what's interesting is that this attack is not slowing down block formation at_all.  we're just seeing continual full blocks.  based on Tradeblock's previous analysis, real customer tx's can probably get through if they pay a high enough fee.  unfortunately, the avg consumer won't know what that fee is given current wallet software capability and will get frustrated from delays.

edit:  altho unconf tx's aren't that bad at 4500

dying off again:

i don't think any spam attacks can be sustained for a prolonged period of time.  it's too expensive as they pay normal tx fees.  while yes, at 1MB, they crowd out normal users, at 8MB or more, the spammers have to pay 8x more in fees.  while the anti Gavin crowd will say it's a drop in the bucket to perform such an attack even at 8x, what they i think they miss is that those tx fees will be tremendously beneficial for the miners raking up all those free fees and actually is expensive.  that will strengthen mining which is always a good thing for an industry that has been under stress for over the last year.  that would be the last thing they want to do.  can you also imagine a sustained 8x increase in the tx graph below?:



and what that would do to the price?  an 8x increase?  pt being, a spam attack is and will get more and more expensive and uneconomical and even strengthen mining.  it's be like your local candy store; owners ideally would like to sell to as many kids on the block as possible to keep them all happy but if one big kid keeps coming in week after week and buying out all your inventory, you aren't going to complain.  you might even prefer it as your turnover increases and you make more money.

all in all, this is just another form of manipulation of an open source, transparent system that won't work in the end and shouldn't be used as a reason for us not to adopt Gavin's plan.

edit:  yes, full nodes will be more expensive. but we already know they will become specialized.  and once pruning comes in, ordinary users can still run those.

all over.  and it would be the same at 8MB:

I like Satoshi's quote on this:

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg09979.html


The nonchalance, to me, indicates a nice trust in markets to do their job of optimizing allocation over time. But - if Bitcoin ever starts to become a serious global economic force, mainstream economists are going to flip out over the above quote, given the initial-distribution algo didn't go through some deep analysis, etc... 

I think it's interesting how the engineering decision of making a simple/transparent (easy to implement, thus more secure) distribution algorithm trumped any potential detailed economic complexity, presumably due to Satoshi's understanding that the market would eventually allocate the capital optimally anyways, given the transparency of the current and future supply.

While I'm moderately against just increasing the block size. (I think that we should sort out the rest of the hard engineering infrastructure so we can actually support larger blocks first).

The main point is even on this forum we have nowhere near the 95%+ consensus that we need to do a hard-fork.

Gavin's latest proposal is just dangerous with only needing 75% of the miners to agree.

I would much prefer Bitcoin to continue to work with 1MB blocks, than be destroyed on the reckless quest for larger blocks.

cypherdoc changed his mind because Gavin did presumably.  Gavin did because it was easier to do this as quitely as possible than to try to change the laws of arithmetic.

Both of them know that it's the exponential growth that is the critical element here since it is pretty certain to sink Bitcoin eventually.  (Actually, cypherdoc may or may not know that or may or may not care much if he can make a buck in the interim.)

Like I've been saying about {n} MB increase _{(and exponential growth)} for the last while now: 'Watch the pea.'

Of course since I like the expression and it fits a few things here in bitcoinland,  so I've also been saying the same thing about UTXO size.

Whether the society and its elite is national or international or both is irrelevant. Relevant is: Do you promote the society (collectivism/paternalism) or the community (anarchy, self-sufficiency).

My god, cheezes christ, what a socialist pile of crap.

I can personally guarantee that bitcoin with the crucial coin limit will continue, even if I have to run my own miner and wait decennia before the difficulty adjusts. More likely though, I will be joined by at least a percentage of current miners, meaning the system will continue with the slight annoyance of having confirmation times of a day or so. Have your fork, the inflatacoin will go the way of the fiats.