Bitcoin Forum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ&feature=youtu.be&t=12667

jgarzik suggests in his talk that Fidelity investment company has a beta bitcoin project which it is cannot turn on, because it would "max out" bitcoin capacity and future capacity growth is unknown

http://up.picr.de/23112451qr.jpg

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Also read:

https://medium.com/@OB1Company/scaling-bitcoin-9366988972b6

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Another good talk:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKDC2DpzNbw&t=26m30s

If they have such high throughput needs, why use bitcoin in the first place and not create their own altcoin?

They could have it merge-mined or secured by regular checkpoints stored in the BTC blockchain instead, using BTC just for security rather than using it as a storage network.

Basic question being why should a common shared blockchain become the one every single company with massive upscaling plans needs to be in?

For full scale, blocks would need to be in the GB range, today, and tens of GB with tech growth in the future, which would completely change the nature of bitcoin.

dump fuck, create their own coins? are you this fucking stupid?

We are not responsible for your inability to understand fundamental facts about bitcoin scalability issues and
centralization. It seems that you keep supporting bigger blocks. For the last time, please understand that
our hardware is not capable of handling bigger blocks. This will be devastating for bitcoin, and will turn many people
on altcoins, which they have the same scalability issues or even worse.
Ohh wait! How convenient! Your nickname looks self-explanatory. LiteCoinGuy, how many litecoins do you own?
Well not everyone is invested in LiteCoin, which is just a copy of bitcoin, and 2.5 minute blocks make it even harder to scale compared to bitcoin.

So hhow do we solve this shit, making blocks bigger has an issue, leaving blocks small has an issue, seems to me that bitcoin has just a flaw and fkin satoshi who is hiding himself failed.

If you think you have valuable input and not only stupid stuff to say you might want to consider:

https://scalingbitcoin.org/

Everything has its advantages and its limits, doesn't mean we should stop using something just because it has some limits. Its not just bitcoin can't handle many transactions so keep making it bigger, personally I'm against this whole XT thing but probably BIP 101 would be a good idea so probably a biased opinion here, you can adjust yourself as well.
Lastly, I'm going with this guy until someone can prove his opinion to be better or cross out the possibility of this idea.

thanks for the video. it makes clear that capacity of the network now is not enough

When I asked the (Uni)Verse, what the true path of Bitcoin was, All She Wrote (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McV-ridezgw) was that it Can't Be Touched (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoCOg8ZzUfg).

But we can always approximate it (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1174568.msg12390247#msg12390247). :)

Creating a sidechain coin is a good idea...

The longer this debate goes on the clearer is to me that we will have to choose a solution, live with it and know that's not perfect. Either we will raise blocks or make scheduled raising of blocks and centralize Bitcoin a bit more.

Or we will leave the blocks like this and in this way raise the fees considerably and even risk to drop some small transactions of the network. In this way we may hinder adoption as well.

We will just have to decide in the end and live with this decision. Or just hope that someone will come out with some miracle solution that we don't see at the moment.

The solution is there.... someone just need to make some sacrifices and only implement the stuff that is needed. {block size increase} The rest of the garbage just need to

be dropped and everything will be fine. We have a bunch of people doing a polite dance, much like the mating ritual in animals... where the goal is defined, but the rules of who

will be doing the f#%^ing are not defined yet. The result of this "dance" will determine who will be screwed and by the looks of it, it seems to be the Bitcoin users.  :(

Small blocksistan people want to push bitcoin into irrelevance and commercial failure. This must be good for bitcoin!

https://saboteur365.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/clapping-gif.gif

Tragedy of the commons.

A situation where individuals acting independently and rationally according to each's self-interest behave contrary to the best interests of the whole group by depleting some common resource.

Company X has plan B and we need to modify the current consensus rules in order to accommodate them! What could go wrong?

Every companies work like that. Keeping the blocks small is a good way to keep investments in the space away and ensure bitcoin to be a commercial failure. Don't fool yourself though, another system will give what companies need (either a fork or an altcoin) AKA growth predictability leaving bitcoin behind in term of value proposition.

Unless this another system is as censorship-resistant as Bitcoin (seems unlikely), I don't give a shit.

Scaling =! being less censorship resistant. I don't understand your point.

Exactly!
You are reading (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1169144.msg12336280#msg12336280) my thoughts (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1170822.msg12346397#msg12346397). :)

You know, that's the whole point, that's the main reason of the ongoing debate. And it remains to be seen who of us is right.

BTW, scaling != large blocks. Large blocks are one of the ways, and you are aware of that.

scaling != more TX

DUH

Bitcoin is not a service layer for Fidelity investment's purposes. If they need that much data, they can run their proper altcoin or use upper-layer-Bitcoin-technologies.

It's sickening to read all the FUD that is posted by altcoiners referring to an urgency to raise blocks. People who fall for this propaganda mostly don't understand, that block size increases do not solve Bitcoin's scaling problem. To scale Bitcoin, additional solutions like sidechains are needed. These are being developed right now.

Giving up decentralization for a quick buck will kill Bitcoin.

ya.ya.yo!

That's because you have the false premise that bigger blocks = centralization. This is only true if you think the free market doesn't work and can't come up with capacity solutions. 

Worldwide public infrastructure (network upload capacity) is not build only to suit Bitcoin. Exceeding technical limits will make it impossible for private individuals to run full nodes. This will lead to a further decline in node count and hence increase centralization to a limited number of full nodes run by corporations that will reduce network security and open the doors to blacklisting, surveillance and ultimately loss of full private ownership rights.

People that want another Paypal should just stick to the original.

ya.ya.yo!

it almost make 0 sense when talking about 8MB blocks, NO ONE not even china will have a problem downloading 8 retarted MegaBytes.

i've fucking had it with these smallblockist  nonsense arguments

now go tell Call of Duty devs they should make games that work on a 486 so they reach a wider audience

>1MB blocks = "Exceeding technical limits"

http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/131/351/eb6.jpg

I will just put it here to define a fairly large perimeter of where the truth is hiding...


We might indeed need some testing of larger blocks (closer to 8MB) before fully committing to agree on the new limit, but once we do (agree), we must stick to it with proper discipline in order for it to solidify and have an effect in protecting the network.

It seems like you are implying that actual decentralization is in best interests of the free market. I can't see any reliable foundation for this assumption.

Is it true that the same free market has resulted in increasing mining centralization, that could only be slowed by hard work in performance optimizations done by core devs and others? Are core devs a part of the free market?

I'm not making an argument, just asking.

Big blocks without being sure that nodes will be able to be ran by average joe computers out there = it's just bye bye for Bitcoin.
Thats why it's just a big deal. But obviously, staying the way we are now also gives us the problem of being stuck in terms of development to meet certain goals.
As of right now I don't see a solution that will keep everyone happy.

Discussion about block sizes is like people arguing over Y2K or IPv4 vs IPv6.

Its not rocket science.  Potential for dire consequences are vastly exaggerated.  And the majority of those talking about it don't know enough about basic crypto currency fundamentals to understand its not an important topic due to bitcoin's framework being designed from the ground up to be scalable and extensible if necessary.

Might as well argue over what color the sky is, it makes about as much sense.

Do those of you arguing for a removal (or increase in size) of the 1 mb anti-spam limit even run a full node? (Adam, it's pretty clear from your comments that you most certainly do not.)

Has the spam problem been solved? Including all the spam in the permanent record that we (those of us who care about decentralization) all have to maintain forever isn't a solution.

I've been running a full node for several years now. I used to argue how easy it was. It used to be something I was comfortable doing with my daily use computer. At some point, I had to switch to dedicated hardware because of the resources the software was using. Then I had to limit the maximum amount of connections to my node because it was eating so much bandwidth that I couldn't even surf the web properly (hundreds of gigabytes per month). I have modern computers with lots of RAM and fast SSDs. My internet speeds are some of the fastest available for home users. Yet, running a Bitcoin node is no longer something I would consider "easy". This is all with the 1mb anti-spam measure in place!

Are you seriously going to try and convince me that an 8x increase in block size limit is no big deal? I'm sure if you build it, they will come. If the limit is increased, transactions will increase (that's what this thread is suggesting after all). More transactions and larger blocks will significantly affect how easy (or difficult) it is to run a full node. I'm a Bitcoin enthusiast. I've been somewhat of a Bitcoin cheerleader for years now. I'm certain that if we simply increase the amount of information that needs to be shared on the p2p network, I will no longer be able to effectively run a full node.

If a Bitcoin enthusiast like myself is questioning my ability to effectively run a full node in the face of increasing block sizes, you can bet your ass that is going to have an impact on decentralization.

You can go ahead and call that nonsense if you want.

no i don't run a full node i stopped a long time ago.

but i have a hard time believing downloading ~1MB about every 10mins is making your internet notably slower.

maybe i should fire up Bitcoin0.11.0 and see how it feels these days.

running a full node noe  ;D

fuck that was easy

It isn't that simple Adam. I'm supposed to share this information (along with the rest of the block chain) with my peers. That's the point of the peer to peer network. With default settings my node sends (not even including data received) hundreds of gigabytes per month. I have to limit connections to less than a fifth of default to keep my internet functioning at a point where no one in the household complains. Again, I have modern computers with multi core processors and top tier home internet speeds.

Maybe I'm just unlucky and someone out there is using my node to re-download the entire chain every other day!

Let's see some improvements in QoS (in the Bitcoin software itself) without me needing to be a network admin before we just takes the training wheels off, ehh?


Run it for just a month with near 100% uptime, then get back to me.

all kinds of improvements should be made... there should be different levels of "full nodes" obviously someone might want to only realy TX to a few peers and someone else might want to be a "SuperNode" connecting to 100's of peers.

this is going to take a while to sycn up i'm over a year behind.  :D

Well, the 1 mb block size limit is going to be a problem in a near term.  Why not address it now and find a solution to the problem now?  There needs to be some kind of scaling in the block size so that in 4-5years, this same problem doesn't occur again.

is it normal bitcoin-qt is eating up like 90% of my CPU?

While syncing the chain, yes.

Isn't the point of pruned node?

a pruned  node can't be used as a wallet
it can reduce the storage size of the blockchain to MB's
but you end up with a full node without a wallet, it verifies and relays TX and that's all it does.
i really don't get why you can't have both a wallet and prune your blockchain

I'm more interested in this

http://photo.mystisland.org/worstcase.png

30 seconds to verify a transaction on one node! And to relay that block to all nodes you need at least 4-5 hop, that adds up to 2-3 minutes, I believe that we are going to see some serious problem when we reach the 2MB block size limit (If it ever get that large)

Actually I'm getting more cautious after more evidence showing that the blockchain does not scale at current technology, not even to 2MB if you want to have some safety margin

  ::)  ???   :o  :(  :-\  :-X  :'( :'(

quit your trolling johnyj

also links to videos would be better than screen caps

Well well well, the morons that say that >1 MB blocks will destroy the network, are you living in a cave with 1 kilobyte internet bandwidth?

http://i60.tinypic.com/dm73g3.png

Guys what the fuck are you talking about? I alone can forward the entire bitcoin network capacity/bandwidth, seriously we live in the 2015 where internet speed is not a scarce resource anymore.

Fuck your XT , fuck the forks, just raise the fucking block size limit already!

Link is in the top of this thread, time in the screenshot is clear

If the slide is correct and Core actually takes O(N^2) to verify a block then the software has a serious performance bug.  There is no excuse for this.  If this is true it calls into question the competence and credibility of the core developers.  I would have expected better from "experts" with PhD degrees in Computer Science who are supposed to be operating in the real world of product development.

It would be interesting to hear what the Core developers have to say about this issue. (And other developers who are working on alternate code bases.)

 (My apologies if this report proves false.)

This is a nature result of how bitcoin works. For validation of each transaction, you must validate all of its unspent output all the way down to its root, when the unspent output are all dust coming from thousands of other dusts and dusts several layers down, the time to validate the transaction rises exponentially

Just try to import a private key from coinwallet give out and see how long it takes on your machine to get an idea why 1MB block can even be deadly sometimes
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1175321.msg12390644#msg12390644

if Peter R is correct with his free market hypothesis, then your concern johnnyj is a moot point because miners won't broadcast blocks that take hours to confirm.  Pretty simple concept don't you think?

IMO, supply/demand curve in a free market exists only on books of economy schools, it never really happens in reality because the reality is magnitudes complex than this too simplified model. I have pointed several weaknesses in his modeling

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1179712.msg12417772#msg12417772

Back to the topic, Mark also said the nodes can limit maximum size of transaction to reduce the relay chance of such transaction. However, this 1MB transaction was intentionally made by F2pool to sweep the dust in those addresses (they contain more than 0.5 btc). And what if someone put 5 BTC in those dust addresses? Then every miner will try to include this mega transaction and cause the network to hiccup. So it only takes 5 BTC to disturb the bitcoin network if every miner is just aiming for the best economic interest

its not a question of supply and demand, if miners know other miners will orphan his block if it take >a few seconds to validate then no reward is worth getting your block orphan cuz you don't get a reward if your block is orphaned.

i guess miners have to come up with some guide lines as to what constitutes a valid block, or more to the point what constitutes an invalid block.

pretty sure it would be really easy to get all miners to agree a block that takes 1hour to validate is invalid.
at the same time i wonder how hard it would be for them to agree on no more then 2 seconds  validation time....

Well, forgive me for posting cross thread, but your argument that Peter's modelling isn't valid
because different miners have different configurations doesn't really seem like a strong argument.

If some miners don't want to do it (create a big block), they can, and if others won't, they won't.
Still don't see why we need a block cap to enforce what miners will do.

Partly true, if all the miners have an agreement that refuse to relay a block that takes bigger than a few seconds to validate. However, some of the super nodes might have 10 times more capacity that can verify it 10 times faster. And F2pool does not need other miners to relay his blocks, he just need to mine continuously two blocks in a row to write his block permanently into the blockchain, it happens quite often https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC

Those so called rational human in economy books are like animals,  they only care about the profit. In reality human have more visions. Many miners build mining farms not for profit from mining blocks, but for constructing the infrastructure of a global independent financial universe, and there are many aspects have much more weight than the fee from a block (that's the reason the difficulty does not drop when it takes more money to mine bitcoin than its market price). Being agile and robust is always preferred

Yeah, thats the point.

If a block takes too long, probability rises that another miner will find solve the block first.
So they won't do it.

On the other hand, the July hardfork has shown us that miners don't necessarily validate blocks before mining on top of them -- the so-called SPV-mining.
Suppose only Chinese (the majority of hashrate) are doing SPV-mining. It means that they are very quickly noticing each others blocks, and start mining on top of them without waiting for validation. In this case, the rest of the miners will experience increased orphan rates, because they are wasting hases while waiting for validation. Of course, they can start SPV-mining as well, but I don't know where it gets us.

If some miners are SPV mining they will still orphan blocks that take along time to propagate.  Imagine an SPV miner receives the block header for a BIG block and, while he is still receiving that block's contents, he fully receives and validates another smaller block.  He would then switch to the smaller block that came later because he is 100% sure that it is correct (and less than 100% sure that the large block is correct).  

Are you saying that the Laws of Supply and Demand are not useful?


I agree with your point that each miner will have his own values of the network propagation impedance and latency (my paper mentions this too).  But that doesn't affect the existence of the fee market.  

as i can see it you can have 3,2 MB blocks today without a problem. and with some tweaks you can go even higher as he said too.

A small correction to what otherwise seems like a very reasonable argument.

The static limit in question cannot serve as a "spam filter", because only individual mining nodes decide on what gets into the block and what doesn't. The line between "spam" and "legitimate" transactions here is very thin (if not non-existent). But the limit does indeed define an overall "bandwidth target" for the network, which in turn determines its potential size (what many don't realize in these discussions is that bigger blocks are definitely possible today, but only in a smaller tightly connected network, which means that home users no longer decide on consensus rules and with that all we know and value about Bitcoin might begin shifting rapidly). If Bitcoin loses its mass (represented by its home-based demographic) it will simply fly away (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1179964.msg12416270#msg12416270).  ;D

Now, with that in mind, we need to understand that rising the limit linearly may cause the actual bandwidth in the network to grow exponentially, due to peers sending the same data again and again multiple times. So, we have to approach this responsibly, which means that any scaling plans beyond the next 4-6 years must be considered too risky and therefore rejected.


Although an example above looks like an edge-case, we definitely need to keep those in mind as potential attack vectors.

Regarding scaling at current technology levels, while I myself haven't had any difficulties syncing up and running a full node (with current limit) for multiple days in a row, I haven't run it for longer periods of time to see if it bumps into any bandwidth related issues (I've been planning on running a node continuously after a computer upgrade anyways).

So, a proper testing would be required for the whole ecosystem with an aim to run full nodes at home for at least a month (in oder to test ISP-related bandwidth caps as well) at near full capacity with our new projected desired hard limit in place before we can whole-heartedly commit to deploy it in production. I guess, the second part of the workshops (scheduled for year's end) was intended to do just that.

I am glad that we are finally past "it is just downloading 8MB every 10 minutes, morons".

Every reasonable Bitcoiner wants the benefits of bigger blocks, but not at the expense of not being able to run a full node at home.

BTW, it currently costs $60 a month to run a full node on a dedicated Microsoft Azure VM. This includes virtual hardware (includes 1 dedicated CPU core) and bandwidth, which is around 600GB a month (mostly outgoing). It is not quite "free" anymore.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/21919/decentralist-perspective-bitcoin-might-need-small-blocks/

On the other hand, if running a full node (at full capacity) at home presents itself as inconvenient even today (I, for example, have more frequent freeze-ups during skype conversations while running a node, so I temporarily turn it off) and at the same time there is a demand for a Bitcoin-like system on a level one step higher than the one we are currently at (home-based network -> business-to-business network), then Bitcoin might be interested in taking that direction as a front-runner of the whole ecosystem, while the home-based niche (that it used to cover) will be filled by the next contender (Litecoin, for example).

However, a precedent like this might create an incentive for many other crypto-currencies to compete for higher bandwidth-levels, while the home-based layer will never be properly served, though that seems unlikely.

The main question here, is whether the big players (all across the planet) are capable of agreeing on acceptable consensus rules without tearing the whole network apart into regional and national sub-domains. My understanding was that the mass of the home-based demographic was supposed to prevent that, but who knows...

Supply and demand theory is easy for economy students to understand. But humans are all complex, using a simple formula to describe all the different type of people's behavior without considering their personality and influence is just too simple that the model only works at academic level. Economy is not science but politics. A policy maker will never make an economy policy that is against his own interest/benefit

Again, this video is just BitcoinXT in different clothes. The problem is easily solved by the very thing that freaks the fat guy in the video out - fees. You pay a higher fee (3 cents?) you get your transaction processed faster. You pay no fee you might have to wait 30 minutes to 3 hours.

For instance, if I'm sending 0.4btc to my mother in the deepest darkest jungles of africa I don't care if it takes 3 hours to confirm. I send with no fee and volia. I'm happy. She gets her coins. She pays the local warlord 0.1 btc for security.

Now, say I'm sitting at a register and I need to have a fast transaction. I pay 0.02 btc for a sandwich. The merchant takes my 0.02 btc, allows 3 cents USD for the fee so he knows he's paid almost immediately, and I leave with a full belly.

You guys keep thinking that 1 btc should equal $300 forever, but that's ridiculous. The currency will be worth more due to inflation. And as fees rise you'll pay $0.50 USD for an ultra fast transaction, but it will never be more than the MARKET can bear. It's the way markets work.


Quit monkeying with the system and crying doom and gloom. Bitcoin is great. Use it and enjoy yourself.

Have none of you guys studied fiat currency? You're setting a very bad precedent and making bitcoin seem unstable, killing the likelyhood of more adoption by the masses.

Edit: Going slowly through the video segment this guy seems to think that charity and goodwill will carry the mining community, but that's insane. Would you work all day for free hoping someone would slip a nickle your way?

wow so much fud coming out of your ass.....

You should write a book about this fud, ... genius AT work

F2pool needs to operate in a "nice" way or his users will go mine at another pool.  longest chain wins != after 2 blocks it's a done deal. and yes "time" isn't the best way to decide, there is probably a simple way to say if the TX is XXX.XX complex its invalid. there no reason a TX would need 50K inputs, right now miners agree on simple stuff like " if the inputs are already spent, its not valid to spend it again "
they need to expand their rule book a little that's all.

However, with greater adoption of Bitcoin, there is a long-term secular pressure to increase the block size. Even for a conservative application of Bitcoin in global settlements, with low transaction volume per person per year, the transaction capacity needs to be raised well above the upper limits of most block size proposals

This means larger blocks are inevitable. Unfortunately, this means that data-center mining and full nodes may be inevitable too depending on hardware and network infrastructure performance over time. The centralization risk depends on the adoption curve, the degree that layer 2 networks remove transactions off-chain, and number of on-chain transactions that are attempted despite the presence of layer 2 systems.

Failing to raise the transaction capacity centralizes the number of actors with access to the blockchain, recreating a financial system that presently exists. Ironically, while the network may be able to run on anyone’s computer, none of the participants may be able to afford to use it. This scenario describes the left side of the Bitcoin failure bathtub.

https://medium.com/@OB1Company/scaling-bitcoin-9366988972b6

Each transaction has to be evaluated only once to see if all of its inputs are valid. The previous work of tracing back each input to its source in some coinbase transaction was done when previous blocks were verified by the node and there is no need to redo this work. 
If there are two transactions going into the same block where one spends the outputs of the other then this will require sorting the transactions (via a topological sort), so that one transaction can be processed at a time and the proper accounting of the UTXO set be performed (remove and add).
Finally, the processing of each transaction will have to verify that each of its inputs is used only once in the transaction. This can be done together with verifying the presence of each input if an efficient data structure is used.  With appropriate use of hashing there will probably not be the need for any sorting operations and performance can be O(N), at least with a very high probability.  (If random access memory is limited, the worst case here requires sorting and this makes the overall operation order n log n, not order n^2 assuming competent design and programming.)

A few more thoughts on the matter...

Internet has multiple levels of bandwidth (from home-based ADSL copper lines to fiber-optics under the ocean). The idea of Bitcoin (as a decentralized consensus system with open-source protocol rules) can therefore exist on any such level, but arguably only one at a time!

As systems like these cannot be established centrally and instead emerge and grow slowly as grass roots movements, they cannot begin to occupy a higher level of bandwidth before saturating the previous one. In principle, however, nothing should stop the idea to keep propagating itself onto the higher and higher levels (with different degrees of decentralization though).

As recent discussions show, Bitcoin seems to have saturated the level of home-based internet infrastructure and is being asked the question: "move up or stay?". That's a tough one to answer, because competitors are nowhere close and there is no one to ask an advice from. It's an uncharted territory.

What if consensus rules can be protected not by sheer quantity of full nodes but rather by a better quality of fewer ones (that's what evolutionary stage transition means!)? What if we can bake the rules into Bitcoin's brand itself, with a pre-defined (4-year) schedule to revise and adjust them? We can then have multiple large full nodes in the system (like various block explorers today) which would provide a web interface for studying and inspecting every aspect of the blockchain without the necessity to run it at home. Any deviation from the consensus will be quickly noticed and the public will be alerted about the nodes and services that decided to deviate from it. The system would still remain perfectly transparent.

Now, if Bitcoin decides to increase its block size cap (and it seems like many in the community want to do it in one way or another), I still wouldn't aim higher than 8MB (or 2-4-8 if that fits better) just to make sure that transition onto the next level is smooth and clean (even if that means that home-based nodes will eventually be pushed out). This approach still requires active (big) players to regularly and consistently agree on the protocol rules and have enough patience and respect for each other to freeze and bake those rules into Bitcoin's brand for at least a period of 4 years (after which they will be revised again).

If Bitcoin decides to stay (at home), it will allow competitors to catch up (bandwidth-wise) and eventually one of them will move forward.

Eight megabyte blocks for example would not effect most people running full nodes. Bandwidth wise this is not an issue for most people, since block propagation is only more critical for miners, and since home miners connect to pools and do not even run their own full nodes for mining this again does not effect them. Therefore eight megabyte blocks does not represent a departure from home-based internet infrastructure.

Such "fraud proofs" do not exist right now. You're asking us to trust corporations with the maintenance of the network!? You know a "block explorer" can be cheated right? Remember when Blockchain.info's block explorer showed that Satoshi had spent his bitcoins?

Fidelity doesn't need to create their own altcoin.  That's not their core competence.  VIA and Clearinghouse were created for such use cases.

As for LiteCoinGuy jgarzik, he needs to understand that Bitcoin, being Sovereign (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Most_Serene_Republic), does not adjust itself to fit the quarterly ratfucking preferences of TBTF petro-fiat hoarding dinosaurs like Fidelity.  Rather, it is those dinosaurs that will adapt to Bitcoin, or perish in the next mass extinction.

We have posters here from China who's full node can barely keep up under 1 MB limit.

Fixed it for ya.

Well I have an average connection for Europe and i could easily support two gigabyte blocks from home, eight megabyte blocks would not be a problem at all. This person in Florida needs to either get a new internet provider or update his client by the sounds of it. lol

I agree that we should scale the blocksize according to the technical limitations that exist today. However it would not make sense to use the worst possible examples as our baseline. There will always be some people that can not run a full node because of bandwidth, even today. We should consider the bandwidth limitation for the majority of people, not just the few that have terrible connections. The Chinese miners have also clearly stated that they can handle eight megabyte blocks, and it is the pools that are most effected by block propagation after all.

How long would it take to transmit a 10mb block across the network?  It can't be more than a few seconds.  Besides, this debate about block size should be settled now.  Sooner is better than later.

No, just no. If you really believe so it shows how very little you understand how Bitcoin works.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/21919/decentralist-perspective-bitcoin-might-need-small-blocks/

I agree, that it's somewhat less secure and would require some trust, but still if the rules are fairly small and simple, only one honest player in the ecosystem would be enough to prevent any potential conspiracy to deviate from the established consensus.

That, of course, implies that public still owns private keys from their coins and responsibly chooses full node servers (which comply with the rules) to transact in the network.



As discussions on previous pages indicated, linear increase in block size may cause the effective bandwidth in the network to grow exponentially due to peers sending the same data to each other many times. So it's not 1MB per every 10 minutes, the actual bandwidth is much higher.

How then would you expand bitcoin to have more transactions per block?  If there is not room for growth, then bitcoin will die.  Simple as that.

This. Let a fee market develop is the way to go vs ruining decentralized nodes. If you want a better service pay more for it. It's still free goddammit, if you want to do it for free then wait your ass until the transaction gets confirmed or pay a smaller fee if anything.
Bitcoin will eventually be valuable as hell because it only gets more scarce with time. No one is going to keep the mining process going without incentives so the fee market is the way to solve this.

if you want fees provide 25BTC and you limit the number of TX to 1000 ~1MB's worth your looking at like 5$ fee pre transaction

Bitcoins Value in the future is not guaranteed, it must still compete with other cryptocurrencies, crippling the transaction limit will not allow Bitcoin to effectively compete. Also having a higher volume at a lower price would be better then having a lower volume at a higher price.

Bitcoin never competed on the basis of MOAR transactions else it would have lost long time ago.

Bitcoin does not use a stupid block propagation algorithm, such as would be needed to create exponential overhead.  It may have overhead that is constant in node connectivity, whereby a node receives the same block from each of its neighbors.  However, if so, this is easily fixed by flooding the small block header to each neighbor once, but having neighbors request the block data from only one neighbor.  In this case, each node receives only one copy of each block.  (Well connected nodes with many fast connections, may send multiple copies to many less connected nodes, but poorly connected nodes will send few copies, with the number of "takeoffs" being equal to the number of "landings".)  There is the opportunity for fine tuning the request process, so that nodes request data from new blocks from those neighbors that are known to have a fast ability to send them.  There may be some small overhead related to the discovery process.  (These kinds of issues exist in other peer to peer networks such as bittorrent and have been solved.)

I never said that it should, however allowing the transactions to become unreliable by allowing the network to become overloaded and at a later point allowing the transactions to become very expensive, would not be good for adoption especially when in competition with other cryptocurrencies that have already solved these problems.

That baseline doesn't make sense if your goal is to optimize tx per second.  But why bother, when Visa/Paypal/Square can do that already very well.

OTOH, if you GAF about survivability of the diverse/diffuse/defensible/resilient network, you plan for the worst (and hope for the best).

Gavin wants to plan according to some rosy vision of the future, where the economy is all fine and dandy thanks to Helicopter Ben printing endless FunBux.

I want Bitcoin to survive World War Three (working subtitle 'Requiem for the Petrodollar').

That's not going to happen if Bitcoin lives in first strike targets like Google.mil datacenters.

Just to be a realist for a minute, if there is a WW III, then I would value many other things that bitcoin.  Solar panels, food source, water supply, etc.

I suppose that what is the future that we are trying to achieve with bitcoin?  Decentralized?  tx per second?  Everyday use?

I've been thinking in the same direction.
I mean, it doesn't have to be exponential.

If every full node receives each transaction only once(?), then there was a proposal to only send a block template and let each node reconstruct the actual block from the list of transactions and the data it already has in its memory pool. A node would then only need to request missing transactions (if any) from other peers.

I don't know if that was implemented or not, but a good implementation would likely approximate a linear bandwidth increase (relative to block size cap increase). Still, I wouldn't aim much higher (than 8MB) for the time being simply because those solutions need to be deployed first and even then we need to make sure that different parts of the world can join the network easily in order to keep the whole system properly balanced.

But bigger blocks is just pushing the problem into the future.
If you had a screen recording program that produced massive video files; you would probably try to make them smaller instead of trying to buy a bigger hard drive.

but as the 1MB sayer say it's not really a problem because of the fee market

so push block limit  to the max and then in the future let fees run up.

All of those, but particular to different aspects of the Bitcoin gestalt.

Uppercase-B Bitcoin (or lowercase in Szabo notation) the first viable and most secure ecash competes with gold and central banks.

Lowercase-b bitcoin (or uppercase in Szabo notation) the blockchain technology competes with Visa/Paypal/Square (via altcoins now and SC/LN later).

Gold has kept its value through two world wars (and still gets you across guarded borders better than food/drinks/gadgets).

Bitcoin will not just keep its value in the exorbitant violence and chaos concomitant to petrodollar collapse (ie WW3), it will arise to take its rightful place as the world's reserve currency.

Start reading here, if you want to appreciate the "future that we are trying to achieve with bitcoin."

World War Three? Are you dreaming? Einstein knew a long time ago that a World War Three would be the last one.

World War Three is a perpetual state of war. Much of the world is already there and has been for some time.

Well put. A worldwide cold war fought with weapons of financial destruction.

no real weapons...

team america world police is always out there spreading democracy and such

"Processed" refers (among other things) to verification of the tx in new blocks.  Verification times are superlinear w/r/t max block size, so one 8MB block could take much longer to process than eight 1MB blocks (depending on how intricately and/or deviously the tx are constructed).

Gavin thought he could just create a 100k max_tx_size as a band-aid to get around this problem, but that idea turned out to be a non-starter.

And that's (yet another reason) why the block size isn't going to change any time soon.

The people who can't handle that truth should just go play outside for a while, and forget all about Bitcoin for a year or three.

Isn't it adorable LunacySapere thinks he can "easily support two gigabyte blocks from home?"

I guess he hasn't got to the part of the Bitcoin FAQ where it explains he'd need to be able to send out 8 copies of those 2GB blocks in under 10 seconds.

Did you read my posts in this thread? I've had to drastically reduce the connectivity of my full node (latest Core release) running on it's own dedicated hardware (modern quad-core CPU, 16GB RAM, SSD) in order to keep the home network functional for other daily use demands.

My node will happily eat as much upload speed as I give it and I have top 10% home internet speeds (probably better). It can bring simple web surfing to a standstill if I let it.

Nodes don't just accept blocks. Most of my bandwidth use is on the upload side (sharing data with other peers)! Larger blocks will obviously have a direct impact on the amount of data shared.

Do you run a node or are you just guessing?

Bitcoin needs to survive the current 'Cold War 2' perpetual state of war fought with weapons of financial destruction.

And then it needs to survive WW3, which is entirely possible.  Einstein's anti-nuke hippie-dippie scare tactic blather about WW4 being fought with sticks and stones is just asinine objectively pro-Marxist counterfactual surrender-monkey BS.  Nuclear Winter was the Global Warming (popular bogyman) of his day...

We're not going to blanket the earth with mushroom clouds (it's too big and that would cost a fortune  ;D).

The kinetic action will be by precision munitions confined to very select ultra-high-value targets, such as the Google.mil data centers Hearn would so dearly love Bitcoin to be within constrained.

After the petrodollar's bloody last hurrah and BTC/XMR ascendency, WW4 will be fought between private security providers and polymorphic assassin guilds governed by smart contracts....while self-owned drone mercenaries whose AI play both sides against the middle...

Which brings us to WW5, the War Against the Machines.  Personally, I'm cheering for Skynet.   :P

should bitcoins traffic limits be based on what 10% of typical home connection can handle?

maybe 20% ? maybe 50%? surly anything demanding 20-10% isn't going to impact number of full nodes.

in anycase i feel that there can be much improvement as to how data is shared across the network to dramatically decrease bandwidth use for full nodes, which should allow for proportionally bigger blocks.

I know someone that turns on his full node like once a week, just to download the lastest blocks and then turns it off again, so that when he makes a TX it doesn't take him long to sync up first. is this node useful? should ALL users be asked to run a full node?

Why would a user who only wants to send 1 transaction a week want to run a full node?  That is useless.  That user is better off using a different type of wallet.

LMAO
i know right!

i agree.
in stress test, my upload usage explose ... (mempool satured).

(with P2Pool stats, i can view the upload usage)

your node is busy telling every other node about TX they already know about.

i'm currently syncing a full node and it feels like my computer is about to explode! cpu is running hot! hot! Hot!

 ;D aha ... so, Bitcoin have a problem ?  ;D noooooooooooooooooooooooo ?!?  :P

AMD?
You should look into upgrading the heatsink/cooler on your cpu.

Yep, transact with bitcoin using other payment methods unless needs to harness the full security of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin traffic should be limited based on capacity of anonymous bandwidth growth.

what if new node run with pruned versions of the blockchain?

maybe we could have a sort of yearly checkpoint, we no longer ask nodes to download data that is >1year old and base verification of off these yearly checkpoints.

Doesn't that violate the whole point of being a node?  Having a complete copy of the blockchain?  Not saying that is bad but just bringing up a point.

which defeats the whole purpose of Bitcoin that you should trust no one to validate the entirety of your coins history

It is absolutely bad. A checkpoint implies someone somewhere is holding the full history. Who would that be?

bitcoin is not datacenter and professionnal hosting.  ::) but you can use your limited and carbonised credit card if you don't want run a full node to control YOUR MONEY.

bitcoins are pure money.

so, it's requiered somes ... materials to use it.
but without nodes, you don't have SPV wallet (phone wallet).

That is not true.

A pruned node downloads and validates the whole history since the genesis block. (Sync is identical to a normal node) It simply doesn't save it all to disk.

pruning is not the same as a checkpoint which is what Adam proposed. either way it still has to sync entirely as you've mentioned so:

Growth, or decline. 

The lowering max block size to survive anonymous bandwidth reduction (or even elimination) is more important than ratcheting it up.


Bitcoin nodes should routinely operate in safe mode, and ideally be able to scale down into survival mode (sporogenesis+dormancy+reactivation) should there be indications of sufficient damage/disruption.

Ok, I must have misunderstood.

How would checkpoints work? (I have no clue)

Does this checkpoint basically hold a checksum of all previous transactions confirming that everything up to this point is true. If network has a checkpoint in it's blockchain (the nodes agree upon it) and you start building on it without validating the whole chain before the checkpoint, then what's the problem?

Easier said than done, just import this private key and tell me how long it takes
L5WfGz1p6tstRpuxXtiy4VFotXkHa9CRytCqY2f5GeStarA5GgG5

Notice that a transaction of 1MB containing 5000+ inputs are totally legal in today's system, so it already showed some incentive that attackers might be interested. If even under 1MB block size nodes already have to setup defenses against data flooding attack, then the current network is far from robust to go for higher block sizes

But its a free market right, if somebody wants to flood the network, miners just increase the transaction fee.

Let the spammer pay, eventually he will run out of money.


I think it should be raised to 2 MB atleast, c`mon i got a  300 mb/s internet speed, guys get yourself better fucking internet:

http://i60.tinypic.com/dm73g3.png

You are exactly the type of human those economy books trying to modeling, and it seems their modeling works very well on you  ;) 

The question is: Are you willing to be modeled by a group of economists so that they can precisely calculate your next move and profit from it?

I don't have the answers to your questions, but I will ask you a few instead.

Should I be able to run a fully functional node while using the same internet connection for other daily household uses?

I pay near $100 per month for the highest tier internet speeds my ISP will offer.

I've built a dedicated machine to run Core (modern quad-core CPU, 16GB RAM, modern SSD).

To give you an example of my resources:


You are still catching up from a partially synced state after at least 24 hours? I can sync the full chain from scratch in about 14 hours.

Yet, I can't run a full node without "putting the brakes on".

I'll ask a second question. Will a larger block size limit (which we agree will lead to larger blocks) make it easier or more difficult for me to run a full node?

I already have to gimp my node in order to have a functional connection to the internet. I already have dedicated hardware in order to keep my daily use computer "up to speed". What future steps will I (someone with fast computer / fast internet) need to take in order to keep running a full node?

I guess I could cross my fingers and hope my ISP (which has zero competition in my area) to just pump up my bandwidth for no additional cost.

I could continue to gimp my node when I know the network would happily accept more data from me.

Or, should I just give up on running a full node?


I haven't done a Bitcoin transaction in over 2 years. Yet, I have multiple full nodes with damn near 100% up time. Maybe I'm the sucker for continuing to bother. If it ends up taking even more resources, I may simply have to stop.

It's good that op points out that indeed there's a flaw in the system that really needs to be addressed. For those who opposes it, we should at least come up with a solution or at least admit there is something wrong. Alas anyway the issue only crops up probably 40 -  50 from now and high chance we will all not be here to see or experience it.

if you mean 40-50 seconds your wrong, this problem cropped up 3 months ago.

Oh noes! 

So the original prototype of public coin, bitcoin proper, can't be all types of coin for all types of people at once?  Run for the hills!!  Oh wait, we have altcoins.  Never mind. 

Ridiculous. As soon as the power grids collapse together with the financial system, the 'nuclear winter' will be around the corner. 500 reactors and fuel pools will blow out its inventory.

sure, i think that is widely accepted, by those who likely include Adam Back and Nick Szabo. the "small blockean" misnomer is just that. the question is how, and it was pretty clear that XT/BIP101 was a dangerous route.

A 2MB block is totally different thing as a 2MB mp3 file, it might contain much more complicated data that even a modern CPU can not handle well because of all the verification involved in thousands of transactions

If someone throwing out $20 notes every second on the top of empire state building, it will jam the traffic of whole Manhattan. Can you just say that let the free market decide and he will eventually run out of money?

Historically, attack of the network usually come together with the attack on bitcoin exchanges. The attacker can short the bitcoin on major exchanges and wait for the network chaos to profit

Bitcoin will break down dams erected by special interest groups attempting to block the stream of transactions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKDC2DpzNbw&t=26m30s

Nice, that you finally come from theory to practice... but let me guess, you won't still see a problem downloading and verifying 8x the current amount of data...

It should be noted, that I'm not categorically against bigger blocks forever. But these changes must be done in a much more careful and restrictive manner than done by BIP101 and the corresponding altcoin. Proposing max-blocksize increases as the preferred solution for scaling Bitcoin shows a lack of engineering capability imho.

ya.ya.yo!

Maybe everyone should use something like a Raspberry Pi and leave it running as a full node 24/7. Then use RPC or something to send and receive coins through a laptop or phone.

One more thing.

Evolutionary stage transition we are currently facing with Bitcoin is where "sheer quantity" (of full nodes) becomes "higher quality" (of fewer ones). That's why evolution doesn't progress in a smooth linear way and has stages instead (nothing grows in a straight line). It has its own cycles and the limit in question serves as a barrier of some sort.

If we look at how stars operate (in outer space), we will see that they need to accumulate enough mass and build up enough pressure in order to be able to contain higher energy reactions and therefore produce heavier elements. At certain point they throw off their outer shell and begin attracting and accumulating new mass on the next level of their evolution.

Home-based demographic might constitute that outer shell for the transition process, but that's not the end of it, read on.


Without the limit the most productive players in the ecosystem will begin losing the background (against which they used to show how good they are) and instead form (and consolidate around) new clusters of gravity not accessible by the majority of Bitcoin's user-base. That's where the star of Bitcoin would begin falling apart.

If instead of removing the limit we simply move the existing one far (but still safe) enough (like 8MB), we will outline the new barrier to which all the players would rush racing against each other. Some will get there faster than others, but because the limit is static and firmly cemented into the brand (while the technology continues to improve), the rest of the user-base will eventually catch up and begin accumulating even bigger mass to facilitate the next stage transition.

And so it goes... :)

Continuing off the post above...


...All the while keeping the cost of transactions low while the (current) 25 BTC subsidy plays out. Once the subsidy is gone and the 21m coins are "printed" fees will still rise with forced inflation, however at that point the limit can be raised again since a dangerous precedent is set and miners will collect fees of 0.0001 BTC per transaction, meaning blocks will need to be an insanely high 30-40mb to collect a similar fee.

You'll always have users clamoring for lower fees and miners demanding higher fees. Why mine (and again, this keeps bitcoin alive guys) when you make no money or have no incentive? With the current 1mb limit you have the market dictating the rate. Those that *need* fast transactions pay for the privilege. Those that don't pay no fee at all. Paying for privilege is nothing new. You can't stay in the best hotel for 40 cents. You can stay in the worst hotel for 40 million but of course you don't have to. You can pay for privilege and not worry about body lice and rats.

 ???

Please define "higher quality" nodes?


I wouldn't say 800% increase qualifies as "safe".

I'm currently catching up from a about 1 year of down time. anyway:

"I already have to gimp my node"
dose gimping your node reduce its usefulness??
that's the thing! there is a real demand for some kind of simi-fullnode.
which is why i believe there should be different levels of nodes

SPV, simi-full node, full node, supernode, miner node.

currently the network is configured in a completely random order, with everyone relaying TX's to everyone else, increasing bandwidth requirements needlessly. and on top of that the way new blocks are propagated also increases bandwidth needlessly.

If improvements were made such that your full node requires X4 less bandwidth would you not agree that a 4X block increase would be OK?

block propagation can be improved up to 250X faster ( there is a running network which currently utilizes this improvement, sadly your node does not currently benefit from this ) there are probably all kinds of other improvements to be made.

you could say you are already running a sort of simi-fullnode because you limit its bandwidth usage. it would be much better if a real simi full node was developed and optimized to sever a specific function on the network.

bottom line, we need improvements, But still the answer is No you shouldn't aim for running  full nodes while running a full household worth of devices. I believe we should keep the limit such that a typical home connection can handle it with about 80% of the its bandwidth being utilized. this will be the upper limit which should never be crossed. and at the same time offer simi-full nodes that do something useful with only 10-20% of a typical home connection.

some improved incentives will also help, what's the point of running a "super node" that relay GB's of data per day? maybe miners would be willing to pay a small fee to connect to this node so that it gets blocks faster? or something!

They will become those heavier elements (in star analogy), which will be able to handle larger amount of transactions and serve more end-users than the current ones. In the initial stages of the transition process people might want to crowd-fund and crowd-source a few full nodes for themselves (in the cloud) instead of running autonomous ones at home (jamming most of their internet daily use). By the time technology advances far enough (while the limit stays the same), people will be able to run full nodes at home again and the whole process will have to repeat itself.


I agree, that stars aren't very safe during their transition stages, but that's the nature of it. It's really up to us (as a collective) to make it as smooth as we want it to be, but don't underestimate the gravity and the inertia of the process. Star transitions can be beautiful, but there is always an element of uncertainty in there. Oh, and you just want to have at least twice the theoretical capacity of your closest PoW competitor in order to stay in the game. :)

Again, my connection and my hardware are no where close to "typical". You are, two days later, still syncing from 1 year behind? I sync the entire chain in 14 hours. My other household uses (frequent web browsing, occasional gaming and streaming video) take nowhere near the resources of Core.

If a Bitcoin enthusiast like myself, who spends money on hardware specifically to run a node, who has top tier internet speeds, can't run a full node at full capacity (without a dedicated line), I would say that the decentralization of the network has been harmed. (Of course, I am currently running multiple full nodes, but not at full capacity. My concern is increasing the data a node should share before making the system as efficient as possible.)

If you want to take off the training wheels, let's talk about it after we've got the pedals, chain, handlebars, and shifters in fantastic working order.

You envision a network where there are multiple implementations of the software based on the resources at hand. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, unless it raises the bar so much that the end user can no longer access the full censorship-proof nature of Bitcoin.

I envision a network that is able to function in a possible future where governments force ISPs to audit or even censor Bitcoin traffic. I don't think we will have truly censorship-proof money until the Bitcoin network is not only able, but actually functioning, on a global wireless mesh network that is entirely out of the reach of any entity that would wish to control it.

I want Bitcoin to function in a worst case scenario. This isn't a war to see who can provide the cheapest, most convenient transaction for buying a glass of wine, this is a war for financial freedom.

its only taking days to sync because i need to work all day on my computer and i cant have core eating 90% cpu while i work.
also i turn off my machine at night because it's hot in my room.


i think your exaggerating the resources core takes and that's why i'm sycning a full node, once the full node is synced i will see first hand if this hurts my streaming.

agreed we need improvements done before we up the limit.

i think your pushing the "war" thing a little to far, right now mostly all governments are OK with bitcoin.

How can you be so naive?

By exaggerating do you suggest Holliday is lying? What he's saying sounds plausible to me and certainly not anecdotal, there have been many reports of node owners experiencing similar problems.

Planning for "the war thing" is how you build security systems: assuming worst-case scenarios. Today's reality might be quite different from tomorrow's. Do you really expect governments of the world to let Bitcoin take over the world without putting up a fight?

honestly I expect them to embrace bitcoin as the banksters monopoly money fails them.

and i think Holliday is simply unlucky and is someone bombarded with requests from alot of node needlessly
again proving that the network is setup really ineffectively

look at what this guy is saying on the matter.


how can they get such drastically different results 

They've already starting to embrace it but much like everything they prefer to control it and there are quite some ways they can go about doing this.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish

wouldn't it be nice if US and China Etc all had million dollar projects trying to mine / acquire all the bitcoins

US and China devs would have to agree on protocol changes

i could live with that  ;D

Oh dear, are you running with the HCF (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halt_and_Catch_Fire) flag set again?  ;D

You're welcome. Bitcoin is now NOT Fidelity coin and not subject to the whims of politicians and regulators. It is still policy neutral and decentralized.

If bitcoin can't be used by businesses because it has capacity problems then bitcoin is going nowhere. That's nothing to do with being Fidelity coin or whatsoever.

Bitcoin is not there to serve consumerism and businesses.

If you think it needs to fold to demands of corporations to succeed you never understood it in the first place.

For capacity there's FidelityCoin or VISAchain.

Then enjoy your worthless Uselesscoin.

 :D

Right... digital gold... so useless.

You shills never cease to amaze me  ;D

Digital gold... lmao

No one care about funny useless piece of bits unless maybe... you.
If you think the fiat power that be will ever care about useless bits they can't control you are highly delusional.

You have to run 24/7 to see Core use the resources I'm talking about here. You need to have 60+ peers connected to you which you will never achieve if you constantly shut your node down. You need about a month of 100% uptime to get those results.

I have no reason to exaggerate Adam. I'm a Bitcoin enthusiast and I want this system to be robust. I would venture to guess that Bitcoin impacts my current and future financial situation far, far more than most people posting on this forum. But more important than that, I want the freedom to do as I see fit with my money. I'm not here calling for mainstream adoption so I can cash out and get rich. Not that I wouldn't mind Bitcoin being valued at what I think is appropriate for the utility it provides.


Let's not be naive and ignore the fact that increasing capital controls continue to be implemented by governments around the world.

60+ peers that's the problem  :D

we need to take the bitcoin network from this:
http://hackingdistributed.com/images/2013-11-04-bitcoin-is-broken/sim-network.png
to this:
https://encrypted-tbn1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTxbvzxArSRpzee3YgOkyokk1YvyBJL273v7xb_ZCtKp9v1CkjR9w

Right but what's the point of financial freedom if you have no freedom to use your coins the way you want? Financial freedom is more than just escaping financial controls IMO.

Isn't that the distributed decentralised model?  Too many possible points of control. It wont work for bitcoin - nodes need to have the choice of getting to any node to be worthwhile.

edit:  meant to say decentralised, not distributed.

60+ connections to really see the bandwidth use I'm talking about.

I've observed some really annoying nodes (non-full nodes) that connect and just terrorize my bandwidth. I'm trying to recall the version string of one such node but I can't off the top of my head. At one point I started banning individual IPs based on the type of node they were running and I saw a drastic improvement, but this ended up being too much work.

I've seen things like 6 nodes with the same IP and different ports connected to my node.

The usage isn't constant. It comes in huge spikes that last for hours (up to days) at a time. Then there will be several hours with much less bandwidth used.

I don't know if node age has anything to do with how much the network will use it, but I've been running mine for many years now with near 100% uptime.

All transactions do not need to be censorship-proof in a world where censorship-proof transactions exist. The possibility of censorship-proof transactions by itself will cut down on censorship because it will be seen as futile.

i disagree

as long as the network can re-adjust if they find a node is not behaving properly, this works just fine

https://larvalsubjects.files.wordpress.com/2009/10/networks.jpg

we should look to get a decentralized model not distributed

But bitcoin is not just about being censorship resistant. It's also about being frictionless programmable money.

Both are equally important.

 ???

Seriously... stop drinking.

What are the use cases of frictionless programmable money? Why is it important? Why do we need to put those transactions on the same block chain that provides us with censorship-proof money? Does frictionless programmable money require the overhead of a permanent distributed ledger?

Most things (possibly everything) come with a trade off. If creating a good frictionless programmable money harms the censorship resistance, which do we choose?

Frictionless programmable money is impossible without censorship resistance

Would you look at the picture you've just posted?

I can remove one little point and kill the whole network.

first off you remove 1 one only part of the network goes down

second if a point is comprised a new one can take its place.

third this is just an example there might be a need for more than 1 point connecting to other parts of the network

point is a home node having 60+ peers is nutty

more sexy network topology porn

http://www.nils-diewald.de/images/dsn/thumb/dsn-cent-decent-distr-federated.png

It is important because it opens up new business and trade opportunities and can lift up the financial situation of people specially in times of financial crisis. Does frictionless programmable money require the overhead of a permanent distributed ledger? Well yes or unless you know any other kind of technology than can achieve this other than bitcoin?


We choose both because bitcoin already does both and we should work toward that goal. Adding censorship adds a layer of friction and going offchain also adds frictions.

If bitcoin could scale from 0 to now by offering both then I don't see why it cannot continue to scale and still offering both.

Here, with color :

https://i.imgur.com/C1T2K8k.png

I can't believe you've gone so far into the Bitcoin experiment and only now realize how inefficient the decentralized model is so you'd like us to change it because it doesn't fit your misconceptions of what Bitcoin should become. Truly disturbing.

I guess I don't really understand the "frictionless" in frictionless programmable money. There are many kinds of friction I can think of, and it seems like you are just saying censorship-proof in a different way.

Because you suck at engineering.  :-\

Bitcoin is first and foremost about censorship resistance and decentralization. The rest is bells and whistles.

Well... my goal was to share information with whomever asked for it without abusing the offer. Apparently that's crazy!

You sir are a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you for your services.

That's the problem with most of the rugrats in here: they don't realize the sacrifices needed for the Bitcoin network to operate.

I would even go so far as to say that Bitcoin is not frictionless at all. Fees, for example, are one type of friction which is going to be required in order to pay for network security.

Edit: Unless Heam's "network assurance contracts" of course!

Don't give me too much credit. Ultimately I run a node for selfish reasons. I want the Bitcoin network to be robust, so that I can take advantage of it should the need arise. I want that freedom to exist!

it is!

you're probably forwarding TX's to all your peers most of whom probably already received those TX datas from the other 60+peers Their connected to.

we're in a league all our own.

and that sir is called resilience by redundancy

for all your frictionless programmable money needs:

http://www.stashcrypto.com/

The only thing that needs redundancy is the blockchain. Broadcasting the same transaction twice is called inefficiencies.

Welp! Should've told Satoshi heh  :D

Seriously who do you think you noobs are giving engineering lessons to people when you are most clueless about how the system operates.  ::)

Then go on and explain how broadcasting the same transaction twice increase resilience instead of making pointless post. 

Well first you'll have to explain where do you get the idea that transactions are broadcasted twice?

there actually broadcasted many times as they hop from one node to the other

do you even know how bitcoin works?    8)

jesus christ is it so hard to believe bitcoin version 1 wasn't the most optimal piece of software in the world?

They're broadcasted once by every node to all of their peers until everyone acknowledges its existence.  

You are not qualified to judge this  :-\

actually i am, we all are.

which is why bitcoin will improve or die.

because i WILL move on to something I JUDGE better, if bitcoin can't deliver. and everyone else will do the same thing, because blieve it or not, you don't need to be a cook to have taste buds.

What you're essentially suggesting is to completely redesign Bitcoin's network topology and protocol to favor a more centralized design.

For the sake of what remains of your reputation you might want to avoid shouting this idea from the top of every roofs.

Your decision is irrelevant.

seems legit.  ;D

we should make a new thread about this network topology stuff, and have hours of fun arguing about the most optimal design, while ignoring brg444's trollery that we are wasting our time.   

http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-September/

Go right ahead, I'm grabbing popcorn.

What is this disease you people suffer from that you need to fix everything that's not broken.  ???

Allow Nick Szabo to explain it to you:

I will say it again, that Bitcoin is the only network of its kind that has saturated the level of home-based internet infrastructure to the point that it can now move onto the next stage of its evolution (8MB), while the niche it used to cover can be served by its closest PoW competitor, which has exact same properties except for smaller market cap, while being at the time more convenient to operate at home.

Satoshi has always intended to increase the limit and even provided a small code-snippet demonstrating how to do it.

How about no? You can go ahead and create EvolutionCoin but you can't and won't have Bitcoin.

Haha!

Nothing in the Universe is static. Bitcoin has never been effectively capped either.
Keep it at 1MB forever and it will wither and shrink or mutate into sidechains that would then tear it apart anyway.

Remember, the true path of Bitcoin isn't ambiguous.
Sometimes things need to change in order to stay the same. :)

A protocol like Bitcoin will eventually become static and sort of ossify once it is considered good enough. The evolution will come from additional layers.

Bitcoin is the cambrian explosion but its blockchain alone will never support the whole financial system.

Sorry I should add this precision: Broadcasting a transaction to a node that has already received this transaction.

In other word, inefficiencies.

I agree that it would be ideal but the protocol needs to consider growth and technological improvement which are hard to forecast. The ability to fork at this point is still required as bitcoin is not a mature protocol yet.  

I'm not sure what you are talking about. Do you mean that if a node sees a new transaction or block, it immediately relays it to other peers?
As far as I'm aware that's not quite true. The only thing a node does when receiving new tx/block is send an inv message containing its hash. After that, a peer can request a tx/block using a getdata message if it doesn't already have it.

That's true. Relaying not just the transactions related messages alone. It would look up for the sources so that it double virtually double confirm the transactions as well as the bitcoins.

I'm not saying that it will, but whatever level this technology is capable of achieving, it should go there.
We might still want to sit at 1MB for a while in order to accumulate enough mass and build up enough pressure.

But when it's time, (G)o fo(R) (8)MB and everything will be GR8.  ;D

i agree that it will be static at some point but not at this stage and not with artificial 1 MB blocks.

i disagree it will never be static, at best in a few years the protocol, and "consensus layer" will be static for years at a time, but the higher level code will always be improving. and it's hard to imagine the protocol NEVER changing in the slightest.

in anycase we are clearly nowhere near this static state, i've said it before and i'll say it again, if bitcoin doesn't improve your opening up the door wide open to competitors having serious advantages, and it won't take all that much for the user base to switch.

Nick Szabo is not saying it's usefull for 1 node to get the same TX data 6 times, he's saying its useful the TX data is redundantly stored on all nodes.

Just found another way to look at it.
Think of electron orbits in the atom, they are discreet!

The 1MB orbit has definitely proven itself stable,
but our atom (of Bitcoin) is now being repeatedly overwhelmed with incoming energy (stress-tests) and needs to find the next stable orbit for its electrons.

I argue, that anything less than 8MB will simply be smashed through (with inertia) and the electrons may just fly away (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1179964.msg12416270#msg12416270) :). The same holds true in case we overshoot.

Now, if we target the next orbit just right, we will have a good chance of increasing the overall energy of the atom (Bitcoin's market cap), while keeping the electrons (user-base) in place, though on a higher orbits.

However, in order for that new orbit to become stable, everyone and their dog (and even cat) should know that Bitcoin is now capped at 8MB.
No one (I repeat, no one!) forks with the limit until it's time, of course! ;D

it would be interesting to know where Fidelity would take us if they were to "flip the on switch" are they going to be spitting out 5TPS or 50TPS....

It's relatively simple to get the same blocks at all nodes without any node having to receive anything except block headers more than once.  The block header succinctly identifies the block and verifies its content. The bandwidth required to receive block headers is sufficiently low as to be negligible. The block headers can be flooded, yielding censor proof knowledge of a new block, but the transaction data can be held until requested. This will cost an extra round-trip to allow for the block data to be selectively requested on only one connection, but this time will be negligible.  Nodes will need a policy to rate their connections as to reliability and performance so that they get block data in a timely fashion.

It's more complex to efficiently forward transactions in the mempool, because there is no similar fixed succinct representation of multiple transactions.  Some kind of dynamic spanning tree, as in the graphs earlier might work if the goal were just efficiency, but the goal also is to prevent censorship, which makes the problem more difficult.

What exactly are you referring to as "get the same TX data 6 times"? I keep reading that, but not following.

Don't mind him he really doesn't know what he's talking about...

Are you aware of exactly how this works? The transaction data is not uploaded to the peers unless they request for it, in which case if they do then it signifies they have not "already received this transaction".

i blieve the bitcoin networks looks somthing like this
http://hackingdistributed.com/images/2013-11-04-bitcoin-is-broken/sim-network.png

and i'm saying the network's topology is inefficient and as a result when nodes relay TXs a node can get sent the same TX multiple times.

ex. 6 nodes get 1 tx to propagate, all 6 nodes send the tx to all 6 nodes, each node gets the same tx 6 times.


Holliday says he has 60+ peers connected. thats alot of peers for one node

i think at most a node should have 5 peers

*maybe when a node is trying to download the blockchain it make sense to dwl from as many peers are possible. but when propagating a TX at most you should send that tx to 5 peers, who also send it to 5 peers, who also send it to 5 peers, etc... five levels in 3125 msgs have occurred.

if all nodes have 60 peers 3 levels in and 216000 msgs have been sent. waste full? i think so.

bitcoin topology should allow a msg to propagate in an exponential way ( 3 peers forward a TX to 3 peers who forward a TX  to 3 peers...) while trying to avoid a peer receiving the same TX from 60 different peers.

A node receives tx only when it asks for it.

That's not how it works  :-\

says you. which isn't reassuring.

i'm under the impression the topology is laid out in a pretty random manner and peers blindly forward the TX to all the peers they are connected to.

when Holliday gets a TX to forward, he's forwarding that TX to all 60 peers, which is why he's having bandwidth issues.

No. Peers don't "blindly forward the TX to all the peers they are connected to".

yes node magically know when other nodes transact

repeating that doesn't make it more reassuring.

The purpose of my exercise is to get you to find the proper information so as to educate yourself.

Start here:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=bitcoin+gossip+network

BTW I expect some kind of "sorry I was wrong" post next.

http://gavintech.blogspot.ca/2015/09/how-efficient-is-bitcoins-gossip.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gossip_protocol

"sorry I was wrong"

 ::) You noobs really need to get fed every answer heh.

Here:


To put into context: if Holliday's node uploads content of a transaction to its peers it is because they DON'T know yet about the transaction. Clear enough?

bottom line here is that if it was laid out properly Holliday wouldn't be uploading more than 2MB every 10mins

something is afoot, that much is clear.

what isnt clear is why we are asking Holliday to use so much bandwidth, and why the task isn't evenly spread out

the Holliday paradox, its a thing now.

What is clear Adam is you have no credibility discussing these issues.

It doesn't matter if you bang on tables and shout in every threads your opinion is as valuable as a 3rd grader telling rocket scientists how to build a spaceship because they saw it in the movies. People might avoid being rude because you're a nice little kiddo but your ideas will not be considered.

omfg you're some special kind of asshole.

OMG you still don't get it  :D

what you don't get is i'm trying to figure out what is causing the Holliday paradox, and suggesting it might have to do with the way the network propagates msg.

Maybe this will help:



https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Network

There is nothing inefficient about Bitcoin's gossip broadcast protocol given the purpose it is trying to achieve.

There might be coding gains to be made but the network topology is fine and in fact critical to Bitcoin's security and overall success.

What is it 4 years now you've been doint this Bitcoin stuff and yet you had not figured this out?

Too busy playing in the speculation forum?

new thread?  :D

http://gavintech.blogspot.ca/2015/09/how-efficient-is-bitcoins-gossip.html?showComment=1441906719340 is a few days old with a comment made on this this morning.

calling me an idiot for suggesting there maybe some inefficiencies in this aspect of bitcoin, and then point to an article recently posted exploring this possibility, hard qualifies as proof that i have no idea what i'm talking about.  

Must be heavy lifting these goal posts  ;D

http://web-tech.fr/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/trollface4-640x489.png

perfect avatar for you sir.

 ;)


For dummies:

Bitcoin's broadcast protocol is quite efficient for the purpose it achieves.

 :)

after reading the not so conclusive *part1* report on this:

it seems there is some coding gain to be had here, at least it's worth a look, but there's no doubt Holliday's paradox has probably more to do with nodes constantly using him to sync up there blockchain

which begs the question, shouldn't most nodes always be up and never need to catch up there blockchain?

maybe alot of nodes do as my friend dose, which is come online once in awhile simply to catch up and then go offline, this behaivor is detrimental to the network, and needs to be somehow dealt with and or mitigated.

I don't think this has much to do with what you describe.

The reason why Holliday's node bandwidth use is important is because of how well connected it is. It simply follows that he hears about a transaction before other less connected nodes and therefore has more people leeching off his transaction data.

He doesn't have to bear this weight but he apparently chooses to do so for the service of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

The blockchains cartography is fine and is obviously the most critical element to BTC's security and overall success.

The Holiday paradox might have a lot to do with the way the network propagates messages.

well that's noble of him, but i still think it's not ideal to get into situations like this by default.

now we have Holliday not wanting an increase in block size because he thinks bandwidth cost are already to high. and  they are to high for him, the system is abusing his node simply because it behaves properly.

ideally nodes will all bear the load together and ideally the  gossip network will do what its supposed too:
would be nice to actually get these kind of results in paritice.

so in the end if we have 1MB blocks floating around we'd expect each peer to use ~1.1MB of bandwidth every 10mins for TX propagation.

at this point Holliday would be OK with a much bigger block size.

another thing to explore is improving block propagation.

my crazy theory says that if it's all optimized to the max a home computer with a typical connection will be able to run on the network up to 2-5 thousands TPS

I could go as far as saying that we do not want nodes with more than a few peers like Holiday's 60+ peer node, because if he turns evil he could confuse a lot of nodes.

No, a node needs at least 8 peers to serve its purpose well. If it doesn't the messages risk not being propagated fast enough throughout the whole network.

Do you understand the word "overhead"?

The gossip broadcasting still has to occur between peers and it is valuable for them be well connected.

Stop being under the impression that you are somehow onto novel ideas, you really think too much of yourself.

The issue you only now realize is the lack of well connected peers throughout the network.

The solution is more full nodes.

Surely you also now understand raising the block size is not ideal nor desired as it stands.

Congratulations, you win today's Internet.   :D

Not all nodes need to have the same connectivity. It is possible to have very low average connectivity and still have a topology that has a small diameter.  An extreme example  would be a star topology with one node having N -1 connections to the remaining N - 1 nodes, each of which had a single connection.  There would be an average connectivity of about two and transmission would be fast (2 hops).

The most efficient topology (based on propagation time) will be a function of the bandwidth of individual connections and individual nodes.  Using random connections will not be optimal if there is a wide disparity in node performance and network bandwidth.  There are other possible optimizations that will minimize the effect of multiple hop transmissions, particularly of large blocks.  None of these ideas are new, having been well understood in the area of computer networking for decades.  The unique difficulty where bitcoin is concerned is the absence of any central network management and the need to operate under denial of service attacks.

I'm well aware of that but for Bitcoin to remain robust there is a certain minimum to achieve.

as it stands, no i am forced to conclude raising block limit any higher then a few MB's will start to cost to much in terms of bandwidth for home users to stay online.

with optimizations, i believe 500MB block limit will be the absolute limit for most home users.

i think gavin banking on tech improving enough to allow for GB blocks in a matter of years is very optimistic. maybe he doesn't care too much that full nodes no longer run on home networks....

 ::)

Optimizations like everyone running SPV I suppose....

Again, you can "optimize" overhead and inefficiencies, but you still have to communicate the whole block of data. There's no way you get around that.

Wow i i haven been really up to date on the block size drama in till today again i noticed a 240k volume on transactions since yesterday. talk about waiting for a transaction paying .0001

no no no

simple shit like :

1) making sure the gossip network actually does make every peer on average use 503Bytes to get everyone to hear about a 500Byte msg.
2) communicate new blocks by listing all the TX ID's in that block instead of in full.
3) has SOME trusted centralized nodes dedicated to allowing new nodes to sync fast ( probably don't even need to trust them using some fancy PGP or something)
4) and yes some SPV, and maybe different types of nodes, simi-full node, full node, super node, minner node.

wtv it takes.

Yes, your intention are clear. Diverge from the trustless decentralized model of Bitcoin to accomodate more spam.

Hopefully you sell your coins so we can be done with people like you and move away from such toxic attitudes.

If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Everyone needs to understand that.  Time to put this back in my sig.

Resiliency, not efficiency, is the paramount goal of decentralized, non-state sanctioned currency -Jon Matonis 2015 (https://twitter.com/jonmatonis/status/614106384142086144)

if you can trade off a small amount of decentralization for a large gain in efficiency...

it's not so clear cut.

You're trying to install trusted centralized nodes in the system, gtfo  >:(

Bitcoin will scale beyond its blockchain. Stop trying to figure out ways to break it.

I don't know why,
but it sounded a bit like "you can trade off a small amount of freedom for some gain in security"  ;D

Muhahahaha!!!

https://bitcoin.org/en/download

a centralized source of download bitcoin   :o

http://i1120.photobucket.com/albums/l488/IristheVirus17/oh-noes-everybody-panic.gif

i ain't selling buddy i'm forking along with the 70% of miners  8)

troll ... but ... well :

ed2k
torrent
freenet
dropbox
mega
4shared
...


 ;D find the 3 errors ...

By the way, has any of you guys considered running a full node in the cloud, as Soros Shorts suggested above?
Would that solve the problem for at least 8MB blocks? Just wondering...

why would i do that when i can run it free from home?

i already have unlimited bandwidth

Running a full node "in the cloud" defeats the whole purpose of running a node which is to be independent.

It's disheartening to see how some people want to sacrifice Bitcoin's uniqueness just because they hope that more txs on blockchain will somehow help in their get rich quick scheme. Nothing unexpected, though...

Truth is, there might be optimizations in the relay protocol, but I doubt they are as significant in the grand scheme of things.

75% i guess.

The thing is, those who can run a node at home today but don't, likely won't bother doing it in the future regardless of the block size.
But those who are dedicated to it and have enough good reasons (like Holliday), might consider the cloud as a better and more convenient alternative.


The home internet connections (that we already pay for) are provided by the state, so it's not quite independent either way at the moment.
I agree, that some countries made "the right to access Internet" as one of the basic human rights, but I don't know if that extends to "the cloud" as well.

---

There are a few more things we need to understand here.

Evolution stages are discreet for a good reason, they aren't arbitrary.
It has something to do with frequencies, resonance and energy minimums.

It means that there is a necessity to have a static limit in place (representing a stage),
but we cannot just shift it a little bit (like 2MB) in order to move forward.
We got to aim for the next stable orbit (like 8MB) if we are considering progressing at all.

As stage transitions imply "quantity -> quality", the system might lose some of its mass in the process.
However, if done carefully with decent coherency and commitment, it should be able to re-capture
that mass along the way and begin attracting new particles, while gaining more energy for the next stage.

The only thing that is still quite uncertain at this point is timing.
But, I guess, we will all know when it happens. :)

nothing i proposed there " sacrifice Bitcoin's uniqueness ".

there is a relay network which implements #2 and gets blocks to miners that connect to this network and configure there software to accept new blocks in this way (header + list of TX ID") get there blocks 250X faster.

clearly there are significant optimizations to be had.

whats disheartening is seeing how poeple are so afraid of the tiniest changes, bitcoin development grinds to a halt.

Haha!

"stay in 1" -> (stain)
"go for 8" -> (gr8)

Gr8ness Awaits!
(psheyshtation)

Hard forks are not "the tiniest of changes."

Bitcoin development has not ground to a halt.

Your problems are that you are a noob, you don't understand software development, and you don't understand Bitcoin.

Sorry about that.

Even if people make a hard fork to 1.5MB, it wouldn't be tiniest of changes.
Stopping mining pools to run a new daemon is easy and all, but the problem is that the world wouldn't update all at once, and the whole Bitcoin "ecosystem" would have a temporary problem with the "2 blockchains".

I think they can all update at once, like BitcoinXT planned to do, everyone run the new software which runs old code until some high percentage of blocks are hashing with the new version. and one time there was an emergency hard fork without any of this fancy way of updating everyone all at once and it took a few hours for the new chain to catch up.

i'd argue that not changing the 1MB is a change in and of itself, we were promised this limit would move up as needed. satoshi knew what that would do, and he talked about SPV clients becoming more important as time went on. not changing the limit is changing the game plan in a big way.

Satoshi spoke of SPV clients that would provide fraud proof. Something that doesn't exist right now.

"i'd argue that not changing the 1MB is a change in itself" <--- I like this point.  I would add that not changing is not the same and shouldn't be evaluated as a proxy for something else that isn't yet invented or otherwise ready-to-go as an alternative (ex: sidechains or LN).  From what I can understand, sidechains and LN will be groundbreaking/important regardless of blocksize. I get the feeling that a lot of folks see sidechains/ln as mutually exclusive w/ XT or any other blocksize increase BIP. 

Related question:  If you have time, what are the best two or three arguments against raising blocksize in your (or anybody else's) opinion, notwithstanding whether you agree with them? 

My background is not tech, and I'm positive I'm in the same boat w/ tons of folks, so some short bullet points would be helpful for us non-techies.  From what I can tell, the best arguments against increasing blocksize are things like: 1) security (decreased node count), 2) unreasonable economic barriers (objections based on specific BIPs (Blacklisting argument against XT) seem less concerning b/c they're fixable and negotiable).  Are there obvious solutions to the strongest arguments (whatever those are to you) that resolve the concern and still increase blocksize? 

Yes, the stagnaters (stream blockers) are the real forkers.

1. Centralization of nodes
2. Centralization of miners

Whether nodes will "Centralize" is somewhat of an assumption, and does also depend on the rate of increased adoption. Since when more people know about Bitcoin more people will be running full nodes, the exact balance between the difficulty of running a full node and the number of people running full nodes in the future is impossible to predict.

I do not think that increasing the blocksize would lead to increased mining centralization. Since miners do not run full nodes, the pools do. Miners are free to point their hashing power wherever they want and they are incentivized to do what is best for Bitcoin. There is in effect a free market of pools, which act as a type of representative democracy for the miners. This is why increasing the block size would not lead to increased mining centralization, even with much larger blocks miners are not effected whatsoever since the pools which run the full nodes for mining can be set up in data centers almost anywhere in the world.

For those of you wondering what to think of leftovers in the above.
Let's take a look.

"stay in 1" -> (stain) + (y 1) -> "Why One?" -> "Why Alone?" -> "Go out and create and bring all things back to me!"
"go for 8" -> (gr8) + (foo) -> "metasyntactic variable (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foobar)" usually comes with "bar" -> "raising the bar!" <- sounds gr8! :)

---

That's why 1.5 or 2 or even 4 are not the options for the hard fork, as they simply won't justify the hassle.
Small limits like these would already begin alienating home-based full nodes due to the increased load, but won't provide enough commitment to handle larger user base. That's why they won't "resonate" with the whole ecosystem and agreeing on them will be problematic. They are not "stable orbits" in that sense.

There are two ways to approach this.

1) Stay with 1MB blocks long enough and let the technology advance to the point that jumping to 8MB (for example) would still allow full nodes to continue running on home networks. There is a chance, however, that other similar systems become more attractive as the time passes and there will be no reason to bother with the changes at all. That's where Bitcoin stops being the master of its own game.

2) Jump to 8MB (as a new limit) in the near future and let the internal competition figure out the appropriate block size. This may alienate home-based full nodes during the transition stage, however, due to the increased potential to handle larger user base and therefore higher overall value (market cap) of the network, people who are committed to running a node should still be able to afford it (using other methods: cloud services or dedicated servers).

---

In general, there is a need to have a static limit in place as a common background representing the interests of the whole ecosystem, as it allows to keep the costs of running a node manageable and therefore provide enough validation for blockchain rules. However, if the rules are compact and simple enough, people might just want to keep them in their memories and associate them with the brand, in which case only one (single!) honest validator (or full node) would be enough to keep the integrity of the whole system intact, but since the costs of doing that are manageable (thanks to a static limit) there will be many (validators).

The risk of pushing the home-based demographic of full nodes out of the system resides in the potential, that the new static limit doesn't last very long and a few large and most active players in the ecosystem collude to keep raising it, while pushing more and more smaller players out of the validation field. The only reasonable way to prevent that is to bake the new limit into the brand itself for at least half a decade and ensure that people are aware and responsible for their actions in choosing a complying full node (or any other service) when transacting in the network.

In order words, if even your cat knows that Bitcoin is capped at 8MB per block till at least 2020, then you can rest assured that the network is holding up nicely. :)

No.

heres a good link  http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/36085/what-are-the-arguments-for-and-against-the-increase-of-the-block-size-limit


i'll comment on them.

Arguments against increasing

Bandwidth requirements are too much for full nodes
this is #1 argument, and is true when you talk about blocksize >8MB's without any optimizations to limit bandwidth usage for full node. I agree to delay any significant increase until optimizations implemented.

Bigger blocks will destroy the market for transaction fees
has been mostly discredited.

Bitcoin is not meant for every person on the planet to pay for their every cup of coffee
Pretty sure this idea ( bitcoin is GOLD not money ) isnt what the white paper says, and is merely an excuse to not scale bitcoin.

Consensus may not be achievable, bitcoin may split down the middle
weather devs push for 1MB to stay forever, or increase the block limit, this statement holds true. at this point there is a gr8er chance of splitting bitcoin if the answer is 1MB stays forever.

Bitcoin is destroying viability of altcoins
this one's just retarded.


Arguments for increasing

The transaction capacity is too low to support a global payment network
Greater blocksize will increase total transaction fees
Effective blocksize will not increase over night
Consensus will be achieved before the hardfork is initiated
Technical issues will be fixed
Slower block propagation due to bigger blocks will be mitigated by Header-first synchronization, etc.

i dont say we dont need ideas for bitcoin but ints not on the structure of blocks of bitcoin its in the market and states implementation

in short the only good argument for not raising the block size is that it would require more bandwidth to be consumed by nodes, and in turn drop the full node count. which is a very good argument. enough to force me to agree 1MB limit is necessary. the good news this argument won't hold up for very long, as internet connectivity improves and more importantly optimizations are implemented

There are many more good arguments but at least you are starting to see the light...!

Ok, I need to give a perspective on this first.

At the heart of creation is a perpetual push-pull engine.
You can easily see it as presented in the choreography below.
It attracts you first (at 1:24) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoCOg8ZzUfg&t=1m24s), then pushes you out (at 1:29) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoCOg8ZzUfg&t=1m29s).

That's all it does, except that in the mean time it "raises the bar". :)

---

So, how does that relate to the question at hand?

Well, the weakest (or less motivated) validators are going to be pushed out in the transition stage, while everyone rushes to the next (bar)rier.
That's where we all meet again to see who is running and where to go next.

There doesn't seem to be a good way around that.
Improvements in any areas require hard work and dedication.
That's how evolution works.

---

Can't be stopped
Can't be moved
Can't be rocked
...
Came to bring life
Came to get it started
Came to get it right
...
Open your hearts for me
Look what I got for you
You in the presence of gr8ness
I'll make it hot for you
Pass the rock to me
Block and I'll run with it
Here for the game
...
Dead discussion, you will not win
Cause I will not lose  ;D
 (http://www.lyriczz.com/lyrics/roy-jones/16890-can't-be-touched/)

Nobody with a background in tech or basic logic will accept the surreal anti-conceptual Red Queen Interpretation that "not changing" "is changing."

Anyone with a background in policy debate should know (and deeply appreciate) why the default state is status quo, not Doing Something Because Reasons.

You don't get to redefine A as Not-A and expect anyone except drooling, easily excited ADHD Redditards to support you.

Presumption has always been negative, and that's not going to change just because you think the limit needs to move up Right Fucking Now And Faster Please.

Satoshi "promised" you nothing, with the arguable exception of Nakamoto Consensus being a solution/workaround to the Byzantine General Problem.

Good luck selling your false sense of urgency, especially now that XT's governance coup was rekt like Stannis at Winterfell and Hearn/Galvin have disappeared in a cloud of public disgrace.   :)

there is some urgency.
right now you can't get a TX through without a good fee.
i wonder how long you can sell that there is "plenty of time" to keep arguing in circles...

You're lying  :)

I can send a tx with no fee right now and it should get picked up fairly quickly.

right now the traffic seems low
lets do a test?
post your address.

What exactly is a "good fee?"

Bitcoin provides services unavailable in any other form; there no substitute for several of its functions.

But there you are, whining about paying less than a dollar for access to those miracles (which are produced at great expense).

There is no "urgency."  Repeating such Gavinista agitprop was for a time effective at misleading the public, but that seasonal fad is over.

BIP000 (scale to 1MB now, then reconsider in a couple of years) is winning, and there is literally nothing you can do to change that fact.

So keep stewing in your impotent frustrated FUD and butt-rage.  The rest of us will continue to scale Bitcoin via the proper channels, based on facts instead of choreographed panic.