Bitcoin Forum

Satoshi was right! With 10Gbps technologies around the corner, Why fight for block size?


http://networks.nokia.com/news-events/press-room/press-releases/nokia-networks-showcases-5g-speed-of-10gbps-with-ni-at-the-brooklyn-5g-summit (http://networks.nokia.com/news-events/press-room/press-releases/nokia-networks-showcases-5g-speed-of-10gbps-with-ni-at-the-brooklyn-5g-summit)

I've been trying to find direct quotes by satoshi on this whole "to fork, or not to fork for bigger blocksizes" thing. Can you post them?

And yes, amazing shit in the pipeline, but still, if VISA can make tons of transactions daily today, why Bitcoin cant? it should be about waiting for the perfect tech to catch up with the current blocksize, ideally it should work with what we have now.

Here it is: http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg09964.html

I honestly don't think there ever was a legitimate argument for keeping a small blocksize (and it was certainly never about the limitations of technology, even if they claimed it was).  There's just a small but vocal minority of arrogant and greedy elitists who think bitcoin should only serve their interests.  If they can force the average user off-chain by restricting the number of transactions, it guarantees security for them at the expense of everyone else.  That won't work in the long run, though, as most people wouldn't support a network that benefits the few instead of the many.  The blocksize has to increase if adoption goes up, so naturally, one way or another, that's what's going to happen.

The point is 10G is near impossible to get , even 5G and 4G is really difficult to get. 3g and 2g pretty much useless though, to use technologies like 10G they should grow the infrastructure  and upgrade their equipments.

Wow thats pretty interesting, amazing how satoshi really thought about everything.
He also predicted the big mining farms. So he basically is saying that we are still at the beginning, since these technologies arent mainstream yet.

It's pretty clear from the posted writings that Satoshi put the 1MB block limit in place to prevent certain attacks on the very early block chain technology. He made it clear he never meant that limit to remain in place. The people who argue we must not increase the block size are fearful that a hard fork could result in disaster. But this need not be the case. It should be possible to hard fork for the good of the technology.

Specifically, new versions of Bitcoin should accept blocks legitimately mined by the old version, but of course old versions may reject blocks mined be the new version.

This means that if less than half the miners ever accept a forked version of Bitcoin, then the old version will win and even the new version miners will accept the old style blocks, no fork occurs.

On the other hand if more than half the mining power accepts a new forked version of Bitcoin, then we have a hard fork on our hands, and old versions may continue mining an alternate chain indefinitely, while claiming to be the one and only true Bitcoin.

The question is, what happens to these old version miners in the long run?

I argue they must be reduced to irrelevancy rather quickly, and here is why. Demand for block chain usage will only increase over time. The 1MB limit could only work in the very earliest times of Bitcoin. Eventually (and hopefully only after a successful fork), demand will pour over into the new Bitcoin fork, or if it has never been made then demand will pour over into Litecoin, which already can handle four times the number of transactions as Bitcoin can. So, without a hard fork, Litecoin becomes four times the market cap of Bitcoin as soon as demand outstrips the 1MB block limit.

So, it's fork or die for Bitcoin, as Satoshi well understood when he put the limit in place on the baby block chain.

Bitcoin is designed to justify its value by bringing real, new value into the world. That real, new value is access to the Byzantine block chain. Bitcoin must make it as available as the demand, or its own clones will kill it.

I managed to found something you may be interested in, although it is not direct quote about fork it is relevant imo: Satoshi Nakamoto, Aug. 5, 2010: While I don't think Bitcoin is practical for smaller micropayments right now, it will eventually be as storage and bandwidth costs continue to fall. … Whatever size micropayments you need will eventually be practical. I think in 5 or 10 years, the bandwidth and storage will seem trivial.

Not everywhere can have that bandwidth, that why limit the block size is important.

“The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed”

That doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for technological development. The fact that there are regions with no Internet at all is a political rather than technological issue, which Bitcoin is not designed to solve.

Wasn't google supposed to be working on something along that line? Actually I probably shouldn't even try to post this because I don't know if what I'm thinking is even related to what you guys are referring to so if not, don't throw stuff. I remember reading something but now it's fragmented and I'll probably butcher it before anyone else figures out what the hell I'm even referring to...but something about google putting in fiber optics or ?? lol dammit and I can't google it because I can't get to the 'thing' it was! But I thought it was basically google and the internet airwaves sailing over 4g to Xg...and it may or may not have been connected to the solar wifi drones but I'll stop with the fiber terrabyte thing because that's probably gonna land me in the target corner!

But if anyone can figure out what it is I'm trying to get across (and if so my gratitude :D ) would that be useful for bigger block sizes?




ETA 1 https://fiber.google.com/about/ - This may be what I was thinking. I'm still looking though. I also remember it having something to do with fiber optics vs cable, bandwidth and some podunk town in the midwest getting it first.









I'll facepalm for us all, don't worry.  :-\

We are the knights who say Ni, we demand a 5G speed of 10 gbps.. and a shrubbery!  Not really contributing, but it came to mind  ;D

The size is inherent to the chain, we cannot have a full ledger if it is not complete. Working with several ledgers and some overlap ledgers to secure the cross ledger transactions might solve something in the short run, but technology will indeed catch up. We have to be patient and it will all work out in the end.

The thing is, we need bandwidth as well as more cheap storage.

And the truth is, even if we have incredible speeds, it is not available to majority of the user base. Developing countries are still stuck on 512 kbps speeds even though developed countries have moved to much higher speeds.

If Bitcoin wants to go mainstream, it needs to be accessible for wider user base, many of whom can't afford Google Fibre or 5G speeds.

"So, without a hard fork, Litecoin becomes four times the market cap of Bitcoin as soon as demand outstrips the 1MB block limit."

But 4 times the max transaction capacity of Bitcoin is not really that much, compared to VISA etc... so Litecoin would run into the same problem as Bitcoin: to fork or not to fork.

What then?