Post
Topic
Board Speculation
Re: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.
by
Carlton Banks
on 23/06/2015, 23:05:41 UTC
I would rather see voting by miners done in the future for changes to be made in the future, than see guesses made today applied far into the future.

For readers who have studied feedback control systems:

   Q. How do you get a good closed-loop response?

   A. Start with a good open-loop one.  

The point is that the Bitcoin system will need tweaking (feedback) at some point in time in the future.  It is best if these tweaks are as small as possible.  That means that the guesses we make now about the future (realize that there's no way not to guess) should be as realistic as possible, thereby giving us a good open-loop response that needs as little feedback as possible to correct.  

There's a faint suggestion here that there is only one possible way to make bitcoin scale up, and it involves guessing which block size corresponds to which required rate of transactions. Which implies you believe the whole thing scales up using block size increases only. Is this really what you're implying?

No, I'm just trying to make the point that there's no way not to guess.  A lot of people think the "static" 1 MB limit is somehow neutral while a growing cap is more of a guess.  They're both guesses.  One will turn out to be more accurate than the other and thus require less tweaking going forward...

Ok, so if you accept that the blocksize is not the only solution to the problem, then would you also accept that your guess for the rate of block size increase can only be sensibly made when the overall context you are applying it to is known? i.e. design first how you intend to mitigate the problems that bigger blocks bring, then you come up with your goldilocks increase curve?

One that note, starting with a good open-loop response is not the only way to get a good closed-loop one.  There's another way: throw a lot of energy at your system!  Or in Bitcoin's case, a lot of debate and arguments!!    

If only raw hot air could solve this problem, we'd have finished with this probelm a long time ago  Cheesy