You can compress a file into an archive. You haven't made the file smaller, you've just compressed it. Putting blockchain into a database hasn't trimmed the actual dataset. It's just put it into a database, BBR would actually reduce the size of the dataset. Spending time on database is a commendable piece of work and a needed contribution to cryptonote, yet If I'm not wrong it's something which can, and would be expected be adopted by others. So you can have a 'pruned' dataset IN an embedded DB.
But it's not pruned, it's 'pruned'. It will continue growing forever - just because he bought an extra year or two for something that's not even really a problem for easily over five years doesn't really sell me on it right now. Specifically because it's an impartial solution to something that's not important right now when the chain is small. If he doesn't spend time on things that are important right now - building community, a real GUI, protocol bug fixes, multisig, firing btc-mike .. and instead spends all day working on things that have zero effect right now .. but can be done in the future .. then why would I ever think that he's gonna be working on the right thing? If one were to take this illegitimate 'pruning' as a selling point .. I would feel that there's a distinct lack of prioritization. I'm just not sold on that one, because of the trade offs involved (below). He has time to create a database - so why not work on that? Yes, I agree that 'pruned' in an embedded DB would be fantastic, but the reality is that taking a potshot on my mixins isn't the way to 'prune' cryptonote. I don't know what is .. but it's not that.
It was easiest to add sig pruning before launch. BBR can add a database later, when it is needed.
Care to elaborate, exactly how he ruined your anonymity set? factoring in the mandatory mixin features added. I don't disagree with some of gmaxwells statements though.
That's just it - now there's mandatory mixin features, you're left with no freedom to choose to mix at all .. and you pay higher tx fees because of that. What does this spur? Someone on the CN site said it best: A tragedy of the commons! It will get to a point where the biggest damn transactions will be chosen over the small ones, to an extreme and much faster when on a comparison with bitcoin or even Monero. The transactions are already larger with CN - there's only so many that can fit into a block, and even then there's only so much to the adaptive limit. The space will run out, and miners will cash the transactions worth the most value. It will cause transaction witholding attacks etc etc .. not something I'd want to encourage. Apart from that .. CZ decided to make space by trimming RS's. That means this data is not there to mix with when it originally would have been! Now we absolutely need miners to cash the highest mixin transactions in order to make more of an anonymity set, so that you can remain cryptographically anonymous in the first place!
There is not a mandatory mixin feature. Tx fee is not variable.
Yes, they get torn to shreds. Unfortunately we made a mistake, but we took the feedback and
corrected the error.