From: Eric Lombrozo <elombrozo@gmail.com>
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Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2015 15:25:50 -0700
Message-Id: <1B7F00D3-41AE-44BF-818D-EC4EF279DC11@gmail.com>
To: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
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Subject: [bitcoin-dev] Why Satoshi's temporary anti-spam measure isn't
	temporary
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I only got into Bitcoin in 2011, after the block size limit was already =
in place. After going through some more of the early history of Bitcoin =
to better understand the origins of this, things are starting to come =
into better perspective.

Initially there was no block size limit - it was thought that the fee =
market would naturally develop and would impose economic constraints on =
growth. But this hypothesis failed after a sudden influx of new uses. It =
was still too easy to attack the network. This idea had to wait until =
the network was more mature to handle things.

Enter a =E2=80=9Ctemporary=E2=80=9D anti-spam measure - a one megabyte =
block size limit. Let=E2=80=99s test this out, then increase it once we =
see how things work. So far so good=E2=80=A6

Except=E2=80=A6well:

1) We never really got to test things out=E2=80=A6a fee market never =
really got created, we never got to see how fees would really work in =
practice.

2) Turns out the vast majority of validation nodes have little if =
anything to do with mining - validators do not get =
compensated=E2=80=A6validation cost is externalized to the entire =
network.

3) Miners don=E2=80=99t even properly validate blocks. And the bigger =
the blocks get, the greater the propensity to skip this step. Oops!

4) A satisfactory mechanism for thin clients to be able to securely =
obtain reasonably secure, short proofs for their transactions never =
materialized.

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