Received: from sog-mx-1.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com ([172.29.43.191] helo=mx.sourceforge.net) by sfs-ml-1.v29.ch3.sourceforge.com with esmtp (Exim 4.76) (envelope-from ) id 1UF604-0000Ae-DF for bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net; Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:55:00 +0000 Received-SPF: pass (sog-mx-1.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com: domain of gmail.com designates 209.85.214.179 as permitted sender) client-ip=209.85.214.179; envelope-from=mh.in.england@gmail.com; helo=mail-ob0-f179.google.com; Received: from mail-ob0-f179.google.com ([209.85.214.179]) by sog-mx-1.v43.ch3.sourceforge.com with esmtps (TLSv1:RC4-SHA:128) (Exim 4.76) id 1UF601-0008A6-5v for bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net; Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:55:00 +0000 Received: by mail-ob0-f179.google.com with SMTP id un3so3512674obb.38 for ; Mon, 11 Mar 2013 09:54:51 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Received: by 10.60.171.230 with SMTP id ax6mr9211626oec.25.1363020891803; Mon, 11 Mar 2013 09:54:51 -0700 (PDT) Sender: mh.in.england@gmail.com Received: by 10.76.86.169 with HTTP; Mon, 11 Mar 2013 09:54:51 -0700 (PDT) In-Reply-To: References: <20130310043155.GA20020@savin> Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:54:51 +0100 X-Google-Sender-Auth: V-od6531WS3-mNWtSRHu2EW_Nso Message-ID: From: Mike Hearn To: =?UTF-8?B?Sm9yZ2UgVGltw7Nu?= Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 X-Spam-Score: -1.5 (-) X-Spam-Report: Spam Filtering performed by mx.sourceforge.net. See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details. -1.5 SPF_CHECK_PASS SPF reports sender host as permitted sender for sender-domain 0.0 FREEMAIL_FROM Sender email is commonly abused enduser mail provider (mh.in.england[at]gmail.com) -0.0 SPF_PASS SPF: sender matches SPF record 0.1 DKIM_SIGNED Message has a DKIM or DK signature, not necessarily valid -0.1 DKIM_VALID Message has at least one valid DKIM or DK signature X-Headers-End: 1UF601-0008A6-5v Cc: Bitcoin Dev Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Blocking uneconomical UTXO creation X-BeenThere: bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.9 Precedence: list List-Id: List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:55:00 -0000 Why does demurrage even still come up? The base rules of Bitcoin will not be changing in such a fundamental way. With regards to trying to minimize the size of the UTXO set, this again feels like a solution in search of a problem. Even with SD abusing micropayments as messages, it's only a few hundred megabytes today. That fits in RAM, let alone disk. If one day people do get concerned about the working set size, miners can independently set their own policies for what they confirm, for instance maybe they just bump the priority of any transaction that has fewer outputs than inputs. An IsStandard() rule now that tries to ban micropayments will just risk hurting interesting applications for no real benefit. It's like trying to anticipate and fix problems we might face in 2020. There are lots of less invasive changes for improving scalability, like making transaction validation multi-threaded in every case, transmitting merkle blocks instead of full blocks, moving blocking disk IO off the main loop so nodes don't go unresponsive when somebody downloads the chain from them, and finishing the payment protocol work so there's less incentive to replicate the SD "transactions as messages" design.