Bitcoin Forum

almost 70k unconfirms in the mempool.

https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Today's congestion brought to you by 1-meg Greg and all the Blockstream superfriends.  Go team!

It can be seen as also the miners' fault. Core does not have all the power to change everything. They have a proposal, it is Segwit. It is clear that the support behind it is not enough, then why blame everything to them? The miners are also at fault here. I have a feeling they want everything to stay as is so that they enjoy more profit if the fees remain high.

It could also be them who is spamming the network. Spend a little in fees to get a little profit in fees.

Seg-wit barely kicks the can down the road. It's not a real scaling solution.

Yeah, my sig campaign earnings have been stuck in the network all day, but luckily I'm not standing in line at Starbucks paying for my coffee with bitcoin.  Ugh.

This is why bitcoin sucks as money, and it's kind of hard to deny if you're honest.  Nobody in their right mind would switch from fiat to bitcoin.

Imagine two mechanics own an autobody shop and there's a car that needs an oil change.
One guy wants to do it the simple way: drain the old oil, and pour in the new oil.
The other mechanic says "no no, we can't do it that way, we might spill some oil,
so we're going to do a fancy engineering project that will cost 5000x as much.
It will involve dissassembling the car, building a separate garage, its going to
take 2 years, but that's my plan."  If the mechanics disagree, who's fault is it?

Raising the blocksize is the obvious simple move (literally 1 line of code), and it was the Satoshi's plan from the beginning.
Miners all favored it, but it was Core who blocked that with their influence, and then came out with segwit which is
literally 5000 times more complex (5000 lines of code).  

You decide who is at fault.



 

That means Core rulezzzzz..... and miners not.

At times like now I don't believe that this is natural to have over 70k unconfirmed tx, bitcoin network is under another spam attack.
Realistically you can blame all involved parties for this problem, as both Bitcoin Unlimited and Core are to blame for stagnating the solution.

... or miners.
you know that they are the ones taking the most out of this situation.
no so long ago, without the spam attack, the total fee they earned was less than 0.5BTC and now it has gone up to 1.5BTC (3x increase) which means 3x more profit aka ~$1200 more free money.

Beg your pool operator overlords to fix it for you!

They can do it via the

Bitclub pool just moved over from segwit to BU.  only 3 pools left signaling SW now.

Everyone knows jonald_fyookball is an anti-core, anti-blockstream shill.

Well, if you didn't know, now you know  :D

if by 'shill' , you mean unpaid advocate for on chain scaling, Satoshi's vision of Bitcoin, and the entire community...then yes, guilty as charged.

As you said, there are still 3 pools: BitFury, BTCC and Slush Pool supporting SegWit.  

What is interesting despite Bitclub's switch BU support seems to be lower than usual with only 36.7%

According to simple math: 29,6% of miners are not signalling any form of upgrade, they can join either BU or SegWit.
Do you seriously think that emergent consensus is something that Satoshi would like to have?

If true (in bold), we wouldn't be having this same discussion for the past three, maybe four, years now.

But hey, I know you wouldn't dare let a little truth interfere with your narrative.

Yeah, 70,000 garbage, no-fee transactions by tumblers and gambling sites.

The tumblers can go to hell. Bitcoin is not supposed to be Mastercard. It is a settlement system for people transferring significant amounts of money, not jokers buying sandwiches and playing nickel slots.

Exactly.

"The entire community" rejected 3 separate big blocks proposals in as many years. jonald is obsessed with talking (and lying) about the case for big blocks, as usual

They have set a flag not to accept any block bigger than 1MB while they're signalling BU, that means even if the hash power supports BU to do a hard fork they won't accept any block bigger than 1MB.
As you say it only 1 line of code but is BU only about 1 line of code? and if it is then you think miners are stupid not to support that?
Just now you could do it yourself, take Core code and change 1MB max block size to 1.25 or 1.5 or whatever and then propose it.

well that's a problem because you are saying that bitcoin is only for the rich, and the poorer can go fuck themselves, but the pooerer have the ability to make bitcoin adoption happen

if you want bitcoin to be widely accepted everywhere, you must allow for micro transaction, to be true, perhaps through some other gateway of payment, but it must be done

and actually those transaction with lower fee, are doing a good thing by lowering the average, instead of following the rally of "who pay more get it faster", that is a bad habit, which is in fact rising the average cost of the fee

Absolutely. Bitcoin is so impractical to be used as money especially on a daily basis and on a face to face payment. Bitcoin has its own advantage over fiat and fiat to bitcoin. We can still see that fiat is on top of bitcoin until who knows when.

Indeed, it can be a funny thing if you are in a restaurant, you are using Bitcoin and you are about to go home but you have to wait for 3 days in there because the money is not yet transferred lol. Anyway, Bitcoin is still a young thing and I am sure that soon things can have a viable and acceptable solutions. Now, Bitcoin will never replace fiat for many reasons, they can co-exist and can even be complimentary just like cards and cash today. I could not imagine paying Bitcoin for agricultural goods of ordinary farmers here in my loving country...that would be insane. Anything that is man-made will always have limitations no matter how high can the potentials be.

The slow confirmation that you are speaking of and you are connecting to 1 meg Greg as the cause along with its friends in the blockstream. I do not understand it and I havent grasp how did they cause the lag in the blockchain. But anyway possibly it is one expression of their dissatisfaction to the current situation that bitcoin has now and they wanted that their voice be heard.

You might want to read Satoshi's Whitepaper (https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf) again. Start with the title: "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System".
Premined and hardforking altcoins are rising, because Bitcoin is being limited by "the ones in power".

Wow a very exceptional delays to this day. There are indeed some time we can see the confirmation does not do, but the thing I am sure is only temporary if it is indeed a team there in the mines do the right way. But I am sure this will not give bad effect if indeed we can use transactions in a timely manner and conduct transactions on those who do not need the confirmation level but also trusted
 

Hear, hear! Bitcoin is for the bourgeois elite who struggle to understand how anything less than 10 dollars (I'm not underestimating the elite, I hope) can be a significant amount of money. Bitcoin is only for certain businesses and not others. We ought to issue notices to sandwich shops and fast food outlets to stop accepting Bitcoin, they're really clogging up the network!

Jokers can go use Dogecoin and Litecoin, for example.

Sincerely,
a sandwich-buying joker.

"The ones in power" Think about that statement for a moment. If there can be anyone or any small group in "power" Bitcoin is a failed experiment and no better than any centrally controlled fiat, Visa, or bank account. In fact, it's much worse. Fiat, Visa, and bank accounts actually work pretty well.

70,000 transactions with no fee? Are you sure with what you're saying because when you look at bitcoinfees.21 most of the uncofirmed transactions have fees. Also most gambling sites charges you with fees when you withdraw and some don't but they still add miners fee to your tx so there's no way to make a no fee transaction from gambling sites.

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System - perhaps you have never read the whitepaper.

I'd say that Bitcoin just transfers the responsibility from the banks to the user.  Digital fiat is very inefficient anyway, sometimes it takes a very long time for the transaction to actually get confirmed it just appears convenient to the user.  Bitcoin is for those who want to have real control over their money, and that carries responsibility as well as benefits but it doesn't make Bitcoin suck as money, it just restricts certain people from wanting to use it.

The unconfirmed transactions in the mempool don't really show how Bitcoin is as money and it doesn't show any inherent problem in the network.  Solutions are proposed and SegWit increases the transaction capacity.  Jonald seems to think that the LN is the only part of SegWit but the LN is just a development which can happen.  The network only needs an increase for now, it doesn't need such a huge increase in potential capacity as BU right now, just more than the current capacity.  The LN is just a good addition which will come later.

You're absolutely right -- I should have said "large portion of the community".

But you know what Holliday...I am still advocating for what you want:  A censorship resistant Bitcoin.

Do you think that because you have some experience running a node, you're now better suited to plan Bitcoin's future than Satoshi?  It was the plan all along to have large mining nodes.

You believe in the digital Gold concept of Bitcoin without fast , cheap transactions for coffee, but I wonder if you have really thought through the game theory here.  Bitcoin can only remain digital gold if it has high security.  It can only have high security if there's a lot of hash power.  It can only have a lot of hash power if the miners are getting paid a lot.  The miners can only get paid a lot if people are willing to pay a high price for Bitcoin.  People will only pay a high price for Bitcoin if there is a lot of demand.  Where does that demand come from?  It's a combination of a lot of things, but if you take away the demand for widespread use, if you take away the utility, then you are left with "well they demand it because it has high security".   So its somewhat circular logic.  It could work, but its questionable this will be able to compete in the long run with other cryptocurrencies that offer high security AND usability.   At least it is very risky.  You do not seem to acknowledge these possibilities. 
 

More than 64k unconfirmed transactions still. This is one of the most important reason why Bitcoin cannot come into main stream market. No one will wait this long to buy a product or anything. This may give some serious hit to the Bitcoin, if it goes on like this.

Actually, this shows that Bitcoin is coming into the mainstream market. Many of those unconfirmeds will be confirmed, but more will be added later.

All that the stupid fee does is to keep the price of Bitcoin down. If we didn't have fees, miners who mined wouldn't sell until the price was right for them. The price would go up - supply and demand.

Bitcoin is supposed to be free and open source. Get rid of the fees and let the thing run as it should, by supply and demand.

8)

A large portion of the community may want bigger blocks, but a larger portion of the community, measured by every metric besides pool operators, want a real scaling solution.

No, you aren't advocating for what I want. Giving more control to miners (which is what BU does) is not conducive to a censorship-proof Bitcoin.

I never suggested that I am better suited than satoshi to plan Bitcoin's future. However, I am willing to consider the opinions of many experts who are actively involved in Bitcoin. Since we've already had this argument and you've apparently forgotten, I'll quote myself to save time.


Making blocks larger does not necessarily mean that miners will earn more transaction fees. Larger blocks will simply fill up with free transactions until there is once again pressure to compete to have your transaction included in the next block. Once there is pressure again, coffee drinkers will resume their complaining or the blocks will have to be made even larger. That's not a valid solution for either coffee drinkers or decentralizationists.

Using a second layer which can aggregate many small transactions (with small fees) into a single on-chain transaction (with a large fee) is beneficial for both coffee drinkers and decentralizationists, however.

There will only be demand for Bitcoin transactions if Bitcoin offers something unique, which in my mind is a system which allows censorship-proof transactions and a seize-proof store of value. Increasing the resources required to maintain the block chain is in direct opposition to the properties which promote decentralization. A system where you have to record every transaction into a permanent ledger which all full nodes must maintain forever will never be able to compete with centralized solutions when it comes to speed and efficiency, so I'm not sure why we should base future improvements on attempting the impossible when we can base them on strengthening the very properties which gives Bitcoin it's unique use cases and thus it's value.

There is no mainstream demand for Bitcoin transactions (I'm not sure why "big blockers" like to pretend there is). The only people who will find it valuable are those who are willing to intentionally evade the capital controls implemented by their governments. Pretending it can compete with more efficient, centralized solutions while maintaining the properties that make it valuable, and attempting to "improve" the protocol based on those imaginary use cases, is pure folly. The average debt slave can't even write a check for $500, so I'm not sure why anyone would think they are going to purchase bitcoins in order to make their everyday, mundane purchases.

Pretending other cryptocurrencies (which must also maintain a permanent ledger) won't run into the same issues as Bitcoin should they obtain similar usage is silly.

I think I've fully acknowledged every possibility in your post.

I really hope we're not talking weeks of congestion again, just as everything seemed to be running smooth for a while, this happens.
Must also be really off putting for people who are just getting into Bitcoin.

I wouldn't recommend my friends to get into it in times like this.

Sounds like bagholder waiting to dump his 0.5 BTC and spending time dreaming about BTC rocketing and becoming more and more 'elite' ;) So, shall Bitcoin be only a toy for playing speculation games, or alternative tender of payment? It doesn't prove strength of Bitcoin at all - you can bet on on football results as well.

You have no proof of this.  You are postulating a tragedy-of-the-commons problem that many disagree with, and you are ignoring that block rewards will continue for decades.
Here's an interesting article about the fee market: https://medium.com/@johnblocke/the-fee-market-myth-b9d189e45096


The only thing really unique about Bitcoin is the first mover advantage and network effect.  But those qualities won't last forever.

8 mb blocks please. Satoshi didn't even put in a hard limit. Adding block limit was a hardfork that should have never happened. Please fix miners.  :) :)

We have the same problem mate. Payment was late and it took 36 hours before the payment was credited to my wallet. But going back to the issue,  bitcoin cannot be used as a micro-payment now because of slow confirmation times. Only solution is to increased the transaction fees. I think dynamic they should implement like a dynamic block generation to really help the block size problem.

I found a very interesting link inside this link: Bitcoin v0.1 released 2009-01-09 20:05:49 UTC (http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/16/#selection-7.0-11.23), which shows release notes from Satoshi Nakamoto.
The basic idea was to create new Bitcoins as a subsidy for nodes:
Miners currently still get about $15,000 in Bitcoins every 10 minutes as a subsidy. It is incredibly harmful for Bitcoin's future that they want to squeeze more money in the form of fees out of users long before mass-adoption has been reached, and long before there is any need caused by a much lower Block subsidy.
Short-term financial goals vs a long-term electronic peer-to-peer cash system.

Note that Satoshi only mentioned "nodes", not miners! Nowadays Bitcoin nodes only support the network without earning from it, while the dedicated mining hardware gets the money.
As far as I understand SegWit, it could give something back to the nodes, and take away some of the power from miners.

I could be wrong but isn't this likely to be from bitcoin unlimited somehow? I also would like to point that PushTX (https://pushtx.btc.com/) from BTC.com (acquired by bitmain who by the way supports BU) are down for maintenance, Is it possible that they have done that in purpose to make people use BU instead?

I think we just need to face it: Bitcoin can’t handle this many transactions, and in order for it to do so we need a change. Whether that be Segwit, BU, or something completely different I don’t know; but what I do know is that we can’t reach mass adoption without fixing this issue.

Satoshi did not make the distinction.  His vision was that all full nodes are miners.  Ordinary users will be SPV clients.

Yes, and no. With about 90% of nodes still using Core, only a little over 10% will validate the bigger blocks. Miners might be waiting to get that number higher. The problem is that this could have been done with a core update, but instead users have to pick a new client, whether classic, XT, BU, or just Core with the limit manually removed.

We are down to less than 43,000 unconfirmed, even though it was over 60,000 this morning.

8)

Right, in Satoshi's day, the client software was the node, sent and received coins, and mined for blocks using a CPU.

Transactions should not be free. At current price 1000 sats should be the minimum.

What kind of second layer - LN? At the moment i am suspicious of any second layer that will take away transaction fees from miners due to decreasing block rewards. It is not something we all need to rush into right now. It does take time and lots of thinking before making a decision. There are always people trying to manipulative a situation to their advantage/agenda that isn't always fully revealed.

There the thing. Is it not possible to automatically prune transactions data more than 1 year old? Will this then make the size of blockchain manageable?

Not really. I do think that rushing into something now when the demand isn't there isn't right, except for doubling the blocksize to 2mb for now is the most simple solution, better than BU and Segwit. The demand maybe there in the future. I do know friends who are not yet involved, but may do so if it was easier to use and has reasons for using it. There is nothing wrong with researching and debating for now, so when the time comes it can be implemented quickly.

The average debt slave can't even write a check for $500 - if they had any sense, they should invest and wait to clear their debts.

Yes there are checkpoint blocks and Core seems to think they are a good idea for that reason.

Just to double check. By prune, i meant remove data older than 1 year.

Would it be practical to keep the full blockchain in a few storage facilities worldwide, justt so that we have a record, but limit the working blockchain to the first time every address was used, and the last 3 or 4 times it was used? Of course, if an address isn't used for more than a year, only save the first and the last.

8)

Then why are the miners taking too long to do the hard fork to Bitcoin Unlimited now? You keep blaming it is Core but they really are powerless if it does not get the support of the miners. You also say that Bitcoin Unlimited is supported by the miners, then where are they? Where are the bigger blocks?

Yes full storage can be saved by the selected few if they wish to do so.

This is not true. The required fee to get a transaction confirmed has risen substantially over the past few days based on the artificial fee market. If these were low/no fee transactions then the required fee would have stayed the same.
Also not true. Even if you were to only look at transactions into and out of exchanges cold storage, then most transactions would not meet your criteria if you define "substantial sums of money" in line with the global economy.

If you look at Bitcoin transactions then almost all transactions are around your explicit definition of what Bitcoin transactions should not be.

Gavin and Satoshi would disagree.

im sure Blockstream would agree with you though.

Did he? Can't help but feel that only nodes mined that there'd be much slower transaction speeds.

Finally, perhaps the network will fix itself soon :)

Yes if you read the whitepaper.  Not sure if there would be slower transaction speeds without non-mining modes;
why would there be?

Transaction speed is pre-defined: 1 block every 10 minutes on average. My netbook can do that all by itself :D
More miners only lead to a higher difficulty, the protocol corrects for to higher hash rate to end up with the same 1 block per 10 minutes average.

I don't think that's what he is talking about.  Blocktime is 10 min but transactions can be near instant with good relaying which is the situation currently.

yes but no one said 1 block can only be 1 MB.   

current technology allows for blocks to be far bigger than that, so why don't we?

1MB is hurting bitcoin.

this is being done by the usual big blockers to pile false pressure on. note when it was clear that unlimited had been roundly rejected by everyone else they lost their mojo for a little while and couldn't be bothered to spam the blockchain.

Even if there were solid proof that Bitcoin Core were not to be blamed for these spam attacks, people like him will still shill for BU... so do not

even waste your breath. Who has the most to gain from these spam attacks? .... Miners... If Bitcoin were not pseudo anonymous, people behind

these spam attacks would have been charged with something like industrial sabotage.... but unfortunately this cannot be traced.  >:(

You can complain, but BU and/or Segwit don't seem to be winning over the miners.
It looks like it is a flawed system, the turkeys have to vote for Thanks Giving, why would miners vote to increase the size, when it means that transactions will get cheaper, so they will lose out.

I think someone might just have to fork Bitcoin without having 66% or whatever is 'required'.  The current situation can't really last too long, it just makes Bitcoin look bad.

if we disregard bitfury and jihan wu, the majority of miners ain't signalling for anything.

if they can't figure out that increasing scaling by whatever means will ultimately make them more money then they're too stupid to have their opinion valued, but they don't appear to have one.

Unfortunately, they're going to follow the money now not in the future, therefore, status quo.

again, a great demonstration of how stupid they are. if status quo continues forever then there won't be any money to make.

They'll push for upgrade when the current money dries up I guess?

Some have speculated BTC price will have to drop to like 500 before they will be forced to push for upgrades. Hopefully the entire system doesn't collapse and move into alt coins before they come around.

too late by then surely? once enough users are pissed off then they'll be either gone for good or in another coin.

there's a case of a boiling frog here a little.

I don't think they'd let Bitcoin fall that far down before they would start pushing for upgrades, they might at the very latest start to push forwards when the overall value is being pegged at something like $700-$800 but at $500 there would have been so much money lost by big investors that a lot of them will be left with a bad taste in their mouth and they would likely bail on the system entirely. Even down at $700 you're pushing it.

Its a fear ALL invested Bitcoiners should have, however, the miners don't seem to be worried?

Personally, I think f2pool started signaling SegWit just to insure status quo  ::)

I am beginning to doubt the Chinese miners concern on the network and its users. They say they support Bitcoin Unlimited because it is good for everyone for the long term but what is happening? Nothing except someone spamming the network for their convenience. Do you know who the real supporters of Core are? The better part of the miners. Blame them.