Bitcoin Forum

https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Hey all, I used to come here every day, but am recently too busy:
69,000 (69K) Unconfirmed Transactions!   ....WTF...???  (Edit 71K++ WTF+++)  ... now ~69,057 after new block

Hey guys, how's it going!
http://images.memes.com/meme/tile/1208592

How does Bitcoin keep functioning, into the future, if ~70,000 transactions can cause an ongoing drama?
What is the solution and how soon can we get things right?

Few days back when recent pump begun. It was close to 90k uncorfirmed transactions.

The explanation is simple:
1) Demand is higher than the block space supply.
2) It is rather trivial to spam the blockchain for useless use cases or malicious reasons.

Bitcoin remains functional regardless of how high the number of unconfirmed transactions is.

Segwit -> Signature aggregation (Schnorr) -> LN.

---

You can get Segwit adopted pretty quickly if the miners were to signal support for it. From what I gather, the miners are enjoying the high fees per block which are a side-effect of the block size debate.

---

Example of SPAM: https://blockchain.info/address/3QQB6AWxaga6wTs6Xwq8FYppgrGinGu15f
Number of transactions: 31981
It is just sending money to itself over and over again!

Die waiting for segwit or use Dash instant transactions, top 3 at coinmarket now:

https://coinmarketcap.com

Stop promoting the shitcoin everywhere. It is a clear pyramid scheme that is dying. ::)

Well fuck, i invested 1000 Dash for masternode, i will not allow Dash to die :)...

That is stupidity.Who is behind all these?I guess the only one benefitting with this is miners.There is no reason otherwise for a non-miners to do this.

With Dash 45% goes to masternodes, 45% to miners, sorry Lauda ;D

The solution was proposed years ago (get rid of the archaic 1mb limit originally put in place as a spam filter).

But the powers that be  **COUGH COUGH BLOCKSTREAM ** have done everything in their power to avoid that.

Shame on you OP (legendary indeed). There is a thread that is the exact same as this one already in progress in this section of the forum. It's was on the front page when you decided to create this one!

Did you think dividing the discussion would be more productive?

All you've done is create another place for signature spammers to promote their garbage.

Good job. You lose 69k internets.

Since you are an clearly an expert at spam, maybe you can explain why there is so much transaction spam lately.

Now we know why you're promoting the shitcoin. You're a bagholder.

Plenty of reasons:
1) Complain about congestion to promote the contentious fork called BU.
2) You just want to harm Bitcoin.
3) You want to earn more (in case a miner is behind this).

I don't care. Stop spamming Dash nonsense in the wrong section.

Just ignore the bagholder. Dash is a premined and centralized trashcoin.

Not for large amounts of Bitcoins, Bitcoin is becoming like western union, if you send thousands in Bitcoin it's possible that you will need to pay hundreds in fees for miners,
Right now is best to transfer money with Dash instant transactions, roger ver Bitcoin.com owner transferred 100k in Dash for only 30 cents:
https://twitter.com/rogerkver/status/837376532884701184

Bullshit. You can send any amount of money for <1$ depending on your transaction size. You don't need to pay "hundreds".

Roger Ver is known for promoting altcoin pumps until he dumps them. You are going to left holding bags full of Dash trash. :-*

Lauda Shmauda, don't lie, don't lie... :) It takes hours or even days to confirm Bitcoin confirmations and fees becoming insaane!
Of course you work with Bitcoin and you will not tell use the truth.

Bitcoin is tha best !

Bullshit. Don't blame the Bitcoin network if you don't know how the fundamentals work. I have made a transaction yesterday which confirmed in the very next block. All that had to be done was use the appropriate fee-rate.

This statement makes you a hypocrite as you're a Dash bagholder promoting the scam coin formerly known as Darkcoin.

Yes.

It would be the best if you would confirm these transactions manually instead of posting shit there :D

Looks like btc is being DDOS'ed with $0.05 and $0.01 transactions.

Maybe someone's trying to lower the price so they can buy cheaper btc before the ETF announcement on the 11th.

69K unconfirmed transactions is nothing special anymore. There are nodes that have had over 100K of unconfirmed transactions in their mempool. Lauda is spot on regarding the heavy spam attack on the network. It's utterly annoying that an entity gains so much pleasure out of choking the network with rubbish transactions. Look at the generated block fees today http://blockr.io/block/list/ it's party time for pools.

I guess best choice run to Dash.

Like ZCASH did with their short lived coin?
What ever did happen to that is it dead buried yet? ???
I remember when it was all the rave with the kids from Arizona. :D

That spam can be viewed as a network test. How effecient bitcoin network can be if it get mainstream and have that much of valid transactions? Currently, as we can see, it is not performing well. We need segwit badly, unfortunately, miners are not so keen on adopting it.

LOL this guy is misguided.

[Quote author = DomainMagnate link = topic = 1813712.msg18067441 # msg18067441 date = 1488665159]

That is stupidity.Who is behind All These? I guess the only one benefitting with this is miners.There is no reason otherwise for a non-miners to do this.
[/ Quote]
https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees

We are on the bullish chart of the total transaction fees on the blockchain. No doubt the miner gets a lot.

This might be a temporary problem which will soon gets sorted. From the last year end onwards when price increases gradually the unconfirmed transactions too have increased much. Later when stability is experienced gradually faster confirmation takes place.

If you mean temporary because eventually we'll have a scaling solution implemented, I agree.

If you mean because it will just go away on its own, I don't.

You cannot blame him. It is in a bubble that is ready to pop anytime. He is desperate for greater fools to enter the fray so he could sell his bags to them. This is nothing new in the forum.

I happen to be both a bitcoin investor and also someone that actually uses Bitcoin (to pay employees via remittances).

This past week was the first time one of my employees actually complained to me about the payment because it
took them 2 days to get their bitcoins through their bank processor to their bank.  

If this network congestion isn't solved soon AND I find myself able to use an alternative cryptocurrency (assuming its cheaper than paypal),
why wouldn't I do so?  Hint: I will.

And if that happens, I would seriously consider liquidating a large portion of my bitcoin investment as
well, based on the conclusion that Bitcoin's utility has been damaged while at the same time other
competitors offer more value.

Food for thought.

this will soon happen to all of us.
i used to think the spam attackers are doing it for political reasons to force some fix for the block size but now i think it is people who are out there to harm bitcoin because at this point this is what they are doing.

Being such an urgent topic, it is good to see so much attention.

Yes, the miners needs to come up with a solution. It will be no good if we keep on going like this as confirmation time is increasing day by day and tx fee are also high. Many altcoins have new technologies which give zero confirmation time. Guess we need to adopt such technologies.

Urgent?! This has been going on since late 2015. Did you just wake from a coma?

The only people giving it "so much attention" are the same five guys who never shut up along with the signature spammers who post incomprehensible dribble everywhere.

In recent 1 month, more and more unconfirmed transactions are there, greedy miners refuse to signal SegWit because they want more mining fees, bitcoin will be killed by those greedy morons.

Nobody really cares if you leave or stay to be frank. You are part of the current problem as you're strongly advocating against a extremely tested solution (Segwit).

Bullshit. They can spam any other shitcoin in no time. Heck, it is much easier to spam some of them.

The recommended fee-rate recently jumped a lot. This was not evident in 2015 nor 2016. Up to Q4 2016 the recommended was always between 15-20 cents.

i don't expect anything anytime soon. miners revenue has gone up 530% because of the combination of price rise and fee rise to 200% what it was before and they are loving the spam attack so far.

why would they want to change anything! (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1811430.0)
https://i.imgur.com/9YUTPnp.jpg

Me personally, no.  Obviously there will be others who make the exact same logical conclusions and decisions.

Bitcoin's value comes from its utility and if that utility declines while competitors' rises, the results will be predictable.  But believe whatever you want.

You sound like a copy of Ver. Standard PR talk, zero valuable knowledge or expertise in the relevant field (assumption). No surprise there.

---

The way forward is simple: Segwit now, HF and LN later.

Solution is Segwit. Only thing that miners need to do is signalling support for Segwit.


Confirmations take long to come through because people don't add a network-situation-appropriate transaction fee.


Altcoins barely enjoy any real world usage, and thus don't suffer from the same annoyances as Bitcoin does. It's pointless to adapt their "technologies" as we first have Segwit, and then Lightning Network to focus on. With both implemented Bitcoin has set a massive step towards being more future proof.

...and you sound like a blockstream fanboy.  Obviously we won't change each other's opinions.

how it get sorted if they cannot reach any consensus? miners do not agree on segwit and dev do not agree on mienrs decision, and what about the merchants they don't care, what they are saying for this situation?

I also have to wait a long time before to confirm my transaction. This is very uncomfortable, I do not have time to promptly transfer the Bitcoins multiple times. I think that more people will use Bitcoin, the more will this problem arise

That's just bullshit as always. I have no affiliation with Blockstream and actually have conflicting views with some of their members.

The ones that have voiced their opinions are in support of Segwit, the other part of them are just neutral/silent.

Pay the required fee to get into the next block and it is most likely that you will.

Correct. Ask your miners/pools to start signaling Segwit.

That would suck for Bitcoin if thousands of other users are starting to think of the same thing. The question now here is what coin are you willing to use to pay your employees? Of all the options I can only LTC as the obvious choice unless you are going to use XMR or a scamcoin like Dash.

Not really.

Every single altcoin will face the same issues. It looks like people can't grasp the reality that fleeing to an altcoin != solution. It equals to shifting the problem from location A to location B. The scamcoins like ETH, Dash, et. al are another story.

how is ddosing is going to lower the price, if the fee on average are lower now than before, i don't think the market even care about this, in fact traders can trade without worry about fee, on the exchange

there are no fee on the exchange for bitcoin, and this is another reason to keep your fund there, with this high cost for the fee you would kill your tiny % of daily profit, by depositing and withdrawing every time

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

This is what you call "lower now than before"? Fees are up to about 300% since Q4 2016 in USD.

---

Source: https://bitcoinfees.info/
Alternative: https://twitter.com/nikzh/status/838341340920434688/photo/1

with before i mean this week not a year ago, the peak was 50k now it's again 45k

not to mention that the average transaction fee is based also on the average transaction size, it doesn't necessarely mean that the fee itself is increased, but that there are more big transaction...

Peak mempool size != peak average fee. Stop comparing apples and oranges. While there is correlation between them, a record mempool size does not need to imply a record average fee-rate.

I just sent 0.02 a while ago and the fee was almost a dollar. The transaction did not take too long to be confirmed actually and was pleasantly surprised that it got through sooner than I expected. Now that the fees are increasing, I think I'll just keep my transactions to a minimum and hold for a while to see if there will be changes in the fees in the coming months because at the rate things are going, the fees are just going to continue to rise due to the increasing number of transactions we see everyday.

You are right! The other coins will also have to face the same problems to a certain extent. I also think jonald_fyookball is only bluffing when he said he wants to relinquish himself from all his Bitcoins. But if not then he is welcome to let go if he wants. Good luck to him.

Dude dont worry so much about unconfirmed transactions.it sometimes happen that due to heavy traffic it does not get it done and its the main disadvantage of using bitcoins .

Temporary solution is to use enough fees on transactions and on doing micro transactions try to send all in one transaction.

Long term solution is to build support for segwit and get it activated.

Long Term Solution is to adopt Bitcoin Unlimited.

Segwit is DOA, can't you people do math, it will never reach 95%.


Only Short Term Solutions are :

 8)

That doesn't tell us anything really. The important metric is the used/required fee-rate in satoshis/byte.

The demand is just so big that the network can't handle it. This didn't affect the frequency of my transacting although you technically also help with the congestion by minimizing TXs during such times.

Actually, coins like ETH and XMR will face even bigger scalability issues. I think the case is the same for Dash, but I need to look into that first.

Stop shitposting.

That is not a solution of any kind. Neither short nor long term. Since when did you sell yourself to become a BU shill?

Proof by assertion, argument from repetition, ad hominem...

You only need to use your brain to understand why it won't work. No evidence is required whatsoever. Even if we disregard all the dangers that it provides, huge block size increases inevitably lead to centralization of nodes. Do you want Bitcoin to be primarily run by companies in data centers? Oh right, that is exactly what you want..  ::)

Apparently one of us has the the understanding and the intellectual honesty to explain the trade offs between small and large blocks, and one of us does not. 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1803307.msg18064768#msg18064768

Nonsense; you're just appealing to an authority aka 'satoshi'. Satoshi was a great person/group, but in no way was he able to predict the best way for the future of his project. The fact that you are completely closed-minded about the alternative options tells me more than enough. So far, you've proven to be wrong about your assertion.

---

The whole situation is a mess, and I'll call out anyone who is enclosed with a tight opinion. There are a lot of different "camps":
1) BU only.
2) Core only.
3) Soft-fork only.
4) Hard-fork only.
5) Only block-size increase.
6) Only block-size decrease.
7) No hard-fork at any cost.
8.) Other?

---

At this point, I'm not sure which camp is worse.

I can certainly agree its a mess.
 
Btw, BU isn't mutually exclusive with other scaling solutions.  I'm primarily a fan of it because
I think giving the power to miners to have an emergent consensus is better
than the centralized top down control of an entrenched group of core developers,
which is what I perceive the current reality to be.

(Doubly so now that many of that group are now arguably 'corporatized'.)

But I'm being repetitive myself now.

Point is, there are merits to many sides of the debate.   No need for fanaticism
from any of us, right?

So why not implement Segwit into it and signal for it? Please don't start with the pseudo knowledge that Segwit HF is much cleaner than Segwit SF.

In order for one to become a miner, all he/she has to do is purchase mining devices. This requires practically zero knowledge about Bitcoin and the underlying protocol. Why exactly would you give more power to those with arguably very limited knowledge?

Please no conspiracy theories.

Solutions to the transactions issue.

1.  Increase Blocksize  (BU does that.) (BTC Core could release a blocksize increase without segwit but they don't.)

2.  Faster Blockspeed  (Also would work, but requires modifying block rewards to keep the same halving dates.)

Personally BU offers a workable solution so I mention them.

Since you claim to know alot about shills, how much are you being paid to shill segwit?   ;)


 8)


FYI:
Soft forks are a waste of time, look at segwit , a year before some of you will admit it has failed.
If segwit was a hard fork , you would have had to admit segwit was a failure last year and then implemented another solution ,
larger blocksize or faster blockspeed already and this ongoing discussion of confused individuals would have lasted less than a month.

Which is what Segwit essentially does as a side-effect, among other things. Why are you not promoting both solutions if you genuinely *think* increasing the block size is the right one? ::)

Not this bullshit again by the Zeti shitcoin knight.

Segwit's main side effect of stealing transaction fees from the miners is why they will never activated it.

You call me a BU shrill but can't handle it when it is apparent you are a Segwit Shrill.

By the way , my cross eye feline, you misspelled ZEIT .
http://www.blogcdn.com/slideshows/images/slides/369/972/5/S3699725/original.gif?v=1

 8)

FYI:
If a Group came out supporting a faster Blockspeed, I would also support them, as that would also fix the problem.
Moving from a 10 minute blockspeed to a 2½ minute blockspeed would increase transaction capacity 4X without touching the blocksize or needing the Trojan know as segwit.

https://news.bitcoin.com/new-unlimited-bitcoin-com-mining-pool-now-open/

Looks like someone is getting ready to help BTC Unlimited kicks Segwit virtual ass
Miners can earn 110% compared to other Mining Pools.

 8)

No. You are confusing Segwit with LN. Although it is fairly ironic that you're making false claims.

No. I support a lot of things, one of which isn't "emergent consensus".

Regardless of the correct spelling, it remains a shitcoin.

Without Segwit, there is No Trustless LN, can't have one without the other, or are you still lying about it.

Regardless of your Bad spelling , you still remain a shithead.  ;)

Since you Mention ZEIT, here is how it compares with BTC

 8)

Luptin, you posted example of spam transaction. By your words this means that spam transactions are making confirmation low and that's why we see fatal unconfirmations, even with blockchain.infom's medium fee, my transaction took more than 1 day for confirmation.
Wasn't that thought that many transaction would make confirmation slow? Won't there be done any fork to fix that issue? It seems, with this way, transactions will be terrible in future.

Of course you can. LN primarily requires a malleability fix. One such fix is called FlexTrans and is provided by the same BU-shill-supporting-camp. Ironically. ::)

Nobody cares about your fake comparison. ZEIT always was and always will remain a shitcoin.

Well then shithead quit bringing it up, if you don't want to talk about it.
The Comparison was accurate.
* ZEIT also does not have a malleability problem , since we process transactions in the order they arrive and don't let others jump ahead of others like BTC. *


Yeah right , no one wants the offchain crap LN, which is why segwit & flextrans are being ignored.

 8)

Took me a while to actually find information about this shitcoin. Look at the amazing volume (https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/zeitcoin/):

https://i.imgur.com/Okq3bUO.png
https://i.makeagif.com/media/10-01-2015/_sbYKw.gif

That's why Zander and BU fanatics are promoting Flextrans. Even Roger Ver, the main BU advocate is in support of LN. Clearly these topics are way beyond your brain capabilities. ::)

ZEIT also hit $6.8 Million Dollar Market cap on Nov 17th, some people sold their coins for 30X what they purchased them at.
You will not see that type of performance with BTC anymore.
You Lauda don't ever need to buy any ZEIT, because I hate to see you profit with everyone else next year.  ;)


Segwit is not activated , Flextrans is not activated,
Clearly the people that matter don't care about LN , Segwit or You for that matter.  :D


 8)

FYI:
Your BTC hubris is funny , it is like you all forgot, that BTC 1st 2 years of Life it's Market cap was ~Zero .
And it had no competition at all.
ZEIT just turned 3 years old , with thousands of coins competing against it, and our MK is over $200,000 .
By the time we are 9 years olds, ZEIT will have a higher Market Cap than BTC.
Just a matter of Time, not an if but a When.

This is becoming more and more important, the frequency of it appearing more and more, and there is no one solution to handle it. It's boring to wait. We all need a new technology, something that does not have many bugs, and especially it does not happen. While bitcoin is increasing, many transactions need to be handled, this stuck always happens, the frequency is increasing. A new technology or a radical remedy, that is what we need, that's what the whole world needs.

Well, there are altcoins with hard limits, like bitcoin ; there are altcoins with extensible blocks too, without hard limits.  The first ones will face exactly the problem bitcoin is facing, but only when they "get filled up".  The second ones will be able to accommodate until they hit smoother, and more practical, technology-related issues.  Some alt coins have centralized decision infrastructures that can modify things in a centralized way, deciding one way or another.  

But the biggest difference between bitcoin on one side, and altcoins, on another side, is that there's (for the moment) only one bitcoin block chain, and there are MANY alt coins.  While the number of bitcoin chains is limited (to 1), the number of altcoin block chains is essentially unlimited.

So when bitcoin is "filled up" and reaches its limit of transactions (that's about right now), an altcoin can still "fill up".  When that altcoin is "full", yet another altcoin can start filling in.  And so on.

Bitcoin's legendary immutability will make it what it is today.  Exactly the same forceful immutability and consensus mechanism will make it impossible for bitcoin to do anything else but remain bitcoin.  I seriously doubt that the block size will change, that Segwit will get accepted, or that any other important change will ever happen to bitcoin, because of, exactly, bitcoin's legendary immutability.

Bitcoin has a huge first mover advantage, and a huge "moral high ground", which is why, 8 years later, bitcoin is still number 1.  But it is hitting its technical limits, as they were laid down long ago.   Alt coins have been living in bitcoin's shadow for most of this time, even though many of them are now technically superior, because they could implement solutions to bitcoin's shortcomings that bitcoin cannot implement (because of its immutability).  Bitcoin being "full", this will start eroding bitcoin's leadership ; alt coins will be able to fill in the room that bitcoin cannot take.

I'm not saying that a *single* altcoin will overtake bitcoin.  I'm saying that once bitcoin's unique position as first mover is being eroded sufficiently by practical problems (full blocks, high fees, long delays, no privacy, Chinese centralization...), *several* altcoins will fill in the gap, and bitcoin will be a crypto like any other alt coin in the long run, after its first mover edge has been eroded away.

Even though every single block chain will run into capacity problems, *a lot of independent block chains* are able to scale: just add more chains.

That's how PoW works.

If you want to go ahead and invent 'proof-of-knowledge' , I'll cheer you on.   :P

It has even passed 100k sometimes, but yeah something rather than just to keep increasing the fees has to be done or wel'll see that great downfall very soon

Is a well-established consensus protocol, working for ages. Also called "religion".

It's very terrible I currently have a pending transaction for the past 14 hours. Just crazy to say the least. What's happening to this fine payment processor?

A joke called BU

I also have some transactions that are not confirmed for several days. But I have a large commission. I even tried to speed up the confirmation of transactions through special sites, but there's no use

I did a withdrawal from an exchange for a 0.2mBTC fee. They sent a transaction with one input and two outputs from a 1 BTC UTXO with a 200sats/byte fee, or 0.45mBTC. It confirmed within 3 blocks.

ZEIT was, is, and will remain trash. No matter how much you try to sell it. :-*

Why would sane people, with any non negligible amount of capital, move towards coins with random 'developers', no peer review or research behind them? Anyhow, whilst what you preach may not be a bad thing, you are looking at it the wrong way. Not altcoins, but sidechains is what we require.

Not having any protocol upgrades on that level is not exactly a 'pro'. Immutability does not get harmed with consensus based upgrades of the protocol.

Again, sidechains.

I don't have any plans on giving mindless zombies more power over the Bitcoin network. The main people who would advocate against 'proof-of-knowledge' are exactly those who lack it. ;)

Bitcoin is not a payment processor. I had to facepalm when I read this. ::)

Keep in mind that a high fee doesn't technically guarantee anything. A miner may not even have received your TX in time to include it into his/her next block, they may mine an empty block or just not include it for whatever reason.

There are delays in bitcoin network, but its still valuable as gold currently.
I mean, we could rush changes but thats dangerous to value of bitcoin.

This is one reason why dev are very careful and cautious on its approach, They validate any updates or upgrade to avoid unnecessary fork, one of the reason why the core are having a second thought on the blocksize increase proposed by BU.

This is the very real problem.

You need to pay NameCheap to renew your domain name or TLS certificate.

You pay bitcoin to BitPay. And wait. And wait. And wait. And wait.

Do you think you will use bitcoin for that again?

Bigger blocks is a KISS solution to the problem. SegWit is not and never was KISS and I don't care if someone wants to implement it, but we need bigger blocks and we need them now.

That's why I just removed bitcoin-core and installed BU.

This is bad and I am literally angry at the core developers for allowing the issue to get to this point.

No - this isn't spammers unless the spammers are paying huge amounts for their spam. If it was spammers, people like me paying reasonable fees wouldn't have to wait hours and hours and days and hours for TXs with fees that were generous a year ago to confirm.

Seriously stop creating useless posts.

BU is not a simple block size increase. BU is 'emergent consensus', which is light years away from a KISS type solution. Ironically you advocate against Segwit because it is not 'KISS', yet you chose another implementation which is also far beyond the 'KISS' concept. ::)

It is KISS. I read it and was able to understand it very easily.

I use to be a core fanboy, but they have shown me their interests are clearly not in the best interest of users like me.

Bitcoin unlimited allows Group consensus to determine the block size,

Segwit allows LN to work where LN can steal transaction fees from the Miners.

BTC Core Devs could have released a simple 2 MB block size increase without segwit, and the miners would have updated, and the transaction issue would be resolved for ~ year , until everyone could agree on a new direction, but Core does nothing except have segwit shrills like Lauda  & CB try and convince everyone else to join segwit.
Funny thing is you segwit shrills are losing the argument, because facts matter more than your lies.  :D
Maybe we should just start calling the segwit shrills, Seg-NIT-WITS (a silly or foolish person).

 8)

FYI:

at the Blockstream company meeting behind closed doors...sometime in 2015-2016:

Adam:  What should we do about the blocksize?  We definitely should stall the community as long as possible
           so can force everyone off the main chain and peddle our technology.

Greg:   Screw them...i'm really good at creating cognitive dissonance by using lots of big words.  We don't have to do anything.

Pieter:  guys, I've been working on a few ideas, ok check this out -- i'll propose a 17.7% growth per year.  If they do accept it,
           it wont hurt us too bad.  But probably the miners will reject, but we'll look like we're trying.

Greg:   I can also talk about how we need to create a fee market.  It wont really be an issue for decades but we'll ignore that.
          We'll make it seem like the network congestion is a good thing.

Adam:  I don't know.... might not be enough

Pieter:  Well i've also been working on something called Segregated Witness.  it's really complicated and it will take forever to
           actually test and implement but that's what we want right?

Adam:  Sounds good but we might have an issue.  There's been a few proposals for 2MB blocks.  How can we stop that?

Greg:   Lets take a hard stance against any hard forks.  Can we release your "Segwit" with a soft fork to support our rhetoric?

Pieter: I think so.

Adam:  Excellent.  I also have a plan to announce some "scalability workshops" that will really stall things and buy us even more time.
           We're on track here. great meeting guys.

Indeed, I am definitely agreed with you.. altcoin can't help with this problem at all, though in some other ways yes. But not on this situation either. Even there is a thousand unconfirmed  transaction in the blockchain, still the end the bitcoin users received it isn't?

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5eqm2b/can_ln_work_without_segwit/

Without SegWit and LN will less on his advantages and efficiency. It seems like the rule of SegWit is a must to establish the LN.

Will not that be open to abuse? We now have seen the Chinese industrial miners have one interest in mind, their greed. Giving them more power could make them collude and become the Bitcoin Mafia.

Hmm,
Chinese Mining Pools have ~67% of the mining,
activating Bitcoin Unlimited will have ZERO EFFECT on that Status one way or the other.

Activating Segwit , however will give complete Dominance to BlockStream's Minions and allow BTC Counterfeiting on the LN network.
Seems like to any sane person , the 100% dominance of BTC along with allowing Counterfeiting in LN, is incredibly more dangerous than anything the Chinese Miners could pull off.

Plus if someone wanted to Limit Chinese Mining Power over BTC, all that has to be done, is to add a Rolling Checkpoint to BTC.
A Rolling Checkpoint of say 12 blocks would guarantee, No Miners could ever do a history rewrite of more than 2 hours.
Problem Solved.  ;)

There are no options to Limit Segwit & LN Control, except Never letting it be activated.  :P

 8)

Also known as:complete bullshit. Emergent consensus is closer to being a flying unicorn than it is to being KISS (in reality):

Did they hurt your feelings? :'(

Any malleability solution will suffice.

Its nothing new in the bitcoin network now a day to have 50k+ unconfirmed transaction pending. Among all my friends in bitcoin world they had send money but its been almost 2 days and yet those transactions are pending. so we need a solution to overcome this. small small transaction should have small fees and not the smae as bigger transactions.
Here I don't mean to the amount of the Bitcoin in small . Usually in the current time we need to face many number of small amount transaction that have the equal fee charge which is equal to any big amount of Bitcoin transaction .
So here I think the network of the Bitcoin needed to some improvement for the fee system because unconfirmation problem is results into earning problem in daily buy/sell Bitcoin .

@Lauda - No, no one hurt my feelings.

My position is not based on emotions, though I have a feeling many (on both sides) positions on this topic are.

BU is a logical mechanism by which we can allow the blocks to expand as needed.

There may be some merit to SegWit, but I don't believe the current implementation of the idea is a very good one. Specifically there is no way to undo it in the future once it is done.

Clearly there is a need to do something now. We don't have time for a better SegWit-like implementation to be developed, but going with what has been developed is dangerous.

The logical solution to the very real present issue thus is to allow for the expansion of the size of the blocks.

Disagreed. If you've actually studied logic, which I highly doubt, you'd never state something like this.

There is a lot to SegWit and that's why so many users and companies are already supporting it.

So you're 'afraid' because it is hard to undo? Undoing it would require a HF that is non trivial. Remind me how many soft forks we undid so far?

No.

Like I said - it's not KISS.

A "lot" of companies "supporting" it doesn't mean the code in core right now is the best way to implement the idea.


How many we have undone are not the issue. The issue is that soft forks are not democratic - hard forks are. SegWit is a soft fork that can not be undone once it goes in to play. If it ends up being bad code no one wants to use, it stays.

Soft forks ARE democratic.  They are not consensus.  51% agreeing imposes a soft fork on everyone, with no escape.   A hard fork will keep consensus on both forks, a soft fork makes the minority shut up and obey, which is the definition of "democratic".

Hard fork the longer chain wins but the older clients could choose to keep their chain if they want to. The fork with the most users is the fork that has value, that's democracy.

Soft fork, blocks are created that are not rejected by older clients but are meaningless to them, forcing them to upgrade. That's not democratic. There is no option to keep their own chain, there is no choice. That's not democracy.

Not at all.  Hard fork means that the chain is now two independent chains.  On each of these two independent chains, there is consensus.  There's no interaction any more between the two chains, they are now two different crypto currencies.  The market cap of the original chain will now be split over both prongs.  Of course, users and miners might all flock to one of the chains, and abandon the other one.  Or not.  In the end, the users will decide upon the market cap split, and the miners will follow.


That is exactly democracy: the majority imposes its will on the minority.  What you call "democracy" is what is called "consensus".
As long as the soft fork doesn't have a majority OF MINERS behind it, it doesn't impose its will on the others.  Once it does, there's NO FURTHER OPTION.  

What is important to realize, with a soft fork, that is are not the *users* but the *miners* who impose their majority on everyone.  With a hard fork, even if only 10% of the miners continues on the old chain, maybe 90% of the users prefer the old chain, and the old chain coin will get 90% of the market cap.  This is extremely lucrative for the 10% of miners, and the miners that chose the new pron (90% of them initially) will revert to the old chain because it is more lucrative.  In the end, the mining distribution will follow the market cap, determined by the users (they determine, on exchanges, how they value the new coin versus the old coin, of which they hold, initially, equal amounts after the hard fork).

This is not the case of a soft fork.  When a majority (51%) of miners, and miners only, whatever users think, applies the soft fork, it is imposed on everyone: the minority of miners have to follow, there is only one chain, and the users have only one token and cannot "vote with their money" as there is no other token to buy.

My two transactions from yesterday still not confirmed. Because I didn't feed miners.  :D Well done bitcoin.

If one of the Forks is very weak compared to the other, a small group that could 51% dominate the weaker fork , might rewrite a little of the enemy fork's history to completely destroy it in the eyes of investors. A rewrite of say 3 or 4 hours would be more than enough Bad PR to crush its price permanently.  


 8)

Yes.  However, what does this mean ?  There are two possibilities:

Initially, there was a HUGE consensus amongst miners to apply the HF.  This is why only a small flock of miners continued on the old chain.  Otherwise, there is no "weak chain".  This can, or cannot, agree with the user preferences.

1) If ALSO the users have HUGE consensus for the HF, then there's only a very small minority of the users not in agreement with the HF, and the non-forked chain being attacked, dying and so on is not harming most of the consensus.

2) If the users are much more divided, say 40%-60%, then, as a miner, you would be an idiot to WASTE your mining hash rate on attacking the chain *where a lot of money is to be made*.  Indeed, if a small minority of miners went to the old chain, and you are a miner, instead of WASTING your hash rate on attacking it, you better JOIN THEM and get a lot of rewards.  If the users decide to allocate 40% of the market cap to the coins you're reaping in right now with the small minority of miners, that's much more profitable than wasting your hash rate to kill it.
Note, that's EXACTLY what happened to ETC, and that chinese guy, what's his name, claiming he would destroy ETC with his hash power... only to join ETC mining soon.


Because mining a chain with a smaller amount of miners than its market cap is very profitable.

Valid Points in a normal split,

However a working Segwit/LN fork is a direct threat to the Miners receiving Transaction fees.
Taking 3 or 4 hours to kill a segwit/LN chain , is directly stopping your competitor that will have an unfair advantage as time goes on.

Either kill it now or segwit & LN kills you later, that is the choice the miners face, which will lead them to take a more aggressive stance than in the ETH/ETC debacle.  ;)


 8)

FYI:  It is a kill or be killed scenario and Both sides know it.
Two Chains Enter only One Chain will Leave.
https://assets.answersingenesis.org/img/cms/content/contentnode/header_image/survival-of-the-fittest.jpg

The wise words of Satoshi came back from the grave to remind me
Miners just need to remember that increased trade volume wins over decreased volume in generating fees over time and that they are destroying their own growth with this near-sighted block-size return.

As this is a SOFT fork, the argument doesn't work.  There is no "second chain".  If a majority of miners adopts it, the minority is forced to accept.  Because there's no "other prong" to flee to.

But don't worry.  Normally, NOTHING will change to bitcoin.  The block size issue will never be resolved, and things will stay the way they are.  Because of immutability dynamics.  Unless bitcoin becomes centralized (for instance, the Chinese government might impose Segwit or something).

I don't think there's more chance for the block size to change or Segwit to get adopted, no more than that the final number of bitcoin, 21 million, will be increased.  Because the block chain size is now an economic parameter of scarcity which implies a market.

Actually if BTC Unlimited gains ~25% more of the mining, they could force a Fork , by Merely putting out a 2 MB Block.  ;)
BTC Unlimited would have over 51%.

 8)

FYI:
Funny Segwit needs 95% to activate, but BTC Unlimited Could Force a Fork with 51% or higher and the rest of the chain would have to follow or be left behind.

You do realize the Goal of Segwit & LN, is that in the Future ALL Transactions take place OFFCHAIN.
Miners will have No Volume, if LN with Segwit is activated.

Miners are not activating Segwit, to protect their future Transaction fee Volume.
However BTC Core is not offering any solutions to the unconfirmed transaction problems they can implement ,
so BTC Unlimited is the only real choice they have.


 8)

In the long run, in any case, scaling is impossible if all transactions have to be on one big single chain.  Miners will adapt difficulty to what they will earn.  Maybe difficulty will go down to PC level activity again, in that case, everybody can mine again with his PC.  No serious problem.  Mining-as-a-business is in any case not something that is sustainable.

But don't worry, it won't happen.  Bitcoin will remain what it is, with 2.5 transactions per second.  Bitcoin has reached its full potential (not as price, but as transaction medium on chain), and is locked in to what it is today.

This is not true.  BU can even fork right away.  It doesn't need any kind of majority.  We would simply have two coins, like ETH and ETC.

I think you have no clear view about the distinction between a hard fork, and a soft fork.

A hard fork: the result is two currencies, and each currency has "full consensus".  The split can happen with just any percentage of adoption, even though less than 10% is most probably not viable (the chain would simply die).

A soft fork: a majority of miners imposes its will on the rest, and there remains only one single currency.  They have put the condition of 95% in the current version of Segwit to avoid this "majority over minority" thing, but they could just as well not.

It always happen when BTC price dips about -3%. I think its getting difficult for miners to cope up when thousands of us are also moving BTCs to altcoins or to cash. I have also try to send my btc 4 hours ago and still not confirmed up to now. A trader could lose more money because of the slow confirmation, the speed is crucial to profits we could get from moving from currency to currency. Are this going to depend to the exchange or would it help if some exchange wallets has to option to set a larger fee?

I think you are missing the point , if BTU gains 51% and holds it, they can release a 2MB block ,
that will Fork their network away from the Segwit voters/miners,  Call it Hard, Call it soft, call it medium
whatever it will be a Fork , the other side will have to update to BTU , so they can add any new blocks in the blockchain.

 8)

But they can do this right away, and create bitcoinBU as an altcoin.  What is so special about 51% ?  They can make an altcoin with 25% of the mining, with 50% of the mining, with 75% of the mining.

They don't want to make an altcoin. They want to fix bitcoin.

Yes they could , but they have less than 51% at the moment, meaning doing it now would leave them with the weaker chain,
If they wait til they achieve 51% or higher, they can fork with the Stronger Chain!
Which is what they should do.


 8)

FYI:
@Dinofelis,
I recommend you study a 51% attack, so you can grasp the power having 51% or more in a PoW coin gives you.

Forking with 51% -> malicious attack -> altcoin creation. Only a consensus based hard fork can be considered a network 'upgrade'.

If you hardfork, you ALWAYS make an altcoin.  But if you have full consensus, that altcoin takes over the entire market cap of the old coin, and the old coin dies (its chain is not propagated any more).
If you don't have full consensus, you end up with two coins.  Probably a prong with much less than 10% mining power is not viable.  This is why 95% consensus is a good thing if you want to ONLY keep the altcoin and have the original die (as it has less than 5% of mining power in that case).  After which you rename the alt coin with the original name.

But if you are at 25%, 50% or 75% doesn't make much of a difference: you will have two coins.  The market will decide about the final split in market caps, and following that, about the re-adjusted mining power that goes to each.

Look at the ethereum -> eth/etc split.

@Kiklo

There is no "stronger chain" after a hard fork, as they are not technically in competition.  Their competition is in the market, not on the chains.

"forking with 51%" is not the same as a 51% attack.  In a 51% attack, both prongs follow the same protocol, and are in competition, but there's more hash power in one prong that has been *rewriting* the past few blocks.  In how much this is an "attack" and in how much this is a "consensus decision" is left in the middle, but this is NOT what a hard fork is about.  Both prongs are "valid prongs" according to the unique protocol.  It is only an "attack" because it has orphaned the "good" last blocks.

In a hard fork, both prongs are incompatible. As such, the two prongs are not in "mining competition".  One prong is considered invalid according to the other prong's protocol.  There is no "longest chain".  There is no "chain with highest PoW".  One chain is simply INVALID according to the protocol you adhere to.

The Market will Choose the Stronger Chain, which is why you want 51% or more.
If the Market was dumb enough to choose the weaker chain , it is easy to crash and then the stronger chain wins.

Compare ETH & ETC

ETH =>$18.53
ETC =>  $1.34

The Market is choosing and ETC is dying, it is only a matter of time.
BTC Markets will Choose at a faster rate , because their is a lot more money involved.
Strongest BTC Chain will Destroy the other.

 8)

Stronger Chain is the one that is Longest with the Highest Difficulty, therefore it is the most Protected from an outside attack.
The Market will Choose the Stronger Chain upon comparison.
The Price of the Stronger Chain will increase and those other miners will flock to it.

 8)

I.E.
Compare ETH & ETC
ETH =>$18.53
ETC =>  $1.34

Segwit Shrills, they are like a cancer, takes surgery and radiation to get rid of them.  :P


 8)

See my previous post.  You confuse a 51% attack within the same protocol, where both prongs are valid according to the (unique) consensus rules, with a hard fork where the other prong is simply invalid.

There won't be an attack if you are, say, over 25% of mining power.  And there's no competition.  A chain with "more hash power" but invalid blocks according to the protocol at hand doesn't matter.


This is a market choice.  ETC wasn't obliterated by the miners of ETH.  They put up a big mouth, and in the end, joined.

You see BTW that the market shares correspond more or less to the initial voter casts.  Grossly some 10% vs 90%.  So a 10% HF is viable.

At certain points, the ratio was closer to 1:4.  Recently, ETH has been pumped like DASH.  But that's the market.

But essentially, this means that you can pull a HF from the moment you're over 10% of miners with you.  And you will probably leave the old chain alive if you have less than 90% of miners AND USERS with you.  So I don't see what is so special about 51%.

Ok Dino,

The higher the % of Miners, means the greater Hash Rate,
Meaning the Greater Hash Rate will find more blocks at faster intervals,
BTC Split into 2 chains

BTC Unlimited with 55% of the previous total

SegCrap with 45% of the Previous Total,

Both are now mining , Due to Greater Hash Rate
BTC Unlimited Pulls ahead by 20 blocks higher block height with higher Difficulty

Segcrap is 20 Blocks lower and has a lower Difficulty.

BTC Unlimited Miners stop mining their chain and start mining Segcrap's Chain,
Not to earn segcrap coins , but using the power of a 51% attack rewrite a few blocks of their transactions and destroy any image of security they had.

After rewriting the segcrap chain history, they immediately switch back to their chain and mine normally.

Since BTC Unlimited has a larger over 51% of the Miners , the segcrap miners can not do the same damage to the BTC unlimited chain.

Do you get it now?

 8)

They said exactly that of the ETC/ETH case.  No miner did so.  Because he's not crazy.  He wants to maximize his profits, and not waste his hash rate on an attack while his buddies take profit.   If he uses his hash rate, he wants profit from it.  If he uses his hash rate on the minority chain, that is to earn minority chain coins that are worth more on the market per "unit of hash rate" than in the majority chain where the difficulty is higher, and hence the reward for hash rate is lower.
As he doesn't know what way the MARKET will go, there's no reason to destroy minority coins that may be easily mined, and maybe worth a lot on the market.  

Attacks suffer from the "tragedy of the commons".  You waste YOUR hash rate on a chain you want to kill, while your BUDDIES make money on the chain you want to protect, while you are NOT mining it.  By the time you won, and wasted all your hash rate on "acts of war", the winning chain is now full of miners, and you've ruined your chances to make a quick buck, while your buddies did.

ETH & ETC did not have segwit & LN to content with.
Whether the BTC Unlimited Guys would actually do it , who knows.
But the Fact of the matter is they could do it , and even through you are implying they will choose the greater profit margin.
To me the greatest profit margin would be not having the competing chain siphoning off buyers that would be buying my coins.

Time will tell and we will see what happens after BTC Unlimited reaches 51% or higher.  :)

 8)

The off-chain mechanism is in there so they can build on off-chain in the future, while in the intermin this kicks the can down the road again. However if I recall correctly miners should be able to mine sidechains, unless its a chain that doesn't involve significant Txt fees like LN where the revenue earned for that is small.

Assuming there is more than one sidechain peg it's possible that miners can get demurrage (percentage of held coins are redistributed automatically to miners) or be rewarded by a separate unpegged asset on the side chain. Although it would be an alt-coin  ;D

Either way I think I'm starting to confound blockstream and segwit. Just want to see something execute or hard-fork.

https://i.redditmedia.com/zTKPV-Nqw5gLjRNUOgE_9-M5aPVcTPXqgjTCHwkq9Rs.png?w=1024&s=94fc6626337b6c9709043ebf7dc4b2ba

I did not say that it is equal to a 51% attack in all ways. Whilst what you say is true, a 51% fork is also an attack. Anything which causes a blockchain split, especially one that is this severe, should be seen and treated as an attack.

You're wasting your time responding to a troll and a ZEIT bagholder IMO.

That has nothing to do with it.  Segwit is a SOFT fork.  So this doesn't apply.  We're talking about a hard fork (BU).  A hard fork can be pulled off from the moment you have 5-10% or more miner support, and will give rise to two coins if you have less than 90%-95% of miner support.  If you are lower than 5-10%, your chain will not live ; if you are higher than 90-95% your new altcoin will replace the previous coin.

With a soft fork, there are no two coins.  So the ETC/ETH situation doesn't apply to the Segwit situation.  We are only talking about the BU situation.

The reason is that you mentioned that BU is waiting to have "51% of miner support".  But for a hard fork, "51% of miner support" has no meaning.  It is "more than 10% of miner support" and "more than 90% of miner support" that are the meaningful numbers for a hard fork.  51% has no specific meaning.  Less than 10%, you can't pull it off.  More than 90%, you will keep one coin (the altcoin).  In between, you will create 2 coins, the old one, and the new altcoin, and both will live.  During their life, market forces will determine the respective market caps, and HENCE the miner ratio.  Like ETC/ETH.  


Again, BU will NOT HAPPEN, simply because if it were, it would have happened already.  With 25% of miner support, the hard fork is viable.  

And segwit will not happen either.

Nothing will happen.  Bitcoin will remain stuck where it is.  

I really don't see why a hard fork is an attack.  It is a divergence in the protocols.  With a hard fork, untenable tensions of disagreement, which don't allow a consensus of second order (that is, a *protocol consensus*, not a block chain consensus within a given protocol), are relieved.  The market cap splits according to how "people vote with their money".  No-one actually loses money, because you are double coin holder at the fork.   And now, two coins exist, with different protocols, each according to their communities.  

There's nothing wrong with hard forking, and the "drama" of ethereum has shown us how well this turned out to be.  There was an unreconcilable tension in ethereum: should one stay with the original axioms of "code is law" and "unstoppable contract" which were the value proposition of ethereum, or should one, in "unforseen circumstances, when many rich people were going to lose money, accommodate the rules" ?  The split was very healthy.  We have the original, unstoppable, code-is-law ethereum (ETC), and we have the "we accommodate the big investors if something totally unexpected happens because this was just a beta-test" ethereum ETH.  Visibly, the market (made by the same rich people) voted for being flexible enough to get one's DAO funds back, and a small minority stuck with unstoppable contracts where code is law.

I think the bitcoin tension is sufficiently high to have a hard fork too, and have an original bitcoin with 1 MB blocks, and another altcoin-bitcoin that accommodates more transactions.  But bitcoin deriving most of its value from "being the first" and no other value proposition that is not filled in by an altcoin, this will probably not happen, because the "forkers" would totally lose their "first mover" value proposition, which is the sole thing bitcoin has going for it (but is important), and just be holders of just another crypto alt coin.

So, until bitcoin has lost its first mover value, this will not happen.  

yes why there's many pending transaction like my withdraw in free faucet its almost five days until now its unconfirmed i also email local wallet asking why still receiving my withdraw and not added to my balance. But sad to say local wallet reply to me that in their site have no problem its the blockchain. Hope they have solution on it.

So many arguments and talk but no action from the people that matter. Why? Because the price is still high. If the price was dumped back to $100, we will see the mining pools scramble to the best scaling solution. What they think it will be we do not know.

On another topic of the miners deciding to activate Segwit or not, is it not the mining pools have control for this and not the miners? The miners only buy their equipment and point their hashing power to a mining pool. 

if the price were to drop that low, miners would stop mining and switched to mining something else that is profitable, because they only care about making profit.

and anyone who doesn't like what their pool are doing can simply switch to another pool. there are multiple pools out there and i don't know any of them that are enforcing anything. not yet anyways.

If by "people who matter" you are referring to bitcoin Core Developers then know that they can't do shit to force any changes on bitcoin protocol.
If the price crashed to sub $100 level I think it would be too late to help bitcoin as many holders and investors would leave.
Miners can join any mining pool they want to, some mining pool are supporting SegWit some prefer Bitcoin Unlimited.

95% of the community must agree about something to implement, looks this is impossible. There is a risk to have ''two Bitcoins'' as there isn't consensus. The only thing I know is that this situation is very bad. I have one transaction pending since last week and it doesn't end...

I think it depends on whether ordinary users (non mining nodes), investors, merchants, etc... accept the forked coin.  
Miners do not have ALL the power.  If the other market participants reject the coin on the longest chain, it will have no value.

So lets say BU creates a hard fork with 51% of the mining power and starts mining a coin with 2mb blocks, there's now 2 coins.  
But if merchants and investors reject the 2mb coins, its a useless alt coin.  

On the other hand, merchants could choose to accept the longest chain and 'bitcoin 1mb' becomes a worthless alt coin...

...or they could choose to accept both.

The first mover advantage (status quo) is still real because its easier for non mining nodes to 'do nothing'
and keep using what they've been using (core)...but it is not everything.  

This.


That is why the only possible consensus is status quo.  And this is exactly the "immutability dynamics" that bitcoin invented.  Once the rules are laid down, it is essentially impossible to change them.  They can only be changed if they are an insignificant technical detail that the "lead devs" sneak in without a big fuzz.  But that window of opportunity is closed now for higher transaction rates, like bigger blocks.  As there are *different alternatives* out there with incompatible solutions kicking the can forward, none of them can reach consensus.   If the tension becomes too high, there should come a hard fork, but the fear of losing the "first mover" status is so big, that nobody will dare doing this.  My opinion.  So this is why bitcoin will remain what it is, until it becomes sufficiently centralized that a small cartel has all deciding power (usually with a soft fork, not to give options to the users) ; or until its first mover status is sufficiently eroded that it is just a coin amongst others, at which point a hard fork is not  a problem any more.

This is exactly why I think the blocksize should not be part of the consensus rules (and why BU's emergent consensus is far better than central planning and the problems that come with that)

The point is that "immutability dynamics" is such that *everything* is part of the consensus rules. Especially now, that the block size became a scarcity parameter, and hence that "room on the blocks" is now a commodity that is sold against money (fees, and probably later, contractually provided room between institutional players and miners).  In other words, the block size is now a parameter determining scarcity *on the same level* as the 21 million coins are.  It is NOT a technical parameter any more.

What is still a technical parameter, is the silly little-endian convention in bitcoin, and even that has never been "fixed".

But block chain room is now a commodity of which the "production rate" is determined by the block size, in the same way as bitcoins are an assset of which the "production rate" is also determined by the economic consensus rules.  A new commodity emerged: scarce block chain room.  It is something that is commercialized now.    It is not unthinkable that this commodity, "block chain room" becomes much more valuable than the coins themselves.  Actually, it is one of the things that bitcoin has been "proud of": its strongly protected chain.  Maybe in the future, transactions will be worth much, much more than bitcoins, of which most of them cannot move.  At that point, the 21 million coins will become a technical parameter nobody cares about, and what really matters is "block chain room".  We will maybe discover that what is really the value of bitcoin, is its chain, and not its coins.  Maybe you pay miners in fiat just to buy some room on a block.  And the coins don't matter.  Who knows.

After all, the electricity that is spend on bitcoin is essentially producing "block chain safety".  And not so much "tokens".  If this is the most valuable aspect of bitcoin, namely the "safe chain", then this is what will be sold most expensively: room on that safe chain.  And one will forget about the "application tokens, the gas" of it, namely the coins, of which there are plenty, but cannot move without spending a lot of value to get room on the chain.

It makes me wondering how it will be solved if there's no any solution accepted by majority.
Not only 69K, but it ever reach 80K, 90K, or even 100k when bitcoin price reach ATH.
Bitcoin will stuck on this level until the problems could solved.

No. If some miners would stop mining because there is no profit, a more efficient miner who is willing to take the losses will be happy to take its place.


Where have you been the past year. There are mining pools for Segwit and there are others for Bitcoin Unlimited. A small small portion is calling for Bitcoin Classic. :D

I think you should reconsider your stance on this. This is a really vague definition of consensus. On the other side, I've seen people who claim that even if 99% of the network agrees on new rules in a hard fork, that it would still be an altcoin (which is an extremist and absurd stance).

Depends on how you view the importance of the economy. Do you prioritize, i.e. value more a large capitalist or do you value a higher quantity of economically involved people? For example, Roger Ver probably has as much Bitcoin as several thousands other users.

I disagree as using ETH/ETC as comparison that "things are fine" afterwards. The current ETH (altcoin with original name) is a "centralized Fed 2.0 coin." A HF like that in Bitcoin would definitely set us back for quite a while IMO. As you've mentioned yourself, what makes Bitcoin so strong is its decentralization and immutability.

This is how these trolls operate: heavily heavily repeating their re-definition of words like consensus


LEARN CONSENSUS, Lauda (i.e. the troll wants you to learn what consensus does not mean: their preferred definition of the word) ;)


What's the source of that information? Roger talking, and I think we all know now the dubious nature of Roger talking ::)

Consensus is not a pre-defined term, it is a dynamically emerging phenomenon.   Like the term "melting".  Melting happens, when a physical solid, which gets its solidity from the molecular interactions that "keep molecules on average in place", transitions to a liquid, where the same forces are not able any more to keep them in place, but can still keep them "at short range".  Evaporation occurs when these forces are even not able any more to keep them in place.

As such, "melting" and "evaporating" are emergent properties of the fact that there are inter-molecular forces, and that there are thermal movements.  There's no point in defining abstractly what you would consider "melting".  It is a phenomenon that occurs, and you give it a name.  The dynamical model of the physics behind it EXPLAINS the phenomenon.  But inventing a name for another phenomenon that doesn't happen, is meaningless.

As such, "consensus" is the name one gives to the fact that in a trustless, distributed system, the initially set out rules remain valid, and the recorded history is not modified.  But up to what point ?   What is the *dynamical model* that is supposed to EXPLAIN this consensus phenomenon ?

The dynamical model is that there are sufficiently diverse and numerous actors in the system, each of which *would like to modify the rules to suit his wishes and advantages* that they cannot come to an agreement over WHAT changes should apply.  As such, the ONLY thing they can agree on, is to keep the rules as they are, to keep the history as it is.  This was the original motivation to even launch a trustless, distributed system that would nevertheless impose the respect of its rules (which is necessary to induce a monetary belief system in the first place: if the rules can change every day, nobody is going to believe in the monetary value).  So "consensus" is the name of this phenomenon.  It cannot be defined more accurately than the knowledge we have of the phenomenon, and there's no use in defining it otherwise, because any *other* definition is naming a non-existent phenomenon.  Like you better define "melting" as what really happens when a solid melts.

Given the initial model of consensus, which seems to describe quite accurately what it has done until now, I *presume* that it will act similarly on the block size.  When I look at what the dynamical model we have of the consensus phenomenon TELLS US, and what we *observe*, then both are marvellously in agreement up to now: several different actors who want to modify the rules, cannot find agreement, because it goes against their own advantages, and so the old rules remain in place.   This is an almost perfect illustration of the expected dynamics of the consensus phenomenon that keeps old rules in place.


There is no "preference" to have.  The dynamics is what it will be.  Your question is like "do you prefer a high or a low oil market price ?".  There will be an oil market price, emerging from offer and demand.  There's not to be decided "what it should be".

See what I mean?

If you can't win the argument, just start playing with the definitions of words that are important to your opponent's argument, lol



Consensus = everyone disagreeing, lol

Now calm down, and read what I wrote.  If you understand bitcoin, you will agree.  
Yes, consensus is everyone disagreeing on changing the rules in a given direction.  That's what maintains the rule set in a trustless environment.  If you didn't understand that essential given, you do not understand distributed trustless environments and hence, you do not understand bitcoin.

It is an emerging phenomenon in these systems. 

Consensual agreement for change = consensus for change to be implemented.
No consensual agreement for change = consensus for current protocol to remain as is.

So, change = stasis, and stasis = change

Riiiiiiiiiiiiight

I don't think why some people still hold the opinion of Roger Ver, I know he has done alot for Bitcoin but the issue of scaling Bitcoin he has got it all wrong. For me when it come s to technical issue I will go with Core, a know devil is better than unknow angel

I think you misunderstand my equations, maybe to rewrite using some of your own definitions

change agreement = change
no change agreement = stasis

Whilst I do agree that consensus is not explicitly defined, as Bitcoin works better in practice than it does in theory [1], I disagree with the remainder of your statements. Redefining consensus on the go is exactly what the BU folk are doing, just in a slightly different fashion. Who are you to re-define consensus? Nobody.

Your analogy is completely flawed. You talk about the market, you talk about the economy, you talk about consensus, therefore my question is valid. If you can't answer it, then you need to start asking yourself some questions.

Weird, ain't it? Nobody, especially not them, can redefine consensus.

When Franky tells me "please learn consensus", whilst he has a very flawed understanding of Bitcoin.. :D

How much Bitcoin exactly he has is always a matter of speculation. Being one of the early Bitcoin investors, having a lot of people working for him and flying around the world spreading the 'word of BTU', pretty much confirms my statement.

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[1] - https://www.coursera.org/learn/cryptocurrency/lecture/At1IC/distributed-consensus

As I said, defining a non-existent phenomenon has no meaning.  I'm just using a word to designate a phenomenon.  Like melting.  Melting is an observable phenomenon ; if you use the word "melting" for some theoretical construct that doesn't happen, that's meaningless, and even if I'm the only guy using the word to indicate the actually happening phenomenon, I'm the only one using it correctly. 

But I'm not even disagreeing with what others say.  Of course, consensus is "that what most of the participants agree upon".  Sure.  But that is not what is interesting about distributed trustless consensus.  What is interesting about it, is that there is a dynamical description that explains the immutability aspect of this "agreement", namely the fact that many diverse agents want to impose changes that suit them, and are unable to come to an agreement over that, so the old rules prevail.

It is amazing that people are so stubborn that they are discussing over how this is wrong, while they have exactly the example under their noses.  This is like Galilei showing the 4 moons of Jupiter with his telescope to the representatives of the church, who refused to see them.

Where does immutability come from in distributed trustless environments, and how is this kind of consensus different from the "computer science consensus" ?  Contrary to "computer science consensus", there is no "neutrality" in the nodes.  In the computer science consensus, there are "honest nodes" trying to establish a pre-defined protocol, and there may be some faulty or malicious.  But most are presumed to "try to be honest".  This is different in a trustless environment of course.  All nodes try to scam all others.  If I use bitcoin, and I pay someone, of course, I would like to reverse my transaction after a while.  Once I get the goods or services I paid for, of course I would like to "erase" my transaction from the block chain, to be able to double spend.  All bitcoin participants are supposed to want to double spend, to modify transaction history, to make fake transactions in their name, and to get fake mined bitcoins.   Nobody is to be trusted, and nobody is "trying to be honest".  Everyone tries to scam everyone.  That's the basic idea of a trustless environment.

However, in as much as I try to erase my transaction to you from the block chain, you want to keep it of course.   I could collude with some others to redo the block containing my transactions, but I won't find enough people agreeing on that.  I would like to make a false block giving me the coinbase reward, but others will not agree.  So, no matter how much I would like to scam others, I won't be able to, because what I want to do in my advantage, is not in the advantage of others, and we can't agree over that.  So we end up agreeing over the "honest" rules.  Not because I'm an honest node (I'm not), not because you are a honest node (you're not), but because there's nothing else we can agree upon.  You do not agree upon my scam, I do not agree upon your scam, and so we have no choice but to agree upon the honest blocks.  That's why there is never agreement on redoing the block chain, and why it becomes immutable.  I cannot make miners agree upon my scam.  You cannot make miners agree upon your scam.  So we end up, even if we both want to, not to scam one another.  But nobody is trying to be honest.  We are CONSTRAINED to be "honest" (that is, follow the original rules).   We are FORCED to agree upon the honest history.  That forced agreement is the emerging consensus, and is immutability.
This differs from the "computer science" consensus where honest nodes have no "gains" and do not try to scam other nodes, but just try to find the "right" data.  In computer science, one has "distributed consensus".  But not trustless (that is, everyone has an advantage in trying to be dishonest, but there is no collusion possible over this).


My analogy is not so bad.  In a market too, everyone tries to get his advantage.  If you sell apples, I would like to buy them for an extremely low price.  You would like to sell them for an extremely high price.  None of us can obtain what one wants (and scam the other one).  So we agree upon a price none of us actually wanted, but is the "honest" one.

We see that the immutability doesn't work, when the parameter is entirely neutral, and nobody can use that parameter to obtain an advantage over someone else.   This is why the normal word "consensus" (common agreement) is applicable for all those changes that do not imply any advantage of one node over another one.  And this is why early modifications to the protocol were possible, as they were not subject to the "I try to scam you, you try to scam me, but the only thing we can agree upon, is to remain, against our wishes, honest, that is, follow the established rules".

This is why immutability didn't stop people change the block size when this didn't affect anyone.  And why NOW, as it is affecting people and giving them advantage or disadvantage (when it becomes an economic parameter) it becomes immutable.

I'm writing this as someone who studies the dynamical phenomena of this kind of system.  Not as someone who has any interest in it.  I find the phenomena happening in bitcoin, as dynamical phenomena of systems, pretty fascinating, and I'm just sharing my observations with you, especially in these times when those dynamical phenomena have "unexpected" (to those who don't understand them) effects.

I'm telling you, the block size will not change, and segwit will not happen if my understanding of the immutability dynamics is correct.  The only thing I see eventually happening (but far from sure), is a hard fork with two coins emerging when the tension is too large.

And honestly, the facts are in my favour.  If it could have been changed, it would have been, since a long time.
Now, you go and take your own definitions of consensus and whatever, and see if your theoretical model fits as well the observations as mine.   You take your Ptolemaic astronomy, and see if it fits the observations. 

My description, as of this day, does: no economic parameter can be changed.

The idea is indeed, that the only agreement over change that can happen, is an agreement over something technical that doesn't involve any gains or losses for anyone.  From the moment that some gain, and others lose (which is always, by definition, the case if one changes an economic parameter), there cannot be agreement, and hence no consensus.

This is why I say that this lack of consensus over those things that make some gain, and others lose, implies their immutability.

And as the block size is now an economic parameter determining the fee market, I consider that immutability is at work when one sees the never-ending quarrels over different ways of modifying it, and why I'm seriously convinced that it will not change, OR FORK.

Consensus doesn't exist? ::)

I don't find it specially interesting and find it rather 'intuitive'.


You didn't answer my question. It was a question directed personally at you.

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Also, your posts are unecessarily large and contain no useful information. Most of it is over-extended noise. You need to improve your 'get-to-the-point' skills.

In order for the concept of consensus to exist meaningfully, it must correspond to some phenomenon.  Like the concept of melting exists meaningfully by it indicating the phenomenon of a solid becoming liquid.  Next, one tries to *model* whatever goes on that makes the phenomenon happen.  One can be wrong ; only observation and logic are the judge.  But inventing names for thing that are not corresponding to a real phenomenon, is a useless activity.

So, defining "consensus" abstractly as what it *should* be ("people agreeing over what is best for bitcoin" or whatever) is a ridiculous exercise, because it puts an abstract idea that may, or may not be true, but doesn't necessarily correspond to a phenomenon that really occurs.

I define "consensus" as the observable phenomenon of the stability (or modification) of the common rules people adhere to within a crypto currency like bitcoin.  It is a fascinating observation that many people are using the same rules to make bitcoin what it is.  Especially that it has to do with individual advantages, one could think that the rules change every day, and that several people use several different rules, all in their advantage.... to make a big mess that doesn't work.  But no, all bitcoin actors obey the same rules, and those rules stay rather constant over time.  That *phenomenon* that is *really observable* is what I name "consensus".
One aspect is that all actors in the system respect the same rules (consensus), and the other aspect is that these rules don't seem to change (much) over time ("immutability").

Next, we try to model the dynamics of this phenomenon.  I sketched this before.  People come to a common set of rules that doesn't change, *because they cannot change it* and they are *obliged to agree*.  Not because they all find these rules in their greatest advantage.  On the contrary.  If I could change the block chain so that my expenses are reversed, that would be better for me.  If I could obtain more coinbase coins, that would be better for me.  So the rules, as I *have to agree on*, are not in my advantage at first sight. Changing these rules would be beneficial to me.  But I can't.  I have to stick to them.  I also will try to avoid that you turn back your transaction to me.  So I will not agree on YOU changing the rules either.  So you have to stick to them.  As such, we get a situation where any change that is in the advantage of one or the other, is disagreed over by sufficiently others, so that it can't happen.  

This dynamical model explains the immutability by consensus.  We all try to scam one another, and we all disagree to be scammed, which means that no modification of whatever brings you or me an advantage, can happen.  The only consensus is status quo: immutability.

As to "who am I" ?  I'm like Galileo showing the cardinals the moons of jupiter.  I'm doing science.

Unconfirmed pool down to about 20k now.

It really depends on where you're looking it, e.g. Blockchain.info (https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-count) has around ~11k (similar to my node), while 21 (https://bitcoinfees.21.co/) has more than that. I guess a fair deal of the spam transaction (e.g. Komodo federation spam) got finally 'forgotten/dropped' by the network.

With the popularity of bitcoin, the pool of unconfirmed transactions will grow. This will someday be a big problem when transactions will not be confirmed for weeks. A large commission will become a negative factor. We have to solve the problem of scalability very quickly.

Well, no, we don't. I would very much like us to solve it, but some do not want BitCoin to be a form of cash.

Those that "do not want this" are those that lined out the current protocol, in other words, the whole bitcoin community.  By putting a hard limit on block size and by programming block reward halvings, they made it into a speculative asset with a limited number of possible transactions.  The idea that one "would adapt it when necessary" is a bit naive if at the same time, one is firmly convinced that the block reward halving is firmly unmodifiable.

Remember the hard limit on block size was put in as an anti-spam measure. Now we are stuck with it as it is difficult to get consensus to remove it. It could very well have been naivety as it was put in by a human.

It depends on if a Bitcoin service uses dynamic fees or not for a transaction that are based on the mempool size.
If a fee is charged then the speed of confirmation will take a long time if the pool of unresolved tx's grows.
Unless they manually boost your fee after the fact or if they have a service that you can complain to do that.
Either way yes it goes back to scalability and memory limits until that issue is resolved we will see this become an increasingly common occurrence.