Bitcoin Forum

F2pool.com、BW.com、BTCChina、Huobi.com、Antpool.com are ready to embrace 8MB blocks.
Details: http://www.8btc.com/blocksize-increase-2

English version
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3a0n4m/why_upgrade_to_8mb_but_not_20mb/

this is good, i was worried that they will eventually end up refusing everything and stay with their own fork of 1MB, apparently they do care about bitcoin a bit, besides their revenue from mining activity

from what i can grasp of one of the comments, it seeems that the total chinese miners contorl 60% of the network, is this correct?

8MB and then an automatic increase over time would be the best solution.

Just AntPool, F2Pool and BW.COM control almost 50% just those three.
https://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=4days

At least this stops that silly 20mb idea.

Increasing the block size is good for increasing the volume of bitcoin, however everyone's bitcoin program may grow by more than 1GB per day (8MB*144 blocks/day=1152MB/day) because of this, which is a waste of storage (and that's why I don't install the bitcoin core on my computer).

It will be terrible for runing bitcoin XT! No matter how large of our hard drive, we will run out of our free space soon! This will become the top issues after implementing 8M blocksize.

Why is 8M rather than other size?
We still don't know how big size of the block. The most important thing is we should solve this problem forever. We can't do it again after several years later for the same reason.

Dude - you can buy a 2TB drive for almost nothing.  By the time the blockchain gets to 2TB - you'll be able to buy a 200TB for next to nothing.  Drive space isn't the problem.

i really doubt that, i mean the storage space will not grow so fast every time and it might be a problem in future, of course now 2 tb is not too much, but after a few years the situation might be the same

well you're not aware of moore law then, why the performances should remain the same in the upcoming years, there is no reason, they will double, continuosly

we are already in the time where you can afford a cheap ssd with 512, not even mechanical

You have to store the data in a ordinary hard disk, not SSD.

I see no difference in storing in a SSD or hard disk. They pretty much do the same function and speed isn't too much of a issue for nodes. A decent hard disk would do. In my country, a 2 TB one would cost $100USD. It should be cheaper at other countries. Blockchain pruning is in the works now so it can potentially solve some problems too. For now, most people don't really use Bitcoin Core due to their ISP limitations, a SPV node can do the job just fine for an average joe.

It's not storage that's the problem, it's bandwidth. You can always plug in more storage and it will always be cheap enough. Increasing bandwidth is out of the average person's hands and probably always will be. Around here you might get your local hardware updated every couple of decades.

A 512GB SSD can potentially cost up to $200. There's no doubt that there aren't people who buy SSD specially for the hosting of node. Bandwidth is still a problematic issue for most people who want to host a node. Only when the cap in many countries gets increased to 1-3TB a month, then it would be much more reasonable.

Keep in mind a max block size increase does not mean all blocks will be maximum size. Very few (if any) will, especially in the short term. So the 1 GB/day growth calculation is not reality.

Eventually, even with growing HD storage space, I expect that major cryptos are going to have to adopt some form of sidechain technology. That should open up all the transaction storage space we need.

Blocks won't instantly be 8mb large.  Just like blocks now arnt 1mb large.  That's just the limit.

agree with that, also is always good that big pools agree with the 8mb block size too.


well not a bad idea, thats why the automatic increase over time will be a pretty good solution i think.

I will follow Bitmain.  Bitmain you have my support.

Yes.  This is correct.  I love BitMain.  The only mining company that didn't screw me.  BitMain is honest and they do what they say they are going to do.  I am sure they are right.  BitMain rules.

Same feeling, them and Rockminer.  Rockminer has always given me exactly what they stated.  Alas they are much smaller.

The fact that maximum size is bigger doesn't mean that every block will hit this maximum... Increasing max also magically increases block size proportionally? Think again.

Some people might abuse the system and fill the block up to the limit. I think 8 MB is better than 20 MB for the time being.

if we would switch to 20 MB blocks, there wouldnt be 20 blocks immediately. 20blocks would appear after years.

and storage space is already cheap today.

@Oscilson

even if a miner would do that and would harm his own business: no problem, storage space is cheap.

I would rather trust people that are deeply knowledgeable on the Bitcoin code, not sure if people that run mines are qualified enough to make big claims about this, unless they hired people that know what they are doing.

Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm when 50-80% of the hashing power says something.. that is what is going to happen..

You better listen they control the network.

Yep.  This pretty much settles it.  Those damn Chinese got a lot of momentum these days.  They've been selling so much crap to US and Europe for so many years - now US and Europe has all kinds of Christmas decorations and broken tools in their landfills and Chinese got all the American's and European's money.  That was pretty clever of them.  Well, clever if you don't mind slave labor to benefit the state.  Either way you have it, it's Chinese rule now.

I think the block rise will be limited to 8 MB now.

This is centralization, we need more farms at other places of the world  ;D

If somebody else can build an efficient farm elsewhere.

Bitcoin companies are leaving New York due to the unfriendlyness to bitcoin start-ups.

While China still subsidizes electricity, their miners will enjoy greater hashing power and prefer small blocks to maintain the lead. When China stops subsidizing electricity and subsidizes internet instead, their miners will demand larger blocks to maintain the lead. We're playing right into them.

Or people to actually mine at their house with miners like the "new-rbox"

If we are only going to mine for profit BTC will become centralized zero questions asked.

For the 1000th time, if you think you are a "bitcoiner" and you are not mining you are not a bitcoiner.

not so sure about this, even in the remotely case that all farms will be built in china, there will be always a big competition between those farms, it's no like , all these farms belong to one entity only, and as long as there are multiple pools everything should be fine

According to whom?

This is quite interesting. I knew that there wouldn't be an end to this story yet.
However what I'm concerned is:
Does anyone have any other sources besides the one linked in Chinese given that this doesn't seem like a credible 'signature'.
I wonder though if Gavin and Hearn are going to listen to listen to them. They definitely need to factor them into the 'equation'.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. Currently 37% of the hashrate is labeled as 'unknown'. How would you know if this is a single entity or not? You could always look at the IP addresses that are solving the unknown blocks, but that doesn't tell us too much. The first one is in Iceland and is solving quite a good number of blocks.

The problem lies deep within each human. The majority are led by greed and thus they won't mine (home;hobby) because they can't profit from it. I guess that the era of home miners is long gone.
Also, that last part is very wrong.

Will they please stop trying to blame the great firewall of china?

http://www.speedtest.net/result/4437848841.png

15 MBit = 11 seconds to transfer a 20 MB block.  Additionally, for every block mined outside of China that needs to traverse this "bottleneck", there's one mined inside China that needs to migrate out.  With over 50% of blocks now mined inside China, a larger block size stands to benefit them on average, albeit by a tiny amount.

After watching the video by Gmaxwell where he explains the blockstream technology along with the features of sidechains etc, I think im a proposal for that now. But I still think the blocksize will need an eventual upgrade from 1MB.

I will be backing antpool :) I think 8 is a good compromise

Taking a look at the reddit comments, I'm a bit hesitant about the authenticity behind this article. Are we sure that all those pools mentioned indeed put their signature on this?

How about we focus on things that actually exist and are working? Don't get me wrong, I also favor sidechains even with their cons, however I don't think that there is enough time to ready them.
This is why the 8 MB blocks should just be buying time and leaving headroom for the network.

Connecting to a server in China isn't the same as making a connection from China.

sound like good and interesting

I recently stumbled over this:
http://hashingit.com/analysis/39-the-myth-of-the-megabyte-bitcoin-block

TL;DR
The miners make their own limit anyways. If they it is a max. 8 MB block, it is a 8 MB block.

They sound reasonable, a jump to 20MB may be too big and if major players say so - those XT guys should listen to them or at least discuss it with them. The worst thing would be if nothing happened at all or if there is a war over block size and community gets divided..

it could also be that because all good places in china are occupied, some chinese miners are building their facility in other part of the world, with still cheap electricity, none is saying that chinese miners can mine in china only

it does not really matter honestly, if they are contributing to bitcoin success, and not hinder its path

Oh, this. This x1000. This x1,000,000

I keep hearing about these bodges in the protocol. It's like listening to the ECB kicking the can down the road for Greece. This coupled with some mining groups clearly achieving enough hashing power to subvert the network when, only a year or two ago, it was being poo, poo'd that it was possible; means these issues need to be put to bed once and for all - sooner rather than later.

Just to reiterate, the mining farm can connect to a pool near China to mine, one with faster internet. It shouldn't matter much. Also, you are just testing one server from the entire country not to say that you are testing from US. I'm sure it would be better at the mining farms but again, stratum requires little bandwidth and speed.

Besides, speedtest.net is going to try and pick the best server available for you. I'm not sure that his results are accurate though. I've just tested Bejing myself and the results aren't good.
https://i.imgur.com/uFHT8l9.png
The ping was around 300. My usual download speed is above 20 Mbps and upload around 3-4.

Obviously you don't see the picture clearly. The debate isn't really about 8 or 20 MB blocks, it is actually about how the problem of transactions is going to be solved. Increasing the block size can't be the final solution as I've argued in another thread.

If that was the case then Gavin should enable "infinite" block size and problem solved.  ::)

I think nobody is really arguing, that it is the final solution, besides some people, who might not really have looked into the whole discussion.
But I also don't think, the increase is just to buy us time. Even with other solutions already ready(which is currently not the case) the 1 MB-limit wouldn't be enough, once we reach mainstream(unless you do nearly everything off-blockchain, which destroys the whole purpose of Bitcoin)

Actually you'd be surprised how many people think that this could be a final solution.
I already had stated this in the thread that I was referring too. 1MB blocks won't be enough even for bigger transactions only (in case we are using side chains). At some point it is just not going to be enough.

Take a look here:
https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size
We've had a huge spike in the size, which I believe isn't natural at all. We shouldn't be concerned yet, however if the price keeps up a positive trend we might have a backlog of transactions pretty soon.

Are the peoplw who suggest that we solve this once and for all not being a bit over the top here?
America doesn't start printing $1mill bills because at some point in the future they might be required.  The also raise the debt ceiling little by little, rather than just getting rid or maiking it $9999 trillion to get rid of the problem forever!

I think a practical response for the next 10 years or so would be the 8mb block size.  That is doable at the moment, if a bit big for downloading, but it will become ever more manageable over time.

The current price of storage is extremely expensive if you are thinking of changing to a 20mb block. It is done to allow the technology to improve and possibly allow everyone to be able to have a copy of blockchain on their computer without too much cost. Besides, the current transaction volume would make this permanent solution redundant.

Sidechains could be the answer, perhaps we should stick to 1MB blocks and start other solutions asap.

Finally we have a resolution. The bosses of Bitcoin have spoken.

No, speedtest will test with whichever server you select, if you select one.  As I did.

It is, in fact, a proper test of bandwidth - upload and download.  HTTP connections are two-way streets.  If you're speaking about connection latency, there may be a significant difference.  However, bandwidth is bandwidth.

Even those arguing against the 20MB change freely admit that 1MB is not enough.  Yes, even with sidechains/the lightning network/etc.  They're only questioning whether we need it sooner rather than later.

Let's set aside the fact that switching to a max of 20MB does not mean that every (or even ANY) block will be 20MB.  Let's jump straight into the 20MB per block, every single block.  It's still cheap.  6TB drives are $250 today.  Six solid years of 20MB blocks will fit on that single drive.  Following current trends, when you run out of space in six years, that next 6TB will cost you about $40.  Anyone spouting off that the storage is "extremely expensive" hasn't done the math.

There are real issues to discuss, but storage cost isn't one of them.

Bandwidth is a problem though. Where I'm from, there are usually data caps and the reasonably priced plans on my provider are up to about 40 to 50GB. Going for anything higher is just unreasonable.

I don't have any problem with the block size increase though. It would be much nicer if there was no hard limit on the block size, with a configurable soft limit.

I think this is a mandatory change that must be done soon, It is creating many problems in blocks and why is this creating so much controversia?

We all agree on 8MB. Let's do it already!

You and me are none to say what the community agree on. It must be reflected through node voting.

I don't think the "cost" is the main issue with storage either. I personally am annoyed at verification times for large blockchains but the real problem, as I see it, is all of these solutions to issues have the effect of centralising operation of the network into large, resource rich, enterprises.

We are already in the situation where miners are dedicated large organisations (some even have more than 51% hashing power) with enormous resources. The barrier to entry for mining is significant and has been for some time. We are also discussing large scale storage and having "Data Centers" that have the full block chain and everyone else having thin clients. This is centralising the network and at some point the miners will merge with the data centers and you will have a small number of large commercial organisations that can hold the entire network to ransom and dictate terms. Sound familiar?

well at least they are willing to negotiate.  8MB is fine for now, but im sure some of the venture capital behind bitcoin has other plans

That would be true only if Gavin or Hearn don't contact anyone. The problem is that certain people have more power and they can likely get someone else to agree to their proposal. Besides Hearn has already stated that if the network doesn't have enough consensus they are going to introduce "checkpoint blocks" that are going to ignore the longest chain. This leads me to question their real intentions, however I'm fine with 8 MB blocks.

Although someone definitely needs to work on that pruning feature soon.

Maybe 8 MB is fine for the next 5 years if side chain becomes working.

I read somewhere that its due in Bitcoin Core 0.11

Good point. Bitcoin should not be limited by special interests. It should be unlimited by general greed.

Gavin's latest update to BitcoinXT will increase the block size to 8MB, then double it every two years afterwards. It doesn't sound like he will be happy to update Bitcoin block size to 8MB and leave it a that for 5 years. It sounds like he wants to keep on increasing it after two years like with BitcoinXT.

Doubling every two years sounds good as it is similar to Moor's law trend. Original Moor's stated that computing ability doubles every 1.5 years . However, it slows down to about 2-3 years now. In 2012, the top of range AMD card had 2048 core, in 2015, the top card has 4096 core.

Here we go again. Stop spreading false information. In the original paper back in 1965 he described a doubling every year, later in 1975 he revised the forecast time to two years. This has nothing to do with the number of cores found within a GPU, it is about the number of transistors that should double approximately every 2 years.

I've verified this, it was pushed back to 0.11.

It doesn't just sound like he wants to do it, he is doing it. He has already pushed the changes to Github.

That's correct. The miners control Bitcoin. They determine what is a valid block. Those five mining companies have over 60% of the hash rate.

For the first time, they're now acting together to take control of the network. The original developers no longer matter.

Bitcoin is independent...now bitcoin is supposed to follow 5 chinese mining pools? Fail....
Even 8mb makes sense  :P

Yeah, I know. I wasn't really joking. You've been here long enough but most of the newer people in this thread don't remember when Tycho at Deepbit held Bitcoin hostage over OP_EVAL/BIP16/17 and he was just one pool operator. Miners control the direction of Bitcoin more than anyone realizes.

I wonder what Satoshi thinks about the fact a bunch of Chinese miners can decide the fate of BTC for coming decades. He predicted that mining would get more and more centralized tho, but not sure about development decisions.

If the community follows the 8 MB block size, then it is not determined by the Chinese miners. It is the consensus of the community.

well those 5 chinese mining pool don't belong to one entity, so bitcoin is indipendent from a single decision, but not from general consensus, for obvious reasons

don't bring the whole "mining is centralized" again, because it isn't


i don't think so, it is just that they find 8 mb the most valid choice, for their business, and since they are situated all in china, they will share similar goals

yet i still believe that something aginst the 51% problem must be done, something that will tell the network to not count the longest chain, but the more legit block, i don't know how it can be implemented

What does make a block legit? There are rules on your full node, which define a legit block. If you don't agree to the rules of the miners, you just don't have to accept their blocks. Your full node can do that. That's called a fork.
The problem is, that if the miners have 60% of the hash rate, your network remains, best case, with 40% of the hash rate, which means it is less secure.

less secure for what? for an attack like 51%... my whole point was that, if the longest chain does not matter anymore, than you not have to worry about who holds the largest percentage of the network

something like

"ignore a longer chain orphaning the current best chain if the sum(priorities of transactions included in new chain) is much less than sum(priorities of transactions in the part of the current best chain that would be orphaned)" would mean a 51% attacker would have to have both lots of hashing power AND lots of old, high-priority bitcoins to keep up a transaction-denial-of-service attack. And they'd pretty quickly run out of old, high-priority bitcoins and would be forced to either include other people's transactions or have their chain rejected."

but this is not the best solution

Maybe PoW+PoS.

When BTC becomes popular, most people will mine it, if they can make the cost low. Even (every) governments will mine it. So there will not be 51%

Most people won't mine it unless you go back to including the miner in the client and it doesn't use the CPU 100%. That would be a good solution if you can convince the virus scanner people that bitcoin mining software is not a virus anymore. Relying on unproven psychological incentives is a political solution not technological and I prefer relying on the maths.

When the bitcoin is adopted by several states/governments, they will mine it to make sure there is no 51% attack. It is in their interest.

"Why upgrade to 8MB but not 20MB?
1.Chinese internet bandwidth infrastructure is not built out to the same advanced level as those found in other countries.
2.Chinese outbound bandwidth is restricted; causing increased latency in connections between China & Europe or the US.
3.Not all Chinese mining pools are ready for the jump to 20MB blocks, and fear that this could cause an orphan rate that is too high."

I know the advanced level in China is not the same as in other countries, for I have kept contact with Chinese companies. 

Gavincoin's idea of doubling every 2 years is not a good one.

Listen to them!

if they cannot propose another better idea, then we need to accept that, i mean we can't wait forever until someone come up with an idea, now i'm starting to believe that this problem should have solved much early, with the fork of 2013

thus you don't need today to fork again and at that time, chinese were not controlling 60% of the network, and playing the dictator's game...

You can accept it, I will not.

I don't have an issue with BTC costing $5-10 to send and using something like Bitshares to buy coffee with and Bitcoin to store wealth.

but the miners will have a problem with such tiny value, and if the miners suffer, the network suffer, they are the backbone of it

bitcoin cannot sustain itself with such price anymore, not with the current powerful asic we have now

I do have an issue, though. Why should I need to change currency just to be able to buy coffee? It's just not worth the effort.

Double the block size every 3-4 years can accommodate the transaction increase and give side chains a chance for real time transaction.

If most of big chinese polls agree to increase block size, I think we can do nothing with it.

Long term I think this is likely to be how things turn out. A handful of major cryptocurrencies each tailored for optimizations in different financial characteristics. Perhaps bitcoin will be the most highly secured and best store of wealth, while other cryptos take on the role of routine transactions, while another works best for buying and selling property and securities, and another is favored for anonymous transactions, and so forth. I think it unlikely that any one cryptocurrency will be able to be best-in-class in all areas, especially where trade-offs are involved.

So pretty much everyone will have some funds stashed away in a half dozen cryptos, just like you have credit cards, a bank ATM card, paper bills and metal change all filling your wallet (not to mention a checkbook).

On the contrary my friend! I firmly believe, If Bitcoin is going to be adopted by governments/states, they will surely try to control over 51% of the Network or they are going to create their own currency!
The most probable outcome would be governments replacing the national paper currency to a new digital currency version...

If Gavin pulls out his powerful "Alert Key" hammer there is nothing we can do except roll over and hope for a kiss.

The mighty bitcoin sledge hammer >>> https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alerts

http://puu.sh/iHaq9/6efb569a22.png

O God, that's exactly what we're trying to avoid, aren't we? To have dozens of ways to spend our money, most of which go through banks and other institutions. Also, even if that's the case, my credit card, debit card, banknotes and checks are all in the same currency. If I want to buy chewing gum with my credit card, there's no one to stop me, and there's no hassle about the exchange rate between ChewingCoin and SalaryCoin.

It seems like you are wrong. We can still have our hope.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2dz9ri/why_in_the_world_does_theymos_have_the_private/cjuu360

im happy they come to agreement with this
Gavin proposal is great for everybody :) chineese pools and people

That could get interesting, contrasting alerts propagating throughout the entire network. :D


(Gavin) URGENT: Upgrade required:

(Theymos) CORRECTION: Ignore Last message:

(Gavin) WARNING: No, Upgrade. Really:

:D But... :P

"A maximum sequence-number alert cancels all other alerts {...}" - Gregory Maxwell.

why is it all about the chinese, i guess the mining companies want to be the bigger man in the picture.

Same reason people use to have copper AND gold.  

I believe that people will own a handful of currencies in the near future.  The altcoins have been completely underestimated.

The same reason people have a savings account and checkings.

A visa and a line of credit.

Still you don't understand my point. My savings account and my MasterCard and my spare change is denominated in the same currency. I don't have to do any exchange between currencies to get money from the ATM and buy a sandwich.

Well I would recommend holding some major Alt coins as a blockchain in the 100's of Ts will kill BTC.

Wow, that is the worst comparison, I heard in a long time.
They had copper, because you can't just make smaller pieces of gold, there is a threshold, where it gets unpractical. That is a problem you won't have in a digital world.

I believe that in the future, and especially because of the Internet Of Things, we will see a handful of crypto currencies.
We will probably see one for each industry or business. The fact is that digital currencies have enabled the use of micropayments and that will certainly make a difference in the future!