Bitcoin Forum

See what happened on the 15th of June:

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=30days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

I don't want to scare anyone but if there are some people who think that a block size increase isn't URGENT, they're wrong. We only have a 5% margin to full capacity and the effects are already being felt.
I made 2 transactions on Thursday, both with a 0.0001 BTC fee. One was 226 bytes and it went smoothly, another was 930 bytes, it took more than 4 hours to confirm. I'm expecting the situation to get worse. Unless the block size is increased.

Sent a payment of 1,5btc on tuesday that was confirmed today morning after ~5days!
Have forgotten to check the mempool before I sent the coins. With 35k open transactions and a small fee of 0,00002...not my best idea so far  ::)

lets await the usual blockstream suspects who will pretend that scalability is not a problem and tell people to just pay more.
leading the way to making bitcoin more expensive to use, to further their agenda to create sidechains and move people away from bitcoin.

Damn that is a long time to confirm, you're obviously clued up though & you realise why, the fee was way too small ;D
I always pay higher than the average fee because I'm always keen to see quick confirmations.

everyone is keen to see quick confirmations. thats the problem its either pay more or wait. there is no mechanism for pay 90% and guarantee confirm in an hour, pay 80% and guarantee in 2 hours. its just pay more or wait.

which is not a "free market" concept but a "open market" concept.

we should not be forcing a fee war especially when its not essential to pools for decades and especially when there is no mechanism to help people have a true choice of priority that actually works

A spam transaction with a below average 0.0001 BTC fee confirmed after 4 hours. So what? I think this shows that a healthy fee market is not fully developed, because spam transactions like OP's still receive this kind of premium service.

We need more fee pressure to incentivize optimizations for automated transactions and to drive transaction spam out. Microtransactions do not need the same level of service at a native Bitcoin layer than ordinary transactions. The former are better served by payment channels, that work faster and more efficiently for this use case.

There is no urgency to increase the blocksize at all. Bitcoin is working fine despite the staged drama from bigblock-fanatics.

ya.ya.yo!

Spam transactions? I sent 2.6 bitcoin a few days ago with 0.001 bitcoin with just 226Byte, it took more than 5 hours to confirm.

Click on 2 years to clearly see the growth of transactions, and the inevitability of full blocks.

Core don't want bigger blocks. They want this fee market situation. This is Cores idea.

We can not achieve 100% full blocks. 95% is about it, maybe 97%, not sure but 100% is not realistically achievable.

It is not possible to get any better, in the near future, under current Core plans. Unless users are driven away from Bitcoin.


That is a problem, and just adds to the correct fee confusion. As you say, this is hit and hope.
Even "currently recommended" fees, in a rising market, suffer this problem. (as just seen)
Due to Cores dynamic fees, the only (almost) sure way to get in the next block is to out bid all other current fee payers.

Wow that is ridiculous you can't count on your money this way. When even a normal bank transaction is faster than a bitcoin transaction. Thought it was meant to be a fast solution to send money to each other.

There is no such thing as "the mempool" and certainly not with "35k open transactions". This solely depends on the settings that a specific node uses. My node has had 40-50k unconfirmed transactions on average for months, but you could clearly see that the mempool at other places (e.g. blockchain.info) was almost empty at times.

Provide TX ID or go away with these stories. ::)

Bullshit by people who don't know what they're talking about (again). A block size limit increase is no solution at all. It does not improve scalability, it does not do anything than open an already pressurized valve even further and hope for the best. Regardless of what you set the block size limit at, the very same people will be able to spam it up all again and then we will have the same people complain (again) about unconfirmed transactions because they don't know how to use the fee system properly.

Bitcoin is faster than anything in the traditional system if you use it properly. If you don't use it properly, you can't blame Bitcoin for slow transactions. Period.

It's getting very annoying,2 days ago i sent a payment of 0.14 btc and it took about 3 hours to be confirmed.
This must  change asap otherwise it will hurt btc

No. Bitcoin is working as intended. Don't blame Bitcoin if: 1) You're cheap. 2) You don't know how to use it properly. I have yet to find someone that I know (which are mostly experienced members) that had "problems with this". Besides, Segwit is getting ready to be merged. The "awaited" capacity 'boost' will come with it.

ha ha ha,, told you lauda would chime in

and WTF he is pretending there is no mempool now..

wait i got to quote him saying that for posterity sake

seriously he really needs to learn some bitcoin basics

oh this gave me a chuckle
https://news.bitcoin.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Screen-Shot-2016-06-16-at-05.06.30.png



lauda's logic is based on the fact that bitcoin blocks dont need transactions to make a block,
but his false logic is that he will continue to say bitcoin is running fine even if there are no transactions, a couple transactions or thousands.. because he doesnt see, or want to see bitcoin as something useful for people actually transacting..

he cannot accept the fact that people want to make transactions so transactions are important.
im starting to think he is getting jealous of bitcoin and wants some altcoin to steal bitcoins utility and is trying his damned hardest to twist things until his blockstream pals have sidechains live so he can sell people onto the promise of sidechains..

what made me laugh the most is this statement applies to segwit even more..
the reasons
1. segwit only overs 1.8x at most.. meaning less scaling than 2mb
2. segwit offers discount on fees.. meaning cheaper to spam

Yes. Bitcoin is working as intended by Core. Don't blame Bitcoin if:
1) You can't work out the correct Core dynamic fee. (you will also need to see the future to be sure )
2) You didn't know paying higher and higher fees is in the Core roadmap. ...vvv

Adjust your fee.  Ive made payments all week with a. 0002 fee and had no issues with waiting hours.

the point is not "just pay more" the point is if everyone "just pays more" the problem is not solved
5000 people paying 14cents each have the exact same problem as those same 5000 people paying $100each instead.
paying more solves nothing but drives bitcoins utility down

deciding to go with a plan that expands scalability by 1.8x instead of 2times is the weak choice in regards to scalability. oh and lets not forget that you cant segwit a segwit to go beyond 1.8x.. but you can increase a block limit by increasing a block limit to go beyond 2mb

deciding to go with a plan that discounts fee's is a weak choice in regards to reducing possibility of spam attacks as i said before.. it actually makes it easier and cheaper thanks to segwit

This may or may not be a problem. Transactions are still extremely cheap, so blocks are filling up. But are those transactions that important? Are the blocks filled with mostly spam-like low-value transactions? I don't have the answer.

1) You don't have to see the future.
2) It is not part of any known Core roadmap (there is only one that I'm aware of).

Well, you can start with this picture:
https://i.imgur.com/fnoZv37.png

---

Almost all of the unconfirmed transactions include a fee that is a minimum of 5 times lower than what it should be (https://bitcoinfees.21.co/). Then it comes down to how you define spam. An example would be signature campaigns that have daily payouts; those just waste space instead of paying weekly/bi-weekly or monthly.

We have enough time. We will get Segregated Witness soon, then we will get a block size increase later on since we will have enough time with the segwit addition to make things slowly and solid instead of rushed and failing like ETH.

lauda's "extremely cheap".
even right now in some downtime when the mempool(yes it exists) is low, fee's are still atleast 0.00040000 per kb(40sat per byte)
thanks lauda for showing proof... you cant back out of that rhetoric
and yes the numbers are right because its not "pay minimum" mindset but "pay more then the rest" mindset. which is 30cents per kb(simple maths even lauda can achieve)

put it this way. when people start having to pay more then 50 cents with no guarantee's of it getting settled in 48 hours.. they might aswell put bank notes in an envelop and buy a first class stamp at 47cents knowing it will arrive in 1-3 business days.

we are already at halfway to the point of that figure.. and at a slight push that figure wont be enough to guarantee "priority".. so its actually conceivable people can send funds through the old mail system settled faster than bitcoin.

but hey lets wait for lauda to say transactions are meaningless, blocks will still be made no matter what and thats all that counts. empty or expensive blocks

all lauda wants to do is sell the bait (segwit) then when it doesnt solve anything he will sell the switch(LN) and when spammers dont use LN and bitcoin becomes mega expensive he will sell the next switch(sidechains AKA altcoins)..

So your 2nd transaction was nearly 4 times larger, did you increase your fee for that transaction x4, no so what did you expect?

I also think same, if you like to get your transaction confirmed without waiting for hours the only way is to pay higher fees (recommended fee).

Its a large block size so the speed of transaction is always depends in block size.. if it will happen in the future after block halving its impossible to use bitcoin as payment in other company and stores.. its nearly 1 mb i never experience it yet..

For most people, if you you use high fee, but the mempool transaction size is very large, you still cannot get confirmation in time.

Obviously he didn't. Let's all blame the network because people don't know that flat fees don't work (in a sense where a fee works for transaction A but does not work for transaction B).

It doesn't. The transaction speed remains the same. You might be talking about confirmation time.

Yes you can. It seems like you don't know how it actually works.

lauda has no clue either.. he is arguing a one sided argument. he is not understanding the big picture.
no one should trust zero-confirms. and so when people talk about transactions they are not just talking about relayed data.. but a settled payment.

that should be what everyone should be thinking.
making a payment should be the term for just relaying it and having it zero-confirmed. but a settled payment is a transaction.

EG
"the transaction is complete when adam pays X to jeff and jeff pays Y and both parties are happy."

you can even google it. "transaction complete" no where does it say that a transaction is complete where a person just waves a bank note in the air. its complete when the deal/contract is deemed forfilled and settled

its also why LN prefers to call the multisigs sat in mempool and relayed adhok as "payments" and payment channels, rather than transaction channels.
because a transaction in the real world is about when a payment is deemed settled

its why a bank statement has a list of transactions and a separate list of "pending"..

(I haven't actually seen a txid for the OP's transaction, but okay). According to theymos, a "spam transaction" is one that create undesirable extra load on the network due to not following Bitcoin best practices(source (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Spam_transactions)). I don't think that creating a single transaction with slightly lower-then-"recommended" fees attached would be considered not following Bitcoin best practices, and thus should not be considered as spam.

From what I have been reading on reddit, some people are considering a spam transaction to be one that does not have a sufficient fee to be included in the first block (eg is not among the 1,000 kb of highest fee/kb as of when the first block is found after it is broadcast). This (greatly expanded) definition of "spam" however goes against the long standing practice of including a lower fee when a transaction does not need to be confirmed in the very next block.

The risk to the network, and to Bitcoin, is that either because of "spam transactions" or "genuine" transactions, that more then 1MB worth of transactions is created over long periods of time, which will create an ever growing backlog of transactions (even with RBF), and will cause the required fee to get a transaction confirmed to grow at an exponential rate.

Not raising the maximum block size also poses a risk to both the security of Bitcoin and Bitcoin itself, because there is a point at which people will decide to simply stop using/holding bitcoin when the cost to use Bitcoin becomes too high, and because there is a maximum transaction fee that users of Bitcoin will be willing to pay (in theory). This means that there is a cap to the total block reward, and that this cap will decrease over time (due to the decreasing block subsidy), which means that the cost to attack the network will decrease over time. If the maximum block size were to increase (to say 2 MB - now), then the (theoretical) maximum block reward would increase as well. I would also speculate that the total block reward would increase following a maximum block size increase due to more tx fee paying transactions being included in each block

true.


and the funny part is if simply not having priority to get into the next block should be deemed spam.. then lets laugh at the term "locktime" too..


and thats why a "pay more or wait forever" is not a free market thing(its open market, totally different and bad). and should not be something we are pushing for especially when pools dont need fees right now anyway.

we should be opening up scalability. we should have done it last year. as it seems we are not even gonna get it this year either. even if segwit code is released it wont be usable for months. so dont expect blockstream(core) to be the saving grace any time soon. by the time their 1.8x proposed capacity growth arrives it would be too late.

I check this site before sending coins: https://tradeblock.com/bitcoin/
Look at the 15th June where I didn't do my homework...in normal times (like now) my transactions are in a block within 45min latest even with my very small fee

Core roadmap. Gmax.
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html
"In Bitcoin Core we should keep patches
ready to implement them as the need and the will arises, to keep the
basic software engineering from being the limiting factor."

Hedge your bets Core?
Block size "cannot" be raised, except with a patch when it all goes tits up?

Too late then Core. Trust will be lost.

Hey, please!
This discussion shall not be about transaction fees. I just gave an example. The MAJOR issue we should be talking about is that blocks are 95% full. To deny this problem is like walking on the edge of a cliff and saying that everything's all right.

Could we please imagine what would happen if next week, there's 5% more transactions than there were on the 15th of June. What do we do when blocks are full?

Uh, the lowest value transactions drop off. The agreed upon architecture is the main chain being a high value settlement network, akin to transferring gold. Lightning Network will be able to service general use payments.

Who agreed to this? I don't believe this is how Bitcoin can be described currently, nor ever in the past, and I am not aware of any consensus for the status quo to be changed to this.

This is built upon, an overlay to, the status quo. It's backwards compatible, no client upgrade is required.

You failed to mention who agreed to this...

Well, the only needed components left are soft forks (backwards compatible and with BIP9, 29 concurrent soft fork proposals are possible). All it really takes is a handful of pool ops + status quo = we're good to go.

User/node agreement/permission is not required, nor even really relevant, by design.

https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0009.mediawiki

What are you on about? When Lauda said there is no "the mempool", he simply means that it's possible (actually more than likely) for nodes to have different mempools because they have different fee rules. For example, my mempool is typically less than 1MB and contains less than 1000 transactions. My node doesn't forward spam, so it rarely grows much larger than that (even during these spam attacks).

Simply increasing the block size will only lead to larger blocks full of spam. If that isn't obvious to you, well I don't know what to say.

Bitcoin's unique use case is censorship-proof transactions. This is why it's valuable. No one in their right mind should be concerned whether or not they can pay for a coffee using the-ledger-that-every-full-node-must-keep-a-permanent-record-of-forever and get cheap, fast confirmations to boot!

The problem is, most Bitcoiners are spoiled from the first 7 years of Bitcoin when block subsidies provided secure transactions for everyone. They need to realize that if we are going to have secure transactions in the future, we need to move away from the subsidized method of securing transactions to actually paying for them directly. Unfortunately, it looks like some spoiled brats are going to have to be dragged along kicking and screaming.

I agree, anyone that says that block size isn't going to be a problem, their stupid.

Bitcoin cannot withhold an economy on a large scale the way it is. And paying larger fees isn't the answer, that's just adding to the problem, disincentivising the use of Bitcoin.

Right now, the use of BitCoin I imagine isn't as big as it could be, when millions (hopefully billions) of people start to use Bitcoin, shit will get crazy.

He's a troll, just ignore him. What I said was, there is no "the mempool" which would define that there are X unconfirmed transactions everywhere. This number differs heavily depending on the settings, and you've just made an example. My node relays everything as I want to keep track of the changes throughout the year.

He's about to tell you that Blockstream this, or blockstream that or you're also part of Blockstream. ::)

Exactly. The intrinsic value of the blockchain lies within decentralization, immutability and censorship resistance.

Read the actual thread for once and ignore the trolls. The post above you gives decent input.

Except they didn't. Even back then, cheapskates were complaining that free transactions took too long to be confirmed, and I've been trying to correct their attitude pretty much ever since I got into Bitcoin nearly 5 years ago. Since then, we've had new anti-spam measures, dynamic fee calculation, RBF, CPFP, and now SegWit* and LN to deal with problematic fees, but it's all useless: these are technical solutions to a social problem, and the problem is that people are too cheap to pay 50 cents to use an international payment system, and too impatient to wait more than 10 minutes for their funds to clear.

*Yes, I know SegWit is much more than a capacity increase, but the idiots I'm talking about don't know that. They only know that their barista won't serve them their coffee until they have 6 confirmations. ::)

ok increase block size isn't the solution, still how the block are right now isn't acceptable either

when the average will be so high that you need to pay always higher fee, to get in the priority list, it would kill the whole "bitcoin is cheaper than fiat" thing

also the spam problem can be counterattacked with the solution the litecoin dev has worked on to make the spammer pay more, far more than what it is currently for bitcoin

Why isn't that acceptable? For me it's perfectly acceptable, since I don't buy single lollipops expecting instant confirmation.


The average is still extremely low for all ordinary transactions. Also the "Bitcoin is cheaper than fiat"-thing is not the main attraction factor of Bitcoin. Even if Bitcoin transactions would be significantly more costly than traditional methods, Bitcoin would have a huge user base, because it is more secure and not subject to devaluation and centralized control like fiat.


It could indeed make sense to increase the fees for especially spammy transactions (low value, big datasize).

ya.ya.yo!

I'm very much afraid of this. Not that I would mind paying some higher fees, I'm more worried about the share of BTC economy made of small transactions. I don't want, nobody wants BTC to evolve into a rich guys club only exchanging large sums and who don't mind paying substantial fees.

Lightning Network is being designed to handle all of these small transactions, instantly, and with very small fees paid to LN Hub operators. Bitcoin is about the status quo, it doesn't really matter what you want, the status quo simply is, and that means small value transactions are priced out first as they can't fit.

If you are just too impatient to wait for LN and the soft forks to Bitcoin it requires... may I suggest Litecoin? or Dogecoin? perhaps Monero?

who cares?  there's still transactions not getting confirmed/processed/included-in-blocks (whatever you wanna call it).  thats the only point that matters.

An increasing number of people are realizing the path of failure core team is leading us down.

I agree with you. The Bitcoin fee is already growing too big and makes Bitcoin look unappealing and inefficient.

Bitcoin was never designed for micro-transactions and as such will most likely not be the best solution for them (depending on what you define as a micro-transaction).

It is pointless trying to tell this to some people. For example: Someone recently complained on r/btc about a TX fee of $50, for some TX that was over 4 KB (or 2000% bigger than normal). They pick out these weird examples and make it seem like the whole system is overly expensive (which it isn't).

Nobody can prevent BTC from becoming more expensive unless you figure out a way that both defies spam and enables a high throughput. Hint: LN is the closest thing that we have for high throughput, and increasing the block size limit is trivial for these two things (neither does it defy spam nor enable high throughput).

If you are too cheap to pay 5-10 cents, you shouldn't complain about Bitcoin.

Well said as usual. Increasing the potential size of blocks would not enable higher throughput.

You don't demand to be able to afford to transfer and store London Good Delivery Bars of Gold (native Bitcoin network). You use a gold substitute cerificate, which can be settled with gold if ever necessary (Lightning Network).

When would you expect Segwit to actually be in place and delivering the "awaited" capacity 'boost' to the live network?

No. I said it is not able to provide "high throughput", not "higher". There's a huge difference. Unless of course, you consider 6 TPS to be "high throughput". In that case I can't help you.  ::)

The miners decide how long it takes them to adopt it. I can't be the one to predict that accurately. I'd say somewhere in Q3/Q4 this year (if nothing goes severely wrong).

As "high" is perfectly subjective, we can always be correct, clever. I may need to use this terminology instead of "higher", thanks for the correction.

It is indeed. However, "higher" throughput would also be anything > ~3 (which we currently have). I'd consider high throughput somewhere above what Visa does on average (which is 2000 TPS according to some sources).

But is that the point at which Segwit will start to deliver increased capacity?  From my reading (which may have misled me) I had understood that users actually had to send and receive Segwit transactions in order for it to provide that increase in capacity?  I was really wondering what was the (your) expectation for when we would be at that point?

That is correct. As soon as some people use the updated client and interact with each other, we will see increased capacity. The more users use Segwit the more capacity the network 'will get'. This will reach a top somewhere around ~180% (or 1.8 MB of TX data).

lol lauda great stuff

for months you been saying transactions are mostly 226bytes which would equate to the 7tps(false assumption but you really loved bragging that 226 magic number alot). atleast now your admitting its more like 400-500 to be at about 3tps, finally some honesty without over selling.

however a 2mb as of 2015 would have headed off the bottlenecks(a few have occurred this year) and kept prices low due to lack of bottlenecks forcing prices up.. while offering 2x capacity potential
but instead we were left with code release delays, which have caused a tx bottleneck many times this year. and what is the future.. a max of 1.8x capacity potential and also, even funnier.. a fee discount to make spamming even cheaper.... now thats just funny..

oh nearly forgot
if you think nefarious spammers will use LN. you would be wrong. their intent it to spam the network not their local machines
and if you think that every genuine user will use LN to not need to worry about spam. you would be wrong in that respect too.
LN isnt useful to everyone, you would be surprised at how little the scenario's for usefulness LN have..(when thinking about real people as oppose to glossy leaflets of exaggeration)

wait. i can already sense you rebuttle. eg not needing to worry about settling because channels dont need to close that often.
well my reply would be to quote your anger that visa takes 1-3 days to fully settle.. because its the same thing. but with LN you think it should be 1month-never.. yep im laughing at that hypocrisy..

now although LN increases "authorizations"/"payments" to large numbers IF people are individually sending funds to the same destination multiples times. but the settling would make it worse then visa.(using your mindset)

REMEMBER: LN helps aggregate "regular spenders" to a lower number. its not really a solution for increased userbase of non regular spenders.

think outside the glossy leaflets you have been handed and look at the some real use case scenarios.

I don't support micro-transactions. I think I've never done a single transaction which was worth less than $10. But there's a risk because of competition. What if some altcoin could perform faster and cheaper transactions than BTC? This is a market economy. BTC rules as of today, but many people, including myself, are looking at altcoins. Core developers should always have in mind that if BTC has a hiccup, there will be many altcoins ready, and willing to beat it.

though true micro transactions are not a thing to think about for every day users (only for lets say google/advertisers). we do atleast have to think about bitcoin in regards to average users.
for instance lets treat the fee as a percentage..what is the minimum fee people are happy to pay..lets say its 1%.
if the fee when the blocks capacity bottlenecks increases, to lets say 20cents(happened many times already) then people would not want to buy items costing less than $20 because then the fee's would be more than1% and just like using visa/paypal

so now we are starting to cut off a certain demograph.. no longer is it just the $2 coffee concept no longer wanted in 2015, but now its the ram, memorysticks, iphone cases blueray movies industry that people dont want to be transacting on chain..

at a 40cents fee(also happened a few times already) we will be cutting off purchases below $40 due to regular users opinion that 1% fee is alot

some thoughts from the past based on bitcoiners centiment about microtransactions
micro transactions in 2009-2013 were deemed as under 1cent..
micro transactions in 2013-2016 were deemed as under $2..
micro transactions in 2016-20xx whats the next threshold to deem as not being worthy

And so back to my original question - when is it expected that we will reach that "top" point?

If those altcoins had any desirable technology that is worth implementing into Bitcoin, it would be implemented. Nobody in their right mind cares about them besides traders who want to profit (excluding a few niche coins, e.g. for anonymity and such).

Nobody can answer that question. They'd just be making guesses. As such, I can't answer this either.

And so offering up SegWit as a solution that will increase transaction capacity 1.8 fold is a little misleading don't you think? It may increase capacity by some (largely unknown but certainly less than 1.8x) amount at some (largely unknown) point in the future if it gets implemented and used.

Nobody has offered Segwit as a solution to increase transaction capacity. Segwit was designed as a solution to malleability, which comes with a few other benefits (including increase transaction capacity). If you don't use Segwit and complain about transactions (and/or capacity) then you'd be a hypocrite.

I don't see why people would not use it. Also, Segwit is implemented. The code has just not been merged.

In this very thread, about block size and capacity, you said:


If that isn't offering Segwit as a solution to increase capacity I don't know what is.


Inertia; laziness; not understanding it or how to use it; suspicion of change - I can think of any number of reasons why people won't use it.  For comparison, what proportion of the network is currently running the latest version of the client?



OK, I think we have a different understanding of the term "implemented".

By "implemented" I mean in place, being used in the live environment and able to deliver the benefits set out for it.

It isn't. I've simply stated that a capacity boost will come with Segwit (which is correct).

Not understanding how to use it? As far as the user is concerned nothing changes. You just have to update your wallet. Besides, when it comes to a hard fork everyone has to upgrade or else they will be left behind (adoption argument makes no sense as far as Segwit is concerned).

Implementation == working code. It is implemented in the testnet, so that fits your definition of it as well. These are the two pull requests that you should be looking at: Segregated witness (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/7910), Segregated witness rebased. (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/8149)

No, it doesn't fit my definition ... I have highlighted just one reason why not.

The blocks are supposed to be full. That's what forces users to outbid enough other users to have their transactions included, which in turn is what is supposed to incentivice the miners to mine and protect the network. If they are not full then there is no need to pay a fee. I can understand why users want the fees to continue to be neglible but Bitcoin won't survive if they do.

It is as close at it gets. It will be merged when it is ready. Anyhow, complaining won't get anyone anywhere. I've seen quite a few people demanding stuff yet they've never contributed anything.

I doubt that many 0-fee transactions would be included at this point even if the average block size was lower. This is due to some factors, and one being the huge amount of spam transactions in the 1-10 satoshis/byte range.

If the blocks are filled because of spam transactions then they would still be full.

I disagree. Take a look here:
https://i.imgur.com/MI5Y8vU.png

Yet the miners are producing partially full blocks. It comes down to their own settings, some might not want to include very cheap/free transactions.

Of course, but those are even more artificial limitations than the block size. It works as long as most of the reward comes from the block reward and not fees, but eventually the fees will be the majority of the reward that pays the miners. At that point they won't be able to set such limits because they will be undercut by other miners. 0 fee blocks can still be excluded but not the ones that pay the minimum fee.

What utter rubbish, not being ready is hardly "as close as it gets" - when it actually is in live and being used how would you describe that, "even closer than as close as it gets"?

I do not think I have complained or demanded anything, I am trying to understand where things stand and what is likely to happen.

Indeed I don't consider myself on either side of this debate particularly, rather I am an interested observer, and what I observe is a considerable lack of clarity.

I think this is semantics - in the context of this thread, the inference is clear that you were referencing Segwit as providing "The" capacity increase.


Segregated witness is a soft fork - what relevance does a hard fork have to this discussion?

Even if "nothing changes" for the user if that is not widely understood (i.e. not understanding how to use it), then it will, in my opinion hinder adoption.  Not everyone will take time to understand the implications, their current wallet will continue to work, so why upgrade?

I notice you did not address any of my other points, and I am confident that the adoption argument is completely relevant for this and indeed any other upgrade; but especially since the benefits we are discussing are dependent upon widespread adoption.


I answered this already.

I did not know this.  It makes sense.  I don't mind paying a fee, it is minuscule and the benefits of btc outweigh the small fees. Lets keep btc moving.

That was the average block size was id almost 1gb and for now it has rised to twice so now it is almost 2g and that is not good for the miners you know.

No. Technically it isn't even "live" after being merged, it has to go through the activation and grace period. Anyhow, RC1 should be released soon.

Again, the main idea behind Segwit is fixing transaction malleability. If you want to improperly understand a statement, I can't stop you.

Because a certain group of people tried to promote a controversial HF (which is useless) as the alternative.

The argument does only hold no merit in the case where one was comparing it to the block size limit increase. It does not seem like you do and as such feel free to ignore it. This might be a 'decent' argument for deploying Segwit as a HF.

Then don't quote it twice and make double posts.

Bullshit. That doesn't make sense.

most people already aware that block almost full

No! The average bitcoiner certainly knows that blocks are 95% full, and we wonder with much apprehension what will happen next, when blocks are 99% full (100% cannot be achieved) but Core developers, it seems, are less informed. They haven't implemented a solution yet, so it's getting likely that BTC will... Stop growing. I don't know how many people use BTC today, but there won't be a single new user in a year from now. If a new user wants to join the BTC party, an old user will need to leave the party. If one user wants to make more transactions, another user will need to reduce his number of transactions. Sorry, no vacancy.

I dont think full blocks is a problem, what worries me more is increasing fees. When transaction cost was around 10 cents I did not cared much, but I sometimes see recommended fee about 120 satoshi / byte which mean cost of transaction about half of 1 USD already.

With these and possible future higher fees it doesnt make much sence to using Bitcoin as a pay option, it is becoming too expensive for me. So hopefully the planned scaling keeps the fees lower, preferably up to 25 cents, so Bitcoin still has some utility. If it become uneconomical to pay with Bitcoin because of very high fees, then Im not sure what to do with Bitcoin - speculating and just selling at exchanges is against what I believe what Bitcoin should be used for - and I have no use for transfering huge sums around the globe myselves where the few dollar fees dont matter so much.

Fees are still lower then banks but they're definitely not suited for microtransaction operations which sorta sucks

first the bait.
then the switch

lauda might aswell be saying that bitcoin already has unlimited coins. because there is code in existance on a different network playing with different blockdata that has unlimited coins.
lauda might aswell be saying that bitcoin has 2 minute average blocks and a 42mill coin cap. because there is code in existance on a different network playing with different blockdata that has 2 minute average blocks and a 42m coin cap

i think everyone who is asking when will segwit be implemented, are talking about BITCOIN, not some silly sandbox testnet called segnet. not some other altcoin. but actually bitcoin. and in a form that real bitcoin users can download and use with the real bitcoin blockchain.
lauda. stop baiting and switching your comments to cause confusion. you know exactly what people were asking so stop with the crappy replies that are meaningless and misdirecting. be honest!! and give real answers

Im not sure what you mean microtransaction operations, but many items are priced between 5 and 20 USD, and it becoming uneconomical to use Bitcoin to pay for such items. If even the fees go higher in future, I dont see much utility to use Bitcoin for purchasing goods online - too costly option. So we might be back where Bitcoin started, no online shop accepting Bitcoin anymore - pretty big step back.

Nonsense. Stop posting FUD. This is not how adoption works. Just because at times there seems to be a lack of space (regardless of the cause), that does not mean that the current limit can not support more users. There will always be a time where existing users create less TX's, at which there is room for other people to transact (more). You can't know where the adoption is at either. One user could easily be making thousands of TX's a day just to use up the space within the blocks. Transaction volume does not necessarily have to imply increased user adoption.

It was never well suited for microtransactions.

So paying 10 cents means that it is "uneconomical"? ::)

In Europe, we have SEPA. To Americans who don't know what it is, it enables most people with a good bank account to make free bank transfers to 44 different countries. I'm enjoying this system so much, I'm making more bank transfers than BTC transactions. Nothing beats free! The only superiority with BTC is speed. 20 minutes versus 24/48 hours. If BTC's fees rise, BTC will suffer.


Don't you want more users? I wish millions would use BTC daily, if only the network could handle them. I only have a few BTC, but the amount I have has been steadily growing, and my monthly average number of transactions has been increasing too. I believe that's the case for most users, and that's also the goal. Don't we all want BTC to be used more and more often by more and more people? Unfortunately, a fixed block size limits all kind of growth.

If it turns Bitcoin into a centralized (or even semi-centralized) platform, the answer is no. If the network is able to handle it, then the potential 'capacity increase' and the users are welcome.

No. A fixed block size limit prevents the system from destroying itself because it is not able to handle big block size limits. As an example, Segwit aims to scale down validation time to make it linear (currently quadratic). Once the proper infrastructure is in place, then an appropriate increase of the block size limit is not a bad idea (even though hard forks carry risks).

no point talking to lauda. he hates bitcoin
he has on many occassions hated services that allows real world retailers to use bitcoin. if lauda had his way he would want bitpay, coinbase and other merchant tools to burn in hell. he has been very audible with hating payment gateways.

its getting obvious lauda is too entranched in the blockstream band camp of moving everyone away from bitcoin.. he is just showing the the bait (segwit) before the switch(sidechains).
funny thing is that segwit will need to "bribe" people with a fee discount.. which in-of itsself is actually going to incentivise the spammers to be the first ones to move across and use it. rather than regular folk.(say goodbye to short term capacity growth thanks to the bribe)

what he is also not telling you is that segwit involves having to move funds into new types of addresses. which will pee alot of people off.. because some people will have to change everything they do, otherwise they are limited to who they can send funds to and who can send them funds..
segwit is not just a soft fork that is backward compatible.. that is an oversell.. of something that is becoming less and less SOFT as we get closer to seeing what it actually does

he thinks segwit is the solution.. yet once the 1.8x capacity (sideeffect) has happened.. segwit cannot grow any more.. then its back to the discussion of blocksize increase OR offchain.. and guess what he is full steam going to over promise and under factualize.. yep you guessed it.. "off-chain". instead of protecting bitcoins onchain usefulness.

he proclaims he wants bitcoin to be better then visa.. and what is his perfect solution.. LN.. something that "authorizes" payments near instantly. but the settling would be FAR FAR FAR FAR worse than visa.
and what is also not really talked about is people funds are locked into a multisig. meaning that the user cant just move his funds around without agreement from another person. if you cannot see that as steps towards corporate control then you are missing the big picture.

lauda has no coding knowledge never once have i seen him talk about LN in terms of multisig. he has only read the glossy images hand picked and presented to him in a narrative that makes him think pushing people offchain is a good thing. he has no clue.

lets not side track the 2018-2020 one way street.. lets instead just talk about the short term "drama"
segwit  = 1.8x scaling (cant go further)
2mb HF = 2x scaling(possibly more with flexcap alllowing higher numbers without endless downloads)

segwit = if fullnodes want to remain fullnodes they need to upgrade
2mb HF = if fullnodes want to remain fullnodes they need to upgrade

segwit = if upgrade but enable pruned no witness mode, it dilutes the full distribution node count (could end up with 50% dilution+)
2mb HF = if dont upgrade it dilutes the full distribution node count (but it wont activate unless there is >90%, meaning only 10% max dilution)

segwit=once active, there is no "doubling segwit".. 1.8x is the max
2mb HF = once active you can always double it.. infact it can be made easy to achieve with flexicap/bu/user settings menu, without need to download upgrades each time.

as for the laughter of segwit beaing leaner, less bloating and not going to affect bandwidth limits of nodes..
segnet
https://segnet.smartbit.com.au/block/000000ddf050de21b895ff687102211806ef2322143c1bea2638490e696f6e56
350 transactions totalling 1 input-one output............ you would think it would be a low 0.088mb block (at a 250byte average).. nope 2.8MB!!
https://segnet.smartbit.com.au/block/00000056a6d930e62f81108f43b490931c9722a324a71b7e959fd03fb6be0580
655 transactions totalling one input-one output............ you would think it would be a low 0.164mb block (at a 250byte average).. nope 2.7MB!!

so all of the chest bumping over the last year that segwit slims down bloat.. and how the network cannot handle 2mb of real data.. have now evaportated

the only debate left lauda can fight is the requirement that everyone needs to upgrade.
and as i said, a HF wont come into action unless a majority upgraded.. and those running full nodes are usually those with more then just a passing interest in economics, so they want to remain full nodes, so will ofcourse have an interest in remaining full nodes and upgrade should the time come.

so lauda has run out of any rational, logical excuses..

I really don't think that a good plan for adoption is for existing Bitcoin users to use Bitcoin less to make room for new users. Generally speaking, the most effective way to increase adoption is to show others how great Bitcoin is/works. If existing users are having to use Bitcoin less then it will be difficult to show others how it works!

There is also the issue of peak usage, as transaction volume will ebb and flow naturally throughout the day, so if blocks tend to be (nearly) full on average, then performance during peak usage times will be degraded. Just because traffic is flowing at the speed limit at 2 PM on a Saturday on a highway, does not mean that the highway has sufficient capacity to handle the amount of traffic it has to handle at 4:30 PM during the week!

Comparison is valid, though the spread between minimum and maximum traffic is smaller with BTC. Or it's getting close to the 405 in Los Angeles which suffers from very heavy traffic at least 8 hours each day. It would be difficult to add highway lanes in the city, but it's very doable to increase block size in BTC.

Did I say that this was a "good plan for adoption"? I most certainly did not. However, I'd rather not sacrifice decentralization for user adoption. If we start doing that, eventually we would start pushing those boundaries more and more and that would definitely be a bad thing.

There's are issues for a lot of things, yet there are only a few people trying to improve these things. Most are just complaining here and there. There are limits which could be considered 'safe' for Bitcoin and those need to have priority.

Doable does not imply being easy. I don't think you realize how difficult it is to deploy a successful hard fork.

Not many of us were around back then... but the founder of the project actually gave us very clear direction on how we should do it!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg15366

As segwit will not be activated by miners until the HF code for 2017 activation is included in a Core binary release...  And the tireless work towards a bug free overhaul like segwit was probably not done just for fun... Core should probably be working to meet the HK consensus criteria if they ever want to see it implemented. Exciting times.  :)

That satoshi. Silly boy.
Staff here wins hands down. :D

Exactly. The 1MB isn't graved in stone. This is no constitutional right that shall never change. Satoshi Nakamoto had seen that block size could become a bottleneck at some point.

10 cents - not anymore, more like half a dollar instead



The one unexpected hard fork Bitcoin had took half a day before miners reversed to previous Bitcoin version.

So I dont see any difficulty in planned hard fork to non controversional changes where miners agree like the small bump to 2 MB - obviously small group who preffer to keep altcoins to be used more will complain loudly as it is in conflict of their interest for Bitcoin to allow to be used by more users, but what matters are miners only - afterall they secure Bitcoin network spending electricity.

Classic appeal to authority and no logic behind the thinking pattern. Nothing of value here, move on.

What are we talking about here, 2013? That was ages ago. The situation is very much different today.

So let's ignore the fact that a 2MB block size limit is unsafe (due to O(n^2) validation time), and needs additional limitations (as added by Gavin in his very own BIP for Classic) and spread pointless FUD. Nicely done. I'd be a perfect example of a person who does not support shitcoins but does not agree to this "non difficult change".

Every day is quite different one, nothing to argue. But where is basically miner consensus, you going to see similar outcome, today the same as happened in the past.



Your right, after BIP 109 limitations (or simply limiting maximum size of one transaction to 1 MB) 2 MB block size limit is as safe as today 1 MB block size limit (O(n^2) wise).

I like you dont support altcoins, and sorry I put all loudly complainers about the upcomming hard fork to one bag of altcoin lovers - my fault. So hopefully Bitcoin Core comes up with hardfork proposal so you, me and other miners can vote with their hashpower, the only provable fair method known to modify (or not) Bitcoin soft and hard rules.



Obviously block size isn't graved in stone. We would still have the original 32MB instead !

The ecosystem was much smaller 3 year ago. Additionally, that was a specific case that required emergency upgrades. A normal HF deployment is not an 'emergency'. Additionally, you completely leave out nodes and merchants out of that equation.

So you're telling me that Gavin is limiting my usage of Bitcoin? In other words, he forbids me from making 1.01 MB transactions now? This sounds very censorship resistant.

There are people that support some altcoins, e.g. iCEBREAKER (IIRC), but I don't think this even makes up a decent amount of people who are against controversial HF's or HF's and thus they should not be generalized.

Which would have broken the system in the meantime.

We can probably argue forever about the block size, but let's not forget the fact: blocks are 95% full. That means BTC's usage cannot grow more than 5% from what it is now. Unless the block size is increased.