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Date: Sun, 28 Jun 2015 14:13:52 +0200
Message-ID: <CABm2gDovynxmZmf_voz-19mmb5k0R4Snxcucx-WObt_stkAL9A@mail.gmail.com>
From: =?UTF-8?B?Sm9yZ2UgVGltw7Nu?= <jtimon@jtimon.cc>
To: NxtChg <nxtchg@hush.com>
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Cc: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] The need for larger blocks
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On Sat, Jun 27, 2015 at 2:10 PM, NxtChg <nxtchg@hush.com> wrote:
>
> On 6/27/2015 at 2:04 PM, "Jorge Tim=C3=B3n" <jtimon@jtimon.cc> wrote:
>
>>But that option is not unknown...
>
> It is, until it actually happens. Before that, anything is a speculation.=
 That's why risk is attached to both "doing nothing" and "raising the limit=
".

Fortunately we have a lower limit in the standard mining policy to see
if the skies turn purple when we hit that limit like some people
predict.

> Various people perceive these risks differently and there is no clear mec=
hanism currently to somehow gauge what the majority wants. So it's tempting=
 to just give up and say: let's do nothing.
>
> In this situation, doing a "software fork" seems like the only way to act=
ually see how many people/interests are in favor of bigger blocks.

But this is NOT a way to see the majority of anything. I can run 1000
nodes, have you heard of sybil attacks?
There's simply no decentralized way of voting that works. Otherwise we
could vote on each block instead of using proof of work.
Miners voting on size is also ridiculous since big miners have an
incentive to completely remove the limit and make smaller miners
unprofitable.

> (Whether the majority has a moral right to dictate the minority is a toug=
h philosophical question, which should probably be left out of this discuss=
ion :)

No, this is very important. The majority has no right to dictate on
the minority.
If the majority of bitcoiners wanted demurrage (and we actually had a
working method for "measuring majorities"), the minority would still
say "these are not the rules we signed up for, go make freicoin as a
separate chain".
And that is very reasonable. If some people want a more centralized
version of Bitcoin they can create an altcoin too. Doesn't dogecoin
already have big blocks?