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Date: Wed, 9 Apr 2014 12:33:33 -0700
Message-ID: <CAAS2fgQyXHNnBDKoUMd_=-=1irGJ6cFKwi59enLJvFJiWBv50A@mail.gmail.com>
From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell@gmail.com>
To: Justus Ranvier <justusranvier@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
Cc: Bitcoin Development <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Bitcoind-in-background mode for SPV
	wallets
Precedence: list

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 11:58 AM, Justus Ranvier <justusranvier@gmail.com> wrote:
> Anyone reading the archives of the list will see about triple the
> number of people independently confirming the resource usage problem
> than they will see denying it, so I'm not particularly worried.

The list has open membership, there is no particular qualification or
background required to post here. Optimal use of an information source
requires critical reading and understanding the limitations of the
medium. Counting comments is usually not a great way to assess
technical considerations on an open public forum.  Doubly so because
those comments were not actually talking about the same thing I am
talking about.

Existing implementations are inefficient in many known ways (and, no
doubt, some unknown ones). This list is about developing protocol and
implementations including improving their efficiency.  When talking
about incentives the costs you need to consider are the costs of the
best realistic option.  As far as I know there is no doubt from anyone
technically experienced that under the current network rules full
nodes can be operated with vastly less resources than current
implementations use, it's just a question of the relatively modest
implementation improvements.

When you argue that Bitcoin doesn't have the right incentives (and
thus something??) I retort that the actual resource _requirements_ are
for the protocol very low. I gave specific example numbers to enable
correction or clarification if I've said something wrong or
controversial. Pointing out that existing implementations are not that
currently as efficient as the underlying requirements and that some
large number of users do not like the efficiency of existing
implementations doesn't tell me anything I disagree with or didn't
already know. Whats being discussed around here contributes to
prioritizing improvements over the existing implementations.

I hope this clarifies something.