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Blockstream wants to keep Bitcoin from scaling past 1mb so they can force you to use their proprietary side chain solutions while profiting.  If this is not true, then how will they generate revenue?

discuss.

Even more important, how will miners make money?

If they will be getting the transaction fees what's the incentive to mine?

They want to transform bitcoin into an exclusive settlement system for proprietary side alternatives instead of an inclusive P2P cash system. The core dev team is clearly compromised. Working for Core and also for a private company should be regarded as a big no no by the market.

Fully agree here. I think its funny how people claim that Andresen is trying to take over the network. He is trying to protect it from this coup from the new developers which work for Blockstream and have a very biased perspective on this due to the 21 Mio $ they got.... Gavin doesn't get anything out of XT. Now think.

people are realizing just now what is going on!  get the word out! 

Blockstream:  you are hereby on notice:  disclose your revenue model with full transparency or we the people will assume your intentions are selfish and nefarious.

Anyone believe this? It's a great deal more plausible that XT, with it's friend of the state-paradigm in lead dev Mike Hearn, will be the chain that imposes taxes on it's users. Not system "taxes" (aka fees, lol), but actual taxes.

Good attempt jonald, but try picking a topic that doesn't blow the spit back into your own face. ;)

Carlton, you've always been one of the brighter minds around here, but with all due respect, what's your point?  How about instead of the banter, try to answer the question: how will blockstream make money? 

don't you think that's a fair question?

Core team reality: Putting the market in a corner imposing their views.

Mike and Gavin reality: Throw some code in the wild and let the market choose.


Like it or not this is the situation right now.

The answer is that I don't know. If Blockstream were to attempt to impose a fee structure whereby they, and they alone, received the fees, and if the company was simply passively extracting them without it being a part of some network mechanism or other (i.e. the same reasons miners get paid blocks+fees), then I would be just as opposed to them as I am to XT.


However jonald, remember how you started this thread. I am happy to reciprocate your compliments; you're also one of the brighter and more thoughtful members of this forum. But I don't believe for a single second that you actually think your title represents the truth, and yet you composed your title and your post with the most exaggerated language that you thought you could get away with (you didn't get away with it).

My point is also a good one, unlike yours. Mike is a friend of the state-paradigm. He will happily cooperate with anything any state asks him to, he has said as much in the past. Have fun using his coin.

I think you baffled everyone here with such an argument  ::)

I assume Blockstream got their dollop of funding by breaking down how investors would eventually make bank. Has anyone seen such a document?

Your OP was so stupid that the gif was the only viable reply. You don't deserve "discuss" starting FUD.

If it does constitute rent seeking (i.e. not adding value), then of course it's not viable. I would be stunned if the Blockstream devs were actually planning that, it's so clearly a non-starter. But then again, here we are debating whether or not Mike Hearn should be lead developer.  ::)

What is the FUD exactly? A private company intended to make a profit actually hires most Core devs which put them in a clear conflict of interest is actually a FACT. Prove me wrong.  

Uh, no it isn't. It's amazing how you can think that because someone has different political views than you do, that they can be completely discredited.

I don't know enough about XT or Mike Hearn to comment about either; but your argument is absolutely horrible.

actually??  Mike? is that you?   Wanna start FUD?

It's not a FACT, whats a FACT is that Mike has consulted with In-Q-TEL and Gavin had a "chat with the nice folks at the cia" and we have NO idea what they talked about! But I can pretty much be sure it wasn't about how FUN and cool bitcoin is! and how it's going to shake things up for the better! if you think that, then you should try to get money back for your brain or trade it for a nice mug.

Like I said, if they powers that be can't shut down bitcoin, unless they wanna shut down TCP/IP, but what they can do is take over the development team.


I trust Adam Back and Peter Todd way WAYYYYYY more than Mike and Gavin!

I don't trust any one of these people. Core and XT developers included. I only trust an open code that can stand on its own and that the market will be free to choose. Just like we didn't have to trust Satoshi in the first place. Putting your trust in any devs at all is the wrong way to go.

Good topic. I like!

You're wrong. If Mike didn't let his political views influence his software development, there wouldn't be a problem. I'm not against XT because I disapprove of Mike Hearns favourite colour, it's because I disapprove of him using bitcoin to promote his political views.

Furthermore, the origianl point of the bitcoin project was to create an open access monetary system that is apolitical. Please, I'm begging you all, think through your arguments before you start typing because I really don't see why I should have to do all your thinking for you

Apparently not to all the XT Gavenites (peace be up on his name) like yourself

I read about that Blockstream agenda and yes there could be something true behind that. Why otherwise the reason not to increase the blocksize. I wouldn't like that.

But I also don't like what XT is doing.

So what ever choices I have? None it seems

One party tries to make money on sidechains and force Bitcoin to be a kind of settlement system. And the other party tries to take away all the freedom Bitcoin gave us.

This is like to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea. Awesome!

Care to explain how XT take away the freedom if XT can only be implemented by the freedom of the market to ultimately choose it?

you can't have it both! at least, for now....
Please try to read this. it will explain why you can't have both right now. you do have to pick one.
http://wallstreettechnologist.com/2015/08/19/bitcoin-xt-vs-core-blocksize-limit-the-schism-that-divides-us-all/

when you use scare tactics to falsely herd people toward a solution that you chose and control, is not really "freedom of the market"
Thanks to you people, we now have an ill informed non-technical user base who have no idea wtf is going on, and all they know is  "gavin good! durrr" (peace be up on his name)

The question is, how to achieve a social consensus without bringing politics at all? Is the answers relies only with market forces that bitcoin creates? If so does that mean any political debate is futile from the start? Is one can go without the other? The answer is pretty unclear to me...

It's not a scare tactics, the conflict of interest is a FACT. It does not mean the people in conflict have ills motives but that should be enough to put you in an uncomfortable position.

There is a reason why the opinion of any person in a conflict of interest is automatically disregarded in a court trial no matter his technical skills. Think about this.

Yes the title of the post was deliberately sensational and meant to provoke conversation.

I don't know if it's 'rent seeking' as you put it or would come with a huge first mover advantage, but as others have pointed out, there may be a conflict of interest and I think we at least deserve to know their plans in order to get an accurate picture of this block size debate.  

As you pointed out, the block size needs to increase, yet evey blockstream developer is calling for the size to not increase, so I feel this line of questioning should be explored.

The XT shills are growing in numbers and are becoming worse than those political propaganda dudes on TV or those paid commenters on the internet.

Just repeating their logical fallacies over and over until they get into your head to change your mind. Basic propaganda tactics. Repeat, repeat repeat. Blockstream evil Blockstream evil Blockstream evil Blockstream evil Blockstream evil Blockstream evil. Got it?

So what??? It seems they are doing the best job at bitcoin development anyway. Has it ocurred to you XT shills that improving bitcoin is in their best interest?

You don't care about arguments or facts. You have a script and you implement it. Repeat repeat repeat. XT good Core evil.

At least we will learn something of this: If XT succeeds, then any crypto can be destroyed by sheer mass propaganda.  >:(

Do you have any argument at all? Because don't see any.

It's possible you went too far, I lost a little respect for you. But we're running on extra adrenaline because of this debate, it's not so egregious in that context.


I agree, these are well made points. I recently asked gmaxwell when the details of the infrastructure behind Blockstream would be released (i.e. these are side-chains, so surely miners will process the transactions on them?). Unfortunately, he did not reply (possibly because he couldn't give a definitive answer at that stage, but I don't know).  

At this point, I don't have more time to waste with you XT hardcore supporters. Any argument I would present would be ignored. You are past the point of no return. It is impossible to convince you otherwise.

And you have grown very adept at diversionary tactics. Let's say I make a good point. But next thing you jump and shout that I'm retarded or I'm working for Blockstream or something and I need to prove otherwise. Diversion is another great weapon of propaganda. Congratulations!

So basically you are perfectly comfortable with the fact that a private company hires most of the Core devs? Honest question.

It's strange isn't it, as soon as Hearn and gang begin to push their changes, the health of bitcoin begins to deteriorate. They're doing it for your own good though! It's got to get worse before it gets better, right?!

Honest question? are you perfectly comfortable to follow two guys who have  connections to InQTel and the CIA?  
wake the fuck up ... or shill on.. which ever you are doing.

I did answered to that one if you only dared to read the whole conversation.

so yes.. you are fully aware and just dont care

Save it by destroying it.

The gullible are living in Bitcoin vs Paypal, VISA, MC payment lala-land and they help them out with their agenda.

Eventually the masses of users will become careless enough and they will succeed. Even if XT fails, XT2 or XT3 will succeed in taking down bitcoin.  :(

I do care but I also think that giving the choice to the market about the implementation makes irrelevant who the devs are and what are their motives. Without fully supporting XT it is this exact reason why I am happy that it is there.

YOU JUST SAID:




AHHAHAHAHAH you just contradicted yourself you silly man

No matter, he will get on with what he knows best. Repeat pro-XT stuff until it gets in your head. Worse than TV ads.

Not at all. The point is, I WAS very uncomfortable before XT. Now it is irrelevant because I have a choice.

I think you have a bias because of the naming.  If Gavin just decided to put 8mb blocks in core, and then Greg Maxwell released a fork with 1 mb, that might be called Bitcoin-B (for blockstream).  And people would be calling it gregcoin with as much hate as 'gavincoin'.

Anyway, I don't recall advocating XT in this thread.  I asked the question of how blockstream will profit, which apparently no one can answer.

False. They want a block size increase, after almost everyone agrees on how much and when. Please read the development mailing list.

They will generate the revenue when Lightning will be ready I guess. But this has no connection with the fact that just increasing the block size like BIP101 is very dangerous, see centralization concerns.

I'm sure you will ignore what I say and continue with the fallacious argument that if Blockstream guys are working on Core then necessarily they are evil.

Of course no one here knows exactly how Blockstream plans to make a profit because no one here works in the Blockstream team. There are probably more ways than I can count but that doesn't really matters. What matters is the conflict of interest that these developers shouldn't have put themselves into in the first place.

Was my answer any good? As I said, I think it's possible that there isn't a complete/definitive to your question, and that's because the system is still in development. Still needs answering but I'm not really sure what else anyone could do right now.

You may be right , or it could be bad for their business strategy to reveal it.

I think they should try to be as transparent as possible, but there may be indeed a conflict of interest.  Time will tell.

but that is not what you're doing is it? You're like FULL DERP AHEAD WITH SHITCOIN XT!!  DERP DERP...blockstream are just thieves..FUD FUD FUD!

I agree with this. There is a clear conflict of interest for those Core devs. Blockstream is still in proof of concept phase and we have no dates to when these sidechains can be integrated into the bitcoin.

I think it may be important for a short sidechains refresher also.

Blockstream are designing a protocol extension to enable all other types of side chains, not just Lightning. Potentially including: vote chains, identity/web of trust, "smart" contracts, decentralised DNS/PKI, land registry etc etc.

Powerful concept in theory. All of the bitcoin hashing power could be utilised to secure the data on those chains. This is what makes the main blockchain worth so much, and the testnet chain pretty much worthless; getting 100% control of the testnet chain wouldn't be so cheap even now, but it would be possible. So it's useless for an actual money system, as the data (aka your money) wouldn't be safe. Applying that level of security to all these other information systems would be stupendously brilliant, like living a sci-fi movie. Possibly it might be horrifying for the same reason, but fuck it, the 20th century is over.

That was what I thought the promise of side chains was: and so of couse, under that model, there is no Blockstream tollbooth, you pay the transaction fees appropriate for the market conditions on that chain, whether you're paying someone for something, or renewing one of your ID's. If they achieve that, it'll be so worthwhile. If jonald's fears prove to be well founded, then Blockstream will have passed up an immense opportunity, arguably of the same degree of significance as bitcoin itself.

easy: even with unlimited blocksize no miner is forced to include any transaction.
he can just put the ones with enough fees in a block and ignore the rest: thats what i call a competive market!

If people aren't able to transact easily, reliably and cheaply, what's the point of using bitcoin?

If there are better ways to transact people will use better ways to transact and nobody makes money with bitcoin, that's the competitive market!

thats the reason why it is important to make bigger blocks!
if too less fee-paying transactions occur miners will include cheaper transactions and stop some of their hardware (lower overall hashrate which leads to cheaper but less secure transactions).

so bitcoin can stay competive against other payment options.

but if there is only 1mb block space.... they cant include many transactions... which theoretically means higher fee: but in practice: nobody will use it because there are cheaper alternatives.

Yeah, that's exactly what happened when the situation you're describing happened in real life. Everyone stopped using bitcoin and used the cheaper alternatives.... I don't quite understand how the transaction rate was at record highs during the time when everyone stopped using it, but what do I know.

Proprietary?  As far as I know, their stuff so far is open source.  Some of the blockstream folks have given lectures about the technology they are working on and it shows no sign of being anything other than pure open-source.  That is one of the things that induces me to have some confidence in them.

As for revenue, I supposed a long time ago that they would have the options of providing technical consulting and development work to people who wanted to run a sidechain currency.  After I posited this thought Maxwell mentioned basically the same thing somewhere along the line on another thread that I ran across..

Secondly, I for one would only use a sidechain which had involvement from this group of people, at least initially.  This group of people have proven their technical abilities by carrying a lions-share of the work needed to get Bitcoin to where it is and many of them have a long and unvarnished history in the crypto-currency space.  In this manner the Blockstream 'seal of approval' is a high value item to would-be sidechain operators.

It is worth note that a lot of people have done quite well in opensource-land by following this business model.  That is part of why I figured it would be Blockstream's.

So, proprietary, centralised, rent seeking; all FUD?

I still want to know who will be providing the hashing security on these so called chains. It's not obvious to me how the Lightning network could be mined directly.... although possibly that's an extraneous example, as Lightning transactions have to be settled on the main chain anyway (and so it just makes the whole system even more fee efficient?)

This is a textbook example of the nirwana fallacy. In June 2016 when bitcoin is crashing due increasing backlog, you have a perfect workable solution called XT. And on the other side you have a theoretical "whitepaper solution", which isn't even skeched out, let alone programmed, tested and then approved. On top of all that there are very dubious financial interests with Blockstream at play here. And that is what you want to prefer?? What do you do in June 2016? Nothing will be ready till then...

uncertainty and doubt for sure, but I think it is warranted.

1. We don't know how Blockstream intends to make money.  We do know they
raised $21M in venture capital, so there must be a profit opportunity somewhere.
What are they doing? 

2. Forgoing or delaying a blocksize increase may not be in the best
interest of Bitcoin, but seems to be what Blockstream wants.

3. It seems possible that 1. and 2. are related.

I don't think we've gotten to see enough about blockstream to be able to judge. Aside of a concept, there isn't much out there to verify OP's null claims.

You just reinforced my point.  We don't know what Blockstream is really up to.  Meanwhile,
more and more blocks are going to be hitting the 1mb limit until they "save us" with
their "solution". 

Well, tvbcof has just told us that they are following a common model for companies doing open source development: charging for technical consulting. I'm not sure whether they can realistically be against blocksize increases per se, the data has got to go somewhere, and there will be necessarily more data than 1 MB could handle to facilitate all these extra transactions.

They certainly favour less simplistic designs than static blocksizes with scheduled increases. I seem to remember Adam Back was talking about something very different from anyone else, but his opinion got put in the "1MB 4EVER" category, probably because it defied the definitions of the categories on offer. Don't remember the details, but it certainly wasn't a 1MB static limit.

The situation is even worse, many clients have as default value 750kB as limit, despite the fact that the max is 1MB!! Mike always fought against this different default value, but some others wanted to be it that way. Many of the miners will not be aware of this. So we really not far from disaster.

I just learned about from this VERY interesting interview with Mike Hearn:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JmvkyQyD8w

And it totally smashes the fantasy of some of the miners here that, when capacity will get scarce that they then will earn 5000$ per month through "fee market". He worked 7 years for google in.... yeah right.. capacity planning and explains very well why its not working like that and bitcoinnetwork will crash due to lack of RAM on machines... if there keep coming transactions for e.g. 1,2 MB for a while but Blocksize only supports 1MB..

I would love to believe that is true, and I wish they would clarify their position.  I still do not understand
why they wouldn't agree to a modest increase like Jeff Garzik proposed.

The reason Blockstream doesn't want bigger blocks is because if they're bigger , they won't make a shit load of money. It's as simple as that.

every day Gavin break more and more his reputation not only to bitcoin community but to all crypto community. Is better to leave now. This road that he choose is a dead end. I dont know who and what they promise to him but is the best time to step back.

why?
only because he tries to make bitcoin ready for mass adoption?

he has my support...
and i think his way is ok. i dont see any better way to make this change happen.

You are free to make choices now, you weren't able to few weeks ago.

No one is forcing the network to choose BIP101.

Everyone that is against the freedom of choice is blinded, or in bad faith.

we are against nonsense. Is not a free choice when someone want to jump from 4 floor

I wish some of the retards here atleast understand the bold statement above.

Forget the technicality of bitcoin because its way over their heads anyway.

It's too bad that you weren't able to see the forest because all of those stupid trees were blocking your view.

if you think its nonsense you dont have anything to fear...
or do you believe 75% of all bitcoiners will jump?

If 75% of ppl jump then thats not nonsense.

Do you know the old saying: If i see an asshole in the morning, hes an asshole. But if i see assholes all day, i AM the asshole.

jonald, I might be wrong, but you seem to be over-familiar with the "static limit, scheduled increase" model. Do you appreciate why creating a market for block sizes would be a viable alternative? If not, take a look at upal's thread over in Technical Discussion, it features some well thought out stuff (from people who are actually discussing this in the context of software engineering, not a political stand-off).

A hard fork is a difficult thing in the best of circumstances.

Scaling through simplistic and very modest capacity increases is a dead-end, so what's the point?  Scaling through simplistic and sufficient capacity increases promises to mutate Bitcoin into a system which is worse than nothing.  To me at any rate, and I strongly suspect to many of the folks who are now working under the Blockstream banner.  I have no reason to believe anything other than that is nearly the sole reason the organization came together.  If I wanted a job (I don't) I would likely try to hire on at Blockstream because I could be doing something which I believe can make a positive difference.  I imagine that most of the people working under that Banner feel the same way and this is one of the reasons I have more confidence in them than most.

Another reason is that the Blockstream dudes collectively are hugely responsible for getting Bitcoin itself to where it is today and as much as I might bash Bitcoin I find it a remarkable achievement.

In my mind one of the biggest questions which remains unanswered is:  Even if sidechains are nearly completely dependent on their backing store (Bitcoin) as a source of value, what induces them to support the Bitcoin infrastructure?  Can they not just hitch a free ride and hope someone else picks up the slack?  The best answer I can come up with is that they compete with other users of the blockchain not only in fees, but also in supporting mining operations which will get them and their transactions a slot within a reasonable amount of time.  Competition for transaction capacity would have to be a factor.  I doubt I am alone in waiting for scarcity here to finally come into play.  After half a decade at Satoshi's 1MB setting we still are not pushing into this aspect of the system and are still relying almost entirely on currency base inflation.  I'm in no hurry to see a hard fork before transaction fees start carrying a little bit of the support reward load.

simple...price of bitcoin must rise in order to account for decreased reward supply.

it is simple. their side chains crap is only useful while bitcoin block size is capped.

raise the 1 MB limit and blockstream now becomes OBSOLETE and IRRELEVANT.

The is a conflict of interest.  What time will tell is the extent to which they were acting upon it.  

There is nothing in general wrong with a conflict of interest, but it should be openly disclosed.


On a related note, I'd love to hear Jonald's and Carton's view of the ongoing censorship at /r/bitcoin and to a lesser extent at this forum.  For example, Bitcoin[redacted] was defined as an alt-coin by the moderators at /r/bitcoin and all talk related to it has been deemed off-topic.  Several people were banned for linking to sub-reddits that emerged as a result of the censorship.  

Here at our own forum, Cypherdoc's "Gold Collapsing. Bitcoin UP" thread was locked by the Admin, despite it having over 1.4 million views and over 30,000 comments.  The rational given by BadBear is that threads that are broad in scope ("mega-threads") are no longer permitted on this forum.  

What are your views on these recent events?

https://i.imgur.com/nhUjjPL.png

More on this here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1157185.msg12198527#msg12198527

It is worth asking the questions about Blockstream's revenue generation plan.

If their main source of income is charging fees (ie.e taxing bitcoin users) by opening side chains or payment channels then they are not for the original vision satoshi created when he created bit coin.

Very simple.

There is a ton of inconsistency on the moderators/admins parts on what you wrote above.

Clearly there is another agenda when consistency goes out the window while censorship is allowed into the window.

"nonsense" differs from person to person.

I am not sure that tax is the appropriate word to use, however I certainly agree with the OP's point.

As Bitcoin grows in popularity and user adoption increases, if the max block size does not increase then tx fees will inevitability rise. Eventually tx fees will rise enough so that Bitcoin will be prohibitively expensive to use. This is where things like blockstream's Lighting network and Blockstream's side chains come into play, as people will use them as an alternative, which will allow Blockstream to profit, and will cause Bitcoin to be to expensive to use except when used for very large financial transactions (aka only the big players can afford to use Bitcoin).

The above scenario will happen unless the maximum block size is increased in the near future. The best course of action is for the core devs to all support a larger block size that increases over time (to allow for bitcoin adoption to grow over time, and for technology to become more advanced to support larger block sizes). All of the core devs supporting larger block sizes over time will make it so the decision to support this kind of hard fork would be more obvious to the major economic players in the bitcoin economy.

While there is speculation that Bitcoin will become more centralized with a higher block size limit, it is all but certain that Bitcoin will become substantially more centralized with the block size limit remaining unchanged, probably more centralized then what would happen if such speculation would be true.

Working under a banner or idea (impression) is only as good as the leader's actual intentions allows.

Look at the U.S's armed forces fighting al qaeda ("THE WAR ON TERRORISM" banner).

People are dying and fighting a war stupidly and ignorantly at the cause of "FIGHTING FOR OUR COUNTRY" or "SERVING OUR COUNTRY" and at the root of the entire war is greed, not positive difference.

Just because there is a so called "banner" of why a people/company/business/institution/country are doing something does not make it a POSITIVE or good agenda for the common good of all who are involved.

Does "Fee" work?

That is one side.  However, my impression is that most of the 1MB-supporters think the censoring serves as a counterbalance to the higher level of public support BitcoinXT appears to receive.  Furthermore, Anonymint here suggests that "mega-threads" like Cypherdocs are dangerous because they promote group-think and hurt diversity of the Forum.  So he seems to believe that banning "threads with a broad scope" is necessary--in a certain sense--to restore open and transparent communication.  


I'm not saying any of that makes sense to me.  I just find it fascinating how we attempt to contort reason to justify otherwise reprehensible behaviour.  I suppose that it's difficult, without the benefit of hindsight, to recognize the extent to which we are guilty of this ourselves.

Yes. Like I said, I agree with the OP's general point, and I agree that the block size needs to be raised.

As I recall, several of the Blockstream hires wrote into their contract that they could go home and sit on the couch if they felt that Blockstream was going the wrong direction and still get paid.  Quite unusual in the industry.  It's either a devious marketing gimmick or an indication that the principles and investors in Blockstream do not anticipate pissing these higher-end developers off.  Going full Hearndresen would almost certainly do just that.  I suspect the latter, but time will tell.

This would be like me being called to 'fight for freedom' in gulf-I (I was) and finding out that our mission was to re-install a monarch and deliver a replacement gold toilet seat that the Iraqis stole (which is literally what happened) and being able to not only abandon my post because I didn't like the mission but be paid anyway.  That is NOT AT ALL what happened so your military analogy has limited usefulness in this particular case.

Yes, and while I am very appreciative of that, we mustn't let our bias allow us to get in the way of scrutinizing what they are currently doing.  I think that once millions of dollars of venture capital enter the picture, those same core devs which have given us so much value in the past, may have  been 'corrupted' in a sense.  I get the fact that it is hard to incentivize open source projects, but they seem to be pushing Bitcoin in a very radical direction.  


Thanks Carlton, I will take a look.  Generally my opinion is that the fees are still much smaller than the coinbase subsidies right now, and therefore it may be premature to worry about that, especially if it creates bandwidth issues.

@Peter R:

regarding censorship, I find it pretty surprising to be honest, given the lack of censorship in most other areas here.  Still, right now there seems to be a healthy discussion going on.
Again, I think bias comes into play hugely, in favor of the core devs and against Hearn.

It's ironic, when it's clear that you are not doing any thinking yourself. The heart of your argument is exerting libertarian ideals into bitcoin. And you're just trying to cover that up with pathetic ad hominem attacks.

Who? Name one 1 MB supporter on this forum, Peter. Whichever singular name you come up with, they will almost certainly refute the label. Check your rhetoric.

In answer to the question about censorship, I don't approve. On the other hand, this forum or the reddit sub isn't mine to control, so my opinion is only as good as that: an opinion.


It barely deserves recognition seeing as it involves that particular entity, but it's wrong (of course). Demonstrably so by it's own presence in the cypherdoc thread.

When did cypher's thread go down? I'm in favour of unlocking it, although I haven't been reading it for some time and do not intend to in future.

Thats simply true. Everybody opposing increase of 1 MB block don't want bitcoin to become global payment processor.

It already embodies libertarian ideals. It did so from the beginning.

But Satoshi didn't express it that way round, he was taking a non-political, utilitarian stance. As do I. I have little to no interest in politics most of the time.



So it's the attack that's pathetic, and not me? Are you not contradicting your own argument?

exactly. people will realise that when it is too late and transactions costs with bitcoin core will increase to 0,50 - 1 USD - good luck with that.

Here are a few names of people opposed to the block size increase along with evidence that they feel the censorship is a positive thing in terms of balancing the debate.

1. Theymos (link (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h9cq4/its_time_for_a_break_about_the_recent_mess/))
2. Peter Todd (link (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3hn5wy/peter_todd_recommends_revoking_gavins_commit/cu8v4km))
3. Brg444 (link (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1091654.msg12188731#msg12188731), link (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=68655.msg12161940#msg12161940))
4. Marcus_of_Augustus (link (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1091654.msg12208544#msg12208544))
5. LaudaM (link (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1157185.msg12197586#msg12197586))

I'm quite certain I could compile a much more comprehensive list with higher-quality example quotes too if I spent several days going back through people's comments.  

Anyways, you didn't answer my question.  What is your personal feelings on the ongoing censorship at /r/bitcoin and to a lesser extent here?

Four days ago.  Here is the first discussion of the event: https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/comments/3hg41x/the_thermos_strikes_again_moves_bitcointalk/

It sounds like the thread won't be unlocked because apparently threads with a broad scope ("mega threads") are no longer permitted.  What do you think about the logic of banning threads that are broad in scope (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1157185.msg12198527#msg12198527)?

XT would be great as a bitcoin-backed sidecoin.  I would expect that this sidecoin and many others would give the user 'cash back.'

You may have missed my reply about censorship, it was in the same post you are quoting from here.

Either you don't understand what censorship is or you can't get what XT is. :)

1, 2, 3 & 5: I don't think they are against raising block size but they are against XT which is a hardfork without consensus. You are mixing XT with block size increase. Although they have some sort of connection, saying "against block size increase" and "against XT" are completely different.

4: I don't understand what that link suppose to mean. Can you explain?

I think you have left a few people out, I can think of at least three more. But it all conforms to what I've already said about this: painting those 5 as subscribers to "1MB forever, period" is not credible when you look at what their actual position is. Ditto the 3 I'm thinking of.

Essentially, no one is so imperceptive that they believe that you can increase the rate at which information is processed, and yet simultaneously believe that you can use the same amount of resources to do it. No one would believe that someone was capable of being so imperceptive. Except apparently yourself.

I don't think there's much of a difference between "1mb forever" and "no increase for now".
Those that don't want to increase it now are siding with the core dev/blockstream guys
and support their plans and ideas.

Everyone else is calling for an increase in the short term.

Well, it's impossible for an "increase it now", this isn't like upgrading a server running Apache and mySQL, people have to update their nodes, people all around the world, it takes a few months for this to happen, so any changes that require upgrade have to be planned way before they are supposed to be in effect.

there was an emergency fork once (altho it was clearly necessary and there was no disagreement ) took only a few hours for most miners to update.

this isn't even the point.  increase now = as soon as we can.   we're not increasing it now because not everyone agrees.

And a solution is yet to be found.

LOL.

I love the way you just waxed over a possible never ending dystopian nightmare with a 'fuck it, the 20th century is over'. I laughed hard and spat out my tortilla chips.

I agree about the blockchain tech if it comes to fruition though. It'll be amazing.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0101.mediawiki

Doubling every two years is not a good solution IMHO. A better dynamic increment or a temporary static increment is needed. For example, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1154536.0.

But isn't that proposal for maximum block size? There's no need to make blocks that enormous unless there's an actual need for them. It just permits the possibility.

and 14% of all nodes are already XT nodes ...within 7 days.

hopefully the core devs come to consensus or XT will stay or win. i support bigger blocks. the only way at the moment is XT.

We need to raise block size limit. A dynamic block size limit is better than a static block size limit because for later, we need to hardfork everytime the block is full or nearly full. A dynamic block size limit can resolve this issue. The proposal I linked above is a good one but we can make it better by making some changes.


If Mike or Gavin remove patches such as "blacklist of IP", then I might also use XT but XT contains questionable patches and sometimes they add buggy codes too.

it will double every two years.
personally i'd prefer an unlimited blocksize.

i just dont think miners are dumb.
if there is a 1GB block i dont think any miner will build on top off it (except it is absolutely necessary)

Well, I'm glad there's at least one other person who's enthusiastic about it, even if you almost choked on your Doritos. If I'm causing people who agree with me to commit involuntary suicide, maybe this is a sign that it's guaranteed dystopia after all  :D

I'm not even sure what to comment on this. That link does not prove either assumption that you've made. You're spreading false information regarding me (I will not comment the others). I was actually advocating for the increase a few months back in a huge thread (that was over 100 pages long). I never said that the block size limit should not be increased. While I do support a increase (which is not urgent as some think), I do not support XT at all. There is a difference.

As for the "censorship", there are two possible situations: a) either you are not able to comprehend what real censorship is; b) or you have forgotten that this is a privately owned forum.
IMHO this is off-topic.

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Thank you sir. Supporting a block size increase (in general, not specific to any limit) =/= supporting XT.

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Obviously for you to in order to use their technology/product, you are probably going to have to pay fees. However, if people really think that these fees are going to be high, think again. If they introduce a model with high fees, nobody is going to use their product. Besides, nobody is forcing you to do transactions off chain. Pay the normal (or higher, whichever is necessary) fee and you aren't going to have a problem transacting Bitcoin during heavy amount of TX traffic.

1 down, 4 to go. Peter?

My apologies LaudaM.  I have always appreciated your commentary.  Carlton asked for examples of people who appeared to be in favour of the censoring removing off-topic content and threads that are broad in scope and I recalled your recent comment in favour of the action the Forum Administration took by locking Cypherdoc's thread.

The trouble with words (such as censoring) is that we can twist their meanings to prove our points.

I said early that:

"I just find it fascinating how we attempt to contort reason to justify otherwise reprehensible behaviour.  I suppose that it's difficult, without the benefit of hindsight, to recognize the extent to which we are guilty of this ourselves."

When we look back on this a year from now, will people agree that the discussion of BitcoinXT was off-topic?  Will they agree that the locking of Cypherdoc's thread by the Administration "because threads with a broad scope are no longer permitted" was an objective decision?

I patently did not ask for such a list. Peter, why aren't you paying attention to your own argument? It comes across as a little inconsistent when you "resume" an argument that you were not making previously, on the basis of things that people did not say.

Here are your exact words:


I am sorry if I mis-interpretted your question, Carlton. When you asked "who?" I thought you were asking me to list some people.  As for the remainder of your comment, a don't think I can parse what you are trying to say.  

In the mean time, you've still avoided my original question.  Let me ask it a different way:

Q: When we look back on this a year from now, will people agree that the discussion of BitcoinXT was off-topic?  Will they agree that the locking of Cypherdoc's thread by the Administration "because threads with a broad scope are no longer permitted" was an objective decision?

Peter, you're being evasive and manipulative, I have told you once already about my attitudes to the censorship, yet you keep repeating that I am avoiding your questions. Sadly, the evidence is all here for anyone who wishes to look. I am disappointed that you have revealed yourself to be quite so sociopathic, but rather sooner than later I suppose. Don't address me again, I will not reply.

What I find particularly interesting is the blurring between what is "off-topic" or "too broad in scope" (so that's its removal can be justified as being "objective") with the removal of content that has a certain political slant in the block size debate (its removal would be seen as "biased" or as "censoring").  I found this comic quite accurate in depicting the point I'm trying to communicate:

https://i.imgur.com/sbIpWx4.jpg

lol. true.

onemorexmr:  let me break this down for you.  miners will build on any valid block that follows the protocol rules.  Right now we are trying to determine what those rules should be.  the current rule is that no block can be bigger than 1mb but as blocks are getting more and more full, people want to raise it.  Gavin, Jeff,  and Mike all want to raise it.  Unfortunately many of the other core devs dont, because they would rather peruse a sidechain solution with their new company called Blockstream.  

i can imagine many reasons why a miner would not build on a block which is valid by protocol rules (eg because his country has blacklists for certain transactions or they are trying to push out competition; as long as 51% of them think the same it'll work for them)

but anyhow: this discussion is about XT which i fully support. 1mb is simply not enough.

jonald, you cannot make a false statement true simply by repeating it again and again.

You know the position of the Core devs is not as simple as "1MB", yet you keep choosing to misrepresent their position by presenting it this way. Stop doing it, it is harming your cause.

I was explaining it for someone who apparently didn't quite understand, but you're right.  The repetition is not necessary
and the OP is clear.  As far as it being false, well that is your opinion and you make some fair arguments but
so far I think my hypothesis is still valid. 

Banter away...

Sidechains is a flawed concept invented by programmers with a Bitcoin techno-centric view of the world economy who do not believe in monetary diversity (https://letstalkbitcoin.com/e77-the-adam-back-interview/). (Go to time:42:45)

However the world is a subjective place and when the global economy looks back at bitcoin with all those ridiculous extensions, all it will see is an unattractive, unfungible, immobile, ambiguous mess that's simply a drag on monetary velocity, however much it does justice to a "one-off event".

If you want to improve a monetary medium - be it physical or digital - you need to enhance its monetary properties (http://contrarianinvestorsjournal.com/?p=391), not deplete them.

Sidechains may be a nice technical extension to bitcoin but they conflict substantially with the priorities of money. In particular, the properties of mobility and fungibility are adversely impacted. The former due to the hard exchange with the sidechain (as opposed to a soft exchange facilitated by markets which allows the bitcoin to stay in circulation) and the latter due to recasting of parts of the coin supply so that they are no longer capable of "mutual substitution".

When we invest in a different currency (e.g. forex or even altcoin), the money we invest stays in circulation because a genuine exchange takes place and the other party is free to re-spend our committed funds in their commercial sector as we are free to re-spend theirs in ours. This is not the case with sidechains. Instead of an exchange, a portion of the coin supply is "recast" thereby turning bitcoin from a solid, unambigious currency into a kind of "chameleon" that changes its spots according to demand with ever diminishing fungibility.

This is not a currency in any economic sense but rather a digital interface. Something invented by programmers, not economies.

To be avoided.

One baseless claim meant to create FUD with nothing to back it up, and then tell others to discuss. Lame attempt at propaganda, at least put a little effort into it.

His cause is propaganda, so he will continue to repeat it even though he knows full well it's not true. He isn't trying to debate or educate, his cause is only to make peoples minds up for them with misinformation.

Actually it's more of a hypothesis than a claim.  And I am using a reasonable line of argument.  
Blockstream devs do not want bigger blocks.  This is fact.  It is not baseless.  And the other devs
who are not on blockstreams payroll do want bigger blocks.  I guess you have a reasonable explanation
for that, though, right?  Go ahead, I'm all ears.

It's alright to support XT but you should not support everything XT related unless it is the truth. cypherdoc's 'Gold Collapsing. Bitcoin Up' thread was about Gold vs Bitcoin, but later onwards it became a discussion about XT solely. So it was moved to Altcoin board which is the correct action. If you don't agree, then another way is to delete all the posts about XT from that thread. IMHO, former is better than later. LaudaM clearly stated:

---

A year ago, XT didn't hardfork. As it didn't, the protocol is same as the widely-agreed Bitcoin Core's. Therefore, how can it be an alt? Isn't that obvious?


Yes. The thread was locked because people started discussing about a client called XT, which is definitely not a Gold vs Bitcoin 'speculation'. If its not a speculation, how can it be in 'Speculation' child-board?

* Edited.

You know, this debate has become very tiring. As Antonopoulos said, the debate is full of ad hominem, it has involved attacking people rather than discussing ideas and the use of ideological aphorisms without sufficient evidence. I am guilty of that as anyone else (his words; apply to me as well). You can't expect me to support discussing XT and trolling in a SPECULATION thread about Bitcoin and Gold.

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People are twisting everyone's words for their own sake. Antonopoulos said that consensus is very important and that we should be implementing everything (i.e. bigger blocks, sidechains, lightning network, payment channels). He did not say that he supports XT (there is a thread stating that he does).

It depends on how it's implemented. There is not only one way to design the sidechain extension, you're only criticising what is currently on the table.

If the Blockstream design was as you say, a direct modification of the properties of Bitcoin and it's monetary units, then I would understand and agree with your criticisms. I am not 100% convinced however, I don't expect accomplished computer scientists to come up with such glaring design faults. I don't know though, as I am not familiar enough with their design right now (and reserve the right to reject it)

Do you know the design well? I thought it wasn't finished/published yet?

On the contrary. It depends on the principle - the implementation is irrelevant. If you read the sidechains whitepaper (https://blockstream.com/sidechains.pdf), the principle of 2-way pegging underlies the whole thing. This is not going to change with 'implementation'.


direct modification is a relative term in this case. It is not a 'direct modification' in a technical sense but it is in a commercial sense since the bitcoin is removed from circulation and directly substituted for the sidechained-alt. So it amounts to a "direct modification" as far as the market is concerned (thats the whole point of sidechains).


"accomplished computer scientists" are not necessarily "accomplished monetary analysts" or even "accomplished systems analysts". It's true that the people who design good software systems are usually programming professionals, but the people who specify the requirements for such are usually not.

In this case, an implicit assumption has been made which is economic - i.e. that the world economy cannot sustain more than one cryptocurrency and that "network effects" will tend towards the adoption and consolidation of this currency. But then the theory immediately contradicts itself by acknowledging the need for diversification and hence the emergence of sidechains.

You only need to take one look at the range of monetary like stocks (https://www.nyse.com/listings_directory/stock) traded on any global exchange to see that markets favour diversification of genuinely independent assets rather than diversification of 'presentation' within a particular asset, so the commercial assumption that underlies the concept of sidechains is flawed IMO, however well designed it is technically.

This analysis is further endorsed by examining the properties of "good money" which are well understood and considering the impact of a concept like sidechains on these. Think it through - you basically have a set of pegged altcoins that have varying levels of demand, all pulling in different directions on a common base currency. The effect of this is to cause price and liquidity volatility in commercial sectors where it didn't originate. What will the market do in that case ? - it will simply use an altcoin that's native to that sector in preference to the sidechained one.

That is one of the effects of adversely impacting on "fungibility" but there are others (think Greece & the Euro).

toknormal: "Implementation isn't relevant. Just look at what it says here in the implementation document..."

 ::)

you are right: their plan is 1.07 MB blocks in the year 2021 - big difference. meanwhile they can charge big fees for their blockstream service.  

:P

That's Peter Wuille's BIP, not what they all think. I don't support that.

Why doesn't a dynamic limit interest you, Litecoinguy?

I don't know what the rolley eyes is for. The "implementation document" expresses a principle called "pegging".

Without that principle sidechains don't exist, no matter how you implement them.

What's wrong with pegging? (you didn't explain that before)

I think I did - at least in this particular context.

Not in that text

I would not waste my time arguing with him. He just cant never be wrong.

He did not understand at all. Why bother?

I frequently get things wrong, or say the wrong thing.

I am happy to acknowledge both circumstances, and evidence exists all over this forum. You should attack me on that basis instead, I think it would be much more effective than trying to assert what I believe, or things I say, when neither are demonstrably the case.

Work with facts, it works. Discrediting arguments on the basis of mistruths only discredits your argument.

if blockstream can profit from it, then many other sidechain provider can also profit it. There will be no monopoly.

so how do you think did they rais 21mio investor capital then?
last time i checked investors arent altruistic.

perhaps true. still, they will have first mover advantage... but more importantly, they will be a player in a space that exists only because the blocksize is small.  They (and perhaps also their competitors as you point out) will be making money off everyone using Bitcoins instead of the mining system we have today. 

must be pretty irrelevant if you felt the need to shout it in red in 8 threads. :D

ignore.

Bitcoin, as it currently stands (one currency, one chain), taps into the balance of power that exists on the planet. It means, that big players need to compete for domination in the system, keeping themselves in check and the network robust. If Bitcoin is split into sidechains, then every large geopolitical region will likely get one, which is far easier for local governments to control.

If that manifests, we will have arrived at the monetary configuration similar to that of present day fiat and therefore have achieved nothing. The block size needs to grow for as long as the network remains stable (propagation times considered). This might result in a slight shift of power from regions with a lot of hashing capacity to those with higher bandwidth, but that would only highlight the weaknesses those regions have in the era of technological advancements and help them become more competitive on the global landscape.

You have misunderstood the purpose of sidechains, and also Bitcoin's resiliency to control. The sidechains are not strictly to store money on, different types of data will be stored on those chains also.

That's the point of sidechains; using blockchain technology for a purpose that is not money.

I might have.
I thought Namecoin (and merged mining in general) would be a good example of those other uses,
but unlike sidechains it doesn't have to take bitcoins out of circulation in order to use.


Something like land tracking via blockchain will be interesting, but money itself should be simple and kept separate.

Are you jealous you're not hired by Blockstream? Honest question.

Side chains is a brilliant concept for forking bitcoin protocol. It is the only approach to change bitcoin without putting at risk everything achieved so far!

Actually, the real draw to me is that sidechains are an approach to NOT changing Bitcoin.  One of the whole points is that in Bitcoin's current and fairly simple and well-proven form it can backstop an infinite number of customized sidechains but be isolated from problems or failures of any one of them.  Every new functional addition to Bitcoin introduces new possibilities for attack.  Freezing it as a workable system as soon as possible is, to me, a very good thing to do.  My computation of value of each BTC is a function where security and robustness against attack is the dominant variable.

A side-effect of this isolation is that each side-currency is a black box to Bitcoin.  In order to track users, an attacker would have to maintain visibility into the workings of any sidechains that he/she participated in.  Since the focus of some sidechains would likely be privacy and/or security this would make an impossible approach even more impossible.  I expect significant efforts to thwart the development of sidechains for this reason.  At the end of the day, however, the cat is out of the bag and some sort of subordinate chain ecosystem will develop eventually.  As a BTC hodler, I'd hope it would be sidechains using Bitcoin as it's backing store.

If blockstream is so bad, then it will never be supported. Simple as that.

I think we should add fee per output first, this to avoid attacks to the network.
After that we should wait until a fee market starts rising, and then an analysis from the community will decide the block size issue. All in Bitcoin Core of course.

I guess we should have both.

A system with larger blocks and a system with sidechains.
If we relax the insistence on only one having to carry the name Bitcoin, then we might end up in a very interesting battle of ideas.

Since both approaches require forking, I suggest we add a suffix to each fork.
Something like Bitcoin XT and Bitcoin SC.

Of course, it would be much cleaner if those two were implemented in separate chains to begin with, but reality is always a bit more complex than we want it to be.

The fact that most of the core devs are now employed by a single entity is somewhat alarming, but they need to eat too and then we might finally have our Bitcoin CEO. ;)

The beauty of it is that it can be said both ways. To me locking my bitcoins and switching to a side chain means I change/fork my bitcoins.

The danger of it, on the other hand, is somewhat akin locking your gold and getting nice pieces of paper in return.
That German gold is still locked there somewhere, maybe...

I absolutely won't be using sidecoins that offer me only such a thing.  I don't have any paper-gold either.

I want strong and well researched crypto that allows me to be sure that I can exercise at my own digression any of the contract terms I agree to.

That I agree with.

In order for more complex use cases like contracts to be usable, physical security of private keys along with personal awareness and responsibility will be a must. Presently, losing control to a private key will result in the loss of funds associated with it. With contracts, however, it might be used to sign to things which can have more lasting effects. I wonder how digital contracts will be enforced and how to prevent abuse in cases of lost keys. Something like multisig with a third party within a web of trust will be necessary for anything other than monetary transactions.

sidechains sound like they could be a great innovation.  the issue that I see is they are being used to justify keeping the blocks small.  Why should we be forced to use sidechains?  Why can't we have sidechains AND bigger blocks?

You nailed it Peter.

Right now people are still a bit unaware of this.
I see many posts "Everyone wants to raise the
limit, but they are still deciding how to do it".

They haven't woken up to the fact that blockstream
simply refuses to do it.  That's why nodes are adopting
XT.  That's why miners are voting to support bigger
blocks. 

But why support such a poor design for increasing the blocksize? The entire class of proposed solutions are presented as permanent solutions, and yet when you walk through the logic, you realise that static limits are too restrictive.

The inevitable colossal fees so derided under the mythical "1 MB 4ever" position can just as easily be reached in January 2016 if the use of the network suddenly jumps higher than the 8 fold blocksize increase. Doesn't sound at all implausible to me, it's what we're trying to encourage with the change in carrying capacity to begin with.

Then what? Emergency doubling? That won't cause another argument at all, will it? Come on.

I've never heard anyone ever say that Bitcoin should be off-limits to anyone who is willing to pay the going rate for transactions on a secure system.  That is, one which throws a huge amount of power into locking the transactions, and maintains multiple copies of the transaction on multiple systems scattered around the world and retained indefinitely.

The cost of such a solution is significant.  The costs could come down to a very low level by centralization and consolidation of the support infrastructure just as has been the case for other many other on-line services.  That is very undesirable from a security standpoint however.  To me it would destroy any value Bitcoin has at all.  Exponentially growing blocks as Gavin and Mike have tried to ram home are a sure-fire recipe for severe centralization eventually.  They pretty much bake it in.

Sidechains leverages the power of of the core solution with autonomous chains to take the load of less critical transactions.  It ties things together with immutable math rather state sponsored judicial systems which are increasingly capricious.  They are, to me, a pretty strong win.

This sounds like an all-or-nothing fallacy to me.  We don't have the 'perfect' solution so its better to do nothing?
I don't agree with that.  I would rather see 8mb now while solutions continue to be developed.

You know perfectly well that I do not support doing nothing, and intimate as such in the very text you replied to.

You are attempting to submit to me a straw man argument. Done with you jonald, I will not entertain such open dishonesty

Please.

You were the one who just introduced a strawman: "what if there's an 8 fold increase, then we are back to square one".

You seem more interested in arguing the problems than offering solutions, so if you are done
in this thread, that is fine with me.  Good day.

Because they have no time. In few months side chains will catapult bitcoin into completely different orbit that is unreachable to bitcoin enemies. They have to cripple bitcoin now. It is a question of now or never. This is why is all that hectic creation of XT nodes.

A few more thoughts on the matter...

Firstly, the stable and tested core has been proven to increase its soft limit from 250Kb, to 500Kb, to then 750Kb in order to survive this long by being a useful transactional medium with a single ledger. Artificially capping it to 1Mb now cannot be claimed as a safe solution going forward, because we are entering an uncharted territory here. Again a proven and workable solution that we currently have and value is known to have been increasing the cap, not maintaining it.

Secondly, the market for fees will emerge naturally as the network can timestamp a limited amount of transactions not because of an artificial cap, but due to physical limitations related to block propagation times and network stability. Whether we need an explicit limit baked into the protocol or allow the network to find its own equilibrium (with a help of outside competition in altcoin space) is a question open to debate. A series of planned workshops should help find a common ground with regards to this.

Thirdly, the idea of every monetary transaction on a single ledger might sound Utopian with present day technology and limitations, however, it is not entirely out of question. I, personally, don't think that every coffee purchase will be on blockchain within next 5 to 10 years, but it doesn't mean that we have to artificially cap the blockchain beyond what current technology allows. What transactions are in and what out will be decided by the market.

Of course, its not better to do nothing. But is bad better than nothing? Is not it better to discuss more to find a better solution than to implement a bad one? 1 MB now is not a problem now except when blockchain is spammed by so-called "stress test". IMHO its better to wait a little than to implement BIP 101. No offence.

8Mb is what Bitcoin needs in order to have only twice the capacity of its closest PoW competitor. However a soft cap of 4Mb might be a good safety measure for the initial ramp up schedule. Whether doubling should occur every two or every four years and what an ultimate cap (if any) should be is all debatable.

Yes. We need to have bigger block size to handle a high number of transaction but we can't just increase to 8 MB because of that. Its always better to increase block size gradually. Now, there is no need for 8 MB and doubling every X years does not make sense. We need dynamic block size, of course, but a better one.

The only reason that BIP101 is bad is that there is the possibility that it will be attempted to be implemented without consensus. There is no real reason why the network would not be able to support 8MB blocks on a technical basis and Moores law would imply that technology will advance quickly enough so that the network will continue to be able to support the increasingly large max block size and if it doesn't then then Bitcoin can be formed again.

There wasn't a need for 1Mb limit 4 years ago either, we could have done away with 256Kb or 512Kb just fine. In fact, up until recently the hard 1Mb cap wasn't effective at all as it never was approached. But smaller soft limits were all hit and raised. That's how Bitcoin survived.

As this time we are discussing rising the hard limit (via hard fork) we need to future proof it a little bit. In this light, 8Mb seems reasonable as a new hard limit for the next 4 years, in conjunction with smaller soft limits that miners can agree to maintain internally to prevent network spamming and abuse. They can, for example, agree to not build on top of anything larger than 4Mb initially, however full nodes will still accept and propagate blocks all the way up to 8Mb. This way the infrastructure will be ready for soft expansion in the future.

Whether to expand beyond 8Mb, when and how is questionable and depends on many factors. Maybe a series of hard-forks down the road will be a more appropriate and responsible solution than trying to predict the technology, but anything less than 8Mb for the upcoming years might start hurting Bitcoin and deflect its user base towards other solutions. We, as a community, definitely don't want that.

Intel conceded that Moore's law as applied to silicon lithography ran out of legs, the story came out a few weeks ago. Their next "tock" in their world renowned "tick-tock" development strategy has been re-scheduled to become a "tick" for the first time in history.

Exponential growth is not the same thing as infinite growth. Because exponential trends necessarily end when they hit the apex.

lol these people are so far away from reality, talking about things they will never grasp, it is dramatically staggering.

hopefully bitcoin will absorb this nonsense and rise from the xt ashes.

Moore's law? It looks like you aren't up to date with that one.
It is going to get worse from here, until the transition to something entirely new. The growth factor in BIP 101 is not sustainable and people should be aware of this. That's one of the main problems.

This explains it as well. My quote was from Wikipedia, as I failed at finding the article that I have recently read.

BIP 101: Doubles maximum block size every two years.

IMHO, its not a good idea. CMIIW.


I know, maximum block size as 8 MB does not necessarily mean all blocks after that will be 8 MB. IMHO, its better for a gradual increase than a jump. However, I might support 8 MB but I am still opposed to BIP 101.

According to Gavin, storage space won't be the bottleneck in the future , but rather bandwidth.
"The (pruned) ledger only takes up 1 gig and will be further optimized."

It is still a problem.

What's a problem?  Storage space required to run a node? 

what? the miners don't have bills?

we don't fully use the 1mb and out of gavin(CIA)'s ass we jump to 8mb?

wtf!!!

problem: when you dont qualify, you stfu..

The CEO of Intel suggested 'Moore's Law' is finally coming to an end
http://uk.businessinsider.com/intel-ceo-brian-krzanich-suggests-moores-law-is-over-2015-7?r=US&IR=T

Intel scientists find wall for Moore's Law
http://www.cnet.com/news/intel-scientists-find-wall-for-moores-law/


edit: bonus: The impending end of Moore's Law is not Intel's biggest problem: http://www.itworld.com/article/2949368/hardware/the-impending-end-of-moores-law-is-not-intels-biggest-problem.html

blocks sometimes do get filled up and we'll see more and more
of that as Bitcoin grows.  You want to wait till its a dire situation before expanding
the bandwidth?  wtf!!!

The idea of a jump (from 1 to 8 in this case) is to allow for temporary peaks in transaction volume.
The hard limit can only be raised in a hard fork and we don't want to fork every year or now and then.
The hard limit must be such that the network should feel uneasy operating at full capacity, but still workable.

In fact I'm more inclined to think that forking every 4 years as "Bitcoin halving celebration" is actually a good idea.
So my proposed solution would to be increase the hard limit to 8Mb (with soft limit of 4Mb for initial ramp up) and then re-evaluate every 4 years.

bullshit!!!!!!! they never get filled! even with the spam from coinwallet.eu!
i don't scratch if i dont have an itch! ;)

except for the one just now.

https://i.imgur.com/w1F2b4G.png

Bandwidth.


Right but should we jump from 1 MB to 8 MB?


Transaction backlog is there and legitimate transaction gets rejected or take longer than usual.

I preferred Gavin's original proposal of 20 MB.

Okay then change BIP101 so that the max block size doubles every 2.5 years. Problem solved.

Plus the change in timeframe is only the short term trend which is hardly an indication of what will happen between now and the next 20 years.

Regardless if Bitcoin is to remain decentralized the max block size needs to increase, and it needs to increase a lot over time. Otherwise it will become too expensive to use and people will be forced to either use the traditional banking system or centralized systems like LN and side chains. There is no way around this. There is a good chance that it might get more expensive to run a full node.

you bet you are. N00b.

jonald can't count as high as 1024 apparently

grow up.
"protecting your investment" by insulting anybody is laughable.
if you have a real argument tell it or gtfo.

oh yeah! from 1mb jump to 20 mb! not even 2mb or 4mb...

my argument is you are all pathologically crippled noobs, if not professional shills with the not-so-hidden agenda of destroying bitcoin.

judging from your post history we share the same vision for bitcoin.
its just that you think core is better and i think xt is.

is that really enough for you to start fighting like this?
do you realize that you actually harm your cause by acting this way?

i think you are well-informed. so why dont you share your experience?

and i am definitely not a shill and not crippled. i just say what i think.
and your opinion gets more and more less important to me - ONLY because of the way you act.

Doubling maximum block size every X years is not a good idea which is what BIP 101 is about though in it X is 2. Even though it is dynamic increase, maximum block size increase should depend on more/better factors.

Carlton!  My main man.

I thought you were done responding to me?

974/1024 ..thats a 95% full block.  
Obviously that's close enough for the purpose
of this conversation as the essense of the issue is running up
against the limit, which is happening sometimes as
I mentioned.
 
@ onemorexmr:  Please ignore the troll (hdbuck).

No, this does not solve anything. Basically if we had a minimum and maximum within a possible projection, while speculating, Gavin would opt for a choice near the maximum. We can not predict the future and the more we try to predict (more time, e.g. years) the more we are wrong.
Pieter Wuille actually made a better suggestion (17.7% increase per year). However, this is not that good if we start with a 1 MB limit because we would reach a maximum of 8 MB in 2030. It would be interesting if we had a initial 8 MB limit and a 17.7% yearly increase.

Actually I disagree, and so does Gavin (among other people). Blockchain systems do not scale properly, nor were they designed to do so. We can't just infinitely increase the block size, this will just lead to other problems. We need other solutions that are going to be built on top of the blockchain or that are going to work completely off-chain.

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Demonstration of the lack of scalability with Bitcoin:
At 1 MB per block, Bitcoin has a average of ~3 transactions per seconds (see D&T thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=946236.0)). Visa has an average of 2,000 tps (a maximum of 56,000).  Just to reach the average that Visa handles (not the maximum, nor peak times) everyday we would need ~666.6MB blocks right now.
Just for reference, we would need ~18.6666 GB blocks to be able to process the same amount of transactions that Visa can.

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Tl;dr:
Bitcoin can't scale well on its own. We need to do everything, i.e. increase the block size, implement sidechains, the lightning network, payment channels. Everything.

change to proof of stake screw the miners

If we believe in consensus, instead of turning Bitcoin into a mindless machine, then we should be able to reach it consistently when the need arises.
Doing it every 4 years seems like a reasonable exercise, so that we remember how to stay vigilant. That's why I advocate one-off fork with 8Mb hard cap.

Where such information? It's just a suggestion to conduct discussions or reliable information?

see this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1157575.0

btw, for those who think "blocks arent filling up"... I just happened to
have blockchain.info open on another tab and hit refresh.  
3 out of last 6 blocks are over 900kb, and 5 out of 6 more than half full.
Just sayin.

https://i.imgur.com/XjpsqZs.png

People voting with their wallets. Looking at market price there is no need to increase block size limit because bitcoin will soon not be used at all.
Just sayin.

I didn't bother reading this thread at all.

Let me just say:

Proofs used to reconcile between mainchain and sidechains compete with normal transactions for block space. Blockstream would be one of the main entity to benefit from bigger block size.

If for some reason it starts to get too expensive to run a full node and blocks are not filling up then increases of the maximum block sizes can be delayed and each increase in the max block size can be less then double. As a rough approximation, I think it will be unlikely for it to become prohibitively expensive to run a full node for small sized businesses.
I think that would probably be too small of an increase, especially if Bitcoin is going to gain widespread adoption.
I agree that over the long term, there will likely be more off-chain uses for Bitcoin then there are now (one example of this would be someone prepaying a weeks worth of coffee onto a gift card and the user would use the gift card every day until they need to add additional funds to such card). However the max block size does need to increase a lot in order for Bitcoin to reach any level of mass adoption. Bitcoin was designed to be scalable, although it made little sense when Bitcoin was very new to have very large blocks because Bitcoin was not being used that much and because the cost of storage/the cost of bandwidth was higher then it is now.

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When Visa processes a transaction, they most likely need to transmit and store more data in their own database then is transmitted/stored when a 3 input, 2 output transaction is confirmed on the blockchain. Visa also needs to store information about each transaction in it's database for a long time (although not forever), it also most likely needs to store failed/denied transaction in it's database for a long time (which is not the case for Bitcoin).

Visa does need to keep a number of backups of all of their transactions (although they probably do not keep thousands of backups), and they do need to transmit each transactions a number of times, including to the issuing bank, which also would need to keep a number of backups and themselves will need to transmit each transaction they receive a number of times.

Right now Bitcoin is far from the level of adoption that Visa has, so there is no need to have a 600 MB (or a 19 GB) max block size now. Although hopefully it's adoption level will increase substantially over time and such a maximum block size will be necessary.

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I am glad that you agree on the larger block sizes. I am unsure about the others though. I do support a small amount of off chain transactions, and although I do not drink coffee, I would trust Starbucks with the ~$20 or so that I would need to send them each week in order to buy a cup of coffee every day.

I think that it is decent if used accordingly with the right starting block size limit. Obviously 17.7% yearly is surely not going to cause any problems (unless technology development comes to a complete halt, which I doubt).
Well it looks like people have different opinions in regards to that. We have people like Maxwell who believe that scaling upwards (with a hard fork) is a bad way of doing it. The we have Gavin (including myself) who thinks that this is just 'kicking the can down the road'. There are plenty of other examples. It's hard to reach consensus when everyone is acting stubborn and when there is a obvious lack of communication.

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Actually I was supportive of bigger blocks ever since the first big debate (earlier in 2015) on this very forum. However, what I do dislike is the approach that Gavin and Hearn are taking. Obviously in order for something like BIP101 to work there needs to be a lot of testing. Testing that has not been done. If Core were to implement bigger blocks, the whole discussion (which, IMHO ,has become a waste of time) would not be taking place.