Block size discussion between Erik Voorhees and Roger Ver

[rogerver]

Erik and I recently exchanged some emails on this subject. I thought the Bitcoin community may find our discussion useful, so I've made it public below.

Hi Erik,

Congratulations on becoming a father in addition to the fast growth.

Bitcoin Core’s refusal to scale is about the best thing that could happen for Shapeshift.
It is breaking my heart for Bitcoin though.
https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-bloc ... 0&address=

I already know of VC firms and major companies that are choosing not to get involved with Bitcoin currently, specifically because of this issue.
I really think you should reconsider your support of Core’s road blocks for scaling Bitcoin.

Roger Ver

Hey Roger,

Thanks for the congratulations

What do you think of the Roundtable Consensus plan? Ignoring whether it will happen or not, what do you think of the structure?

We haven’t formally supported anything from Core at this point. I share your opinion of the need for bigger blocks soon.

-Erik

Hi Erik,

The Roundtable consensus from last week is too little too late.
It isn’t a fast enough scaling roadmap to accommodate all the new users that are coming.

Please take a look at this chart, ponder the rate of growth and how much time we have left before there isn’t room for new people to start using bitcoin.
We are talking about just a few weeks. We might even already be there today.


Then look at the unconfirmed transaction pool, currently 13MB or more than 2 hours for the network to clear if all other Bitcoin transactions were to cease completely.

Bitcoin needs to scale, and needs to scale significantly right now.
I know of multiple large companies who specifically have decided NOT to integrate bitcoin at this time because their user base would overwhelm the the current Blockchain capacity.
This is a huge missed opportunity for all of us.

Respectfully,

Roger Ver

Hi Erik,

Please see my comments inline below.

Hey Roger,

So, you know I generally agree with you on this issue. I think blocks should be bigger, ASAP.

Let me play devil’s advocate here for a second though, because I’m interested in your opinion on a couple counter points:

1) SegWit will likely be available in Apr/May and probably quite widely used by summer. This enables maybe 50% more txs per block. It doesn’t “solve” scaling issues, but it does buy time, perhaps a year. In this case, SegWit would help alleviate the crisis for a year, until the blocks increase in size in mid 2017. Is there a fatal flaw with this opinion from your perspective?

Please take a look at this chart again. The bitcoin block size has been increasing at about the rate of 2.5 times every year for the past few years.
I expect that rate of growth to stay the same, or even increase. If that is the case, the 50% gain provided by Segwit is likely to only be able to cary us through to June of this year.
This is no where near enough.

2) As we bump up against the block limit (which I agree is starting to happen already during bursts), users will need to increase mining fees to have assurance of timely confirmation. If many wallets use smart fee systems (like BitGo) which make this fairly non-burdensome for the users, then we would expect fees to rise modestly, and the “least valuable” transactions start to not be placed on the blockchain. For example, sending 0.00024 BTC might not be worthwhile anymore if fees rise. So some certainly use cases of Bitcoin would be hampered, but the majority of normal users would still get into blocks reasonably quickly. <— I have my own problems with this argument, but what are your thoughts? Do you think every single use case of BTC transaction needs to be accommodated by the blockchain itself right now?

Even if this were true, we still run into the exact same problem, it will just be a few extra months down the road. Let’s assume everyone agrees that transactions of less than $1 in value shouldn’t be on the blockchain. Let’s also assume that each 1MB block can contain a maximum of 2,000 transactions
What happens when more than 2,000 people every ten minutes want to send more than $1. Many many financial institutions already do this kind of volume.
I know first hand of two large companies that were interested in integrating Bitcoin last year, but specifically chose not to because their user base would have created more transactions than the 1MB blocks could handle.
This is likely why Paypal hasn’t already integrated Bitcoin. Even with 2MB blocks, there isn't enough room for Paypal to start using Bitcoin. (Paypal does about 4M transactions per day. That would require about 13MB blocks with the current architecture if all of their transactions were on chain)
This is a HUGE ROADBLOCK to further adoption. We need to have enough excess capacity at all times so that companies like Paypal, Western Union, or Wells Fargo could instantly give all of their users access to Bitcoin, and not overwhelm the network. That isn’t the case today, and is directly hindering adoption of the large firms that we want to have involved.

Again, I fully agree blocks should be increased very soon. I don’t want to wait until 2017. But, if that is what the community comes to consensus around, is it really so fatal as you describe?

Yes. All of these giant potential blocks of users won’t be able to use bitcoin because there won’t be enough capacity for them.
This will push them to use alt coins, or their own private blockchains, or not get involved at all.
Bitcoin will become an interesting side note because of it.

Sorry I can’t join everyone at the roundtable this weekend, I really wish I could. I’m hopefully it will help key industry participants start coming to terms on a consensus for Bitcoin. The division in the community is still, in my opinion, a bigger threat than block scarcity.
Your own speaking out on the need for having substantial excess capacity can help with this problem a lot.
I look forward to seeing you the next time.

Interested in your thoughts on the above.

Kind regards,
-Erik Voorhees
CEO ShapeShift.io

Hey Roger,

Feel free to post the discussion publicly.
So, your points are valid certainly. Generally your concern is that SegWit, and even a 2MB increase, are too little too late.

They are certainly much better than where we are at today, but it isn’t fast enough to accommodate the growth that Bitcoin is experiencing.

What then do you suggest as an appropriate block size?

Enough to accommodate as many people that want to use Bitcoin.
The throughput capacity of Bitcoin counts more than the block size, but until 2nd layer protocols like lightning network are ready, increasing the block size is a super easy way to add capacity.

Do you think it should grow whenever the limit is approached?

I think it should grow in advance of the limit ever being approached. This way, new potential new users of Bitcoin will know that there is going to be room for them to get involved.
Currently, even existing Bitcoin companies are exploring other alt coins to handle their capacity. This is completely unnecessary and can be solved very easily and quickly by a block size increase while the 2nd layer protocols for scaling continue to be made ready.

Should it grow in this way forever, even if blocks become huge, like 100 MB, within a few years?

From a storage capacity point of view, even today 100MB blocks are almost feasible.
My first digital camera, in around 2001 used a 1.44MB floppy disk to store the photos, and could fit about 25 photos per disk. That means each photo was about 50KB.
Today, my 128GB iPhone, costs less, and takes photos that are nearly 10MB, or 200 times what my first digital camera took.
In just a few years, 100MB blocks and the 5TB required to store them each year won’t seem like much at all.
Even today, a 8TB hard drive is less than $200, and could hold 100% full 10MB blocks for the next 16 years.
In 16 years from now, that 8TB hard drive will be garbage. We will look back upon it the same way we look back on 800MB hard drives that were common about 16 years ago.

In application development, there is a general phenomenon where a business can scale either with a) more servers or b) better, more efficient code. Often, there is a tendency to just add servers to scale (this is equivalent to increasing the block size). It is easy, sure, but it can cause other problems down the road. Alternatively, sometimes it’s better to force oneself not to buy more servers, and instead to make the code more efficient. Once you know you’ve made the code as efficient and capable as possible, only then do you resort to more servers (knowing they will be better utilized, and not wasteful).

Working on making the code more efficient can take place even while we increase the block size in advance of the efficiency improvements being ready. Even proponents of lightning network admit that blocks will need to be at least 32MB in the future to accommodate more users.

I think many of the “small blocks” people feel like it is irresponsible to just increase the block size to bring in all the transactions of big companies at this stage. They want to make the code better - to enable more txs without larger blocks, and when those avenues have been exhausted, then a block size increase becomes more appropriate.

We can make the blocks bigger today to increase the capacity. Then, once the code is ready, we can make the usage of those blocks more efficient. If we were to have 8MB blocks today, filled with conventional transactions, we could repurpose that same 8MB worth of block space to be used for lighting network and other layer two solutions in the future. It’s not like once we increase the block size today, the space in those blocks can never be used more efficiently in the future.

Do you see any wisdom in that way of thinking? Also, since not even 2MB or 4MB blocks would satisfy one or two “large companies like paypal,” don’t you feel that any increase is too little too late?

If 100% of Paypal’s transactions were moved onto the blockchain, it would take 13MB worth of block space. Even with today’s technology and bitcoin code, this is easily handled.
We are shooting ourselves in the foot by not creating room for new users.

Personally, I am not as concerned about some of these problems. Bitcoin will evolve in strange and unpredictable ways, and I don’t know that any of us can really see it’s future clearly. The honey badger principle applies here. I see Bitcoin as water, flowing over the financial system, inundating it, and completely changing it. How that water flows isn’t as important.

Regardless… weighing all the arguments, I feel a conservative block increase has manageable downside risk, and significant short and medium term benefit, both to give the system more time to grow organically before more contentious mechanics of “fee markets” develop (that seems an appropriate discussion for a mature Bitcoin, not a system still rising up through childhood). Maintaining 1MB blocks indefinitely, which was a very arbitrary choice by Satoshi, anyway, unecessarily stifles growth at this particular moment in Bitcoin’s history.

Would love to hear your thoughts on the above.

-Erik

[rogerver]

Hey Roger,

Thanks for the answers. One point of clarification… regarding the size of blocks, surely you know that the issue isn’t one of space. We all know that hard drives are cheap, and are growing in size very fast. I don’t think the small block folks are concerned about the storage of the blockchain. Rather, it’s the latency - the transmission of blocks over the internet that becomes the problem in their opinion. If blocks are too big, they become difficult to propagate, especially when other factors such as the Great Firewall are thrown into the mix.

In my opinion, this seems like a good reason not to increase blocks to something reckless like 20MB or 100MB right away. But I see very little risk in increasing to 2 or 4 MB. I don’t think the lowest common denominator of potential full node operator should be the basis for Bitcoin’s architecture. If there is some server behind the Great Firewall that has crappy internet and can’t handle propagation of 2MB blocks, that doesn’t bother me. As long as “most normal node operators” can run things without significant propagation issues, it seems wise to increase block size to that level.

Thoughts on the propagation? After your answer, I think I’ll edit and format and post our discusion on /r/bitcoin if it’s okay with you?

-Erik

The small block side always seems to have an ephemeral reason for not wanting bigger blocks.
First it is storage, then bandwidth, then latency, then the great fire wall of China, then block validation times.
I think all of these people are confusing the maximum block size with the actual block size.
Up until a few weeks ago there was effectively no block size limit. 1MB was consistently more than what the network ever required.
If we raise the block size to 100MB tomorrow, blocks will still be about 1MB for the next few weeks. then they will be 1.1MB, then 1.2MB, then 1.3MB, and on and on. If we start running into problems the miners and network will have to voluntarily pull pack, lest we will all destroy what we are working so hard to create. No miner is interested in mining bitcoins that aren't worth anything.

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

"That would require about 13MB blocks with the current architecture if all of their transactions were on chain) "

[ronnieb]

Thanks for the share... lots of educational content in those posts!!

[SpartanZA]

Thank you for that. A lot of it has gone over my head, but that is the lack of understanding I have and not the way the discussion has been presented. But I am learning.

Question, again, maybe stupid, there is a discussion about HDD and how cheap and bigger they are getting. Does it make a difference if the harddrive is Solid State or conventional? SSD hard drive are obviously faster, would that affect the block chain?

[rogerver]

Does it make a difference if the harddrive is Solid State or conventional? SSD hard drive are obviously faster, would that affect the block chain?

In a few more years, all drives will be SSD, so this question won't be relevant.

[disco]

Hi Roger & Erik,

Regarding whether SegWit is "enough" to last until 2017, one point I don't see mentioned in your chat is just how effective SegWit would be in real life. Your starting point for debate seems to stipulate that you'll get the full capacity (meaning all tx are SegWit). That will not happen any time soon. Wallets have always been slow to adopt even simple changes such as dynamic fees. I suspect it'll be at least a year before even a significant portion of tx use SegWit.

While he does repeat this concern several times, I think Roger's point about companies failure to adopt Bitcoin due to lack of headroom can't be stressed enough. When I've discussed Bitcoin with non-techies -- business and marketing types, there always comes a point in the conversation where the topic of capacity comes up, and they look at me like they think they misheard when I tell them how limited it is. I fear that we may already be way too late in this. Many otherwise interested parties have already dismissed Bitcoin as a possibility for this simple reason. The industry's shift to talking about Blockchains should have been a real clue that we were getting left behind.

Lastly, we need more diversity when it comes to setting the direction of Bitcoin's development. So much talk about decentralization, yet we have to contend with small numbers of pool operators and developers dictating the path. Larger blocks supporting more transactions, more businesses, more users will invariably lead to less centralization because it will represent a larger pool of interests.

Kind regards,

Aaron G

[JalToorey]

The small block side always seems to have an ephemeral reason for not wanting bigger blocks.
First it is storage, then bandwidth, then latency, then the great fire wall of China, then block validation times.
I think all of these people are confusing the maximum block size with the actual block size.
Up until a few weeks ago there was effectively no block size limit. 1MB was consistently more than what the network ever required.
If we raise the block size to 100MB tomorrow, blocks will still be about 1MB for the next few weeks. then they will be 1.1MB, then 1.2MB, then 1.3MB, and on and on. If we start running into problems the miners and network will have to voluntarily pull pack, lest we will all destroy what we are working so hard to create. No miner is interested in mining bitcoins that aren't worth anything.

Its too easy to pick out the counter-arguments that are poor and then make urself look smart by countering them. I have reasoning that you have never listed in regards to why would should not try to scale bitcoin as a coffee money.

[rogerver]

I have reasoning that you have never listed in regards to why would should not try to scale bitcoin as a coffee money.

So are you going to post that reasoning, or just keep it secret?

[JalToorey]

I have reasoning that you have never listed in regards to why would should not try to scale bitcoin as a coffee money.

So are you going to post that reasoning, or just keep it secret?

Bitcoin left as is, or in other words not scaled to attempt to keep it a coffee money, becomes the mechanism that John Nash describes will bring about Ideal Money. He criticizes NOT Keynes but the Keynesian philosophy that our economy should be based on inflation.

This suggests, which is what I am sure we both now agree to the truth of, that bitcoin cannot widely circulate as a currency, since circulation happens relative to the quality of a money, which is in effect the inflation schedule.

Nash is very explicate, in how such a currency like bitcoin could be used to bring the global financial system that will bring about Ideal Money, where IDEAL MONEY is specifically defined as a money that does not inflate over time.

Bitcoin is the precursor, it is not, and cannot be ideal money, it is the new gold that is needed to force central banks to play ball.

But if bitcoin is arbitrarily scaled to be a coffee money then it cannot be used to bring about Ideal Money.

Please don't start from the conclusion that this is not important, not useful, or wrong. I have read what other have not, a VERY extensive and exhaustive arrangement in regards to Gresham's law. Nash is correct, in every way, and he already had this argument with himself, the best game master of all time. He contemplated all perspectives and laid out a perfect argument, he simply used obfuscation to hide the meaning so as not to be confined again (Proof: https://medium.com/@rextar4444/ideal-mo ... .eirzvygbt).

Here we can remember the classic ancient economics saying called “Gresham’s law” which was “the bad money drives out the good”. The saying of Gresham’s is mostly of interest here because it illustrates the “old” or “classical” concept of “bad money” and this can be contrasted with more recent attitudes which have been very much influenced by the Keynesians and by the result of their influence on government policies since the 30s.~John Nash, Ideal Money

But the famous classical “Gresham’s Law” also reveals the intrinsic difficulty. Thus “good money” will not naturally supplant and replace “bad money” by a simple Darwinian superiority of competitive species. Rather than that, it must be that the good things are established by the voluntary choice of human agencies.~John Nash Ideal Money

Sir, if you are sincere, then levate this argument and proposal, because it has the potential to change the world and bring our global financial system in order. Let us let go of our beliefs that we must fight for bitcoin's honor as a world currency, there is something MUCH bigger at stake to achieve.

Cheers, thank you for your time!

[rogerver]

Gresham's Law doesn't apply to Bitcoin because their isn't a fixed exchange rate.
It would only apply if government's tried to set a fixed exchange rate from BTC to some type of fiat.

I also think there is a lot more to "Ideal money" than just a lack of inflation.

Here are some of the properties that I think "Ideal Money" requires:

[JalToorey]

You are misunderstanding but I would still believe you are being sincere. And I think I might be able to clear it up.

You have stated one aspect of Gresham's law but it is not the relevant aspect. Gresham's law explains that people hoard good money, or exchange it "overseas" etc., and they circulate the bad money (and/or domestically).

Of course the money has changed over time, but Gresham's law is still relevant today in that people will hoard money that is perceived to go up in value and spend the inflating currencies.

Can't really say its not relevant because it is how our global financial system works right?

You point out some key characteristics of money, but we are not discussing such things when I ask these questions. I don't mean "Ideal Money" by some definition we are arguing over, I mean by the definition of money that doesn't lose its value over time. Whatever you want to call that "Nash's Ideal" "Jal's Ideal" whatever, but to address a different standard of ideal is again to dodge the simple and basic question.

If you want to argue such a characteristic is Ideal, you may do so separately from the basic question I am asking about the nature of money in regard to bitcoin's future.

As bitcoin is expected to continually rise in price, rational actors will save it and not spend it, this is obvious, intuitive, and accepted economic science, which you claim to espouse. Then there cannot be an argument for bitcoin as a circulated currency, because as you have previously admitted hoarding and circulation run in opposite directions.

Changing the context of the question so you don't have to address it is not dialogue, debate, scientific, or reason.

[JalToorey]

There is another question that is more to the point and related to you example(s) of what YOU think constitutes Ideal Money. Would you really, flat out disagree, with Dr Nash's thesis, who has done 60+ years of meditation on the subject and spent 20 of the last year of his life writing and speaking about the importance of the subject and the definition he gives, but without understanding him or reading the works first?

They say you are sincere, I read a lot of players write that about you...

You claim to be scientific, economical etc...

Will you really disagree with the literature without reading it and coming to understand it first?

Or will you let this be your introduction into the significance of the lecture Ideal Money. I promise you it is VERY relevant here, and this is coming from someone who is quite familiar with Nash's works.

I am claiming if you enter sincere dialogue with me on the subject that we will change the world.

You are disagreeing with an argument you haven't come to hear yet.

I present something different than you have experience from any other, I know this because I have found no one that espouses the insight that comes from John Nash.

I have the important key to this debate.

[rogerver]

You are misunderstanding but I would still believe you are being sincere. And I think I might be able to clear it up.

You have stated one aspect of Gresham's law but it is not the relevant aspect. Gresham's law explains that people hoard good money, or exchange it "overseas" etc., and they circulate the bad money (and/or domestically).

Sorry,
I'm still not understanding your point.
I don't think Gresham's law applies at all in this instance because Bitcoin can be freely traded on markets around the world.

Bitcoin isn't over valued or undervalued because its price is allowed to float.
Gresham's law applies to things like $1 coins that are made out of an ounce of silver.
No one is stupid enough to believe that those coins are still worth only $1 today, so they are hoarded, and people use pieces of paper that are marked $1. This is a direct result of government's trying to claim that the one ounce silver coins are only worth $1.
Bitcoin doesn't have any of these problems because its price is set on the market, not by government decree. People will decide what amount in Bitcoin they will save or spend. I spend some of my bitcoins, and I save others. I don't see any contradiction here.

[JalToorey]

You aren't addressing what I am asking. Vitalik asked me to taboo a word once, "keynesian" he wanted to know what I meant by that word, so he asked me to give a detail extension, using my definition rather than the word itself.


Gresham's law in the sense that I mean it, is not the wiki summary. The law was used to explain that people hoard good money and circulate bad money. There is a sense of this in government mandated currency prices yes, and debased coinage etc. But the RELEVANT definition in regard to today's currency systems is that inflated currencies gain velocity.

The law was named after Sir Thomas Gresham, a sixteenth-century financial agent of the English Crown in the city of Antwerp, to explain to Queen Elizabeth I what was happening to the English shilling.

According to the economist George Selgin in his paper "Gresham's Law":
As for Gresham himself, he observed "that good and bad coin cannot circulate together" in a letter written to Queen Elizabeth on the occasion of her accession in 1558. The statement was part of Gresham's explanation for the "unexampled state of badness" England's coinage had been left in following the "Great Debasements" of Henry VIII and Edward VI, which reduced the metallic value of English silver coins to a small fraction of what it had been at the time of Henry VII. It was owing to these debasements, Gresham observed to the Queen, that "all your fine gold was convayed out of this your realm."[12]

I also have the fed study on bitcoin explaining this exact same principle.

We could argue about Gresham's law all day, but I am not referring to the same aspect as you and I am using gresham's law as a compartmentalized phrase to explain a certain phenomenon. And I am doing this exactly how John Nash did, who is THE most knowledgeable person on economics I have ever come across.

Very simply put, people do not circulate good money, they hoard it and circulate bad money, and this is known as Gresham's law.

Here we can remember the classic ancient economics saying called “Gresham’s law” which was “the bad money drives out the good”. The saying of Gresham’s is mostly of interest here because it illustrates the “old” or “classical” concept of “bad money” and this can be contrasted with more recent attitudes which have been very much influenced by the Keynesians and by the result of their influence on government policies since the 30s.~John Nash, Ideal Money

But the famous classical “Gresham’s Law” also reveals the intrinsic difficulty. Thus “good money” will not naturally supplant and replace “bad money” by a simple Darwinian superiority of competitive species. Rather than that, it must be that the good things are established by the voluntary choice of human agencies.~John Nash Ideal Money

Ideal Money is relevant.

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

You are misunderstanding but I would still believe you are being sincere. And I think I might be able to clear it up.

You have stated one aspect of Gresham's law but it is not the relevant aspect. Gresham's law explains that people hoard good money, or exchange it "overseas" etc., and they circulate the bad money (and/or domestically).

Sorry,
I'm still not understanding your point.
I don't think Gresham's law applies at all in this instance because Bitcoin can be freely traded on markets around the world.

Bitcoin isn't over valued or undervalued because its price is allowed to float.
Gresham's law applies to things like $1 coins that are made out of an ounce of silver.
No one is stupid enough to believe that those coins are still worth only $1 today, so they are hoarded, and people use pieces of paper that are marked $1. This is a direct result of government's trying to claim that the one ounce silver coins are only worth $1.
Bitcoin doesn't have any of these problems because its price is set on the market, not by government decree. People will decide what amount in Bitcoin they will save or spend. I spend some of my bitcoins, and I save others. I don't see any contradiction here.

@ JalToorey - Around goes the marry go round'

[JalToorey]

@ JalToorey - Around goes the marry go round'

I think Roger is being sincere enough; perhaps you might follow suit.

[iFixBTCmemoryIssues]

@ JalToorey - Around goes the marry go round'

I think Roger is being sincere enough; perhaps you might follow suit.

There is nothing I haven't said that isn't sincere. In fact, I've helped you by giving you financial advice.

A long time ago, someone said to me, "you're not like the others, they go one way when told, you go the other way". I agree with that, it's why I am successful.

[JalToorey]

Now I am compelled to ask Roger, why is there an incessant troll, pushing their self in between what could otherwise be significant mutually gainful dialogue?

[rogerver]

Now I am compelled to ask Roger, why is there an incessant troll, pushing their self in between what could otherwise be significant mutually gainful dialogue?

I actually think ifixBTCmemoryIssues is sincere as well. If you check his profile, he is busy posting things all over this forum.