Bitcoin Forum

Simple as that. Please discuss.

none

others are OK because their market cap and usage is low, but if they ever grows closer to BTC usage then things won't be better with them regarding escalation and other issues

No altcoin is as big as bitcoin, no altcoin is plagued by spam attack as bitcoin is, and every altcoin claims that its devs are solved scaling problem and are ready for mass adoption.
In reality there is no hard proof that they are indeed capable of doing so - what altcoins is showing us are big promises and numbers on paper.

BTW about bitcoin scaling:

The Bitcoin scaling problem is not technical, it is political, as there are many ways we could scale.

Plenty of altcoins are scaling.

there's this : http://bitcoinist.com/dash-doubles-block-size-in-less-than-24-hours/

ethereum has a rolling average 'gas limit' which would be comparable to Bitcoin flexcap.
 

Oh yes, Evan's Masternodes had a discussion with each other and quickly found out they were in agreement (It's not been implemented, it was just about self promotion by digging at the BTC stalemate IMO). Although it has now been agreed to reduce block time to 2.5 mins instead, so dash will now be more litecoin than bitcoin.

As as told you block-chain is expensive resurse since you have to store it forever.
You have to know limits 1MB/2Mb/....10MB,,,,1000MB (Visa tx/s lvl) the bigger blocksize is the more centralized it will be.
If you loose ability to validate blocks you will end with CENTRAL PAYPAL/MMiner system.
And guess what will happen if you give all power to miners :D ?
It will go same way like Microsoft/Apple/Google monopoly EVERY monopol screw users.
In long run such currency will end in few datacenters and will be hijacked by governments and it will to late to change anything.
You will make snapshot of blockchain and move your BTC to another chain even POS when that will be needed POS miners instead hashing power will give you data-center disc space.
1MB with decentralized 2nd layers can be more usefull since you will be able just forget about parts of some chain.

There is no easy solution to this case. You will trade decentralization vs centralization.
Noone will force you to use centralized 2nd layer as Coinbase.

Blockchain i long run is expensive disc space overtime will be expensive.

There are zero cryptos that are doing anything remotely similar to what Bitcoin is trying to solve. All other cryptos have far smaller transaction rates, and because of this they never have to make themselves larger.

There may be some cryptos that "scale" but chances are they're never actually going to have to test their effectiveness due to their blocks never getting filled ion the way that Bitcoin's do.

Yea.... look at data:
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-eth-dash-ltc-doge.html

BTC transaction at cap 300 000 vs ETH 90 000.... when BTC hitted hard cap of ~300 000 ETH comed in and took new clients with open hands look.
So if you will stay in you bubble ETH will go after BTC.
Eth won't give a fuck they will cut blockchain when needed and move forward while BTC will hav drama 1MB vs 2MB or maybe 3MB...
Eth will add new systems on board (domains, new daps ) while BTC will have still drama 1MB vs 2MB vs Segwit....
Eth will move to POS to solve scaling problems  while BTC will have still drama 1MB vs 2MB vs Segwit....
Don't live in illusion that whole crypto will be sleeping :)  whie BTC will have still drama 1MB vs 2MB vs Segwit....
I hope they will move forward with good stuff and solve that scaling drama if not ETH will win in 2-3 years.


http://www.image-share.com/upload/3499/133.jpg

But by "chances" you admit there is a chance you could be wrong? I hope so. Because I think you will be wrong (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1840706.0). Remember that humans are unable to comprehend exponential change. It is what you can't see coming which catches you unprepared.

You sound like a greedy altcoin bagholder who doesn't care about the principle of peer-to-peer or decentralization. ETH is a centralized bankster backed coin. The main principles that give Bitcoin value do not exist in Ethereum. They are fundamentally different, and your beloved "domains, and dapps" will come to Bitcoin in summer 2017 via Rootstock.

What "winning"? Nobody in their right mind uses ETH, and surely nobody who didn't come here for a *quick get rich scheme*.

---

The answer to OP is simply: Not a single one.. The other coins are not learning anything from Bitcoin at the moment, they are too busy with statements like "We are the best, we are going to win next".

Read this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZi86_ovB3Y

I agree with you and i'm VERY excited about the Lightening Network.

No reason not to HF to 2-4 mb like 2 years ago though.  entirely political...and stupid...and damaging.

Isn't there skilled programmers who can run various simulations of different scenarios or you all want to see everything and experience them all in real time and real world with real money at stakes?

Before any alt claims to have comprehensively solved scaling, we need to see it in operation for a few months before endorsing it. It's dead easy to come up with some cool tricks. It's a little harder to make them cast iron when the pressure is building by the second.

So here's another question, which crypto other than BTC has come closest to maxing out its capacity?

I've always wondered this about certain coins. For example, I pretty much never see congestion on DOGE, LTC, and ETH/ETC. Is it a function of being underused, or have they actually solved the traffic issue? But from a meta perspective, I can see where no coin is really up to the task. If any one coin actually processed a real fraction of the transactions that ACH/SWIFT sees, it would pretty much have to bog down the network. But I'm no tech expert.

Sidechains are insolubly insecure and can never work. @ArticMine and I debated it a month ago.

Another zero post newbie asking inflammatory questions, presumably because they don't want to use their existing account to associate themselves with their question.

As for your question: "What cryptocurrency is solving the scaling problem?"

Easy: Bitcoin.

Most of those coins never leave the exchanges.

https://live.blockcypher.com/ltc/

Here's an LTC block explorer. There are transactions happening but compared to a Bitcoin block explorer it's a very leisurely read.

In other words, they have no adoption use case at all. They can be destroyed overnight by an attack on exchanges (by an inside attack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7yVyIPATWc), hacker, or regulatory crackdown (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1218399.msg18015763#msg18015763) such as from the SEC for those which sold ICOs (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1218399.msg17989461#msg17989461)).

In the near future you will have a shocking wake-up and realize that Bitcoin, and every other altcoin for that matter, will be de-throned - and soon also obsolete.
Current scaling numbers being aired from Bitcoin and various altcoins will be dwarfed once the new supernova enters the atmosphere.
Oh, BTW, scaling is not the only holy grail, there are so much more to it than scaling.

Things are happening in the background. You'll see ;)

Ardor (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1518497) is designed to be ~35x more scaleable than Bitcoin. (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1C2lgUpSLxUJma3KsJV-lTs0B5mANolZqQZiS8StwVtI/edit#gid=0)

Iota (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1216479.0) is another one.

Both of them are not yet production ready, but they show a good progress.

As of now, none I know of.  Any block chain based technology can't, because the consensus is too strict.

The question, however, is: why SHOULD it scale ?  The delusion of the "world currency" is, well, delusional.

The real question is: are there things out there that can scale sufficiently to fill in comfortably their niche ?  Then, the answer is most probably, yes.  Because the niches of crypto are small.

The intellectual challenge to invent a scheme that can scale, is interesting.  The question is whether it will find a use case.

isn't monero solving the scaling problem with the implementation of dynamic fee and they also have no limit in the block size? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monero_(cryptocurrency)#Scalability, but monero is not as big as bitcoin, and it has not 300k transaction per day, and therefore it's easy to fix the issue for them

BTC and LTC as soon as SW and LN are in place.

Ardor is meant to solve the scalability problem as far as I know:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/nxtardor-platform-to-make-blockchain-cheaper-and-safer

Of all block chain tech, monero is one of the coins that will not hit a HARD WALL, but that is not the same as "scaling".
Monero would scale if all of computing was 1000 - 10000 times faster and bigger (cpu, network, disk, ...)

Monero is good enough for what it wants to be for the moment and in the near future.  Monero doesn't pretend to be the "world currency".  It is good for private payment transactions in a relatively swift and secure way. 

LN is banking.  Raw, savage banking that is.  Putting a banking layer on top of any crypto is not difficult, but it is not permissionless, decentralized payment.  It is banking, with the permission of your banker, the fees that your banker wants, he can ask you for justification to want to process your payment or not, grant you or deny you the right to pay someone or not.

If you do not agree, you have to settle your link on-chain, chain which doesn't have enough capacity to settle in this way.  So you are tied to your banker for ever essentially.  The settlement will never process in time (especially if your banker has agreements with miners, which he HAS TO HAVE if he has a certain size), and you will lose most of your money because the settlement will time-out.

Actually, both doge and steem have come close in the past to equalling the number of transactions that bitcoin does. Both managed easily because they confirm very very quickly.

The real issue with bitcoin is it's ten minute block time, which allows thousands of transactions to build up in those ten minutes, waiting to be confirmed.

If the long term intention of crypto-currencies is to be a primary choice for people to use instead of current financial systems (which it certainly SHOULD be, not just a speculators medium) then I wouldn't consider scaling to be solved until there is technology that can sustain > 10,000 tps....all day....every day...from the outset!

Kicking the can down the road with "Internet connections will be faster / mining more efficient / hard drives cheaper so it's not a problem right now!" isn't a solution.   That's what we did with Bitcoin and look at that shit storm now!

That 10,000 tps is the low end of the scale, and allows all the current primaries such as VISA, Mastercard, Paypal, GooglePay etc and all C2C payments to migrate.  When talking mass market, ease of use is paramount, so having multiple independent solutions that do say 1000 each isn't enough, consumers will not adopt it...it needs to be one platform ideally.

That's only the start though, with the advent of IoT, and the growth in electronic payments (VISA processing quantity is rising, MC's is too), that requirement increases further to > 25,000 tps in the next 5-10 years.  If you then include the Asian block with the volume of such things like Alipay, it exceeds 200,000+ tps.

Segwit is not a solution, LN is not a solution (LN isn't even a good one....off chain?  centralized 3rd parties?  cmon!).  Ultimately no block chain can scale to anything like that level no matter how many bags of tricks you bring without some form of centralization.

Confirmation or settlement time is paramount too, no one wants to wait around for transactions to process for long periods of time.  IMO the settlement time of a network poised to be a replacement of the incumbents needs to settle in 10 seconds or less and should be equivalent in security to at least 2 BTC confirms at present, at least for priority payments such as Point of Sale.

Fast confirmation is possible to a degree on a block chain if the size of the blocks is low, but once volume increases it becomes harder to maintain it.

If you're wondering why the above isn't possible on a block chain, simply its due to the architecture of a block chain requiring synchronicity of state at all times... therefore CAP theorem and speed of light are NOT a block chain's friend.

If you claim a block chain can do the above sufficiently, well....you're wrong.

Ripple has a 3 part scalablity approach:

On ledger
Ripple Consensus Ledger Can Sustain 1000 Transactions per Second:
https://ripple.com/xrp-portal/xrp-resources/ripple-consensus-ledger-can-sustain-1000-transactions-per-second/

Payment channels
Escrow, PayChan, and fix1368 Will Be Available in 3 Days:
https://ripple.com/dev-blog/escrow-paychan-fix1368-will-available-3-days/

Interledger's fully scalable payments are then settled with Ripple:
https://interledger.org/

Bonus features:

Transactions are typically finalized in under 4 seconds (Ledger Close Interval):
https://charts.ripple.com/#/metrics

The amendments feature allows voting for feature upgrades and upgrades the network instantly:
https://ripple.com/build/amendments/

Ripple is interesting but does not provide trustless, decentralized consensus like most cryptocurrencies.

Do you honestly think the Lightning Network concept would've received a second glance if that was provably the case?

He is somewhat right.  Anyone can build a LN on top of Bitcoin, but they can also choose how they will let users interface with that network.
The good thing is that it appears (for now) that there will be many options and choices.

But we should be careful not to allow the companies that are pioneering the technology with for-profit networks
to create future roadblocks for a larger, truly decentralized and permissionless, public LN network. 

Of course, but the exact same thing goes for Bitcoin itself. You can go fully down the third party route but the option to remain on your own terms is always there.

My 2 pence.

I wouldn't call LN banking, but I wouldn't call it a decent solution either.  I'm not quite sure what all the excitement is about as it only really works well in some limited use cases.

The premise of LN is that 2 (or more) parties that transact with each other frequently can just settle the difference after a round of payments have happened.  Great, but that requirement severely limits its application.

Consider two companies, one is a supplier of raw materials, the other produces products with those raw materials and then sells them on.  Even though transactions between the two may be frequent, they are typically one way, the producer pays the supplier for raw resources, but a supplier rarely purchases back items that have been produced with the resources it provided.

Another case is mass market, I go to the grocery store pretty often and make regular payments for goods of all types of amounts.....rarely though (if at all) does the grocer send me a payment unless I'm returning something, which is maybe once for ever few hundred purchases.

Most of my consumer purchases though are NOT frequent, maybe I visit my favorite clothing store once a month and buy some new clothes...hardly frequent.

If I then as the supplier of resources or as the grocer or the clothing retailer wish to use the funds that I've received they need to be settled on-chain so that I can use them (or a complex mesh of connecting channels needs to be in place).  In many cases this settlement back on-chain will actually increase the load.

Don't get me started on the fact that LN channels may be controlled in the majority by 3rd parties off-chain who aren't auditable.

unless the network is artificially constrained.  But that would never happen right?  ::)





That is not the entire premise.  The other part is that anyone can transact with anyone else offchain even if they don't have a channel together through intermediaries.  This is what people are so excited about.
 

And private fractional reserve banking is no longer viable...

There is only one altcoin design which will win:

Do you have an linkable citation of that?

I've read quite a bit of stuff about LN and nowhere does it seem to indicate that is possible.  There always appears to be a need for an "opened channel" recorded on the block chain.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1543991.0

The product isn't currently working plus the release and the thread is a complete shambles. Anyone care to unravel the buzzwords below?

UNLIMITED SCALABILITY

HEAT's unbounded vertical scalability is only limited by the performance of the hardware used. Utilizing not a single blockchain , but a chain of blockchains - and removing embedded databases through the use of off-heap memory mapped binary files, the HEAT blockchain is able to sustain transaction throughput of at least 1000 tps 24/7. On our internal tests the HEAT server has been capable of achieving an unbelievable rate of 100,000 updates per second on commonly available consumer hardware.

Then what's the point of mentioning it?

Don't get me started on that one!


Meh I hate it when projects use incorrect terms and contradict themselves in order to build hype.

"HEAT's unbounded vertical scalability is only limited by the performance of the hardware used."

Unbounded means its not limited by anything tangible...but wait....its limited by the performance of the hardware used.  *facepalm*  isn't EVERYTHING that operates in a vertical environment?


Meh nothing special, I (and many others no doubt) can get close to that with a well tuned MySQL server, smart commits and aggressive caching in Java let alone C++ on commodity gear.  Opt for simple NoSQL key->value store databases and it's even higher still.  Btw updates of state are NOT transactions per second!

I've seen these kind of claims now for nigh on 2 years and it really grates my gears (if you couldn't tell :-) ).   They are simply undeliverable and are at best a twisting of common terms to make it appear such that there is real innovation when really there is none.

@jonald_fyookball, you better re-read my post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1847410.msg18393815#msg18393815) and make sure you understand why LN is not only never going to happen in Bitcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1837136.msg18387193#msg18387193), it is not viable in the knowledge age.

Bitshares just had a stress test on their testnet. Throughput got up to 3300 tx per second.

https://steemit.com/bitshares/@ash/current-bitshares-testnet-stress-test-highlight-3300tx-14000ops (https://steemit.com/bitshares/@ash/current-bitshares-testnet-stress-test-highlight-3300tx-14000ops)

I know that dpos is a centralized solution but I don't think its possible to get high tps without having some centralization.

Live Stats: http://stats.bitshares.eu/#test (http://stats.bitshares.eu/#test)

Thread https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23829.0.html (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,23829.0.html)

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/understanding-the-lightning-network-part-creating-the-network-1465326903/

I intend to prove your assumption is incorrect.

I explained in the Decentralization thread, that Byzcoin has a broken security model and is incentives incompatible.

Ahh I know about that, I referred to it in my original post.


But Alice has to know that Carol also has a channel with Bob, what if Alice doesn't want Carol to know, or Carol Alice?

Even if Alice doesn't care about Carol (or some other party) knowing she has a channel with Bob what is the discovery process?  And does that discovery process expose some security/privacy issues?

For example, for Alice and Carol to discover that Bob is a common intermediary, I can only imagine that one or both parties have to disclose all of their currently open channels in some form with the hope that one of them is common to both.  Then Alice or Carol knows a large portion of the others channels and may be able to determine who they might be.

As you probably guessed I don't like it.  It's overly complicated, doesn't solve the issue adequately, has various exposure surfaces that make me uncomfortable and could consume a lot of overhead in the linking of independent channels to fill the use case of Alice Bob and Carol.

Hasn't that become both of our life goals for the immediate future? hehe

My understanding is that the technology allows a great deal. 

I think how it will be implemented initially will look a lot more like Paypal 2.0 than people here seem to imagine because each company, for example, Blockstream, can have a channel with each customer, so if i want to send funds to you, they would go to my channel with blockstream and then to you, via your channel w Blockstream.

In the medium term future though, I can envision a world where intelligent wallets are mini hubs that can just route things for people with no centralized companies needed.

I agree that it does allow some interesting and viable use cases, but it also feels like a dangerous step that could lead backwards.

Centralization is akin to "order devolves into chaos".  It's inevitable if there are no fundamental guards to protect against it...and LN doesn't seem to have any whatsoever.

Anyway, I don't wish to turn this into an LN bashing thread.  I've said my piece and I respect yours.  So lets get some popcorn and see where it goes :-)

When the most prominent Bitcoin core developers are calling to restrict capacity on the main Bitcoin chain, and they are also working at Blockstream, it really raises a few eyebrows to say the least.

...and then I just get attacked and called a shill for saying "hey wait a sec..something is off with this picture".  

Well I can certainly attest that picture looks like its painted with a base color of dung.

I guess I'll be a shill with you :-)

Check out IOTA, it scales better with more users (still in testing):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1216479.0


https://i.imgur.com/d0eXYCT.jpg

This is the holy grail of posts on this website. No block chain will ever be able to do what people envision (as you stated so eloquently in this post).
PoW, PoS, PoW+PoS, PoI , 10 min block, 2.5 min block, 10 second block, 1 MB, 5 MB, 10 MB ... none of that matters

I have no dog in this fight, as I'm a simple observer, but check out IOTA.
www.iota.org

@Anonymint

I am glad to hear your crypto is deflationary, unlike any other crypto that exists. Any deflationary coin that has utility will be a BIG success. People around here are so disillusioned as to what makes a coin deflationary... it is a pet peeve of mine. IE. Inflation that slowly decreases is not deflation at all, as the coin (usually) inflates for hundreds of years, or in some cases indefinitely.

Shhhh  ;D

So far there is no coin that is used as much as bitcoin, therefore we can’t know until it hits to that point.
Maybe ethereum would be that big one day but they already had hardfork and there are two ethereum coins out there today.

I think we need to wait a long time for another coin to be as big as bitcoin in marketcap, when that day comes we will see which one has a solution for it.

It is not possible in block chain centered crypto, because block chain centered crypto is requiring a much too much severe form of consensus, needing EVERYONE to agree *perfectly* on the *single* *totally* ordered list of transactions ever done ; on top of it, with a time-spaced unique seigniorage mechanism included.

This is not needed to keep the accounts of owners of coins.  Of course, it is (largely) sufficient, but this strict ordering and time spacing is making that the thing can not scale.

For instance, whether the transaction from Joe to Jack came BEFORE the transaction from Alice to Claire, or after it, *doesn't matter*.  Whether you got a confirmation of the transaction from Joe to Jack in block A, and you got another confirmation in block B, doesn't matter.  The fact of having to chose between block A and block B is, concerning these transactions, not necessary.  It is only necessary to indicate a winner of the reward. 

Looking forward to it. I think most of us are.

I'd agree that the solution is probably to take the blockchain out of crypto. Then transactions can be instant without waiting for confirms. If Joe pays Jack, Alice and Claire, it doesn't matter what order they are processed in as long as Jack has the balance to send the transactions. Blockchains are doubling the amount of traffic, firstly we have the broadcasting of transactions, and secondly we get the transaction included in a block. A PoW blockchain coin generation distribution scheme would be a very small blockchain only needed by mining nodes. So all that is needed is a mechanism where people cannot forge their own coins and double spend. A p2p system which delivers encrypted transactions between sender and receiver and once that transaction is delivered, nodes can forget about the transaction. If there is a direct link available between sender and receiver (both have their wallet software running), then the transaction could take the shortest path through the p2p network, without having to be broadcast to every node. I'm not going to pretend I have the cryptographic knowledge to know if and how that could be achieved.

Graphene is capable of 100,000 TPS when we pay for the network to go with it

High performance blockchain technology is necessary for cryptocurrencies and smart contract platforms to provide a viable alternative to existing financial platforms. BitShares is designed from the ground up to process more transactions every second than VISA and MasterCard combined. With Delegated Proof of Stake, the BitShares network can confirm transactions in an average of just 1 second, limited only by the speed of light.

Designing a high-performance blockchain isn’t rocket-science, and doesn’t require complex, hard-to-understand protocols, nor does it require dividing processing among all the nodes on the network. Instead, all that is necessary to build a high-performance blockchain is to remove all calculations that are not part of the critical, order-dependent, evaluation from the core business logic, and to design a protocol that facilitates these kinds of optimizations. This is what BitShares has done.

Please see more details here:

https://bitshares.org/technology/industrial-performance-and-scalability/

Indeed.  I'm trying to find a scheme where it is the owner of coins himself that is to prove that he didn't double spend, rather than having the global system showing that he didn't.  That means that there mustn't be global consensus on much ; in fact only on "provided signatures for peer balances" or something of the kind.  Everyone is supposed to keep his OWN transaction history to be able to prove validity of his current status.

In fact, you only need to have sufficient peers keeping your transactions sufficient long times in order to be able to verify that your actual balance is correct since your last "certified" balance ; if you don't bother keeping a past certified balance that is recent enough, then your problem that you cannot provide proof any more of right to spend.

That 'certified' balance has to be private. I'm told Monero does not have the concept of UTXO, since they don't know how much someone has spent, so there may be some clues about how to achieve such a system in that protocol.

I think the question is important enough to revive this thread. There are some attempts in the altcoin world to solve scaling with other methods than simply rising the block size limit. I've compiled them into a list (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2634160.msg26807791#msg26807791).

It should be considered incomplete still, and I'm not totally sure if Lisk includes a two-way peg or only an one-way peg - if not, then it should not appear in the list.