Bitcoin Forum

From what I understand, a larger block size would mean more transactions (or data in general) can be included in each block effectively increasing the number of transactions the network can handle in a finite time frame (at least 1 block long). Consequently, the size of the blockchain will increase at a greater rate since more data is being added everytime a block is accepted. Eventually, this would mean the blockchain would be too large to store so only dedicated companies will be able to have full nodes, resulting in the centralization of mining.

Wouldn't that happen eventually anyway? Sure it'll take longer but unless the chain is pruned how will people be able to store it?

The only people running full nodes now are enthusiasts who like verifying everything themselves (though it's getting harder since the blockchain is already pretty big), pool operators, and mining farms or services like NiceHash/Blockchain.com

This is not a post in support of a change in block size or for sidechains, I'm not qualified to take a side in that debate at all lol. What are the consequences of a block size increase and more specifically how it would be harmful for bitcoin's decentralization?

I think the idea is that advances in networking technologies will mean we can transfer more data in the same amount of time as. As long as networking capacities grow quicker than the blockchain then we will be able to avoid the problem you have described.

the debate is that those that want people to be pushed off bitcoin and into other networks will say bitcoin cant scale and blockchains ar broke because they want people to use commercialised networks/services.

the myth presented about bitcoin is the whole "gigabytes by midnight" fud that is being pushed by those commercial lovers, to make is sound like bitcoin has to remain at 1mb base block or jump to gigabytes.

the funny part is that progressive SCALING (step by step growth) like what WAS allowed 2009-2015 (0.25mb, 0.5mb, 0.75mb,1mb) pretty much went stagnant at 2015

even the supposed 'segwit' has not achieved a scaling solution ONCHAIN and we are still stuck at the implied limit of 600k transactions a day, while segwits true purpose is to be used as the gate way tx format for an alternative network

even though if you do the math of sending a full block to another user 1block of 1mb legacy transactions every ~10 minutes is1.66kb/s (even dialup can handle that)

so yea those against BITCOIN adoption/scaling are not really true 'bitcoiners' as they prefer to be stuck shouting out that bitcoin cant scale beyond 1999's technology

the only reason to keep to the implied 600k tx a day, is purely to incentivise commercial services to advertise their alternative networks/services while also pushing the fee's of bitcoin up to keep users from wanting to utilise the bitcoin network

I don't think the network is the problem, sure initial download of the blockchain would take a really really long time (especially if you verify every tx signature,  but that can be skipped anyway (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/492)), but day to day broadcast of blocks and transactions would be fine.

My understanding is that it's just a disk storage issue.
Again I don't think it's a network issue. If the block size was 8mb like in BIP-101 (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0101.mediawiki) then it would be 13.33kb/s. I'm certain modern day CPUs can handle the tx verification even if we increased the # of txs a lot, and there really doesn't seem to be a network issue unless I'm totally missing something; so it must be storage.

its not even about storage
1mb base block =52gb a year(4mb=~200gb)
i can get a 256gb microsd card(size of a fingernail)
i can get a couple terrabyte hard drive for less than a week of groceries cost

funny thing is those worried about 1mb+=bad, before 2017 suddenly shut up when it became convenient to allow 4mb to allow the gateway to another network..

yet millions-billions do facetime/stream HDTV,they play online games and upload the gaming while narrating while streaming HD content all the same time.
and happily would take up hundreds of gigabytes of data. just so they can run around a map shooting people

but yet strangely the rhetoric of same data, same speeds becomes suddenly impossible in regards to bitcoin

The chain can be pruned. Whether full nodes are storing the entire blockchain isn't the major issue. Storage space is a bottleneck and can stop people from running full nodes, but bandwidth and latency are more pressing issues.


Exchanges and basically any service who credits accounts based on the blockchain need to run full nodes.

I'd say that the more people that run full nodes, the better. Without full nodes enforcing the consensus rules, miners and economically important nodes can collude to change the protocol. If the chain will be hard forked, SPV nodes have zero say about it. Only full nodes are relevant in hard fork attempts.


Larger blocks cause propagation delays. This increases orphaning rates, which disproportionately hurts smaller miners and will eventually force them off the network via unprofitability. Miners can sidestep these problems by centralizing -- pooling hashpower, colocation. Less mining entities, each with larger market share = bigger threat of transaction censorship, government targeting of miners, 51%/selfish mining attacks, political hard fork attacks, etc.

Larger blocks also cause increased bandwidth requirements. Data upload limitations are the primary bottleneck here. People who don't have access to unlimited internet data will become increasingly likely to shut down their nodes as it begins to interfere with streaming, gaming, file sharing, etc. The less full nodes there are, the easier the consensus is to attack.

block size does not harm decentralization, how block size is increased can do that. for example if you increase it suddenly to a much bigger number now it will end up centralizing bitcoin but if it is increased slowly with the advancement of hardware and internet speed then it can't do much harm.

the most important thing to remember is that size of the blockchain is only one of the problems. the bigger problems is the hardware limitations. if we have 10 MB blocks for example you will have to verify 10 MB worth of transactions every 10 minutes on average and also be able to receive and send that much every 10 minutes. additionally miners will start facing problems, specially those with slower internet speeds who have to compete with those with high speed connections and that leads to miner centralization.
so the numbers you are reciting above (13.33kb/s, etc) are only when you assume people download 1 block per 10 minute but that doesn't make any sense. not for miners not for others. and it is not just downloading blocks, a node does a lot of other things that takes traffic including relaying transactions in its mempool

There's still a larger problem here that most people don't discuss. Even if hardware advancement allows us to significantly increase block sizes over time, that doesn't address whether doing so is compatible with Bitcoin's hard cap on supply.

Without inflation, the system needs fee revenue to continue incentivizing miners. The block size limit is the only means we have to enforce scarcity of block space, which guarantees fee revenue. Otherwise, Bitcoin's Byzantine fault tolerance may be threatened as block rewards decline in value. You can't have a network worth many billions or trillions of USD where miners have no incentive to secure the network.

in my opinion higher fees will kill bitcoin so if block size scarcity is enforced in the future*, remember that bitcoin was meant to be a decentralized currency not something people only trade or store value in so they don't care if they pay a high fee to transfer it. it may also nullify what you are saying since people would stop using bitcoin and consequently the price would drop and there wouldn't be any more profit for them miners anymore.
bigger capacity also means more transactions, and that means more transaction fees in total.

* note that i am saying in the future, as of today and in the close future we don't need block size increase or even fees to replace the block reward since it is quite high still and will remain high for many years.

what your not realising is that you cant have a network that is core demandd to stick with under 600k transactions a day as that then just makes the network only useful to under 600k people wanting to use/monitor/care about bitcoin daily.

people end up using other networks that are cheaper and able to process more than 600k transactions a day and bitcoin is left stranded as the coin no one wants to return to because the costs become too high..

LN thunderdome: btc and LTC iou's may enter, only LTC iou's may leave

secondly the REAL incentive to pools is not for the next few decade requiring fee's. the block reward is sufficient enough
(in short dont even bother bringing 'fee's for pools' into a scaling debate unless its a few decades in the future)

thirdly fee COST USERS funds, not incentivise users.
arguing that things need to be done for user benefit, then push that argument aside to then say fe's need to rise to benefit pools. is just playing games and empty excuses as to why scaling should be stalled/stagnant

again forcing utility to remain at 600k a day transactions helps no one, incentivises no one and actually makes peopl want to care less about bitcoin if they cant use it as and when they like.

so if it costs something just to monitor 600k peoples transactions as a user.. and then costs a user $1+ just to use it themselves. then its the fee's that will push people away far sooner.

the real goal would be to
allow more transactions
allow the combined (lower fees) to accumulate to be more as a total.

thus making bitcoins blockchain USEFUL for users. and also cheap to use for users.thus users continue to be full nodes

which after years of progressive growth would then become enough to cover costs for pools eventually(when pools actually need it)

A gradual increase in the Block size was a old method to scale, since then new innovations like second layer applications <Lightning Network> was introduced to reduce the burden on the Blockchain to prevent a scenario where the Blockchain grows too fast for people to be able to affordably run nodes with big enough storage space. <It is also significantly faster than the Blockchain>

People like Roger Ver and supporters of Block size scaling will learn the hard way, that it is not a good strategy for the long-term and definitely not if it goes mainstream. <Currently BCash has huge Block sizes and only a small percentage of blocks are used to capacity>

LN is NOT a bitcoin network. it is a thunderdome network for multiple coins.
for those that dont get the movie reference.. its a fortknox custodial banking system of not 100% control

which once you enter it. you wont want to leave and obtain BTC on exit. because it will become too impractical/expensive(fees) to close out and withdraw bitcoin from the locks

people will end up just atomic swapping to altcoin ious(12 decimal unconfirmed LN payments) within LN and exit using LTC or other coins that have been modified to have gateways to LN but have more transaction counts and cheaper fee's

oh by the way. those wanting to be full nodes for LN will end up actually harbouring multiple chains to allow channels to atomic swap. so if bitcoin for instance is too much to handle. imagine full node running multiple chains at once..
stick that scenario in your play book and run with it.. itll shock you in a hard way

LN's design is to take utility AWAY from bitcoin


^ blah blah blah social drama distraction.

im guessing your the kind of person that only has one plate, one knife and fork and one shelf in your kitchn because you only plan on minimal reserves.

smart people have extra wardrobe space in their bedroom. a full plate and cuttlery set in the kitchen so that they can cope with change and growth/expansion rather then race around at the last minut when theings happen

EG when you buy a computer do you buy a computer with the minimalist of features or do you try to buy a computer that has more than you need so that yor covered for future changes?

No franky1, I know you are 100% against the LN and I respect that, but you should also be able to see that Block size scaling is not the way to go, if we want Bitcoin to go mainstream. If the LN can only handle most of the micro payments, then we have already made significant progress. <Let's give it some time to mature and to show it's advantages over Block size scaling. >

Yes, every method has it's advantages and disadvantages, but stagnating on one method <because it was Satoshi's original idea> is not very innovative or creative at all. We have talented developers with lots of new ideas that might improve on Satoshi's original implementation.  ;)

3 years after we hit the implied tx count limit and bitcoins network has not improved.. instead "use this other network and stop using bitcoin".... (facepalm) thats a 200 year old business model which we all know how it ended

gold is limited utility, lock it up and use these promissory notes, oh and by the way it will be expensive if you want your gold back so here have some silver and nickel if you dont wanna play with promissory notes

Right now, the cost per confirmed transaction (based on actual mining expenditure) is much higher than the fees users are paying. Miners are subsidizing that cost because their revenues are temporarily being subsidized by inflation. However next year, inflation will drop to 12.5% of the original reward and it quickly drops off after that. When should we expect fees to begin making up the difference? The design can't remain completely dependent on fiat speculation forever. At some point, users need to pay the actual cost of transactions if they expect miners to continue securing the chain. The sooner users get used to higher fees, the smoother the transition to a deflationary Bitcoin will be.

If we keep increasing block size, "more transactions" doesn't imply a requisite increase in fees. That all depends on how limited block space is. If we increase block size beyond demand because technology advancement allows it (Like Bitcoin Cash), fees will drop towards zero. We need full blocks and a constant transaction backlog, otherwise there is no fee pressure.

Now, what evidence do you have that "higher fees will kill Bitcoin?"

I think you hit on the answer earlier in your post: bigger blocks = a bigger blockchain = less people running full nodes = more centralization.

Somewhat humorously, BCH blocks never come close to getting filled and are on average much smaller than BTC blocks. BSV block size limit is even bigger and has even fewer transactions.

I think both the on- and off-chain scaling solutions are a much better approach than increasing the block size limit, for the very reason that its a bad idea to let the blockchain become exponentially larger. Right now its growing at a linear rate and it should be kept that way.

Of course there are those who absolutely insist on "staying true to Satoshi's white paper," which itself is not perfect and merely an outline for the idea of what went on to become bitcoin. I see increasing block size as merely the twiddling of an ancient parameter and rather a stagnant approach to a technology still largely under development.

https://preview.redd.it/xulc06ckly921.png?width=728&auto=webp&s=aaddd330bb56d026a7dfe7de3e3df73c7fa7b514

Your opinion makes sense, even today mining still uses simple hardware. So that mining difficulties can still be overcome by cheap and many shops. I think why "segwit" in August 2017 changes the size of transactions from 1MB to weight units (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weight_units) and separates between shipping transactions with signatures. If in the future the block size becomes larger, the possibility of mining hardware also does not use simple tools, consequently the full chain will only be owned by large companies.

Ironically here i am, weeks into syncing the blockchain and run a full node, but I'm barely halfway there (84g). I like bitcoin core solution, and the market likes bitcoin core as well regardless of what fork supporters say.

This is not "a war" though. It is about CHOICE. If you have a "better" idea, you are free to fork and see if others follow you. So far what others have proposed is clearly not good enough to take over the crown. Bitcoin as it is handled by the core team remains The King.

LN provides neat things like (true) decentralized exchange, you could theoretically directly exchange litecoin for bitcoin and back without using any web site (wallet to wallet). LN is optional, you may use it or not. Either way, providing this option is already offloading the on chain network enough for it to scale. Each shop could run its own LN node, and why not, a full Bitcoin node along it (and while you are at it an Electrum server pointed to your node).

Perhaps someone will sell some raspi pre-installed with everything so its plug and play and shops can have their solution ready, or same as there is a linux distro for "miners", a linux distro foe "nodes" (or the same distro could do both).

Anyway, enlarging blocks is dumb, I wish newbies stopped requesting that as a "solution" for a "problem" that is no more... Spend that energy pushing for faster wallet LN adoption...

What's the largest contributing factor to increased propagation delay? Is it transaction verification, a bandwidth issue, maybe something else? Verifying more transactions would slow down block creation, but I don't think it would by too much. As for bandwidth, miners don't send out blocks to every node, they send them to their peers who then propagate them further, so I'm not quite sure I understand how bandwidth is a problem since there are plenty of nodes transmitting and receiving data.

Agreed, but why would users want to pay massive fees to cover the miners expenses, especially if they can use other networks for far cheaper (I know I know "they get a secure decentralized network" but still, does this limit the types of transactions that will be capable on the bitcoin network? Is this where LN comes in?). Is it fair to assume that up til now (and maybe for a few more years) miners have been taking the hit in terms of fees with the belief that their accumulated BTC will be worth more in the future than their current mining operation has cost them (i.e a net positive in the future)?

I installed core and was downloading the blockchain a few months ago on my laptop to try to use JSON-RPC with a python/bitcoin library, I had no idea it was over 200GB and eventually while bitcoind was getting blocks and verifying transactions I got a message saying my laptop was out of space  :P

On top of that I didn't have an internet connection at my place so I was downloading it at Starbucks and stuff so it took a couple weeks to get that far, yet it only took a few seconds to delete nearly the whole blockchain  :'( I felt so stupid when I realized I didn't check how much storage my SSD had...

Decentralization is an ambiguous word. I'm afraid this problem is more "political" than technical. It's about what kind of device (money) that you are willing to invest or include in the bitcoin network. The bigger the block, the more infrastructure you need to be able to process the block.

Source: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=532.msg6306#msg6306

Above is Satoshi's opinion. Core team might have a different opinion about this matter, but I'm not interested in politics. "Big blocker" and "small blocker" could be correct at the same time. Let's see what will happen in the next few years.

pools dont need fee's for decades
so drop that mindset of them needing fees now

causing a transaction backlog and fee pressure NOW kills off the desire and utility of bitcoin.
people dont and wont want a system which costs them more than other networks and still get delays (yes im using LN's promotion).
the very point that people love and want LN is the very point that proves that people are already angry and disliking bitcoin.
so why is bitcoin hated and detested. because fee's are too high and mempool backlogs cause bitcoin to be too slow.

if fee's were low and no backlog, people would love bitcoin and not care for LN... LN would then be seen as just the commercial service for business hubs to make money from by offering a banking system(counterparty authorised tranasactions)

propagation is currently SECONDS.. so SCALING block sizes to atleast get passed the implied 600k transactions a day limit is not going to cause issues.

secondly nodes dont even need to receive the full block data in one lump. they can get blockheaders. and thn attach the transactions in their own nodes mempools to fill in the blanks and only request the few missing transactions that didnt get relayed to them. so again if nodes are only receiving block headers. the propagation is still low as the transactions element of a full block is not being sent with it.
a blockheader(~80bytes) of 2000tx includes TXIDs of 6bytes(compact/shortIDs) per tx =12kb
so instead of sending 1mb of a full block data blockheaders can be a little over 12kb
meaning a block of 4000tx =24kb (compared to 2mb)
meaning a block of 8000tx =48kb (compared to 4mb)

thirdly. "miners" dont care about blocksizes. get a screw driver and look inside an ASIC.. you will find no hard drive. asics do not store blockdata. they are just given a small piece of data and their job is to send back a hash. that is all

fourthly
bitcoin core has already dropped compatibility for xp/vista and so should drop minimum hardware specs of such outdated levels. we are not in the 1990's and should not be trying to keep bitcoin relevant to PC specs of a decade+ ago
average joe upgrades their PC's every 2-6 years.
imagine online gaming industry.. how innovative would they be if they had to keep specs down below millenium/decade old tech/spec..
the whole need to keep bitcoin functional for a raspi spec is just empty excuses.. because even on a raspi bitcoin is capable of more than 600k transactions a day processing

fifthly
scaling is not just about pure blocksize increases.. it is most definetly not about jumping to "gigabytes by midnight"
scaling can be done by
actually avoiding adding features that cause a byte per tx bloat.(sgwit actually uses more bytes per tx, but then hides the real bytes with its pseudo math of vbytes and witness scale factor and other wishy washy code)
core also STUPIDLY allow a block to be treated as filled by having just 5 transactions, with lots of sigops.. so reduce the sigops means more transactions, and less concern over any legacy linear sigop processing delays(yep core instigated the linear sigop delay drama by even allowing a transaction to have thousands of sigops.. all so they can sway people into accepting the LN gateway tx format called segwit)

in a peer-to-peer cash  system. a peer does not need transactions of 16k sigops. in most cases they only need 2-5
thus going to that kind of transaction format of low sigops would actually speed up transaction validation where by more than 2000tx under low sigop counts can validate FASTER than 200tx under the current ratio

sixthly
fee's do not need to be pressured by a fe war over a limited space. it can be done be RE-introducing a fee priority mechanism.
a mechanism such as if a users funds are only 1confirm aged. they have to pay 144 times more than someone that only spends once a day(144confirm age). that way it actually means the whole community do not get pressured to pay the same high amount due to just a couple of spammers filling blocks.. but instead the spammers pay the price of spamming and its the spammers who want to spend every 10 minutes that would then see the incentive of using commercialised service networks like LN. while more modest ethical users get to remain happily using the bitcoin network still paying a more acceptable fee amount where because they dont spend often they wouldnt have benefitted from LN anyways.
simply trying to push EVERYONE, including the modest spenders into LN with the whole fe war pressure helps no one

I haven't really seen any tx's with a large amount of sigops, here's a tx with lots of outputs (https://btc.com/0e7a37f44a0ea519eff9dea1781e0cb7d2ed350dd3a0b80cabeb93c19b7c903b) yet relatively few sigops. Could you reference some transactions where the # of sigops is very large? I can't really imagine what types of transactions could come remotely close to MAX_SIGOPS (except for attempts to flood the network/overwork transaction verifying nodes).

This kind problems are predictable and can be solved by technological developments. e can give many examples for this situation: just before a few years ago, we were wating so much to download even for "one minute video" but now we watch movies online.  Don't worry about it because there are many people who works on blockchain technology in order to make it faster and safer.

the main irritation about the initial block sync is not actually "cost".. but the time.
and when actually poking deeper at the irritations the main rebuttal i hear again is not cost. but the fact that people cannot see their 'final balance' until the syncing is complete. which means they cant really easily see if imported their wallet correctly or even make a transaction until the syncing is complete.

this can easily be remedied.
imagine getting to see a 'unverified' balance within seconds of opening your node for the first time. via SPV methods(grab a rlatively fresh UTXO set from peers). and thus using a fresh UTXO set, then able to know you have imported the correct wallet by seeing aatleast a unverified balance and also then able to make transactions.. then the whole blockchain syncing becomes a background issue rather than a stare at the screen waiting issue

its like online gaming/phone apps these days. get to play with a small single level demo of a game whilst the whole game downloads in the background. people can the be instantly entertained and not be as concerned about waiting for the game to download, as that main download is treated as a background issue.

lastly the fee being more than a few hours of minimum wage labour for MILLIONS of people in third world countries deters more people than the cost of a hard drive or internet access

Why not just use a lightweight client then? If you just want to send transactions and see your balance then you can just import that wallet in an SPV client. The assurance you get from verifying all TX's via your full node isn't meant to be an annoyance, we shouldn't be taking a full node and downgrading it to some kind of hybrid; there's a reason SPV exists.

its not about turning a full node into a SPV.. although. funnily enough core's prunned chain feature and stripped block featurs actually allow a core node to not be a full node.
its not about turning a full node into a SPV.. its about allowing users to still be full nodes. but also get some unverified upfront information to help them out straight away rather than waiting


the way i see it is that not everyone NEEDS to be a full node. so yea people can use lite wallets.
the way i see it if you only have balance to only b spending occassionally (once a week) you dont need to monitor every transaction there is all day every day, all you really care about is that your transaction exists. so being a full node is not an essential need.

where as businesses that NEED to monitor hundreds/thousands of transactions they are personally involved in have personal reasons to NEED to be a full node.

also those few people that have slow internet because they are home users actually bottleneck the propogation. and thus they are not helping the network. so just being a full node for the sake of thinking they are helping, is actually doing the opposite.

if people really want to be full nodes then they need to expect some sort of effort is needed by them by actually having hom broadband instead of borrowing starbucks wifi occassionally.

its like online gaming. wanting to play the latest game but not having the latest console to play it. if you really want to play the latest games then buy the latest console. rather than say that online gaming should be regulated down to only being sega megadrive(genesis)/n64 graphics purely to be universal

imagine it. the gaming community first saying online gaming should be regulated down to sega/nintendo specs.. and then saying that online gaming should then charge 20cents per 10 minute game round.. thus ruling out utility for the same group that only want sega/nintendo standards by way of fee's..

and then going further. having a special screen that offers HD standards but you need to sign a contract that locks your funds up with a custodian that then server streams you HD content to screen, purely so you can play hd games for sub-pennies without the need of a console.

there is just so much hypocrisy of flip flop arguements that it becomes amusing.
LN's design is for the fast microtransactions niche:
do you really think LN users will take their desktop computers running as masternodes to validate all the mainchains that are LN compatible into starbucks to LN purchase a coffee.. or just use a phone app linked to a LN factory/watchtower server..
as the answer will tell you that LN will be more centralised than people think

too many people think that the answer to bitcoin is just 2 debates
low utility high fee.. or gigabytes by midnight low fee
big server farms.. or everyone NEEDS to be fullnode

Bigger blocks take longer to propagate to the network and they also take longer to verify. The latter is especially problematic at larger block sizes because for certain transactions, signature hashing quadratically scales (https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/). If it takes several minutes to verify a block, that's a real problem. If invalid, it'll be orphaned. If miners are doing validationless mining to sidestep the issue, this can result in orphaned chains. This means less secure transactions for users, and more expensive mining for miners. This encourages smaller miners to shut down and larger miners to scale up to account for these inefficiencies.

Segwit partially solved the quadratic sig hashing issue, but transaction data in the base block is still a problem.


That's a fair assumption. Miners are paying far more per transaction than users are. Rationally, this is because they are investors who are speculating on the future value of bitcoins. It's bad to assume that miner speculation on fiat value will sustain the system forever, especially if the block rewards get smaller and smaller due to lack of fee revenue. At some point in the future, Bitcoin's value should become less speculative (as it becomes an established asset class) and mining incentives should accordingly be more in line with actual usage. Mining can't remain entirely dependent on speculation. That was never Bitcoin's design and it's just not sustainable.

If Bitcoin is a settlement layer, it will probably limit on-chain transactions to those who need to transfer higher value, or those who have a specific need for Bitcoin confirmation -- like a Lightning commitment transaction.

If people aren't willing to pay high fees, then mining revenue will drop and mining security will therefore drop. This may be fine, and we will hopefully see an equilibrium form where mining security reflects what users are actually willing to pay.

How do you know? Any evidence or just more empty conjecture?

Both transaction fees and price steadily rose from 2015 until the end of the run in December, 2017. Users were obviously willing to pay higher and higher fees. When Bitcoin has even more utility because of increasing adoption, a robust LN, sidechains, smart contract ecosystem, etc. I think that would justify higher fees yet.


That's the best case scenario, and it's with a base block size of 1MB. Witness data is not a problem for the quadratic sighashing problem, but increasing the base block size is. Some contrast to your "data" (https://bitcoincore.org/en/2016/01/26/segwit-benefits/):

Disclaimer, I can't say that I'm qualified in this matter

But from what I heard, bigger block sizes (like 8-16M) are not good for the resilience of the network since they lead to excessive centralization of mining. Bigger blocks will propagate slowly, so small miners will be at a disadvantage. There are probably other reasons why big blocks are not good. Further, if we want real scalability, Lightning Network is the way to go, not increasing the block size

Regarding pruning the blockchain, I think it is also possible. For example, it might be possible to make a "cold reset", so to speak, i.e. switch to a new and empty blockchain with only initial balances set without the overhead of transactions which led to this state (and we can do so as many times as we need)

evidence... hmmm
how about people frustrated with bitcoin to such a point they are actively promoting LN....
how they are frustrated with waiting for bitcoin innovation that they are willing to losen their morals and principles and understanding of bitcoin to actively want to have a different network where funds are locked into counterparty management(banking).

every person that WANTS LN are people secretly pee'd off with bitcoin fee's and limited transaction ability... if they were not peed off, and happy with bitcoin. they would not be so hard nose about promoting LN as LN would not be something they would want/need
in essense. if there wasnt a problem then LN would not be a solution.. so those promoting LN are actually announcing and screaming there is a bitcoin problem.

but the 'problem' is not technology.. but political decision of devs' to not innovate bitcoin and instead stifle bitcoin to make LN a thing people desire

as for segwits stuff that core pretend are fixed
maleability.. has not been fixed. people can still malleate on the bitcoin network by using legacy
infact new opcodes for segwit allow segwit to be malleated too... yep core want/are reintroducing malleation into segwit.. (i know i laughed hard when that became public knowledge)
as for the legacy transaction s in regards to the "quadratic" verification.. that can be solved real easy... dont let a single transaction be allowed to have 16,000 sigops. this then solves 2 things
a. if a transaction is only allowed say 500sigops. then their wont be any issue with sighash validating.
b. blocks wont be filled by just 5tx's of such bloated crap.

funnily enough.. core when keeping the baseblock but then shifting to weight. didnt DECREASE sigop limit to eleviate the problem.. instead they increased the sigop limit
it was 20k blocksigop limit with a /5 for tx sigop limit... to then be a 80000k blocksigop limit with a /5 for tx sigoplimit
(4k to 16k sigops per tx).. which was an unbelievable foolish move.

at worse they could have done 80000 /20 to atleast stick to the old 4ktx limit.. or improved the situation by doing a 80k /100 to get transactions to only be allowed 800 (though i personally think 800 is still too much for a 'peer-to-peer' decentralsied currency)

LN is not a bitcoin thing.
LN is a separate network for multiple coins. the onyl reason the words bitcoin and LN are currently inter-twined is purely for promotion and sponsorship stuff..

LN is just a thunderdome to let many coins IOU's(12 decimal payments) enter. and then have some coins soo expensive and so unable to manage millions of transactions a day, that people wont want to exit back out to those coins.
thunderdome 2 may enter one may leave..

its the old banking addage of gold is too heavy and costly to be a currency, so lock ur gold up with a counterparty and have them give you a promissory note(19th century banking promotion).. and if you want to convert the promissory note to coins, you may find taking silver or copper a better exit method.

LN does not scale bitcoin. it actually takes bitcoiners off the bitcoin network "to reduce the burden" (=reduce bitcoin utility)

firstly no one HAS TO deposit gold into a bank vault... but if bank notes promote and encourage mass participation of gold why be angry at bank notes. its nonsensical........ is pretty much what your saying right?

a smart contract is just a buzzword for a vault that you yourself do not solely control.
in essense. IF you DID lock up bitcoin into a vault with only yourself. you are not creating a channel. you are just timing yourself and only yourself out of being able to do anything with your funds on the bitcoin network
LN users wont accept such a single control lock. as they have no control to prevent you from just running off and never paying them whats owed later.

multisig is about multiple parties being involved. channels are multisig (multi/counterparty)
maybe instead of thinking what i say is about 'is franky right or wrong' but a point at which you should really look beyond the glossy hype of the promotion material and actually look at LN properly..
even LN devs will admit the flaws and issues with LN

but hey. if you think LN and bitcoin are the same thing.. just ask yourself the 'day one' question of "what is bitcoin" and then compare that answer to "what is LN"

heres an example
1. how many decimals does a bitcoin payment have []8      []12
2. can you pay bitcoiners when the recipient is offline []yes      []no
3. are bitcoin payments validated and confirmed by the community []yes    []no
4. do you need to pre-plan spending habits and lock funds []yes    []no
5. do you then need to search for routes that are online and funded to pass your payment []yes  []no

give your answer for bitcoin.. then ask yourself again for LN
then finally ask
was LN designed to be bitcoin compatible and a feature of bitcoin.. OR.. was bitcoin altered to include a new tx format to be a gateway to LN
.. then you will learn the difference


with all that said. LN not visioned as a "bitcoin solution" (because its not).. but envisioned as a commercial side service network. has a niche. but even to fulfill that niche the bitcoin network still needs to scale.
for instance knowing that bitcoin can only handle 600k lean legacy transactions daily. or ~400k LN gateway transactions.
knowing people to have a reliable LN experience will need 4-6 channels(gateway transactions)
thats only letting in 80k-100k users a day open LN channels.
which with people needing at some point to close them channels. and also people only funding and pre-planning spending habit for a couple weeks(average utility).
means every fortnight 80k-100k are using 2 days of bitcoin blockchain data(open and close). thus mathematically 2 days per fortnight = 700k users per fortnight spending habits.
oh i must stipulate these numbers are only if the bitcoin blockchain was utilised only for LN gateway transactions. because if normal bitcoiners were also doing normal bitcoin transactions inblocks. then thats less LN gateway transactions = less LN users

so, yea dont snap at me for going beyond the promotional material. instead try to yourself look beyond the over promise/over hype sponsorship stuff and look at LN fully an indepth.

That's obvious, though. Wouldn't you rather get something for free rather than paying the actual cost? Neither Bitcoin nor Lightning are perfect, but it's the closest we can get to having our cake and eating it too.

If you keep giving users more block space for free, they'll keep taking it, regardless of the long term costs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons). Raising the ceiling higher and higher means there is no mechanism to enforce fees. How's that going to work a few halvings down the road when block rewards are amounting to little more than 1.5 BTC? "Free transactions for all" sounds like a nice socialist paradise, but miners aren't in this for charity.

Every one of us has incentive to avoid paying fees. So, why do people like me still oppose bigger blocks and prefer the settlement layer approach? Because I also hold bitcoins, and I know that the block size limit is integral to guaranteeing the security of Bitcoin and thus the value of my coins.

ever thought of actually having a fee mechanism
a fee priority formulae like what was available for several years before core removed it. but a better one that actually helps users and actually promotes fair usage and also makes a notible difference between those that wont benefit from LN and those that would.. rather than the treat spammers and ethical users with the same high fee rate purely to encourage pushing people off the network, which inevitably simply pushes the fee rate up more and utility/desires of bitcoin down

in the UK we are seeing hospitals reduce the amount of beds from 300k to 130k just to push 2 false agenda's
1. that 'immigration' is causing a backlog of hospital waiting times.
2. that people should move away from using the national health service and instead pay for a commercial private hospital to avoid waiting times.

the reality is that less people use a national health service than before and the national health service is left to be stifled stagnant and die out. all purely because those that love to be "conservative" prefer commercial services over a system thats open and barrierless for entry.

there is nothing stopping the system going back to 300k beds and then expending at a 5% bed count increase per year. but nah.. 'conservatives' dont like open borderless systems. they want capitalist commercialised systems

need you forget the whole point of bitcoin vs fiat.

Fee priority didn't solve this problem. It was actually just a way for users to pay less fees!

It was miners who took it upon themselves to remove transaction priority because it was node policy, not part of the protocol. Transaction priority was losing them revenue so they stopped enforcing it. It made no sense to keep using priority in Core's fee calculations if no miners were actually using it. There's some good discussion of the issue here (https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/54583/why-is-the-transaction-priority-removed), including this bit:

squatter what you are quoting about what miners removed was not the fee priority formulae. but a dedicated x% of blockspace for zero fee users that 'aged out' of the fee formulae.. in essense if you havnt spent your funds for x confirms then your transaction doesnt need to pay fee's because it wont be calculatable by the fee formulae. plus it makes pools not get anything.
what miners did had nothing to do with the formulae itself.
pools cant change bitcoin rules. only devs can when devs make node upgrade options. so it was the devs that removed the fee formulae
....
however a better more effective fee formulae that does give pools fee's but does it fairly where spammers get punished more. helps everyone.

a system of stifling bitcoins blocksize and utility helps no one. and once users are over burdened by the bitcoin networks fee's due to the stifled/stagnancy of no onchain scaling.. and instead use LN to remove themselves from that burden and stay within LN using factories.. what would be left on the network to pay the pools.... nothing.
pools would then need to find new streams of revenue..
and guess what. if they are not getting paid to solve blocks and users are not putting transactions into blocks. pools will just stop mining "empty blocks". thus stalling out the bitcoin network. again helping no one.

services would just use factories to redeploy channel funds withot touching the bitcoin network. after all who would want to pay the inevitable $2-$50 per tx if a factory on LN would do it for pennies.
thus going back to the whole old age banking system that dont use blockchains.

again think about the whole point of bitcoins. the whole revolutionary uniqueness of blockchains
..
i digress
who would want to exit LN to the bitcoin network if it cost $2-$50 to do so, yet things like litecoin could be an exit far cheaper for those wanting to get back to a blockchain of sole control of funds(sovereignty)

seems people are not looking at the whole economic gameplay. and just thinking that somehow if they promote LN hard enough some how they will get rich quick by being an LN hub..
but as logic and running scenarios will show. not everyone will. and those that will would be the commercial services not average joe..

but hey you keep pushing how bitcoin network needs to remain crippled just to pay some company big money.

It's also worth pointing out that it's not just the BCH/SV crowd who appear to have jumped ship.  I often wonder what happened to some of the militant hardcore "1mb forever" fanatics who used to post here frequently but now stay silent?  Some of them clearly weren't happy with the capacity increase provided by SegWit.  You can tell it's probably the right course of action if the extremists on both sides of the debate didn't like it.  

---

Quoted as evidence that you can't even understand people, let alone LN.  When you say stuff like this, it just goes to show that you're either making this shit up, or, you genuinely believe the stuff you write, which means that your brain doesn't seem to be wired up the same way as the average person here.  That's the only reason I can think of why you are completely incapable of understanding what people repeatedly tell you.  It's just one wild accusation after another with you.  It couldn't possibly be that ordinary people would have legitimate reasons for wanting LN.  There has to be something nefarious at play because that's the only way you can make sense of it with your unique mind.  I appreciate it can't be easy to understand people if you are on the spectrum, or whatever it is with you, but please, just stop pretending you know what the rest of us are thinking when you evidently haven't got the slightest clue.  There are positives to the Lightning Network.  It has support from users, so it's happening.  



Said the person in the topic who is most pissed off at Bitcoin because they can't respect the direction Bitcoin users have chosen.  You are the one who is pissed off.  That's why you dedicate so much time and effort to your misguided little crusade.  

And while you have your ineffective little crusade, we have the code we run, which enforces the rules we want.

Code > Crusades

You've made it abundantly clear how you think Bitcoin should work.  Come up with better code if you want users to join you on your (currently imaginary and entirely non-existent) network that's apparently so much better than what we're currently doing.  

If you don't have code to enforce what you want, then you can't have what you want.  It's that simple.



-digress  +derail  

And why don't you just wait to find out?  Then you can ask all the LN users who don't atomic swap to other currencies.  Not that you'll listen to them, of course.  They'll give you an honest answer, but instead you'll cry conspiracy and make up some other nonsense that better suits a narrative that will only ever make sense in your head.  

doomad..
seriously
all i see is ur insults

and then ur final summary. of:
"And why don't you just wait to find out?"
is basically  let it play out let bitcoin centralise let it get expensive

lol, again
"And why don't you just wait to find out?"

is like theres a tsunami warning that can wipe out a town....
doomad. let it play out and see what happens

typical UK conservative mindset.

as for me not listening. your the one that has one mindset.
i travel the world and speak to many people i get a DIVERSE(you'll need a dictionary as its new word to you) understanding. i do my research. yes my opinions are strong. and yea i dont just run off and bite my lip as soon as the echo chambers chime in to yammer about their love and desire to de-burden bitcoins network of utility to hand it off to other commercial networks.

my mindset is LN is a niche service and a separate network for a few people that need it.
but you and your echos endlessly think LN is a bitcoin solution. and then you flip flop.. all for your ultimate goal of wanting everyone to just use LN and then realise the thunderdome they entered, purely because you hope ull be one of the get rich quick LN hubs that just want a repeat of the whole 18th-21st century banking.. while ignoring the whole point of bitcoin

i do not see it as a threat to decentralisation, the larger the size of the block the more data it accumulates or stores and that has little to do with the miners as it works with the design of the blockchain and and miners only works with the conditions of the blockchain design and whatever comes is within the network design so little of it only concerns the miners.

"LN can create great strides in scaling..."...scaling what.
promissory notes that are not guaranteed to end in confirmed bitcoin value for the intended recipient


people vaulting up value into counterparty locks and then using a network thats got nothing to do with blockchains. doesnt allow payment while people are offline. requires intermediaries to be funded and online to hot potato(route) payments.
and doesnt guatantee a confirmed bitcoin confirmation at the end of it....

again. if you think bitcoin doesnt piss you off then bitcoin would be the strides for scaling network you would want innovating. but you by your own admission thinking bitcoin cant scale by needing LN as the 'great stride' means you are saying your not happy with bitcoins lack of 'great strides'

again for you to desire LN means you think bitcoin cant do it.
if you scrape away the top thin crust of your desire and dig deeper. and truly question yourself. you come up with that answer.

in short if you didnt think bitcoin was broke/limited function. then you wouldnt think LN was needed as bitcoin would provide your needs

LN provides benefits, but I don't describe it as a "solution" in the sense that it somehow means we don't need other features to assist with scaling.  I'd call myself an extremist if I thought that way.  I believe we are best served by pursuing multiple ideas to assist with scaling (just not any of your terrible ideas). 

I have no intention to become a hub for profit.  There are risks to engaging in financial dealings with complete strangers, regardless of the medium.  I would hope most people are sensible enough to realise that.  I plan on only opening channels with people and businesses I know and trust, because LN is a different trust model to Bitcoin and I've always been clear about that.  I won't be routing payments unless it's to help friends or family.  I don't plan on profiteering from my loved ones.  But please keep telling me how I'm some sort of monster who wants to force people into "banking 2.0" or whatever else it is you're raving about.  It doesn't make you sound like a zealot at all.

Neither Bitcoin nor Lightning are get-rich-quick schemes.  Only fools believe otherwise.  Those people are playing with fire and will probably get burnt.  I'm looking for utility and I believe that's what our current direction will provide.  And if we're wrong, we can change direction if that's what users choose to do.  We can argue about it all you like, but neither of us are having any noticeable impact on anything in the grand scheme of things.  Developers are still going to work on LN and the userbase is going to continue growing if users recognise a benefit to them.  If you were right about all this, why are people still using it?  Where are all your "diverse" people saying that it's just as bad as you say it is? 

Describing LN as "the thunderdome" somehow makes it sound a lot less nerdy than it currently is.  As nicknames go, it's actually kinda cool.  Obviously your analogy bears no resemblance to reality, though.  It's just more of the same baseless fear-mongering you're renowned for.

^ more insults.. but lack of research

typical.
pressuring bitcoin to remain low utility. and promoting other networks as the utility gate way.. is not promoting utility growth/scaling OF BITCOIN

emphasis OF BITCOIN (research "what is bitcoin")

but utility growth off another networks promissory note (counterparty signed 12 decimal tokens that are only acceptable during waking hours, and not confirmed by a blockchain nor validated by a community)

maybe you finally one day will do research on factories and watchtowers and update your understanding of LN's direction(thunderdome)
but hey if diversity of nodes and bitcoin scaling makes me a zealot. then your devotion to core and commercial services makes you a conservative(UK politics)

problem is. im just sounding off my opinions.. which you dont like.
its you that keeps thinking im insighting rebellion.
if i was a zealot i would be making code and insighting rebellion..

you have got so emotional about just my opinion. that you have tried (and failed) to demand i make code.. purely just so that you can then scream how im insighting rebellion by making code, which you demand

i think you keep missing the point. even though i even made my point in my footnote to remind the likes of you.
hense knowing im just sounding my opinion and not insighting rebellion. you can simply hit the ignore button if you dont like what you read.
this is a DISCUSSION FORUM. so yea i will continue to DISCUSS. i have never had any aims to insight rebellion. i have just had strong opinions that oppose a certain narrative that is at play

but atleast before just returning to your echo chamber to gather more insults to throw. .. try to update your research and stop with the lazy "wait and see" method.
if you actually cared for bitcoin. you would be more desiring to care/research and understand bitcoins purpose. and want to think about things before things happen. rather then "let them play out"

but hey. i expect more insults. so if your initial reaction is an insult. how about try hitting the ignore button instead.

Although the original encrypted currency, Bitcoin, was designed to decentralize and remove government control, some experts claim that even Bitcoin cannot be called completely decentralized because most Bitcoin miners come from China.
Decentralization is a process that transcends computers and networks. It involves organizations and individuals. At present, partial decentralization is achievable. However, full decentralization is difficult to accomplish, and if they intend to do so, it will take time for the block chain to be truly decentralized. It involves not only block chain technology, but also artificial intelligence algorithm, which will replace human beings to eliminate prejudice.

that's a great idea actually, i feel a little bit dumber each time i read your posts. all you do is seek to further your narrative that up is down and left is right. consider it done.

I'm not sure they were like the BCH crowd mentioned

Many of them were likely arguing in favor of "1mb forever" not because they actually were against SegWit (Lightning Network) or anything to that tune but rather because they felt they should have taken a more radical approach in fighting the BCH zealots, not being quite happy and content with the soft opposition to big blocks that the BlockStream members had turned to. In other words, they were not so much against the BlockStream camp as they were against the BigBlocks gang

This may have been true for a small number of people, but some of the more hardline fruitloops really do run a client that's based on an outdated 2014 version of bitcoind.  They claim all coins stored in SegWit addresses will eventually be stolen, simply because they believe themselves to be the economic majority and think that ordinary people will somehow want to follow "their" network when their fork (that doesn't include SegWit) takes place. 

I wish I were making this up, since they almost make the bigblockers sound sane by comparison.  But sadly, they're very real.

That's sort of the jagged beauty of Bitcoin, to me, though. You get people doing whatever they want to do, believing in whatever they want to. There are various truths and various realities, neither of them true for a long time. I don't know who's sane anymore, nor who has the most correct approach. Time and posterity will be the judge of that. Personally, I'm pretty conservative but probably not radical... so I find myself following what I feel is closest to that.

If you're looking from the outside, there are people who think it's sad that people still believe in Bitcoin, whichever form it is they are using.

That's not a rational assumption

It is not rational simply because 1 bitcoin is still somehow worth over 3000 dollars. That's a huge price tag from any sane point of view. And given that anyone can easily buy and sell bitcoins (a lot easier that buying stocks, for example), I don't think there are many such people (who think it's sad that people still believe in Bitcoin) since if they were in fact many and actually thought so, some would be shorting Bitcoin now. But if they are afraid to short, they should also question whether their attitude is valid

The formula itself was never part of the protocol. That's why miners stopped supporting it once they realized they could increase their revenues with fees.

Core only removed priority from its fee and confirmation estimations because it was making those estimates inaccurate, as miners had completely stopped supporting it.

What miners did had everything to do with the formula: Miners are the ones who made sure transaction priority ceased to exist. For that, you can thank miners for being rational. It had absolutely nothing to do with Core.


You're confused about what "Bitcoin rules" are. Transaction priority was never a consensus rule. It was a client side rule. Not required by the protocol. That's why there was no fork when miners (and later Core) removed it from their clients.

1. pools cant change the rules.(separate debate)
2. pools can IGNORE features that are not ruled(separate debate)
3. but ultimately it was the core devs that REMOVE or add code

EG pools still ran CODE that included the fee priority. they just ignored it.  they didnt release a node to the public that didnt include the fee priority.
pools did not release a node to the public.

it was the core devs that did.
so while pools were ignoring the fee priority, users were still getting messages about fee priority issues. until CORE removed it

ultimately though a new better fee mechanism can solve the issues you have of:
thinking blocks need to be stifled just to get people to pay
thinking pools wont get paid if blocks were large and demand was low

knowing the math that 1mb baseblock 2mb baseblock 4mb baseblock is not a harm to decentralisation..
knowing the math that 1mb, 2mb,4mb base block is no harm to miners
knowing the math that fee's are not essential for years/decades
knowing a fee priority formulae can be implemented to solve the previous 2 things when pools need fee's.
there is no reason to keep blocksizes low under the ruse of "helping pools"

The narrative is that non-mining nodes matter, and the blockchain is way too bloated on 1MB already, let alone 8 or 32MB.
Thing is, if every merchant wants one, companies like BitPay own multiple (in order to check for double spends agains 0conf scammers) + all miners having the full blockchain + spv services + all exchanges you could argue that this situation is decentralized ENOUGH.
Decentralization is not a goal to work towards imho, it's just a means of achieving censorship resistence and a lack of central planners / single points of failure. And unless there's other benefits to decentralization (having useless people feel important as if they're participating is not a benefit) I don't see why having more full nodes is beneficial.

yep. correct
having 100,000 nodes are decentralised
funniliy the EXCUSES to say everyone(millions/billions) NEEDS to be a full node. so lets stifle bitcoin and deburden bitcoin of utility to push people into LN..
but then those with the stifle/deburden bitcoin mindset... then strangely are OK with factory servers/watchtower masternodes.. and then millions of users that are just autopilot slaves using litephone apps where their funds are locked with a factory/watchtower aswell as a counterparty

the hypocrisy is soo ludicrous the only end agenda for having that hypocrisy would be the LN lovers hope to be the hubs/watchtowers/factories getting rich

to preempt and answer the usual echo chamber crew of LN lovers rebuttles

1. initial blocksync time - can be solved with just grabbing a few UTXO set info of a users wallet to get an initial 'unverified' final balance. thus users are not twiddling thumbs(same method SPV/Bloom works..) but still including the full blocksync where the blocksync is then less of a time sensitive priority

2. initial blocksync bandwidth. - users dont need to be connected to 200 nodes  so just connect to 1-2 nodes and wait.
(point one) solves the twiddling thumbs waiting for utility issue. so downloading the blockchain is not a waiting dilemma but a background afterthought.

3. initial blockchain data. hard drives of 4 terrabyte are no problem. we are not stuck at millennium technology afterall
(same argument as games consoles and users wanting to play latest games apply. if you want to run it. expect to upgrade hardware more than once every 2 decades)

4. linear/quadratic sig validation.. reduce the sigops limit prevents a problem. no one needs thousands of sigops anyway

5. peer-to peer / cash/ money is a one user to one user analogy so the whole pushing for group transactions just bloat transaction sizes thus limit numbers of users who want independence away from group held custodial models. so get back to simple lean transactions

6. remove the wishy washy witness scale factor code that still under utilises blockdata limits

7. add a fee priority formulae that actually is beneficial to all. punishing just the spammers. but also allowing efficient infrequent transactors with a fee that differs from the spammers. but still effectively gives pools something. without having to stifle bitcoin utility and deburden the network(which definitely would kill miners fees)

all points above have nothing to do with increasing the blocksize but would most definitely get bitcoin passed the 600k tx a day threshold yet to be achieved.

and then
8. incremental (not massive gigabyte foolish nonsense)... INCREMENTAL growth like we had between 2010-2015

Take it up with the miners if you want fee priority changed.  Miners are making the decision.  Not Devs. 

It should be abundantly clear by this point that:

a) developers want to leave that choice in the hands of miners
b) developers have no ability to force miners to do anything and are relatively powerless even if they did want to make that choice
c) developers don't make all the decisions and it's a double standard for you to claim they do whilst simultaneously advocating they should make decisions about fees (which they don't want to and can't anyway, because see points a+b)



That's right, be a good little lapdog and keep spreading Craig Wright's arguments (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5108368.msg49693128#msg49693128).  Then wonder why no one takes you seriously.

^
seriously.. you learned nothing..

pools just consolidate transactions into blocks..
its then for the nodes to accept those blocks (ultimately BLOCKSTREAMS fibre network AKA CORE roadmap/core dev invention) that decide what passes and what gets rejected(learn the network topology). so if the network had a fe formulae that was set as a rule. then pools would need to follow.

pools dont and wont write a node and publicly release it.. (REKT campaign of social drama by core would avoid that happening)
so knowing the CODE is centralised by core and has been. it would have to be core devs that write in a fee priority formulae.

but hey mr flip flop. wheres your
"devs dont need permission" if your now pretending devs cant change rules as they see fit
"compatibility" of nodes means core can do things without needing a vote
"i agree with cores tactic in august 2017" of the network push off

for months and month the only social debate was not that core control rule changes, but that you love their control and i detest their control.
and now you gone and went full flip flop to even pretend core are not even code creators and just chimney sweepers that do nothing for bitcoin (facepalm)

seriously sort your flip flips out

funny thing is people had same opinion as me and others YEARS before craig wright even was a thing..
who's the lapdog..
certainly craig wright didnt create the opinion... (do some research)
ill give you a hint. the real satoshi had th mindset that not everyone needed to be full nodes.
craig wright in 2015+ adopted that narative to try to convince people he was satoshi.

separate thing.
i have been thinking of bitcoin as a decentralised diverse network where not everyone needed to be a full node, before 2015


but yea you try your social drama games.. of distracting the narrative...
but try going to a forum about eastenders and coronation street as thats where social drama should reside

Hi OP. Forgive me if I skip everyone, and answer you directly.


Storage is not a big problem. It's bandwidth that's the big problem. There are fewer and fewer people running nodes because syncing the blockchain takes frustratingly very long.


No. Resulting in the centralization of the network. Larger blocks improve functionality, but it scales the network in.


I believe you don't understand how it works. Even with pruning, you have to do the initial blockchain download, and validate it. All 200GB of it.


But how does taking away anyone's ability to run a node good?


Bigger blocks are inherently centralizing. What is there else to say?

Real scaling is to increase the network's functionality without giving up decentralization.

Now read Squatter's post I've quoted below repeatedly until you understand it:


Fees in general are not a consensus rule.  Even things like the minimum relay fee (https://bitcoin.org/en/glossary/minimum-relay-fee) can be altered by individual nodes without breaking consensus.  No one has to "publicly release a client" for any of this to apply.  It's just a matter of changing some configuration settings.    

Speak to the miners if you want to convince someone that your ideas about fees are worth implementing.  They are the only ones that can help you.  

There is no flip flop, you just don't understand Bitcoin well enough.  In fact, this scenario perfectly demonstrates why "devs don't need permission" and "devs can't change rules unless others agree" is not a flip flop.  And we all know how big a fan you are of running scenarios.  Let's pretend for a moment that Devs did introduce a fixed fee formula as a consensus rule (which has never been done before) in a new version of their client.  There's nothing to stop them putting that in their client if they wanted to.  They don't need permission to do that.  But then, if non-mining users chose to run it and none of the miners chose to run it, there would be a fork.  Miners could continue to use the current client-side rules and anyone else running the new client where fees are a consensus rule could find themselves on a network that has no miners on it.  Good job, franky1, your idea just split the network in a divisive fashion.  But seeing as you claim not to be a fan of controversy, it's probably not a smart move.  Which is one of the many reason devs chose, quite wisely, to leave fees up to the miners.  

If people don't agree with the code and don't run it, then clearly the devs don't make all the decisions.  Those securing the chain have to agree and run the code before the code can do anything.  If some of the people securing the chain enforce a consensus rule that others securing the chain don't, there can be a fork.  But not all rules are consensus rules.  Some things are left for users and miners to decide as node policy.  There are good reasons for this.

Again, you need to convince miners that your ideas about fees are beneficial.  Fees are not a consensus rule, because that could conceivably split the network.  Constantly raving about what devs do or don't do will not get you what you want.  Stop telling us to "research" when you are the ones who demonstrates a total lack of understanding time and time again.

go do some research. go watch some eastenders. go do somthing to atleast expand your views of bitcoin or your social drama limits

your flip flops and misunderstandings and denials of one thing to suggest another then flopping to deny another to suggest a further have become boring tactics of just social drivel that you continually try.

by implementing a fee mechanism can do things that counter your centralist mantra, while helping the community and pools and others.
waffle all you like to say that pools are needed to be conversed with while flipping that core devs can write what they like without needing to converse.
waffle all you like to say that users are needed to be conversed with while flipping that core devs can write what they like without needing to converse.

it was you that was emotionally spouting out your usual echo's that core can upgrade the network.. (remember your permissionless rhetoric). so dont now cry when i actually use your rhetoric against you to suggest core should do something that benefits a decentralised community.. because no one else can without getting rekt

(i can guess your next flip.. that core dont need to listen to community desires/needs/idea's, they will do what they want and ignore the community... which just circles back to the waffles listed above flops)

yes i get it anything to promote decentralisation you hate. but to then have you flop your own rhetoric about core and its compatibility and permisionless stuff.. is just you failing. moving from core being the trusted devs that you adore, to core just being chimney sweeps/janitors all in the space of a few posts is amusing to see you flop so much

end result
my OPINION and pure DISCUSSION is about things that can help. it is just words on a forum that harm no one
emphasis words on a forum. not code with mandated forks. so relax, dont get emotional

your reaction, i presume is that it might accidently open a few minds and have people want it, thus you fear that there may be a chance of it happening openly via a community open choice, without me even needing to write code. infuriates you.
it seems you actually fear the possibility of a NEW fee priority formulae being added as a consensus rule, you fear any discussion thats not optimistic to the centralist roadmap agenda

but oh well.
we all know you only want one direction of centralisation and commercialisation to occur. but beyond that you have become very boring with your unresearched flip flops.
especially when your flips flops are used against you.

but instead of trying to over-dramatise my comments. do some research
have a nice year,

Uh-oh, someone's turning into a cranky franky.   :D

Maybe take your own advice from that other topic, which I've helpfully amended to fit this topic:


If you think I'm being unfair to you, it's because your ideas are fundamentally misguided.  You don't even stop to consider the consequences.  It almost seems like you can't even understand what the consequences would be, even when they're pointed out to you in no uncertain terms.  Yes, I clearly do have legitimate concerns over a fee priority formula being added as a consensus rule.  I support the notion of fairer fees based on how often people transact, that part is an idea I could get on board with.  But your proposed implementation is utterly abysmal.  I explained why it would be a bad idea as a consensus rule and you haven't presented any counter-arguments to convince me otherwise.  Because you don't understand why your idea is bad.  You just repeat the same incoherent nonsense.  You think you're discussing things that would help and I'm discussing why I believe you are wrong.  This will continue until I believe you have stopped being wrong.  

If you can't comprehend how your idea of fees being a consensus rule might split the network, then you are in no position to blame others for the fact that no one likes your ideas.  The fault clearly lies with you.

Reading the comments makes me come to a conclusion that increasing the block size of bitcoin will lead to centralization and will probably make bitcoin more prone to various attacks.
This again leads to the same problem of scalability of bitcoin. My suggestion here would be to create a sidechain (an alternative blockchain) that will store all the old transactions in it.
The newer blockchain can be treated as the main source of verifying the transactions while the sidechain could be used to verify all the older transactions.
Obviously we can decide a point of time from where the older and newer transactions can be split and put into the sidechain and the newer blockchain.

doomad

the kingscorpio thing has nothing to do with centralisation. its just a crappy website that no one really views or considers important, but kingscorpio treats it like the network relies on it.

however. in regards to things that actually do affect the bitcoin network/centralisation..  even by your own admission and such has shown that the network is far too reliant on core. your admiration and devotion to their tactics of control alone shout loudly how its the case. let alone the stuff i said

in short. show me how the network has changed due to code/protocol changes that didnt not involve core devs in the last say 4 years.

your own words of "compatible" when you talk about no vote needed. and "permissionless" when talking about their consensus bypass and how you admire that they get to control the network changes is where the centralisation lays. you really need to learn what the 2009-2013 consensus was all about, what the byzantine generals problem of pre2009 was about and how satoshi found the solution around it to make it so there doesnt need to be a single leader/controller/reference of the rules.

as for the fee formulae. delving into your mindset of your admiration for core and your (sometimes denial, sometimes loudly spoken) thoughts about cores permissionless ability.. yes i said core could write a fee priority formulae and activate it. after all with all the controversy around segwit, core still got their x1 via all the tactics they employed in summer 2017. so its not impossible. core are not just chimney sweeps that are powerless.

and i find it funny that when an idea is suggested that can improve things. suddenly the core defense league of echo chamber people suddenly pretend and flop around that core are then powerless and shouldnt be trusted to implement it.. purely because its not on their roadmap thus should not be implemented.

so atleast try to stick to one narrative. either man up and admit the centralised code updates and then only a DISTRIBUTION(sheep follow or thrown off network) of that code and stick to one narrative. or man up that your waffles are just social drama in an attempt to bore people into giving up discussing things not in cores roadmap via your meandering flip flops, just so core can follow through with their centralist plans unhindered by the community

by the way. reading all your insults. you are the cranky one. you especially get cranky and insulting when getting told to do something useful.. like research.

maybe spend less time on your social drama sideshow of personal waffles and actually start caring about bitcoin (not alternative networks/commercial services)

but have a good year.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not on the outside, but I know how they feel and think about me or those cut from the same Bitcoin cloth. And you're right, it isn't a rational assumption at all. The problem with looking at price as the explanation for the irrationality is precisely that price isn't really the only rational we should be using. In fact, that those looking in from outside can't understand why something they feel is worthless should cost so much.

You're lucky not to have met more people (who think it's sad that others still believe in Bitcoin)... but haven't you seen the orderbooks on futures for the past year? Using your rationale of them shorting Bitcoin that is.

I haven't seen them and what was there?

It made sense to short Bitcoin then as in retrospect (aka hindsight) we understand that there was nothing rational about those prices. It may in fact turn out in the end that there is nothing rational with these prices too, but that's not my point. If people say something and moreover if they mean that their words should be taken as a guide (like "sell everything right now while Bitcoin is still worth something"), you would expect them to follow their own advice, and in this particular case that would amount to shorting Bitcoin (as they don't have any bitcoins of their own to sell). Otherwise, it is all empty talk and no walk