Bitcoin Forum

What are your opinions on this? Will the block size problem be resolved or will the halving happen first?

If history is any indication, then the halving will first commence.

I think the halving will happen before the block size thing gets resolved. The block size arguments have dragged on for month after month, and there are so many stake holders involved that reaching consensus could drag on for another year. It could be quickly resolved if somebody devises a coding solution that's so brilliant everyone immediately accepts it, but I don't think anyone will.

An interesting question. The halving is one thing that does seem to be agreed upon so that's likely to be first. I'd be happier and feel more positive if it was vice versa but that's life.

Of course halving will hit us first. Seeing how majority of miners (Chinese side) already decided to stick with standard bitcoin core and don't upgrade anything I see no way how we can see bigger blocks anytime soon.

The halving will probably come first, but that doesn't mean we won't have a capacity increase. SegWit is supposed to come out in April, which is two months before the halving. SegWit will bring with it some capacity increase.

Halving first, then blocksize solution. At this point it seems to be that a solution for blocksize will not be found until it really becomes a problem, sadly. Hope that is the other way around.

We need "consensus" for the block size debate to be resolved. I wouldn't put my money on that happening any time soon.
So I would go for halving.

I think we will get first the halving and then the block size adjustment will follow. I hope these events will cause the price to increase :)

the roadmap is telling me that the segwit thign will be implemented in april, so i say the block size, unless i'm missing something

if you mean the normal increase to 2mb, this is not going to happen in any case already

the halving sounds like a Stephen King novel

 :D

Block size increase will happen after the halving. Because the the debate is ongoing for many months and there is no quick solution at the moment. But halving is planned on the timetable.

with what i see from bitcoin developers until now, i say block size debate is not going to be solved this easily and it will take a very long time. because of that i vote block halving to be first.

I din't think that the problem of block size will be resolved so easy. The main core developer (Gavin Andresen) it is supporter of "another" bitcoin. With him even another charismatic developer as Jeff Garzik. The others remaining at bitcoincore are unknown people and with less contributes in the actual bitcoin (as it is actually). I don't see any point in which these two groups can be together. Every each of those has already its bitcoin and is working for it. So, according to me, not only before halving but even to much time after halving there it will not be a solution of this problem. Being not a technician (devs or programmer) cannot be able to tell if this division (if can be successful both variants of bitcoin) could affect the halving but normally not. It would be the the halving of the bitcoin of today and not of the bitcoin classic. Anyhow if both are bitcoin and have the same code and development (except the block size) can (or must) be even the halving of the other one. Anyhow this is not something that is much important for this thread so have no meaning to be analyzed more.

This is just nonsense. Gavin is far from being 'main core' developer. The group that is working on Bitcoin Core is much bigger and more skilled than the one working for Bitcoin Classic.

Even if they make a decision right now, rushing to deploy it is dangerous. Hard forks need time.

What I hope : 1 - Block size issue getting solved to end the nonsense drama. 2 - Block halving.

What I think will happen : 1 - Block halving. 2 - Block size issue being solved.

If the block size issue is getting solved first, then we can have a real HARD pump when we go towards the block halving.

There is too much drag on the block size increase. But if the community cannot find a solution, the bitcoin will hardfork.

For that I can understand it is the second one contributor on the development of the Bitcoin Core if it is taken as a point of reference this website:  

https://bitcoin.org/en/development (https://bitcoin.org/en/development)

And in which I found the below data:

https://i.imgur.com/Hp7j5lq.png

Anyhow, as I told in my post I am not an expert in such field and here the numbers cannot have that importance given or taken by me. But for sure I know another fact which cannot be never bypassed by no one. Gavin Andresen was the only person to whom Satoshi gave the codes of bitcoin and if so must be the most professionally able and prepared person in this field according to the inventor of bitcoin. Otherwise have no sense that was the chosen and the only One who has the trust from Satoshi.

This is due to his contributions in the past, the amount of commits that he makes have been heavily reduced. His profile shows:

This is because he seemed to be the best candidate at that time. This has turned out wrong and is possibly one of the reasons why Satoshi went missing (the visit to the CIA).

It doesn't get solved. It will be a kick down the road if we focus on the 'block size' and don't run off-chain solutions.

and wladimir seems the first and he is still working on core, so i'm with this guy than anyone else on the team there

Although I would like to say that it will be halving first based on history, this time I would like to give them the benefit of the doubt that there will be a resolution of block size prior to halving. I'm thinking of around 2-3 months time before they come up with a resolution though.

I am not taking the part of no one. I am not able to understand the difference that can exist and the problems which can be caused if the block size is increased with 1 MB, 2 MB and 8 MB. I told since the beginning that my technical knowledge in this matter are almost zero and I judge from that I can understand reading the news about this matter. And being in such situation cannot even find who has right and who has wrong or which is the best choice. But if it is true that Gavin was the most able person in that time for me seems not credible the fact that a person chosen by Satoshi as his successor become incompetent after some time. Have meaning to be better because will be more experienced but worst it is difficult to be credible for me. What would be happen if he wouldn't have been given the codes to the other devcores since the beginning? My answer is: it wouldn't be any kind of such problems for bitcoin today and even in the future.

If we are being realistic then obviously the halfing will happen far before we can expect the block size problem to be solved.  The halfing isn't something that needs talked about to happen,  it will happen regardless.  The block size on the other hand has been talked about for months and will continue to be argued about for months to come.

even if block size problem were to be solved soon, then implementation of hard fork and then making everybody use it , all the mining pools, etc it is going to take a very long time which i think block halving is going to pass by then.

Whichever protocol the core devs with the community at large agreeing to would take at least a few months, so yeah, probably the halving would come out first before we can see the full effect of the changes.


There's no need for a hardfork as far as I know.

I am going out on a limb here and saying that the block size issue will be resolved first and then the halving will happen. I think the Core team is getting

pretty fed up with all this fighting and bickering and they just want to push out the changes, before some new proposal pops up from the Bitcoin Classic

 side that might undermine all their hard work on SegWit.  ::)

What problem? 

Like everyone else said, halving  will come first.

i believe that the block size limit will be changed way earlier than the halving because this problem has to be solved as soon as possible in my opinion

I'm quite sure that the block size increase will happen first. And I would agree if it was increased to 8MB or else in a year or two we will be confronted with the same problem.
Judging by how things are going and how bitcoin is becoming increasingly mainstream, the number of transactions will grow exponentially, and in order for the network to keep up there will be a need for a new block size increase. So, if that is happening, why should we only increase the block size to 2MB??

yeah, surely the BI will come first. It is a matter of time until they implement it.

We are going to have to wait a very long time for the block size limit to change. Halving will come first.

I agree with the majority that the block halving will come first. First and biggest reason for that is that it is hard coded and will happen no matter what
at certain block, while block size will continue to raise argues and debates for months, if not even years to come

Halving all the way, and at this rat you might be asking this same question in a few years

After Gavin's latest Bip proposal for a 2MB block size upgrade, I would bet a lot of people will jump in that direction because it is the popular choice and we will see a block size increase before the halving. This little patch can have dire consequences in the future for the political shift it might develop.

You cannot put Band-aid on a gunshot wound and tell people the patient will survive. The doctor will get paid, but the patient might just die. I guess it is all about the power.

The majority is most often wrong and thus this would not surprise me one bit. Once we let a single political fork change the rules of the system, where does it end? Who's to say that there won't be other fundamental changes via other forks? Once you let this succeed, there is no coming back.

Every year or two if we scale by increasing the block size.

What is this other bitcoin? That private/corporate one?

I strongly believe halving will come first, since the block size discussion doesn't seem to have a solution in the near future. I would say at least one year so it's possible to begin to grasp a consensus.

I'm not even sure, the whole block size debate has been going on for far too long. I want to predict SegWit will be introduced but I'm not sure when they planned that so I think the halving will be first.

Block size increase first, via 1st stage of SegWit in April.

before there is an agreement about the ongong block size debate, we might be seeing the block halving is being completed first as an agreement regarding the block size can take another year or so. i have no confidence in a quick outcome.

It's a dumb decision to raise the block size now since we have Segregated Witness which effectively is the same as raising the blocksize without all the tradeoffs like the risk of hard forking itself beside node centralization problems.

We will go through the halving with 1MB block size I think.

Exactly. Another beneficial factor of segwit is that the block size will not jump to 2 MB but will rather grow over time with the adoption. I think that this is better than a sudden jump although this is debatable. Segwit fixes some other very important things as well.

segwit is not an ultimate solution, so you need to increase in the end the block size, so why we are not doing it now instead of wasting time with subterfuge like segwit?

unless someone here think that bitcoin just need 2mb to embrace adoption...not so sure about lightning network...i guess it may help, but i doubt it can cover the possible 1giga needed to match visa tx per second

Visa can value their TX in bitcoin.  There is no "need" here you have identified yet. 

what do you mean their value in bitcoin? i'm talking about tx volume...the need is not for now is for the future in case bitcoin will embrace greater adoption

to the contrary of popular belief, a big adoption can actually happen in a short time, so if it will happen there will be no time to implement the ideal solution

Visa is not a currency, they are a company.  They are a payment provider enabling payments IN ANY CURRENCY which could be bitcoin, gold, or even obscure private scamcoins like funbux or yuros.   

If you are a merchant, call them up and say you price your goods in bitcoin, and you need to receive payments from them in bitcoin.

After all, I have a visa card, and I want to buy something from your shop that costs .005 btc.   

The halving already happened... 4 years ago.  ;)

I'm going to guess halving will come first based on how it's going right now, and past events.

yeah but this what have to do with the limitation of bitcoin? do you're really think that if visa were to use bitcoin instead of fiat, the issue about the block limit would vanish?

I guess that halving will take place first, as people ain't gonna let this block size thing happen because they want their transactions to get confirmed faster in accordance with time rather than in regards to size and number of transactions...

The Core team are dragging their feet. Although the road map says higher block size will come out in April, I doubt that.

Not really, the issue about the block limit won't ever vanish.  Unless of course the issue is that "visa can do XX TX per second and we can't do that with bitcoin" in which case, there is no issue. 

According to the latest round table meeting between Core developers and miners, SegWit will come out before halving.

SegWit creates a whole range of new options, it also gives a temp. relief to the blocksize problem. Why do you need to increase blocksize without considering the optimum long term block structure? There are other options - side chains, incresing transaction density, and reducing the block creation interval are just 3 that occur to me with my limited knowledge. I am sure that there are other that more knowledgeable members can suggest.

I believe the block size issue will be addressed first, by the Core team.

Until July, it is highly probable we will be testing second, or even third version of segregated witness.