From: "Eric Lombrozo" <elombrozo@gmail.com>
To: s7r@sky-ip.org, bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
Date: Sun, 20 Sep 2015 21:45:04 +0000
Message-Id: <ema20a20ae-62b0-483b-90d4-a2cded334b2f@platinum>
In-Reply-To: <55FF2632.2010804@sky-ip.org>
Reply-To: "Eric Lombrozo" <elombrozo@gmail.com>
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Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Scaling Bitcoin conference micro-report
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------ Original Message ------
From: "s7r via bitcoin-dev" <bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org>
To: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
Sent: 9/20/2015 2:33:38 PM
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Scaling Bitcoin conference micro-report

>The general threat model for which we want to scale is: larger user=20
>base
>(not necessarily by increasing the blocksize - just increase the
>transactions per second using the best way from all points of view),
>more use cases for simple people who only do basic stuff, more
>popularity but all these without the possibility for some actor to
>control more than he should (like a government agency).

Larger user base won't necessarily protect against governments if we=20
still have chokepoints they can go after. Given that as a currency=20
Bitcoin  currently represents a negligible portion of the world's=20
economy, even growing the user base by some small factor is at best a=20
token gesture in our fight against governmental threats. If governments=20
successfully take down critical pieces of our network infrastructure,=20
Bitcoin will fail and most people will continue doing business as usual=20
(using fiat currency), most of them never even noticing anything=20
noteworthy happened at all.

What we really need to grow is the number of nodes on the network that=20
participate in its basic infrastructure - namely: miners, validators,=20
etc...and the more centralized these activities become, the easier it=20
will be for governments to clamp down.
>