Bitcoin Forum

Found this online:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZp7UGgBR0I

Makes sense to me. Thought i drop it here.

Was it paid by Coinbase? :D

Doesn't make sense to me.

Seems to use fear and emotion as a propaganda tool to keep people from paying attention to the details (of which it gets several important ones wrong).

As just one example, 1 MB blocks don't realistically support "7 transactions per second".  It's really more like 3 transactions per second.

Also, there is nothing "magical" about 1 MB.  I think we could almost all agree that 1 TB blocks would be "too big" and that 1 KB blocks would be "too small".  Somewhere between those extremes is a number that is "just right", but that number probably changes over time.  Why are you so certain that the correct number today is 1 MB, and not 750 KB or 1.75 MB?

Mining costs will continue to increase regardless of the block size.  It was designed into the nature of Bitcoin from the very beginning.  Satoshi said so himself. So large powerful and regulated pools will occur regardless of blocksize.

Besides, how are "large powerful and regulated off-chain payment processors" any different than "large powerful and regulated pools"?

Great video. Will share. Thanks.

I guess I'm a large financial institution.   That video was total bullshit.  Even if the block size magically jumped to 20 MB right away, I could still run a node in my house with no problems.  

It's hard to wrap my mind around the fact that there's this minority of people who can't understand basic facts.  They seem too smart to actually believe the crap they say so there must be alternative motivation.  When there's billions of dollars at stake, there's always going to be paid shills or reasons to try and destroy a system.  Maybe they are trying to knock Bitcoin down or they are trying to corner the market with their centralized solutions.

nice and professionally created video, even I disagree. anyway, it was already discussed https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=208200.0 and site not working at all:(

Has Gavin changed his proposal to a one-time increase to 20MB or is it still an increase to 20MB with an automatic 50% increase per year?  I would support the first, and strongly oppose the second.

Check here: http://gavinandresen.ninja/bigger-blocks-another-way

He's pushing for the 20MB increase.

Peter Todd was the primary driving force behind the creation of the vid to the best of my knowledge, and I personally contributed significantly in a financial sense.

Probably the most important take-away is the image of a transparent processor where operations could not be hidden (if there were market demand for one.)  Coinbase is absolutely not in that category and to this date no real implementation of such off-chain solutions displaying this characteristic really exist, but I must admit that there well could be some which I am not aware of since I don't pay that close attention.  One way or another, it is fairly easy to balance risk between off-chain providers and core holdings.  No matter how shitty the off-chain implementation the option always exist to do this sort of risk balancing and this largely blows the ubiquitous argument that off-chain providers cans steal all your money out of the water.  Even in the worst of circumstanced they can only steal what you let them.

Contrast this with the ability of an entity to steal one's money via fungibility attacks on Bitcoin itself such as blacklisting/whitelisting which is an across-the-board attack.  It is also, parenthetically, something which has characterized Mike Hearn's interest in Bitcoin since at least 2011.  Ponder on that a little before 'upgrading' to XT.  Or don't.  I'm actually not totally adverse to having the Pied Piper lead a lot of you idiots away and Bitcoin will be the better for it.

The video was made before there was any real discussion of sidechains and the 'two-way-peg'.  Also before crypto methods of having transactions 'revert' such that not only could it be the case that an off-chain provider could not take your money as his own (which would solve 99% of theft problems in and of itself) but there likely are ways to have it so that you could eventually have your balance restored.  Or even more if the off-chain provider posted a bond which, again, could in theory be validated via transparency in operations.

Between nearly perfect proxy behavior for the Bitcoin circulation base, transparency, and crypto-extensions which significantly mitigate the counter-party risk, and the breadth of mutually conflicting niches that purpose tuned off-chain solutions could serve, they are hugely promising.  Those who would attack Bitcoin have no choice but to do it quickly before sidechains come on-line even if their attacks are pre-mature.  It's the last best hope.

Now how many punched cards, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punched_card, does it take to store this video? Furthermore how many trees have to be cut down to make these punched cards?  Distribution of video in digital form is totally unsustainable and very damaging to the environment.

It doesn't make sense to me either. I wonder why it is hard to spend 1 minute doing research to find posts that show that the actual tps is 2-3 and not 7?
Even though I do not favor bloat (as syncing might become painful unless we have pruning), there is no way that we would need "expensive data centers" to run nodes.

Side chains and similar technology will definitely benefit Bitcoin in the future, however I do not think that 1 MB will be sufficient even for larger transactions only in the future. Would it not be better to do this now in addition to buying time with it? Although I'm not favoring 20 MB blocks, 4 or 8 MB would be better for me.
That should quiet down some people whose only reason is "centralization".


It looks like most of the people didn't notice the date of the upload:
That's 2 years ago.

coinbase is pro fork.

and the video is idiotic.

To new users of Bitcoin/bitcoin, this video is very good at arguing against increasing the limit.
One way it does so is by arguing that the original intention of bitcoin will be eroded and destroyed.
Most new users know Bitcoin/bitcoin as being "freedom from centralization/banks/governments/agencies/[fill in the blank]/etc".

Whether this video is factually correct or not, is not important. Propaganda is propaganda and has 5,931 views.

To most users of Bitcoin/bitcoin, they do not understand or wish to understand any of the facts or fundamentals. (IMO).
The blocksize limit argument, in relation to the masses, will be won by emotional arguments and statements such as these.
(Eventhough, I believe currently, most users are for an increase, and up to around 20 MB.)

I think someone, who supports raising the 1MB cap, who has the know how and skill, should make a video in response.
I would very much enjoy seeing and hearing the opposing arguments in the same style and fashion as this one.

Edit: Spelling.

Well if the noobs would fall for it, Id say it would help the cause.  :P
But seriously, someone should make one for raising the cap, preferably with truths though.

And yet this whole mess is as relevant today as it was 2 years ago when the video was posted.

Every time I see another post about this topic (after the hundreds of similar threads I've participated in over the past few years) I just roll my eyes.

It's like people seem to think that somehow, by starting a new thread, they will finally win their argument, and everyone else will finally see things their way.

Everyone agrees that "something" needs to change, but they each have their own tightly held belief about what that "something" is.  There are VERY FEW at all that are willing to consider any alternative idea with an open mind and an honest look at the facts.

It's so much easier to grab a few poorly thought out catchphrases and repeat them ad nauseum while implying (or outright shouting) that anybody that disagrees is either a mush minded idiot or has an agenda to destroy bitcoin.

Four legs good, two legs bad!

Well I've wanted to point out that some of the "nonsense" in the video could be explained by the date of upload (creation). The situation now is definitely much different that it was back then.
My view has definitely changed since I got hold on information in regards to different solutions e.g. side chains, lightning network. I guess people also don't realize that no solution is "perfect". Most of the time I've encountered individuals either thinking that increasing the block size will solve all problems; increasing the fees; side chains and what not.

However, I agree with you. These 'discussions' have worn me out ,and from the looks of it, they aren't going to solve anything.

No FUD about it, and in fact my goals are pretty much the opposite of 'elitist' in the sense that I very much want everyone who wishes and needs to to benefit by the existence of Bitcoin.  That cannot happen if Bitcoin is destroyed in the sense that it becomes just another PayPal with the same basic set of failure modes.

As I was reading Satoshi's whitepaper for the first time I could see that the system would not scale beyond the 'elitist' use-case while retaining some of the unique properties which were actually interesting to me.  I did, however, see that it could potentially provide a foundation upon which some of my aspirations for it could be built.  I took my initial position on the hope that this would eventually occur although at the time I considered it a long-shot.  I still do, but I have more hope now than I ever have and Maxwell's run-down of the work that various participants under the Blockstream banner was very helpful.  I sense that just as this work has given me hope it has caused some level of panic on the part of those who are threatened by a uncontrolable Bitcoin.

With "Gavincoin" in the title, how could the video possibly be worth wasting time on?

But it is Gavincoin, isn't it? "XT" is what they would love to call it cuz that sounds to fresh and modern but really it's Geavin/Hearncoin and got nothing to do with the consensus based 'Bitcoin core' we are all using right now.
Gavincoin is an alt and everyone would be better off if these clowns would release it as an seperate coin instead of vandalizing bitcoin network.

Wow, is this a video from 2013 for real? Who would have thought it'd become so relevant again. What do we know about the creation of this video?

Edit: Todd is the word

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=208200.0

That may or may not be the case.  It is a viable argument that the Bitcoin ecosystem contains a lot of participants who don't need it and who are doing it harm and causing excess risk a long as they are around.

It very well could be a gift if a lot of them were siphoned off, and I can think of few sieves which would be more nicely sized than the 20MB-plus-exponential-growth, damn-the-centralization-full-speed-ahead. govt-is-powerless-against-us one.  The piper's best tune to draw them away would be 'XT is the real Bitcoin.'

Finally I understand the whole 1MB vs Gavincoin talk. THANKS to the person who made that video.
In my optionion is the idea about buyin a cup of coffee with bitcoin just stupid.
This could be handled by payment processsors (like to video say) so we can finally stop all that talk about that bitcoin has too long confirmation time. Well even though I hate altcoins, thoese can be used to buy coffee as well if you like.

Bitcoin should be used for larger transactions, online sale, cars, houses ect. where the confirm time is irrelevent.

Before the video I kinda supported the 20Mb..... but am I convist that keeping the 1MB is the right choice.

we created a market on the likelihood of a raise of the block size before mid March 2015. Recently the likelihood moved from 10% to around 30%. However - the volume is still low so that doesn't mean too much: https://www.fairlay.com/event/category/bitcoin/blockchain/all/?lt=1

We can pretend all we want.. We all know something has to change, no matter what.

The way we do it, will determine the integrity of the people doing it. If your reasons for doing it, is pure and to improve the Bitcoin community, you are on the right track. If you do it to improve your own individual agenda, you are setting yourself up for failure, because it will be exposed later.

Lately it seems as though this has more to do with control and other hidden agendas than anything else... and that is the sad part.  >:(

He can't really know or decide what would be best for the ecosystem. This raises the question if Gavin should be able to decide or not? They are after all kind of trying to force XT. I guess we will have to wait to see what is going to happen.
Every solution has its cons.
I think that most of us here know that things have to change. The problem is, however how to change it?

Exactly.  These guys want you to use their 'off blockchain' system. This introduces a WORLD of new problems.  Those side chains will have remarkable failure modes we can't anticipate today.  Changing to 20Mb is a tiny change likely to disturb almost nothing.  Changing to sidechains is freaking crazy!
Their argument that nodes will have to close down and only huge miners will remain is total rubbish. KnC and other mega miners are a result of conditions not related to blocksize.  Tiny nodes can buy a 2 Tera drive for about $60 these days.  Big blocks aren't that hard to digest for small miners.

I had this same notion. 

If 20MB will 'break' bitcoin, then what about 19? what about 18? will 17MB fuck things up?  Will 15?, 14?, what about 12MB? 5MB? 1.1MB. Somewhere in there is a point which doesn't mess things up.  It is not clear to me why 20MB will cause disaster. 

The notion that small nodes will go away with 20MB just makes me want to do XT even more.  This is raging bullshit.  AntiXT people need to think up a better argument than that or they've surely lost their attempt to force everyone into BitStream and its stupid side chains plan.

we need blockchain size increase but step by step ---

1. 2015 : 1 MB
2. 2016 : 2 MB
3. 2018 : 4 MB
4. 2020 : 6 MB
5. 2022 : 8 MB
....................
....................
& finally 20 MB. I think 20 MB is enough

I really had the impression that the 20Mb shit, XT or Asshole-client, call it what you want, was going to be an official client which you can download at bitcoin.org. Is it really some rouge project? how the hell can a rouge project get so much hype?

What scientific analysis have you done to reach this conclusion?  Are you just pulling numbers out of your @$$ because you like the sound of them?  Do you really want to risk destroying the balance between incentive and cost on your "gut feel"?  How much do you care if your "guess" is correct?  If you're wrong and bitcoin is destroyed because of it, do you really care?

So Mr. Todd just added his comment on this:


https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/39po7q/blocksize_youtube_animation_favoring_1mb_blocks/cs5cv1x

And there's maybe going to be a continuation/update of this video.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/39po7q/blocksize_youtube_animation_favoring_1mb_blocks/cs5hzfu

Msg to ~retep:  I'll make a contribution again if need be.  I don't use reddit because the 'tard ratio on Bitcointalk is already galling enough and reddit is fast becoming as slimy as Wikipedia and Snoops before it.

On the new vid, try to work in the fact that those of us who thought along these lines struggled for a way to tie subordinate chains (or more generally, 'stores of truth') to the Bitcoin blockchain all along (me since 2011) but certain ideas about how to do it are more recent.

IIRC, the debate around and push toward bloat was as fierce back when this vid was made a year and a half ago as it is now.  Scare stories about impending disaster were a similar part of the mix and they came from the same corners.  Somehow Mike and his clan can easily create super-node clusters to handle 'visa level' transaction rates or whatever, but they cannot see a possible way to deal with UTXO's cramping a memory cache.  Funny that.

I loled at that video, it is clearly fud.  It is pretty liberal with the facts, and outright lies in places.  I am thinking this video was funded by those devs who have a vested interest in the sidechains, and making a lot of money from keeping the block size low.

Nice theory, but sidechains were not seriously talked about until about a year or so after the vid.

I'm not one of the devs, but the idea of scaling through subordinate chains which derive their value from a single primary chain was about the first thing which occurred to me since it was fairly obvious that a flooding network would not be especially practical if it were to remain a true peer-2-peer solution.  Not only is it kind of a no-brainer, but it opens the door for a variety of more specialized niche tuning, and some potential needs for a currency are mutually exclusive which makes a one-size-fits-all solution less desirable even if it were practical.

With a robust 2-way-peg (which is something I did not think of) a sidechain is a near perfect proxy for Bitcoin which doesn't bloat the infrastructure needs and doesn't impact the inflation/deflation characteristics.  Bitcoin as a backing or in native form is a sigle-point-of-failure which should be protected against all attacks.  If bloated and popularized it is susceptible to fungibility attacks through whitelisting and blacklisting which is something that certain people have advocated for a long time.  When used primary as a high-powered and highly distributed backing system it would be more difficult to attack successfully in this manner.

That is actually what I wanted to point out somewhere. Who gets to decide what is right and how?
I guess that is one of the problems. Everyone is trying to pursue their own agenda/way in regards to the problem even if that 'solution' has significant cons. Even though I'm in for gradual increase, I'm not so sure about the exact numbers.
Personally I think that 4 or 8 MB would be better to start rather than 20 MB.

Yes.  Consensus is difficult.  Nobody gets to "decide" for everybody else, and everybody gets to decide together.  That's great when everybody agrees, but when there are multiple competing ideas and there is no agreement then it all becomes a HUGE mess.  In the end, several people will put forth their own preferences in software.  Some of those may "catch on" and the system could fork into competing currencies.  Some may die as the developers come to realize that they don't have as much support for their idea as they thought they did.

I'd like to think that the concepts that have the best analysis and research behind them will be the most likely to succeed, but in the short run it will probably be the ideas that have the most persuasive personalities involved, and in the long run it's likely to be "survival of the fittest" with many random and poorly conceived ideas suffering painful and horrible deaths along the way.

Only among the uneducated and easily manipulated.  Those that take the time to learn about the details are aware that in Satoshi's original software the block size limit was 32 MB. It wasn't until 2010 that Satoshi decided that he'd temporarily add a 1 MB limit.


You might think that you "know" that, but many people would disagree with you.

Even when the increase in block size was first proposed (months back) it was a mess, but now it is much worse. If I recall correctly in a recent statement Gavin (video) was sitting next to Mike and he said that a lot of people have been telling him to take the lead on the matter. However I wonder who these "people" are, since nobody likes when things are being forced on them.
Disregarding whether I agree with his solution or not, I definitely disagree with the way that he is trying to solve things.

My question would be: What would be the best way to get out of the mess that we're currently in and make a decision, even if it isn't the right one?

Why do you disagree?  Is there any other way to do it?

There is nobody "in charge" that can make a decision for everybody.  There isn't any kind of "vote" that would satisfy everybody.

Bitcoin requires consensus, and in this situation consensus is impossible.  The only option remaining is for there to be multiple separate "consensus" each with their own fork of the blockchain.  Then some measure of chaos begins while the competing ideas play out in the real world and we see what happens.

With Gavin's current "way he is trying to solve things", the larger blocksize isn't being forced on most people.  There is an option available to anybody that wants it to support larger block sizes.  Once the miners (and merchants) exceed 90% on the matter the decision won't need to be made, effectively consensus will exist. If the miners never reach 90% on the matter, then everything stays the way it is today and others are free to try whatever solution they prefer.


There is no way "out of the mess", by its very nature all protocol changing decisions in bitcoin will always be messy.  The only thing that can be done is to accept the messy nature of it, provide software that makes clear what is supported, and hold off on activating any forking changes until the system has arrived at near consensus on the matter.

The consensus requirement has always been (and always will be) one of bitcoin's biggest weaknesses.  It's a great thing for stability in design (making it nearly impossible for any single entity or group to force their own changes on the majority), but it makes advancement and improvement extremely difficult to accomplish.

Aren't both proposed solutions non scalable?
How long could we go with 1MB + LN solution without a hard fork (which is what is tried to avoid at all costs) vs Gavin's blocksize increase?
Do we just accept with 1MB + LN situation that fees will keep increasing indefinitely?

As far as I can remember from that video that I've seen, it feel like he's trying to 'force' it. I just don't think that jumping onto XT was the right move, and it might have been planned for a long time. If the consensus is reached for XT, Mike Hearn will be in control of the development on github, right?
I'm not sure who currently in control of QT. As far as I know some commits that Gavin has proposed were denied and they are implemented in XT (what he refers to 'minor changes').
The real question is what Mike Hearn is trying to do? He wasn't really active with development AFAIK.

So there isn't a really good solution for this. Are you sure that we are going to be reaching consensus this time? From what I can understand, if we don't have reach consensus (90%) for XT they are going to introduce "checkpoint blocks" to ignore the longest chain.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB9goUDBAR0

I haven't read the complete thread yet, but I have one question:
If this video was made 2 years ago, why aren't there any off-chain payment processors?
It's easy to talk about all this stuff in an academical way, but is anybody actually doing the things, they are talking about(obviously for at least 2 years)?

I think changetip is such a thing?


-----



Gavincointards are going strong on this thread again ...

Can I use changetip to pay in a store? As far as I know, it's not designed for that.
I really would like to see a video of someone doing that.

i believe they were just testing it on test net, for all this time, or running it locally for further testing

it's better to prepare for a problem long before it happens

i think thats the key, we should be ready for that problem before it happend, i still cant understand why they didnt reach a concensus and thats the part i dont like, if "we" are not together we will fail.

Depends which store.

I think as blocks become  fuller we'll see more services for payment offchain. But as long as there is no demand because fees are minimal there won't be any. When fees rise and people want to save on fees such services will quickly pop up i could imagine.

Nobody opens a business for which there is no demand. If fees rise, demand for cheaper txs will also rise and with it offchain tx processors. I could imagine blockchain.info doing such a thing for example. For them it should be easy to hack together things like that as they could serve as trusted party.

There should be quite a few smart solutions for offchain txs that haven't even been developed yet because as pointed out already: there is currently no demand for it because fees are so low.

Once fees are higher and there is some real demand for that, soon businesses for that will open doors for customers.
Gavincoin wants socialist central planning when in reality the free market effects sort it all out by themselves when left alone.

Full blocks are no problem at all. At least no urgent one. Microtxs go offchain for example. Gambling for 20 cents a bet or shit like that. Recently someone sent me 10k satoshi with a message attached for coin double scam. So as long as scammers can still afford to spam the chain with their "service" there isn't a problem.
I think people underestimate a lot how many of the txs are acutally unimportant dust txs and txs under 3$.