Bitcoin Forum

https://i.imgur.com/mhzjNR2.png

lulz

"640 kB ought to be enough for anybody" - Bill Gates ... and look at us now.  ::) ... Bitcoin allow for scaling, but you should not run into it with

closed eyes, hoping you not going to kill yourself. This experiment needs cautious people with open minds... putting investors interest first. I

would like to see bigger blocks, but not at the expense of the whole experiment.  ::)

Haha nice :D
Haven't seen this before

LOL, bitcoin block size can't be estimated, maybe in 2050, bitcoin block is 100MB, who knows? At that time, there will be over 10 M or even 100M people use bitocin, the population will be 10 B.

lol 1st ive seen this, dont get it  ;)

It can be estimated. The blocksize is too big if it does not allow for users to run their own nodes in a decent computer. It's as simple as that. If the node cannot be run on single computers but on specialized computers/farms, its over. Right now 1mb is a sweet spot where it allows for it to be run on single computers.

You'd be surprised how many people would be mislead by jokes like these and end up thinking that 'high' or 'unlimited' block sizes are a true possibility. The primary result of those is the lack of knowledge, or false knowledge. I do have to admit that the image has a bit of humor to it.

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I'd call false analogy on that one though.

It's not as simple as that. What does "not being allowed" to run nodes on a decent computer mean? I've seen a lot of people throw around words without actually backing them up with specifics. Does this imply a lack of storage space, an inadequate internet connection/bandwidth, not being able to validate on time? I do recall a presentation where the potential of 'never being able to catch up' as a new node as presented (I think this was Hong Kong Scaling 2015).

Can bitcoin use dynamic block sizes like the one Monero uses? That could be the future of all cryptocurrencies and I am all for experimenting on it using a testnet. For now the core developers can raise an argument that there is no need to increase the 1mb per block limit. But they have to plan it well when to change the block size limit or use dynamic block sizes. They cannot avoid the issue and take it lightly because there will come a time that they will have to increase it.

I can't figure out what you are taking about. But i guess that you are training about bitcoin block size, but as a programmer 1MB size is not a big size for me.  Since bitcoin have millions of block so obviously that would sum up a huge number.

Yes 1 MB is of very large size when compared to millions of blocks. As a database engineer 1 MB is very very small for me but the same is opposite for bitcoin because If we gather all blocks then it would a very very large data. 1MB x million= Trillions.

OP talk about technology behind the bitcoin is called blockchain,Block that contains all new transactions on the bitcoin network will be confirmed at every 10 minutes, and now has been limited to 1MB of information in one block,op does not explain in detail thread meant just write 1 MB to big.

lol funny to see that now that core are saying yes to 4mb. lauda has done a complete 180 change from his old rhetoric of 2mb is too much.
come on lauda. are you going to atleast admit your last year of tripe was just propaganda and misinformation to sway your flock to stick with the scheme to make bitcoin more controlled.

where is all the 2mb wont work on a RasPi now? (evaporated as soon as core wanted BIG BLOCKS)
where's all your 1mbit/sec internet (75mbyte per 10min) is not fast enough for 2mb? (evaporated as soon as core wanted BIG BLOCKS)
where is all of your "the internet cant cope", (while millions are livestreaming HD gaming)? (evaporated as soon as core wanted BIG BLOCKS)
where is all of your doomsday prophecies? (evaporated as soon as core wanted BIG BLOCKS)

oh wait. now you been spoon fed from your controllers, you now want to pretend it was never a problem, even after a year of saying it was a problem.
oh well it only took you a year to wake up.

I'm glad to see that this is a satire post, I was actually kind of worried for a second when I read the title and the image didn't load for a second.

Being serious, though, someone needs to decide what the block size is going to be instead of these 6-month+ long deliberations that have been happening.

So do we get this? The guy see a cute little dog, and think it's cute. The dog says, 1mb is too big. So the guy realize that the dog is retarded, so his opinion is of no use? Is this a cartoon targetted at small blockers, to say that they should not have a opinion on block sizes, because they are retarded?

I think both sides are retarded, and should stop attacking each other. If I could draw a cartoon, I would draw two dogs fighting over 1 bone, and whilst they are fighting a 3rd dog steal the bone. Think about that, with all the other Alt coins and Blockchain based technologies licking their lips, for Bitcoin to fail. ^hmmmm^

Because there hasn't been a sound dynamic block size proposal, in addition to the inadequate amount of research spent regarding such. AFAIK there are 'plans' to switch to such an algorithm in the future, although I'm not aware of a timeline for it.

"Someone needs to decide" in a decentralized system? They need to make proposals, and decisions need to be made via consensus. There have been several proposals in the past two years, and it is clearly obvious that Segwit is the one that has most of the support.

Primarily the side using logical fallacies is the problem. Attacking someone for having a view, when they have decent arguments for such is ridiculous.

Franky1, am I correct to assume that the 4 mb blocks that core is proposing now are the direct result of a proposed soft fork for segregated witness and not a hard fork?

In that case, can you explain or link to an article that explains how it can reduce the size of transactions in the blocks?

No, they haven't proposed "4 MB blocks". He's just trolling with misleading or false information as always. They're likely talking about the possibility, in which the block size can grow upwards to 4 MB with Segwit, but that would require some heavy and complex multi-signature use (no standard TXs in a block).

Reduce the size of individual transactions?

---

Update:
As you can see under, they continue to troll with wrong information.

lauda, so much fail in your posts..
you say core isnt going for 4mb data per block??
here

go research it. and have a nice day.
edit: hint 4000000 = 4mill bytes = 4000 kbytes = 4mb
EDIT: seems lauda still thinks 4mb doesnt exist in cores code.
here ill even link him right to THEIR consensus code
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/consensus/consensus.h

now lets see lauda continue to pretend its not the github that is literally saying it.. and instead lets laugh while he thinks im talking about unicorns..
really time he starts to learn to read code.. as his fails are going beyond logic

and to norris
although the blockweight which is real world data combined that nodes will be transmitting to each other as FULL NODES, the way its formatted is that the txid, inputs are in the baseblock(main block area) as just a bait and switch to not need old nodes to upgrade, but left only seeing uncheckable data inside the:
other things like a second txid, signatures and eventually 'payment code' (which maxwell wants to rename*) will add more bloat,
*first payment codes, then confidential payment codes, then Pedersen commitments, and who knows whats next

but this extra data will be outside of the baseblock(meaning uncheckable by old nodes).. but included in the blockweight (combined/serialised block) which is the real full data that is actually transmitted in the real world by updated full nodes.

in short although taking the signatures out of the baseblock allows more txdata into baseblock.. things like signatures and the second txid dont just disappear.. they still need to be transmitted. so once you brush away all the fluffy false promises of 1.8x at 1mb and look at the REAL bytes and megabytes transmitted between updated FULL NODES and then look at the transaction count to work out a transaction size of real full data..

it only allows for upto 1.8x capacity compared to today. because all they are cutting out of the baseblock is the signature. nothing more, just the signature. but then adding alot more data outside the baseblock

so its not 4mb=4x capacity. its just 4mb=1.8xcapacity.. because capacity is still limited to whats in the base block

and those numbers are actually numbers spouted out from core devs and their fanboys.

but i would love to see lauda fail at explaining why 'static const unsigned int MAX_BLOCK_WEIGHT = 4000000;' exists in actual code, knowing he hasnt read any code to even realise it... as i really wanna see him backtrack and admit that his deception for the last year of '2mb bloat is bad' has failed

Guys, you're missing the point.

Somewhere in an alternate universe Greg Maxwell exists as a talking dog.

Just common sense. When the computer is struggling to run the node then it's not viable. If you are not able to work with your computer while you have your core wallet opened, then it's not viable since you would need a secondary computer.

Why does everyone need to run a full node?  See section 8 of the bitcoin white paper.  Even Satoshi viewed full node operation as a business activity.  If you didn't sign up for Satoshi's vision, what exactly did you sign up for?  It sounds like you're rather have a toy than a tool for stopping banks from leaching from hardworking citizens via government bailouts.  That is first and foremost the mission of bitcoin.  Just look at the timing of its creation and the message encoded in the Genesis block.

Remember, BTC is now being ran by these types:


https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/52l541/we_should_not_change_btc_to_accommodate_more/ (https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/52l541/we_should_not_change_btc_to_accommodate_more/)

No, not "everyone" has to run one. We're already pass that point IMO. However, you should be able to run a node without it costing you a lot of money (this is subjective I know) if you want any kind of decentralization.

Just because Satoshi had a view regarding something, that doesn't mean that they were right. I disagree with 'running a full node to being a business activity'. It's not like the node count isn't slowly going down due to the ever increasing resource cost required to run one.

So we should believe in Ver's words, the same person that vouched for Mt.Gox solvency? ::)

Did you draw this by yourself?It`s nice. ;D

Or i guess it`s created before 20 years when 1MB was too big.

For me 1TB isn`t enough. ;D

Yeah, it is subjective.  My desktop could easily handle 20 mb blocks, and it isn't anywhere near top of the line.  Sure, in 5 years I'd need more disk space, but I could also buy enough disk for 20 years at that rate for less than $600.  In 5 years when I actually need it, that storage will likely be even cheaper.  The CPU, RAM, and network connectivity I have today can already handle it.

No, I'm fairly certain that you've pulled that out of thin air. Exactly where, when and how did you benchmark validation time for a 20 MB block? Quadratic scaling induces problems with malicious 2 MB blocks, now imagine the implications on 10x of that.

You are forgetting several things in your point of view: 1) Syncing from scratch; 2) Bandwidth. Sure, you could argue that you'd need only download 20 MB worth of data on average every 10 minutes. However, this does not apply for full nodes, but full clients. A node, doing an average of 1 mbit/s at the current block size of 1 MB, will spend around 300 GB of data in 30 days (source: My own node).

What is this about? Is this a reference to the Blockchain?

Does anyone know why current blocks take so much longer to download in Bitcoin Core than old blocks? As far I as know the increased difficulty is only related to mining and has nothing to with checking downloaded blocks.

Example: When I start a fresh installation of Bitcoin Core, it starts downloading the blockchain. It quickly goes through the first years with small blocks, then after that it's downloading with more than 2 MB/s continuously. That means at least 2 blocks per second (say 90 seconds to download 1 day's worth of blocks). But when it gets closer to the current date, it slows down.
Now when I start Bitcoin Core, it downloads fast for a bit, then stops, continues a bit later again, and then downloading stops entirely for a long time. CPU load is low, hard drive I can't hear (and I have no indicator LED). My question is: why is it so slow? Why can't it continue to download 2 MB/s so I can update 3 days in 5 minutes?

This also happens on a trimmed version of the blockchain, so it can't be caused by Bitcoin Core checking all transactions on disk. The only thing that also gets bigger in the trimmed version, is the chainstate directory (now 1.6 GB). Could that be what slows it down?

As another test, on my old Atom laptop, it updates 3 weeks blockchain in 2 calendar days. To come back to the statement I quoted: if blocks would be 20 times larger, and I extrapolate this, my old Atom couldn't keep up anymore. And if this gets worse in the future, it could become a limitation for faster hardware too.

While I've typed all this, Bitcoin Core running on my i3 still says "3 days behind", the same as when I started typing. Network activity has slowed down to just a few kB/s "background" level. What is it doing?

I'm not sure how you don't know the obvious answer to that question: Because the blocks are larger. Just because the block size limit has been at 1 MB for years, that does not mean that the blocks were actually 1 MB in size. Blocks prior to 2015 and 2016 were usually quite smaller. Note: Downloading these blocks at 2 MB/s isn't the bottleneck, but validating them is. You can speed this up if you add a high "dbcache" setting (e.g. 4-8 GB).

It shouldn't stop if it isn't doing anything. Relying on HDD noise is a bad way of testing whether it's actually doing something. If the CPU load is low, then the bottleneck is the IOPS of the HDD.

Again: Validation time. You could copy over the whole blockchain and do a reindex to check. In other words, reindex builds the blockchain index and chain state from scratch (no downloading). You're going to notice that it takes a lot of time, especially on weak hardware such as yours.

---

Hint: Something like this should probably be discussed in a separate thread.

Does that mean validating 10 blocks (each 0.2 MB) takes less time than validating 2 blocks (each 1 MB)? That would explain it, although I don't get why this would be different.
I only have 4 GB RAM so much more dbcache won't work.

Probably ;) I've had this on my mind for a while, and reading about the 20 MB blocks triggered it.

If you restrict transactions to 1mb, then you can scale linearly from the current worst case.

Bitcoin unlimited is running a testnet with 10mb blocks and they aren't even close to straining decent desktop hardware.

Bandwidth usage can be high, but 20mbit/second is pretty easy to come by.  If you have less, you can serve fewer nodes but still provide more to the network than you consume.

What do you mean by "restrict transactions to 1 MB"? Restrict the maximum size of an individual transaction to 1 MB?

I highly suspected that they are testing normal 10 MB blocks, which is obviously the wrong way to test stuff. Otherwise, that statement wouldn't hold ground. At 10 MB, with quadratic validation time, you could reproduce a block that requires a ridiculous amount of time to process.

The problem isn't the speed, the problem is the amount that you spend. Even at 1mbit/s, you can have 40-80 connections (again, source: my node). However, do you really think that you wouldn't be throttled down very soon considering that they'd probably label this as "not fair use"?

Yes, at a 1mb transaction limit, it would scale linearly from today's worst case and still allow any transaction that is currently valid.

If you pay for a data rate and they don't deliver that data rate they have breached your contract.

Bitcoin has fallen to 80% of the cryptocurrency market.  Transactions throughput has stalled.  Other coins are working hard on massive throughput and are continuing to grow.

The promise of bitcoin was not that everyone can run a node.  The promise was that no single entity could control the issuance of money.  Bitcoin can only meet this promise it it can scale enough to be useful as one of the primary means of international exchange.  The good news is that if it doesn't, some other coin will.

Who are you to prevent me from making a 1.01 MB transaction if the block size allows it? I see a bad precedence here.

Flat rate is usually based on fair usage. You should read the small print.

None have succeeded with that, nor do they have many users. Not that this is a bad thing.

They are both related. You lose decentralization, you will also likely lose values such as that. I disagree with the last part, that was not *the only promise*.

There isn't even a single viable candidate yet.

Yes, essentially.

Your question contains an assumption: that downloading is the only thing that's happening, or that it's the only thing that takes time. It's not.

The signatures of the transactions need checking. That involves finding and reading the blocks where the tx's were ALL minted from (which is not an inconsiderable amount of disk I/O), and then checking that each tx signature satisfies a cryptographic proof that it really originated from those blocks. And Bitcoin has to do that for every transaction in every block since genesis.

The early blocks (1-170,000) barely contain any tx data at all, as no-one was sending much BTC around. Once we get to around 2011 (>170,000), the tx rate ramps up exponentially, and so the complexity of the initial sync'ing job goes up at an even higher rate.

I don't like topics about block size. It's smarter to talk about free space within each block. On an average computer, most people would say you need to keep at least 15% free space on your hard disk so that you work on files without hiccup. It's the same thing with BTC. If we're close to max capacity, things will be less smooth. It may even stall at some point and we don't want to see that.

I'm guessing certain Core members have large positions in alts.

No wonder they want to keep strangling BTC.

Greed.

The question will be whether or not we will have to power to computer that much in transactions on a regular basis!  That is a lot and because of the difficulty levels now, normal joe's can not just mine BTC, so what are we looking like in the future.

It's a pretty serious problem though and it's almost not even discussed anymore.      

Bitcoin needs room to grow, and 1MB limit is stopping it from growing.

This doesn't benefit anyone in bitcoin, not even the miners. Because more transactions means more fees, even if the fees per transaction might be a bit lower, the total amount of fees will be higher because there are more transactions to get fees from. And that's not even taking into consideration that with more transactions come more users, and with more users comes a higher price, and therefore more profit.

And people worrying about bitcoin getting more centralized if we get bigger blocks are not considering the fact that we have been sitting on 1MB for years now, and since that time internet has gotten cheaper and disk space has gotten cheaper as well. So we can easily increase the block size and we can do so again when we need to (and by that time, internet and disk space have become cheaper again). And on top of that we can find more efficient ways to manage the blockchain and transactions. As has been suggested in the whitepaper.

As long as the increase in blocksize is not too large at once it is fine. And it won't cause centralization at all. And even if the amount of nodes and miners goes down a little it won't matter, because there will still be plenty of different miners.

It's still better than having everyone run to altcoins because it is becoming impossible for bitcoin to grow the network and transactions are getting stuck.

If we perpetually increase capacity ahead of demand, fees will never rise. Transactions will always be free or nearly free for users. This will not end well in a future where block subsidy ends and fees alone must support the security of the network (by incentivizing miners). If we did this, we are basically depending on mass adoption and skyrocketing price being guaranteed. That's probably not a good engineering decision.

you are right, though im sure that 1 mb is not too big at all and i think that the size of a block should be bigger

What's your suggestion? a hard fork? lol
             
Let the fees raise! miners will love it ;)

Exactly. People need to become aware that by transmitting a transaction they make use of resource - the Bitcoin network secured by miners. Such a resource can't be provided for free, because the miners are doing work for it. Since Bitcoin's maximum supply is fixed (for good reason), miners can't be eternally paid from block discovery rewards. Fee will play an increasingly important role as mining rewards in future.

Some fee pressure is also needed to prevent transaction spam which could easily render Bitcoin unusable, if no block limits are given and the network is flooded with micro-transactions. Ironically several such spam attacks were carried out by the big-block fanatics to proof that blocks were "full". In fact these attacks only showed that fees weren't high enough...
The reckless Gavinista bigblock-advocates even went as far as painting shiny charts that predicted a breakdown of the Bitcoin network around the end of last year. Nothing happend. You can always transact smoothly on the network, if you are willing to pay the appropriate fees.

Bitcoin capacity increases will come with segwit and small increases in block size to preserve decentralization. That's the responsible way to do it. There's no urgency to rush a toxic solution that endangers the original source of Bitcoin's value.

ya.ya.yo!

As said before by a few other members, once the 2100s arrive, and blocks no longer produce bitcoins(at least through the creation of blocks that aren't related to transaction fees), because of Bitcoin's many denominations(i.e in the future, even 0.0001 btc could be worth something substantial), fees would need to sustain the coin enough to carry it through further. Of course a fork could help once we get to that point and lower blocksize and force fees onto miners, but keeping a small blocksize helps eliminate the sudden change. Transaction fees have been rising constantly throughout the last few years, and I've seen almost no people complain about it except for a few. Things change, and people need to realise that.

Of course blocksize will increase just a tad in the future to accommodate ever increasing volume, but it won't happen with a huge spike from 1mb to 2mb.

In most blocks, less than 0.2% free space is left. I completely agree, and I've been saying it for a while: this limits Bitcoin growth. It also limits how many people can use Bitcoin, as any new user takes away a transaction that an existing user can no longer make. Lightning Networks may work in the future, but we need a solution now. And with "now" I mean about a year ago.

Miners spend millions on hashrates, and barely anything on disk space. By changing that ratio a small fraction, all miners can afford enough disk space for much bigger blocks.
The problem is that miners now only have a financial short term incentive to increase their hash rates, while they have no direct gain from larger blocks.

The demand is there already.
By not increasing capacity, mass adoption becomes impossible. It's already not possible for just 1 million people to make a few transactions per day, let alone much more people.

Right now, transaction fee represents less than 2% of the miner's income. The remainder comes from the block reward. This percentage is going to increase in the future, but no by much. By 2030 or 2035, the tx fee may cross the 10% mark. If we increase the tx fee, that will do more harm than good. The usage will go down, and there will not be any significant increase in the miner's revenue.

Lol 1 mb is to big are you raelly sure about this do you know how much 1 mb is just 1000 kb and that is nothing for now in the past it was allot but now it is nothing.

I don't think you understand what I said. The demand should outweigh capacity if fees are to rise. And fees must rise significantly if the chain is to remain secure many years from now. And regarding capacity....firstly, Segwit, Schnorr and other optimizations + LN will drastically increase capacity. Secondly, it's not clear that fees are discouraging adoption at all---data, please? For those that view BTC as digital gold, 10 or 20 cent fees are not discouraging at all.


The remainder comes from the block subsidy, which in a few years will be 6.5 BTC per block, and a few years after that, 3.125 BTC per block. Why would you assume that transactions won't make up for the loss in subsidy? Why, that was the whole premise of the system---that fees would eventually replace subsidy. Bitcoin has a finite supply. You say fees will never amount to subsidy; well, rationally, that suggests that in the future, the Bitcoin network will be significantly less secure than now. Perhaps we will see such drops in hash rates that mining tech from previous generations could be used to attack the network and cause block reorgs.

Eventually the transaction fees would replace subsidy... But that is going to take a long long time.... May be another 50 or 60 years... Are you sure that Bitcoin will survive for that long? Even if we assume that BTC is going to survive that long, the high transaction fee would mean that very few people could afford to transmit BTC.

Right now the average tx fee is around BTC0.0002, and I don't think that people would be really happy if they are forced to pay 100x of that (imagine paying BTC0.02 in tx fee).

Miners earn about $7000 every 10 minutes now. A few months ago it was $12000. It was never a given that mining should earn this much. I know that eventually all revenue has to come from transaction fees, but to do that now would mean either having 25 times higher fees, or 25 times more transactions (and more users) at the same fees. Or a 25 times higher value, or somewhere in the middle a bit of everything.
Bitcoin was also secure when miners were earning much less dollars per block.

For as far as fees discouraging adoption: I don't have data from that. But it's easy to see that blocks are full, and full blocks simply mean it's not possible to do more transactions.

Ha ha.  I dont think so because you cannot save sound files, video files and application files. I think this is the common needed in computer. But in just 1mb you can text files, webpage files, folder, document files. He he. And also without 1mb 1gb will not exist, 1tb will not exist also. Take this to your note.

Another possibility is to change the Bitcoin main chain from a linear chain to a dicyclic/dynamic tree type of thing, where instead of only one block being used as the subject for the proof of work at any one moment in time, an algorithmically tuned amount of POW subjects can be worked on simultaneously, targeting some kind of mining variability sweet spot. Not sure quite how disruptive that change would be though, lol

There was a time years ago when 0.01 was the norm. :P

It's all relative. The key is that the block reward incentive mechanism needs to be robust without external guarantees like mass adoption and a million dollar bitcoin. We can't rely on those assumptions. More to the point, many people don't view Bitcoin primarily as a payment mechanism, but rather digital gold. In that context, fees are much less important.


That's not the point. We need to account for rationality. A miner isn't going to lose money mining a chain simply because it was profitable in the past. He will shut down.

I won't be worth anything if it's not used for payment settlement.

It can not be just digital gold. It derives the value from being a payment settlement, so if people just only hold on to their coins, there is no value at all.

That's also why we can't keep the 1MB blocksize.

No one said it won't be used for settlement. But the value provided by the finite supply combined with the network's security should be considered in relation to transaction fees. Even at $1 or $20 fees, that value could be entirely worth it. Personally, I don't think Bitcoin is very useful for commerce (it could be with Layer 2 applications). It's useful for P2P value storage and transfer. Leaving the context of $3 cups of coffee and entering the context of people storing their net worth in Bitcoin is where this is relevant.

Bitcoin is arguably the best and only viable payment solution for online transactions.   

Credit/debit cards aren't safe to use on the internet, as fraud is common, and leaving all your credit card info online to pay online is just too risky. Credit/debit cards just weren't designed with the internet in mind.     

Cash obviously won't work on the internet at all.     

There's paypal and such, but then there's the problem with how do you pay paypal?     

But even if bitcoin would only be used as an internet currency, that's still a huge market. And bitcoin is already becoming a big player in remittance.

I use credit cards all the time online, and I get cash back for it, too. I'm covered for fraudulent charges (which have happened once in over 10 years using them). The optimal way to use Paypal is to use their credit line and pay them by electronic check. You could probably pay them by snail mail if you wanted.

Anyway, this is getting away from the topic, which is being taken for granted. The real situation is that blocks are not full; they've leveled off at ~75% full, even as SPV mining becomes less prevalent. According to https://bitcoinfees.21.co, 60 satoshis/byte is enough to get into the next block, which is ~ $0.07 based on median transaction size. Talk about hand-waving! :D

https://i.imgur.com/TueHM7T.png

There could be any number of reasons why blocks aren't filling up (or why average block size spiked earlier in the year). There may have been ongoing DOS/spam attacks that have died down. Services (and people) have probably gotten smarter about batching payments and cutting out unnecessary spends (I have). One would think that rationally, miners would be picking up transactions with low (but non-zero) fees instead of mining non-full blocks... so it may be a matter of fee policy enforcement, as we do see a steady ~2000 unconfirmed transactions even after many 100-600kb blocks in a row.

Yes, and that's why I think the bitcoin price will stay on ~600 for a long time... With lucky it can double in the next halving, it's time for a altcoins now(talking about speculation)

Well, I hope in 2100 I'll be dead already  :D can you imagine the miners in 2100? super computers and stuffs like that?  :o Hope bitcoin survives

Even though I understand, and quite agree to a rise in transaction fees, I don't like the idea that demand should outweigh capacity. Do we want BTC to be a rich guy's club or to become the world's leading cryptocurrency, and to change the world?

Look at Ferrari. They artificially limit their production. They could sell more but they don't to protect the value of their brand, and the exclusivity of their products. I guess it suits them well, but you must look at Ford or Toyota to see who is changing the world.

I don't think it has anything to do with being a "rich guy's club." Being able to run a node shouldn't be a "rich guy's club" either. And though mining already is, do we want to exacerbate that? Maxblocksize is very much about preventing the externalities that limit node/miner participation into more and more centralized groups.

I think "artificial limit" implies a misconception. Bitcoin as a system was a matter of designing a system that optimally aligns market incentives to ensure a decentralized, secure network. We cannot have talk about an "artificial limit" without mention that this limit is specifically designed to ensure decentralization and security---the former by maximizing the ability to run nodes and participate in mining, and the latter by forcing users to pay some of the cost of confirmed transactions, rather than externalizing all costs onto nodes and miners (forcing some off the network). I take exception when people try to make this about "free markets vs. central planning."

Bitcoin was centrally planned from Day 1; the entire point is trying to design the optimal system, with regard for all of its parts. The point wasn't to disregard most of the system so we can guarantee cheap/free transactions for users.

blocksize doesn't affect miners as much as nodes. Miners who can afford to mine in this market can afford to have bigger blocks too, because blocksize is limited by nodes, not miners.

And 98% of nodes right now can support 4MB blocks without a problem.     

Just that miners will have to receive more than 4mb of transactions before they can start mining. :P


And the nodes that can't, really shouldn't be on the network. We don't want weak links in the chain.

Block size certainly affects miners greatly. An entire block needs to be relayed across all nodes in a timely manner for mining to be decentralized. The more data propagated, the more latency.

Where do you get this 98% number? The IC3 paper suggested that 4MB blocks would kick 10% of nodes off the network, and they only tested propagation effects.

That's the same for all miners. Even if they spend a few seconds downloading the block, and all miners lose a few seconds from the 600 seconds average between blocks, the difficulty will correct for this. One way or another, there will be one block every 10 minutes.

I think Mike Hearn (https://medium.com/@octskyward/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experiment-dabb30201f7#.d6lolnbcg), who blames the Chinese “Great Firewall” censorship system for limiting the Chinese miners, could be right. They have the advantage of very cheap (and dirty) electricity, but they don't have decent internet.
And since the hash rate puts them in power, they can stop blocks from growing to protect their interests.

Mike Hears says this:
It could very well be the miners simply don't care about the transaction fees! They get 12.5 BTC, and if they spend a few seconds on processing waiting transactions, they risk losing the block to someone else. So they skip the transactions and claim the 12.5 BTC as fast as they can. If this is the case, the block reward does the opposite of what it should do: enable transactions! It may need several more halvings for this behaviour to change.

I dont think 100 mb would be considered a lot in 2050 with much better devices.Earlier even 1 mb was huge due to slow internet.Technology going to improve for better in future for sure

Which is not a problem at all, download speed of miners is not a bottleneck, and you need huge amounts of money to even be competitive in the mining industry in the first place so they can all afford internet. You don't even need fast internet in the first place. But even if they would, they could afford it. It will not at all increase centralization.

You'll never reach 100%, 98% is more than acceptable.

Not upgrading hurts more people than upgrading. In the longer term, more people will run nodes (because there will be more adopters), so the weak nodes will be replaced.
And the nodes that can't, really shouldn't be on the network. We don't want weak links in the chain.

Yes i agree with you. That 1mb size is not enough size,  we should always consider the millions block of bitcoin.
I recommend 10mb size maybe its enough already.

uh, you don't think the people who spend all day every day up to their eyes in bitcoin know less than you?

1mb is clearly not enough but 10mb would be a shock to most systems.

I'd like to see the testing methodology used in order to draw to this conclusion. IIRC there was some 'research' being done by some team a while ago, stating something like this (although I'm unsure about the specifics and can't find it). Please post the source if you are able to.

That number is just arbitrary and useless.

A tenfold increase in resource usage is definitely a "killer".

I can now confirm the HDD was the limitation. I've upgraded from 4 to 12 GB ram, which made it possible to download a pruned blockchain (2.4 GB total with -prune=550) to a ram drive.
The result: Bitcoin Core used all CPU it could get continuously for processing blocks. It downloaded at maximum speed once in a while, then stopped downloading for a while, all the time still processing the blocks.
In total it downloaded approximately 86 GB, and it took 1 full day on an i3 (while also doing normal tasks). A huge speed improvement.

I also noticed  Bitcoin Core 0.13.0 is more responsive than the previous version. While synchronizing I can now click Send > Inputs and get the popup instantly. This used to take up to several minutes.

All this combined, I'm ready for bigger blocks :)

So are two mining pools (https://news.bitcoin.com/viabtc-bitcoin-unlimited-hashpower/) and approximately 11% (https://coin.dance/blocks) of the total hashrate (at the time of writing), it seems.  

//EDIT:  Roughly 11% of nodes, too (https://coin.dance/nodes).

Hash rate for BU will definitely increase as time goes on. 11% now, 20% will follow soon enough

All of that is irrelevant to the question of whether that is (safely) feasible.

ViaBTC is a joke: "We want on chain scaling" -> Segwit release imminent (on chain scaling) -> "Let's block Segwit". A bit ironic, isn't it?

If their genuine intent is to block SegWit, then I'm happy to go on record as stating that's unreasonable behaviour.  We should at least give it a try and see what impact it has.  I'm hoping that the actual reason has more to do with coding compatibility, for example, trying to get SegWit and Xthin working in conjunction and it taking a bit of time to figure that out before BU and others can add Segwit to their code.

How do you mean 1 mb is to big maybe a cuouple of years ago the 1mb was to big for your mobile phone but dont think that in this time 1 mb is really less for something like
that  you know.

That would be a little pointless really. Xthin turned out to be written incompetently, and we have a thin blocks relay protocol working now without Xthin. What next, fix Xthin so that it works with Compact Blocks?

Xthin devs (the Classic team, isn't it?) should quit while they're behind, IMO. They had their chance, they even got to market first, but it wasn't good enough.

That's a rather rational statement that is very rare in r/btc. I've seen fanatics praise the 'potential blocking' of Segwit. I've also seen absurd claims that Segwit is an altcoin.

It's up to the BU team to keep up to date with everything, and not up to the other teams to slow down if they can't catch up. Xthin wasn't really anything special, and BU is already outdated (isn't it at 0.12.1 IIRC?).

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about so I'd advise you to stop posting nonsense.

Sort of funny but if we interpret 1MB as one million of Bitcoins and think about it seriously then it really is a very big amount of money. Even now when BTC is about 600$, one million would be 600 000 000 $ which is unbelievably big sum. So the dog's not retarted and is right that people need to stop at some point when they try to earn money.