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by Jabanga
3242 days ago
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It did not have payment channel code. There is nothing to indicate that the nLockTime field was originally intended for use in payment channels. There is no source for when the conversation between Satoshi and the developer, in which Satoshi describes payment channel functionality, took place. And large blocks were very much part of Bitcoin's original plan. They were described even before the initial release of the software: http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg099... |
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It's strange thing to try to summarize something and have someone question it happened at all. The subtext of this confuses me. This is a public mailing list and most of the people are still around and can answer much better than I can why the design of the opcodes are the way they are. There have been surprisingly many blind alleys in the short life of Bitcoin.
Payment channels are what Satoshi advocated, but it was my impression at the time that many others were more interested in things like sidechains and bearer proofs. The scalability of a system where everyone stores everyone else's transactions for all eternity was and still is the first thing people comment on. The second is the feasibility of everyday payments when the recommended confirmation time is up to an hour, best case. That's the reason people took interest in these proposals, even at a time when there was no economic pressure to do so, as transactions were completely free.
There's was no "original plan" as much as there were discussions. That doesn't mean Satoshi didn't have opinions. If your impression of the block size is shaped by the carnival mirror that is Reddit, it might be interesting to look at the reasoning why this limit was kept in place. But none of that matters in practice right now, because there is overwhelming consensus to double the block size (or quadruple, thinking adversarially) in a backwards compatible way and this will be active in a matter of weeks.