambiguously about validation. Why would you claim otherwise? And the last known statements Satoshi made on it were in emails to Mike Hearn, like this one, from December 29 2010: >>A higher limit can be phased in once we have actual use closer to the limit and make sure it's working OK. >>Eventually when we have client-only implementations, the block chain size won't matter much. Until then, while all users still have to download the entire block chain to start, it's nice if we can keep it down to a reasonable size. >>With very high transaction volume, network nodes would consolidate and there would be more pooled mining and GPU farms, and users would run client-only. With dev work on optimising and parallelising, it can keep scaling up. >>Whatever the current capacity of the software is, it automatically grows at the rate of Moore's Law, about 60% per year. That is much more clearly his preference/vision than the brief reference to the community turning tyrannical about block sizes, and it was more recent.
SnowProblem 6y ago
It looks to me like he's describing a trend he disagrees with. Nobody would describe their own vision as "tyrannical".