Quote from: DannyHamilton on May 20, 2016, 10:43:12 PM

Quote from: AliceGored on May 20, 2016, 08:19:47 PM

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I bet he didn't see the 1MB anti spam limit being turned into a centrally determined economic policy tool
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Well, he definitely saw it being a centrally controlled tool, but he saw himself as that central control. In response to J. Garzik publishing a fork with a larger maxblocksize limit in October 2010 he said:

Quote from: satoshi on October 04, 2010, 07:47:00 PM

Don't use this patch, it'll make you incompatible with the network, to your own detriment.

We can phase in a change later if we get closer to needing it.

In 2010, 1MB was ridiculously higher than the actual usage of the blockchain for real economic uses. Satoshi was right that the change wasn't needed then, and Garzik had the foresight to see that it would eventually become a problem, which it did. Today, that entire 1MB is filled with real, fee-paying traffic, and Garzik is probably left wishing he would have defended his position more vigorously at the time. He probably didn't because it was widely agreed that it would be lifted before it was hit.

This all changed after Blockstream was founded.

Quote from: DannyHamilton on May 20, 2016, 10:43:12 PM

Quote from: satoshi on October 04, 2010, 07:48:40 PM

It can be phased in, like:

if (blocknumber > 115000)
maxblocksize = largerlimit

It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete.

When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade.

(bold emphasis added by me)

He didn't give any indication who should be in charge of that central control when he left.

Most would read this as having the maxblocksize limit above natural traffic, with miners deciding their own min fees and adjusting their blocksizes accordingly. That would be a free market situation, with a limit as a DoS safety check. What we have now is central economic planning by an insular and infallible priesthood of Core devs, the most influential of which formed/work for a company with its own interests. Interests that may be at odds with the health and competitiveness of the network proper.

The indication of who is in charge is in the whitepaper:

Quote

They vote with their CPU power, expressing their acceptance of valid blocks by working on extending them and rejecting invalid blocks by refusing to work on them. Any needed rules and incentives can be enforced with this consensus mechanism.

Unfortunately, the miners are extremely risk averse, and forking away from Core would cause fear and impact the short term price. Theymos controls bitcoin.org, r/bitcoin, and this forum... so he could theoretically have a good chance of encouraging a persistent network fork by offering a competing client with diff PoW, and censoring information about what was happening. Miners' fear of this outcome is currently more pronounced than the alternative of hemorrhaging users, investment, and tx's to altcoins.