Bitcoin Forum

While the question of a block size limit increase has been debated a lot, an ABC algorithm that would be used to increase the miner income could benefit to the whole network. This could be combined with a hard cap so the block size limit would vary from (let's say 0.1MB to 8MB) preventing any form of centralisation.

Firstly, it is a compromise and not a scaling solution.

Secondly, it should be implemented in SegWit instead of manipulating the legacy 1 MB block size, for avoiding a hard fork.

Making the block size a variable is already centralizing it since the decision falls to miners and how they can manipulate it to their own benefit and they can easily do it with zero cost using a simple spam attack. They definitely spammed bitcoin in 2017 and the big pools were also rejecting any low fees to prevent the fees from going down. F2Pool is an example that comes to mind.

I've advocated for this idea in the past.  I used to think it was the way forward, but I've got some pretty big doubts about that now.  It sounds good in theory, but once you get down to the finer details, it starts getting quite messy.  Game theory and consensus are pretty big hurdles to overcome.

This has been proposed and discussed at the time of scaling debate. Check the following for reference...

1. BIP 105 - Consensus based block size retargeting algorithm (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0105.mediawiki)

2. BIP 106 - Dynamically Controlled Bitcoin Block Size Max Cap (https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0106.mediawiki)

OK I guess I'll be the one bringing new ideas (or maybe not) and we can debate about them..

What if the size limit of the next block would go up if the average transaction fee goes up but down if the amount of transactions goes up. If a miner would try to play the system by filling his block with fake transactions then he would have to mine 2 blocks for the price of one which wouldn't be profitable.

Maybe I am but I'm just taking a shot. Btc could go up or down depending on the development of the currency (as any technology I think it must evolve to survive) and I don't see any crypto being used as a collectible item  :D

I can't understand why we would keep the block size limit to 1MB just to reduce the amount of spams because at the same time we would make the network less efficient for peak periods (huge trade off). Someone will have to come up with a viable solution at some point...

I merited your post because I think it is good to discuss these types of ideas, even if they are bad. These discussions could potentially lead to good ideas.

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Your suggestion effectively allows the miners to decide the blocksize. It would be trivial and cost-free for the miners to either send many transactions to themselves with an arbitrary transaction fee, or to include fewer transactions than is economically logical. 

Fixing btc blocksize is not going to be easy as there are many safe coins to mine and move money.

LTC can move large sums safely and as a bonus  cheaper then Btc.

Doge can move small and medium sums faster and cheaper and safely.

Tether is being used to move wealth quickly and so far safely.

All of them do a decent job.

So btc is much more usable as a store of wealth rather then a quick fast cheaper money mover.

I think that the problem is solved.  Of course btc maximinalist wont agree or be happy with my thoughts.

On the subject.

Ok let's do this


Actually, there is the cost of opportunity because miners don't get paid mining their own transactions. Also, I don't see why a miner would purposely raise his own storage cost...

Filling your own block with transactions costs nothing because you are getting the fees of all those transactions in the coinbase transaction of the block they mine (it is like putting money from left pocket into the right one). Not to mention that such an attack could be a collaboration between more than one big miner where they both spam the network to inflate the fees.

Block size hasn't been 1MB for nearly 4 years now. The block weight has been 4 MB which has translated into average size of about 1.5 MB.
This "cap" is not there to reduce spam, it is there to prevent spam attacks that would cost nothing to perform.
We also don't want to just bump the raw size, we aim to increase the capacity without doing that. For example Schnorr signatures already get rid of some of the useless bytes that for years we've put into each signature. There is also aggregate signature that can reduce the size of transactions with more than one key.

That's because they are not used. It is like saying I can speed in this street that nobody else is in but I have to be stuck in traffic in the other street that is the exact copy of this one but it is used by a lot of cars.

Tether is neither quick nor safe. It is a centralized altcoin that is extremely risky to use because it could be shut down at any moment very easily.
If you are happy with centralized tokens pegged to fiat then you can use PayPal. It gives you a token that is also called USD which is pegged with dollar and is fully centralized, fast and as safe as it gets. But the difference is that PayPal is a legitimate company that works within United States and under US law while each PayPal USD token is legitimately backed by USD 1:1 whereas Bitfinex is not.

I think the problem you're referring to is the centralisation of mining because a miner would need a large portion of the total hashrate to launch this kind of attack and there's not really any system in place to prevent that. And you're actually making my point because I proposed that the block size limit would go up if the average transaction fee goes up which would require more fake transactions to upper the average cost per transaction.


I get it and I think that's fine but since the cost of storage is dimishing and the speed of internet is going up why not increasing the block limit also? And could you explain why a spam attack would magically cost a lot more if the block weight is 4MB or less?

Storage cost and internet speed are only part of the issue, the other part which is more important is the computation cost, which is the CPU and RAM you need to validate each and every transaction.
With that said I have never been against increasing the block size. Ever since 2017 I've been saying we need to also increase the size alongside everything else we do.

I emphasized on having the cap (having a maximum size for each block) not on the value of it.
This value has to be close to the needed capacity but higher than it, that way it can ensure that if someone decided to spam the network they go over that capacity and end up creating a fee market that costs them a lot of money to sustain the attack.
4 MB weight has been close to that needed capacity but I believe we have surpassed that for some time now, which is why we keep seeing big fee spikes regularly.

OP, it isn't that simple. Research the effects of increasing the block size cap on network latency, network security, and how the costs in the network transfers from the miners to the nodes.

The best solution will always go back to off-chain networks.

For OP.
Your reasoning is correct and based on common sense. If all technologies are improving,then it is necessary and possible to increase the block. There is no reason to freeze the block size.
 
The problem is that the Bitcoin community is mostly zombified. They are sincerely convinced that the block cannot be increased. They have no real reason, but they are convinced of it. :)
Therefore, they will generate refutations for any proposal to increase the block. They generate such arguments against increasing at a high rate. All of them without proof, just look plausible.
 If you take the time to prove one claim untenable, another will immediately appear. And the number of such pseudo-true statements is not limited.
For example, "spam from miners". This problem is not there, it is just made up. This problem was not present when the blocks were half-empty, this problem is not present when the blocks became full. And there is no evidence of the existence of "spam from miners".

When you doubt the credibility of this argument, there will be arguments in the form of "lack of processor power, RAM, block propagation speed over the network, etc." I emphasize that all these statements are without evidence. And you will have to look for evidence that they are untenable. If you expose these statements, the following will appear: like "increasing the block increases censorship", etc.

How to break through this swamp is not understood. :)

p/s/ why was the Khaos77 post deleted? :)

Yes, but the money you move through Paypal include significant transaction fees. I think it's 3-5% per transaction, but I don't use it that often to pay attention. Everything you said about Tether is true, but the tokens moved via the Tron network bear almost no withdrawal fees. I am talking about withdrawing from exchanges. Therefore, it gets the job done as philipma1957 said. For now...   

Or a coalition of pools will play it the other way around.
They would insert only fees with low transactions into their blocks thus making the next block smaller but if filled correctly would trigger the next block to be larger and they could stuff also higher fees in this, you can't force miners to propagate a block they find if they don't want to. Of course, it will need also quite a bit of luck alongside hashing power but they could still try to game it, this will turn ugly once the fees will be the dominant reward, miners will have an incentive for selfish mining.
In the end, it's normal if you open even the smallest door of opportunity someone will try to make more money than the others.


Let' be realistic here, even if they would have the same number of transactions as BTC, doge fees would be cheaper, two cities might have the same time wasted in traffic on average but if we reverse the number of cars one might go to zero time wasted and the other to a complete stop. Nearly all the transactions you see on those chains are exactly because the fees on BTC are too high, if everyone would be using the LN then there would be no reason left for their existence anymore.

So you're saying the civil war that divided the community happened totally without cause?  There must have been a reason, because I definitely remember being on the "pro-increase" side at the time.  Speaking as a reformed big-blocker, eventually I was persuaded that if there was to be an increase in throughput, it needed to be a moderate one.  Hence I'm satisfied with the compromise SegWit provided.  
 


I'm sensing you feel somewhat resentful that your arguments weren't received as particularly compelling at the time.  If you want to re-write history from your own perspective, feel free.  I'm not looking to re-tread old ground. But I remember reading enough well-substantiated viewpoints on the matter to change my stance.  Also, you can't argue about the outcome.  Consensus has spoken pretty conclusively.

I'll concede that politisation may have been a factor, though.  There were certainly comments made at the time, some by myself, that the debate was getting rather tribalistic.  You'll struggle to convince me the arguments made against large increases in blocksize were spurious, though.

What you're suggesting here is risky for the miner (it's like taking a gamble to earn more money). I'd agree that we can take the volume of transactions out of the equation and just use the average transaction fee to calculate the limit on the next block but I don't buy that having an adjustable blocksize cap would make it easier for anyone to "game the system".

In my opinion, the ideal solution is to adjust the blocksize cap in real time, not to fix a limit based on future predictions. To anyone talking about an off chain solution, just so you know the L1 network is the barrier to entry to the L2 network.

The only reason I see is the reluctance of most Bitcoin developers (not all) increase the block. I do not know the real reasons for this decision. Because all the arguments that the developers gave in favor of such a decision were unconvincing. For me. The majority of society believed them. (I'm not going to rewrite history :) )

Just because society chose such a consensus does not mean that it was the right decision. It can also mean that someone is very strong in propaganda and manipulation. :)
If the arguments against increasing the block were convincing, then they should remain the same now. All you have to do is get them out, dust them off, and give them to the public. The fact is that they were ridiculous, and so they remained.

I wonder how a convincing argument convinced you that the block can't be increased? Maybe a "Chinese firewall"? :)

A miner does not get paid to confirm his own transactions, but he also does not pay anything to confirm his own transaction. If the maximum block size is based on the last x number of blocks, including additional transactions will increase the maximum block size in the future. There is some opportunity cost, in the form of the greater chance that a block will be orphaned when it includes an additional transaction.

The additional storage cost of including a transaction is close to zero.

That BIP might be reasonable. There does need to be a vibrant fee market, or else the miners will bid down transaction fees to zero, which creates other problems.

If something like this BIP were to be implemented, I would suggest the automatic growth be limited to 10 years, and after 5 years, a new hard fork can be implemented (if there is consensus) to extend the growth indefinitely.

All copies of bitcoin suffer the same flaws and shortcomings as bitcoin. Under the same exact circumstances, they all act the same.
If doge was spammed attacked for 18 months where 80k transactions were injected into its mempool within seconds and size of its mempool went up 600% over its block cap, the fees would be exactly the same as bitcoin.
We have seen similar fee spikes in all copies of bitcoin that inherit its issues, from ethereum to litecoin and even useless bcash even when its mempool was empty (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1776143.msg52337255#msg52337255)

It doesn't make any sense. When the demand for block space exceeds the supply you'd rather mine high paying real transactions than your own no paying fake transactions.


Does that mean there is no miracle solution to spams?

Your idea to “scale” Bitcoin is to increase transaction-throughput despite the technical costs on the network? OK. Block size increases, simply centralizes validators. That’s not “scaling”.  None of it is “pseudo-statements”. You are on a disinformation campaign, sir.

BUT, newbies. Listen to him, and learn the HARD WAY. That’s how I learned. 8)

Decentralization is hard to gain and easy to lose, I'm afraid..
And achieving Byzantine fault tolerance quality is much easier than actual decentralization.

In the case of Bitcoin, to achieve just Byzantine security, three nodes responsible for block production and validation would be enough, I suppose.

But would it really have anything to do with decentralization?
Of course not....

Do not forget that mining pools are not a threat to Bitoin's decentralization just because miners can unsubscribe at any time and start running full nodes on their own.
If the owner of a large mining pool does anything harmful to Bitcoin, it will instantly lose miners and market position and its potential to harm ends.

Bitcoin's mining industry is still far from the theoretical limits of its development.

Now there are tens of thousands of full nodes dealing only with validation, in the future such a number of full nodes may turn out to be necessary for the free operation of fully developed mining.

You've gone full 101% cultist mode.
I was pointing a fact, I was never telling you that long-term larger blocks are the solution, but you went into a full defensive mode going to extremes.
What if there is an EMP that will target only doge wallets? What if the reptilians will unleash a new version of the alien parasite that will target only Doge owners?
Then it will surely prove Bitcoin is better!

The whole thing is pretty simple, can the Bitcoin network confirm 1  million transactions a day? No, it can't in the current state. Can doge do it? Yes, it can.
Can the LN outperform Doge, yes, it can!
You're telling me that an F50 Ferrari isn't faster than a Moskvitch because they are both out of gas.


Bitcoin (https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/) is currently doing  314,531 tx in the last 24 with an average $17.09 USD fee, Ethereum (https://bitinfocharts.com/ethereum/) which is also quite slow compared to others is doing 1,121,409 a day with $5.8 USD in fees.

Leave the cultism aside, it's pretty simple and obvious to everybody.
ON CHAIN bitcoin will never be able to confirm the same amount of transactions as Doge, never! It doesn't matter how many cars are on the highway, what color they have, and where they are heading!

Again you lie, again you create another strange statement. I do not know anyone on the forum who would like to increase the block despite the technical costs. Why do you invent it?
There is a concept of estimating technical costs. According to my calculations, if the owner of a full node makes an average of one transaction per month, then it is more profitable to keep a full node with a 10mb block and pay cents in the form of a transaction fee than to keep a full node with a 1MB block and pay 5-10$ fee per transaction. Therefore, the statement that when the block is increased, the user's costs will necessarily increase is already incorrect.

If we look at your statement above for pseudo-valid statements:
"on network latency" - unsubstantiated. If you just take the calculator and take the block size of 10mb, you will see that there is no problem with this. But you didn't make any calculations, you don't need to know the truth. You need to refute the possibility of increasing the block by any effort. :)
"network security" - unsubstantiated.
"costs in the network transfers from the miners to the nodes" - unsubstantiated.

And you say:None of it is “pseudo-statements”.
I've been waiting for this. :) Pseudo-arguments such as "disk size, processor power, RAM, internet speed, etc." come to an end.
Then there is the main argument of "the increasing centralization (reduction of decentralization)".

So, for newbies. (since there is a tradition to address newbies.). When the arguments "increasing centralization (decreasing decentralization)" appear, then the constructive discussion ends. Because these statements "increasing centralization (decreasing decentralization)" are usually presented as self-sufficient. For some reason, it is considered that it is not necessary to provide any evidence. :)

If my opponent wanted to confirm his words with evidence, then he should have provided:
1) How it measures the level of centralization (decentralization).
2) What is the level of centralization (decentralization) now, at 1mb block.
3) What is the level of centralization (decentralization) will be if we increase the block, for example, to 10MB.

You're moving the goalposts a bit there.  I didn't say I was convinced it can't be increased.  Just that increases should be moderate, not excessive.  



In the end, I think it was ultimately more of an economic question than it was a technical one for me.  Whether or not the Bitcoin network could theoretically cope with larger blocks without sacrificing nodecount is completely immaterial if the nodes in question have no interest in allowing you to get past the first hurdle.  It pretty much boils down to this (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5202006.msg53093614#msg53093614).  We can argue over technical details for the rest of time, but the fact is, the arguments mean nothing if the people who secure the chain simply don't want to offer more of their own resources in order to permit a further increase beyond what SegWit is already achieving.

Why should you do this buddy? Be nicer to yourself in the first place and to prominent figures like the one who are used to attack, now for a while. I'm personally against many ideas and the whole vision of him, but we desperately need the mountain of knowledge and expertise he got for the future improvements, and should appreciate his contributions in the past, after all.

That said, you have every right to challenge any idea or philosophy you find inappropriate, expressing your thoughts as long as it is not about spreading baseless claims or scam projects which I'm sure is not the case with you. :)

Why do we keep having these redundant discussions? There already are Alts with every possible change you can think of.

Why should Bitcoin do something that it hasn't set out to do? We should discuss block size increase when LN and initiatives to reduce transactions size have provably failed.

A block-size increase is the last step in a lasting solution. The other steps of a "lasting solution" INCLUDE the development and usage of the ecosystem in ways that lead to a justifiable fee market for the very long term. Your view may depend on what "lasting" means to you.

Guys, I didn't know how hard it was to understand that what's protecting the network is the honest hashrate not the block size limit. Would you all repeat after me: The network is safe as long as 51% of the hashrate is honest. The network is safe as long as 51% of the hashrate is honest. The network is safe as long as 51% of the hashrate is honest. Satoshi Nakamoto probably took 5sec to choose a 1MB block cap and it was to prevent a congestion attack on the network, at that time it was more than enough to answer the need of the users and the internet speed was slower but things have changed since then. And guys BIP 103 are you kidding me!? We can't even predict the price of btc tommorow morning with a margin of error of less than 20% and you think we are able to plan the next 42 years?? I don't know if we all live on the same planet but on mine btc is still at a very early stage and is still pretty useless so we shouldn't even worry about experimenting new things...

That said, here is my new proposal
The block size limit increases/decreases in proportion to the change in the average transaction fee from the previous block with a 0.1MB min and a 10MB max. The 10MB is to celebrate the 1st decade of bitcoin. Open for debate!

P.s.

Please no more spam/orphan block kumbaya bs theories on this thread. Ty.

I don't know why it comes out that way to you, all I mean is that if you want to compare two cryptocurrencies you must compare them under the same circumstances not take the capped usage of bitcoin and compare it with the theoretical possibility in another coin.

Ethereum block size is about 1.6-1.8 MB per 10 minute which is pretty close to what bitcoin has per 10 minute. Meanwhile bitcoin transaction sizes are usually 200-250 bytes for 1 input 2 outputs but ethereum transaction sizes are around 110 bytes. both have bigger txs so lets use the averages:

	ETH	BTC
Average # of tx/hour:	47,447	14,160
Average # blocks/hour	276	7
Average # tx/block	172	2,022
Average block size in kBytes	41	1430
Average tx size in kBytes	0.23	0.707
Ratio		3.07
tx/24hour	1,138,717	339,844
Ratio	3.35

Now its a much better perspective rather than just comparing counts. With 3x smaller transactions, ETH is doing about 3x more tx/day compared to bitcoin.
The amount of data being processed is roughly the same. The level of decentralization is not even comparable.

Okay, so who are you exactly?

I don't mean to ask for your real identity but you seem to have all the answers about what Bitcoin is or not and what it should be. I would like to know if the person behind this has thought this enough or you are just trolling.

Have you implemented or have seen the implementation of such dynamic sizing? Any studies or data to show how this would work on a network where blocks are to be produced every 10 minutes on average and decisions like the allowed blocksize has to be taken as part of the verification process.

I just found @topcoin360's idea worthy and your harsh statements inappropriate.

If you ignore my opening statement and just read the rest of it, you would see I am just asking him to back his idea with some data or a code implementation he has done or seen. It would be educating to look up for some of us. Otherwise, we just end up doing this in the Development and Technical section without any reason.

This kind of thing is also then more suitable for "Bitcoin Discussion". That sub could use some of this brainstorming and intellectual back and forth rather than what we otherwise do there.

Also, I AM trying to take it seriously as he named an optimization algorithm in his opening post. Yet, for someone who thinks that BCash is the real bitcoin, i just want to be sure.

With 10MB blocks, costs of running a node would increase exponentially. The node operator would stop running the node eventually, centralizing the network. That’s not “scaling”. Scaling is to increase transaction-throughput without sacrificing decentralization.


You can’t bend the Laws of Physics. Block propagation slows down as block size grows.

Would we really be able to apply "meters" to decentralization?

For a given payment system: there are middlemen present, or they are not.
It's a binary phenomenon...

In other words, it can only be that:
1) you have the freedom to send funds to any person you choose, receive funds from anyone who chooses to send them to you, or hold funds for as long as you see fit
or,
2) you do not have this freedom.

So, for me, the factors that are important for maintaining decentralization (we assume that Bitcoin is decentralized) is the same class of factors as those describing the chance of death while performing certain activities.

Since life/death is also a binary phenomenon, and at the stake here is the loss of something indisputably valuable.

We could try to use the language/the tools of statistics here, most probably.

I understand your moderate position. :)
I just can't figure out how moderate growth is better than natural growth. After all, your moderate growth implies an artificial restriction of growth. Questions appear. What for? We tell users: some of your transactions are unworthy to get into the blockchain. What do we gain by throwing out some part of the transactions? My answers to these questions are: nothing. Only slowing down the development of Bitcoin.

Unfortunately, this is simply not true. Another statement without proof.
We are discussing raising the block to 10mb here. For this case, there is no problem with the distribution of blocks over the network at the current Internet speed. You do not take into account the growth of Internet speed, as well as the development of technology. I understand you don't know about the Compact block technology.
You were zombified 4 years ago, since then you have not turned on your brain.  :)

However, users of bitcoin forums constantly use expressions such as"decrease/increase centralization/decentralization". Even bitcoin developers don't hesitate to use these expressions. Although they must have an engineering mindset.
And it's amazing! How can you claim a decrease/increase in some indicator if you do not know how to measure this indicator, if you have not determined how to measure it? This is nonsense.

As I was saying, exactly the thing I've mentioned.
I shouldn't compare the maximum 80kmh/ Trabant with a Ferrari because the Ferrari is parked.

But be it like you, next time a spike of 40$ for one transaction will happen be there and tell people it makes no sense to use Doge as it is theoretically possible for transactions on the Doge chain to cost the same.
Have fun telling people that you can fit 5l of water in a 2 littler bottle just as good as you can in a 10l bucket as it is "theoretically possible" that your 2 liters of water is actually milk and the first bottle is a can making the whole comparison impossible since we don't have the correct circumstances.


And with an x3 lower average fee which you successfully managed to omit from the equation. ;D

There's is the cost of running a full node but there's also the cost of making an on chain transaction which seems to go up as btc gains in popularity. My point is just that it's still too early to plan on the long term. We should try new stuffs and learn from our mistakes, it's the only way we can improve a new tech such as btc.


I think we're making progress here. Ok, let's just call it an idea for now.. I'll answer your questions.

1. What's the reason behind 0.1MB as min and 10MB as max?
The transaction fees will eventually be the only source of income for the miners so we need a system that will force the user to "tip the miner" but which will also allow more block space for peak periods. A 10MB limit seems reasonable, the max yearly storage space that could be required would be approximately 0.5TB. A 0.1MB min gives enough space for most transactions.
2. How many previous block should be considered to calculate average transaction fee?
One.
3. How often should block limit changed?
On every block.
4. Do you have proposed formula/logic/code to set block size?
No. We can discuss it first then move on to the next step. I will review your codes..



Ok so I'll bring some modifications since we didn't agree on everything..

//n  is the block size limit formula
I = old avg transaction fee
I+ = new avg transaction fee
N = old block size limit
N+ = new block size limit
n = N * I+ / I

If n <= 0.1 then
N+ = 0.1

else
N+ = n

else if n >= 10 then
N+ = 10

The logic is there. I think that an immediate adjustment to the change in price would be the best...

The miners could make blocks look full with their own fake transactions that appear to pay high transaction fees, and leave only a small number of actually paying transactions outstanding. This would make it appear the market transaction fee rate is higher than it actually is.
Correct. A miner with a small percentage of total mining capacity could potentially broadcast valid spam transactions, and end up with more mining revenue after accounting for the transaction fees from the spam transactions.

It is an arbitrary figure, and I haven't studied the data supporting it. I would prefer that the rate be too high than too low. If the rate is too high, a soft fork can be implemented to reduce the rate, but if it is too low, a hard fork would be required. It is much easier, almost trivial, to implement a soft fork, while a hard fork is at least an order of magnitude more difficult.

isn't it because ETH tx is much smaller(roughly 1/3 bitcoin tx)? the Fee/byte is still roughly the same

---

https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/43675/why-do-bigger-blocks-make-it-more-expensive-to-run-a-full-node

I’ll stop you there. Full node hardware, and bandwidth requirements plus costs won’t increase as the block size increase? Then explain Ethereum. It’s simply a common-sense statement. The proof is all there, plain for you to see.

It's about 1.29x higher in ETH! Although fees are computed differently in ethereum but working with raw bytes and amount paid we have

____________________	ETH	BTC
Average tx size in kBytes	0.230	0.707
Average tx fee	0.005500000	0.00042000
fee/byte	0.000023910	0.00000059
fee/byte in USD	$0.029	$0.022
Ratio	1.29

Good.

No. Unfortunately such a switch for miners neither by going solo (because of the variance) nor even by joining honest pools (at least fast enough, and again because of the variance) is practical.

YES! It'd be so better if you haven't made the comment before this one, what a waste.


P.S.
I was following Greg's sent merits, just like a normal stalker  ;D noticing that he has merited this post. Now, I'm confused:
Which part of the post deserves big Maxwell's appreciation?

It'll be a total surprise, actually the second in the last couple of weeks, if it turns out to be the right part, Because @gmaxwell has not been there for a LONG time, though, it isn't too late, and he is making moves, IMHO.

Sorry, I’m wrong. Growth will not be exponential, BUT a one time block size increase to 10MB, and with current Bitcoin on-chain usage keeping those blocks full, would make each node process 10 times the data, and make it “feel” exponential. I want to see Bitcoin Cash’s blocks full, everyday, for a whole year.

People call it linear growth or O(n)

“feel” exponential - this is something new in cost estimation. :)

My computer, bought 5 years ago, processes a new block in less than 1 second. a 10mb block will process less than 10 seconds. And blocks appear once every 10 minutes. The only expense is disk space. At 10MB block - 0.5 TB per year. 2tb. hard disk ~$ 60 and this is for 4 years. The cost per year is $ 15, per month ~ $ 1.2. And now that I make a modest 12 transactions a year, look at the size of the average fee, and estimate how much I have costs due to 1MB. block.

You understand that it is your "concern" for the user that only brings them extra costs.

Even if we take the more expensive option, together hdd ssd. 2tb ssd - ~ $ 240. Divide by 48 months - $ 5 per month. The fee for one transaction per month is about the same level, and I will not pay this fee. That is, I will be at the same level in terms of costs. But in return, I get a 10-fold increase in the Bitcoin system. (10x! , Karl).

You are more careful with your desires. If the Bitcoin Cache develops to the point that users will make 2.5 million transactions a day, and bitcoin will remain at its 350 thousand, then I do not think that this is a a good outcome for Bitcoin.. :)

That's not the only metric people use to measure the overall success of the network, though.  If, for example, BCH's nodecount dropped to single digits, I wouldn't care how many millions of transactions it could process per day.



If you can find a way to distinguish at protocol level between "natural growth" and "malicious growth", then let's hear it.  I get the part where encouraging a fee market is something many users are not fond of, but I see the sense behind it.  If something is valuable but there is very little cost to use it, people will simply abuse it.  That's just the nature of things.

As an analogy, I work in a call centre dealing with insurance.  I basically listen to people every day moaning about there being an administration fee to make changes to their car insurance policy.  None of them seem to grasp the fact that if there wasn't a fee, more people would call in more frequently to make superfluous changes.  Instead of paying the cost of adding a driver to a car insurance policy for the remainder of the policy term, you know some tightwads would be calling every other week to add a driver and then calling back a few days later to remove them again.  Then they'd tell their friends to do it because it would save them money and suddenly everyone is doing it.  People would take the piss if given the opportunity.  So if we didn't hire more staff, more customers would be stuck on hold for longer trying to get through to speak to someone.  The service would deteriorate and people would complain when they have something important or urgent to do and they can't even get through to us because the lines are jammed with skinflints.

Sometimes discouraging volume is the wiser course of action.


//EDIT:


My belief was that I was engaging with someone who understood the distinction between the number of nodes and the number of people transacting.  Someone who knew what SPV was.  Perhaps I was mistaken? 

The scarce space is the "commodity" being sold in the fee market. If you increase and decrease the supply depending on your price, I doubt there will be any customers who will want to buy your product for long. Can you think of a commodity that acts this way except the commodities that have middlemen traders hoarding capacity? Are those the best examples of the kind of market we want a bitcoin fee-market to be?

This solution seems to fail on the simplest of economic model. Someone accustomed to actual financial modelling can comment better on this.

In addition, this also opens up a situation where people will be waiting and speculating on the transaction fees.

Isn't verification of target size limit a thing while producing blocks. How do you calculate the average transaction fee for the current block when you haven't decided the block size and hence the topmost transactions to keep in it? Or do you propose to just calculate all the fees in all the transactions in mempool?

So I assume that you haven't seen or attempted an implementation of this sort on a test net etc. That would be the best way to go i suppose.

A blockchain of 10mb. blocks, in which 2.5 million transactions are made every day, will hold less than 10 users? This is so implausible that there is nothing to comment on.

"malicious growth" - As far as I understand, this is filling the blockchain with transactions with zero or very small fee.

There is a very simple and elegant way to solve this problem. You need to enter a minimum fee amount. Transactions with a fee of less than will be invalid. The problem is solved, and solved well. Because it will only affect those who make "malicious" transactions.

The way this is solved now, through the block size limit , is a terrible solution. I do not know if it is possible to come up with a worse solution than this. It does not solve the problem when the block is not complete - "malicious " transactions hit the block. When the blocks are full and there are queues, many good transactions are thrown out along with the "malicious " ones. For example, right now, when the average transaction is $ 10, many transactions with fees of several dollars do not fall into the blocks. Good customers who want to get into the nearest block should play the game "guess the right fee".

If you look at the analogy with your work. For you, the cost of service does not depend on the number of customers at the moment. And the cost of service does not change every second. :)

Ok, we must not forget that there is some electricity cost for mining blocks, mining an empty block is not profitable. An adjustable blocksize cap algorithm would reduce the limit of the block when the demand for space is low which would maintain some level of competition for block space but the algorithm would increase the limit in periods where the demand is high which would improve the network's reliability while reducing the transaction fees. The client software would have to be updated.


I wasn't thinking about importing the data from external sources. We can easily compute the avg transaction fee of the last block:

total amount of all the transactions inputs - total amount of all the transactions outputs
                                                      nb of transactions

@amishmanish, I think this post may have addressed your concerns as well...                                                

It is a very lazy solution that only causes more problems than it solves.
For starters what would the minimum fee value be? Lets say the coin is worth $0.01 you hardcode the minimum to be 0.01X (X is the coin). Now price goes up to $10 and the minimum fee of that coin is suddenly 10 times more at $0.1, then it goes up to $100 and fee reaches $1 and so on.
Your solution simply added mandated hard forks each time there is a big price rise to reduce the minimum fee.

The question is not really about empty blocks. All miners don't work on the same set of transactions from the mempool. It can happen that some  miner arrives at the next acceptable hash immediately, rather than 10 mins after the current block.


If you are just calculating from the mempool then it becomes unrelated to the actual set of transactions you want to affect price-wise. This continuous variation also puts another set of calculations, consensus requirement and propagation delays for the miners to calculate, especially if you talk about adjusting size in every block. I don't think this is feasible.

Some kind of DAO based variation over periods of high fees maybe a different thing but that opens up to politics and is entirely not suited to Bitcoin's mathematical purity. That is why I have been asking if you have seen an actual implementation or you plan to think this over and then come up with calculations.

I think you should move this topic to "Bitcoin Discussion" already.

Not necessarily. You can have a minimum fee scaling factor in a configuration file.
After all, this is not a consensus parameter. So after the price has gone up by an order of magnitude
for a long enough period, you could agree to have as many nodes as possible to update this scaling factor
to be 10 times smaller. Over time, more and more nodes will adopt this new value, and allow
the mempool acceptance and relay of transactions with 10x smaller fees.

Your computer is not other people’s computers. Plus the real problem is also bandwidth, and latency remember? The Initial Blockchain Download has become more and more difficult.

You want real scaling, a solution like this, if successful, is real scaling, https://medium.com/mit-media-lab-digital-currency-initiative/utreexo-demonstration-release-a0d87506fd70


::)

Increasing transaction throughput, but centralizing the validators is not real scaling.

Click on the quote in my comment and read the full comment first. The user is talking about preventing miners from filling the blocks with cheap fee transactions. You cannot prevent that by anything that is not consensus rules such as a simple configuration that already exists called minrelaytxfee.

In continuation of this, it just occurred to me that any attempt at dynamically calculating the "miner fees" based on mempool transactions will automatically open up the network to all sort of nuisance attacks.

Not sure if I am thinking this correctly but a malicious actor could simply spam the chain with hundreds and thousands of transactions with bare minimum fee. The transactions just stay there, never being picked due to the very low fees and screwing up your calculations. You end up making an elegantly sybil-resistance system welcoming to the most basic of sybil attacks and manipulation.

Maybe we can use Mining difficulty as a predicting tool for the price?
When bitcoin prices rise, mining profitability will rise, resulting in more people mining, and therefore increasing difficulty. we need to factor in mining hardware improvement though (Updated Moore's Law?)

---

is the validating process really significantly increase with that blocksize? i think if there will be any blocksize increase, it should be increased to the point where mini-computer like Raspberry Pi still can handle it.
and BTW, isn't that utreexo is just like a pruned node but with "compressed" UTXO?

---

I think, for now, there's no need for blocksize increase yet. the recent increase in bitcoin transaction fee are most likely because the significant price increase, and it maybe won't last forever, once the price fall significantly, the transaction fee will go down too(2017, mid-2019).  there needs some long-term transaction fee increase to make it worth it to increase the blocksize. Maybe when we start using bitcoin as a method of payment, not as speculative asset.

You just haven't tried it yet. Everything is known by comparison.

Managing the fee through the block size:
If there are few transactions, the fee is sharply reduced, to cents. If there are a lot of transactions, the fee increases dramatically, up to $10. That is, it can change 100 times. And in a very short time - in a day, 2.
As I wrote above, this is a bad way, because it constantly causes inconvenience to bona fide users.

Minimum fee management:
The fee is set in satoshi and, let's say, changes every 2 weeks. What is a change algorithm is a topic for discussion. Now the price does not change dramatically by 10 times. The recent sharp increase is just a 2-fold increase in 2 weeks.(even in December 2017, the growth was 2-fold in 2 weeks.) It's not that bad. Instead of 10 cents - 20 cents, instead of $ 1 - $ 2 before changing the fee. - not terrible, against the background of the current $10.  
As for hard forks. Since this is adding restrictions, you can theoretically do with a soft fork. Possible, You may need one hard fork.

The bitcoin system does not have enough information.
1)It doesn't know the value of bitcoin in the real world.
2) It does not know about the level of technology development.

Therefore, theoretically, it is impossible to come up with an algorithm only within the system that would successfully regulate fees and block size.

You can prevent it by creating a backlog of high-fee paying transaction, which Bitcoin has achieved by constraining the block size.

Hi folks,

I just wanna tell you a little tale.. Once upon a time, the square tv was invented. It was a miraculous invention allowing people to watch movies, series, news, porn, anything you can imagine but in black and white. And then came the plasma tv, the lcd I don't know if you can remember that time... Now I can't find any square tv in any nearby store and even if I could I wouldn't buy it. For those who believed that the 16:9 format wouldn't replace the 4:3 format you turned out to be wrong.

All I'm trying to say is btc could go from one of the greatest success to one of the biggest failure if NOTHING is done to make it serve its purpose, which is to be a medium of exchange. So speculators please shut up and let the smart people talk.

Ty everyone, have a good one!

Thanks for proving what you really are. Can't expect more commitment or brainstorming from a BCH shiller except the typical "I am right, BTC should change because TV changed" argument.

When will you boneheads realize that there is a huge difference between all the kind of consumer technologies you guys quote and Bitcoin. Bitcoin is the secure, permissionless and foundational network layer for a new kind of money. People are ascribing value to all the other decentralized digital assets because Bitcoin enables that confidence. It is not a software plaything with low barrier of understanding so that it can be a hobbyist dev's plaything. That is the case with stuff like ETH, DeFi, ICOs, Solidity and all the others that people like you get inspired by and then turn to ask "Why can't Bitcoin do this?"

That does not mean that Bitcoin isn't moving fast enough in terms of innovation. It is. Its just not as glamorous as declaring 10000 TPS like a PoS shitcoin.

As far as I understand your principle, you propose to regulate the transaction fee through changing the block size.
I suggest another option: adjust the block size by changing the transaction fee.

Let's say we have a sample computer of the lower segment, and we focus on it when setting constraints.

We can count the parameter:
1. The maximum block size that our sample computer can process in the time we need.

Additionally, we can evaluate one more parameter:
2. We estimate the maximum level of growth of bitcoin, based on the level of technology development that we can afford.
    Based on it, we calculate the parameter: average block size.

I don't know why, but everyone decided that the 2nd parameter must be adjusted through the 1st.
Suppose we have a parameter 1: 10 MB.
And parameter 2 : 100gb per year. - >the average block size should be ~2mb.
These parameters can be very different.

Algorithm diagram:
1. When switching to a new scheme, the values of parameters 1-2 are set, and the minimum transaction fee is assigned.
2. After 2016 blocks (this value may be different), the recalculation takes place.
If the average size of the resulting blocks is higher than the parameter 2, the minimum fee increases.
If the average size of the resulting blocks is lower than the parameter 2, the minimum fee is reduced.

The calculation of the average block can be done for the last period, you can calculate for the last few periods.

3. The fee can be changed with a certain step, for example, 10-20%. That is, if the average block has not changed much, then it is better not to change the fee .
4 You can always calculate the maximum fee amount for the next period. Towards the end of the period, it becomes more accurate.
And if you make a transaction at the very end of the period, you can make a fee =maximum (the current fee , the maximum possible for the next period). This should save you from possible problems at the junction of periods.

Advantages:
1. Excellent system response to peak loads. Since there is a margin due to the large size of the maximum block.
2. The percentage of non-occurrence of transactions in the nearest block is sharply reduced and is close to zero.
3. There is no need for dynamic fee calculation. It is enough to get the set amount of fee from the system.
4. the overall growth of the blockchain should not be very different from what we wanted.
5. You will not have spam.

Disadvantages:
?

Bitcoin is not a sect or a cult! Please don't put yourself in such a stupid position, lecturing others about how "special" is your cult, it is just disgusting and has pretty reached and surpassed its expiration date, update yourself.

@topcoin360 is not a BCH shill or a POS enthusiast, all this user wants, rightfully, is remembering the cause, the original philosophy behind bitcoin innovation, and he has every right to ask for more active and ambitious research and discussion, don't make this sub-forum a scene for showing your royalty to the myths and gods of your cult.

The main idea is really not bad but I think we'd have a hard time to get everyone to agree on those terms... As you suggested, there would be a strong correlation between the min fee and the amount of transactions that is being processed by the network. We could consider the variation in the amount of transactions from one block to another one to calculate the min fee on the next one. The min fees would then determine the size of the blockchain on the long term so we could rise the block size limit 10x (or even more) and it shouldn't cause any problem. For now we would just need to all agree on the same formula to calculate those min fees...

My suggestion was to introduce a minimum fee in the Bitcoin system. And it is better to introduce such changes at the protocol level. You claim that the disadvantage is that "Need to change Bitcoin protocol to explicitly disallow transaction low fees". :)

Although this is not entirely true. The minimum fee can be entered at the level of miners, without changing the protocol. If, for example, 95% of miners vote for this and activate this mode, then blocks with transactions with a fee less than the established one will be considered invalid by the rest of the miners. But I emphasize that it is better to introduce such changes at the protocol level.

1. Miners can still fill blocks with their own transactions (spam from miners). But so far, there is no evidence that this happened in reality.

2. Such "spam from miners" is very easy to detect. And the entire Bitcoin community very quickly learns that some miner is engaged in malicious activity.

3. The community has the ability to react to such an event. Most miners should block the "malicious" miner.
If the majority of miners cannot overcome this phenomenon, then the bitcoin community can replace the miners.

4.The mining system is a billion-dollar business, and there is no reason for miners to engage in any malicious activity, because it will cause much more damage than the likely profit.

5.The probability of any malicious activity from miners is very low, practically zero. Therefore, I suggest that we stop discussing any arguments that start with the words "bad, malicious  miners". It's just a waste of time. The same as spending time discussing of the "Perpetuum mobile".

No. You can look at historical data regarding increases in processing power, and network capacity, both at specific price points. You can also look at near term projections of both of the above.

It is not possible to prohibit transaction fees under any threshold at the protocol level. A business could for example privately send a transaction that pays a transaction fee of 0.01 btc to a mining pool, and privately receive a refund of 0.005 btc separately when this transaction confirms. Miners will not do this unless there are insufficient transactions to fill blocks that pay the minimum protocol-required transaction fees.

Sharp's the word.
What do you think about various ideas of sharding? Could they address this problem? What properties should have a sharding solution in order to be acceptable?

I think that in this topic we only consider those changes that will be added with the consent of the entire community.

Spam from miners is a lot, a lot of transactions. Therefore, single transactions with 0-fee  are unlikely to be evidence.

In fact, most miners can already set any transaction fee they want. If they want to. And you can't prevent it. The introduction of a minimum fee does not give them this opportunity. They already have this opportunity. :)

The second sentence already has an answer to this situation.

Consider the situations:
1. Most miners set a high transaction fee. And they stop taking transactions with a lower fee. Technically, they don't violate protocol. But at the same time they cause inconvenience to users.

2. The system has implemented a minimum fee with adjustment from the block size. Miners start filling blocks to the maximum with useless transactions in order to raise the fee level. Technically, they don't violate protocol. But at the same time they cause inconvenience to users. Increasing the size of the blockchain unnecessarily. Artificially increase the transaction fee.

What is the difference between these situations? Why don't miners do the same as in situation 1? And why would they do as described in situation 2? What is the Bitcoin community's response to the first situation, and what is the response to the second situation?

My answer is this. Miners have the ability to do malicious actions.The Bitcoin community can adequately respond to such actions of miners. Therefore, miners do not do malicious actions. And they won't.

Therefore, I once again suggest not to discuss the situation with "bad miners". :)

I think that fungibility is hard to obtain while sharding. For ex if one shard is more secure than another one then we can't consider the coins in those two shards as being the same. If not done properly, sharding could lead us in a situation where we end up with "different versions of the same cryptocurrency" (for that reason I'm still skeptical about this whole idea).


You're right everyone will not agree on everything but now you have to convince a lot of people that using external data into the codes of btc is the best option. We know that it could cause some consensus problems (what if the predictions turned out to be so inaccurate that we had to rewrite the codes and how can we agree on the validity of the data in the first place?). Your idea is good but will be hard to realize. I tried to come up with a simple formula that would make sense for most people and I couldn't find one. Speaking of which what if the amount of block space provided by the network was proportional to the price that the users pay? I think that would make perfect sense...

N: new block size limit
n: old block size limit
T: total of the transaction fees in the most recent block
t: total of the transaction fees in the previous block

N = n * T / t

But you don't know "the price that the users pay". You can only guess that transaction fees are related to "the price that the users pay". But still, it is possible to trick any algorithm based on that. You can pay more than mentioned in fees, just by sending some coins to some outputs owned by the miner, then you will indirectly and secretly pay more than you can read from fees. Or, you can receive some coins in exactly the same way, just the miner can send you some coins to your output in any transaction it can sign (or just in the coinbase).

More than that: remember about CPFP! If in some transaction some outputs are yours and some are owned by other people, then someone may want to spend some of the outputs in the near future. Then, you can even pay 1 satoshi per byte, but the other person will have to push your transaction to spend its own coins. And doing this on-chain transaction may sometimes be inevitable if someone wants to open or close some LN channels.

Yes, if the block size cap will be adjusted "on demand", that might have a negative impact on miners. Right now their daily workload, storage and bandwidth requirements are predictable. With adjustable block size system behavior will be unpredictable both for users and miners.

Somebody said that in 2013 tx fees were as low as 2 cents, median transaction was around 50$, market cap was 300 million $ and the grass was green. What if we surge Bitcoin market cap to 1 billion $? Would that solve the problem of high tx fees? What do you think?

The fees that the miners pay to themselves are irrelevant if you take into account all the transactions. All the other fees are paid by the users.
 

The miners will plan on the long term, not the short term. The hard cap is all what matters. An adjustable blocksize cap could end the conflict of interest between the miners and the users. People would be willing to pay a higher price if their transactions were confirmed faster and less people would be mad because their payments didn't go through. With this solution everyone wins!  ;)

That said, the Lightning Network is the only viable solution for low cost transactions...

Hardly,
You have to make One onchain bitcoin transaction to lock the funds in multisig, ie: fund LN channel.
That One onchain bitcoin transaction current average of $13.63 U$ Dollar .
source=https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/bitcoin-transactionfees.html

Since Litecoin has plently of Onchain Transaction capacity (4X bitcoin capacity) ,
their transaction fee is only ~3 cents.
source=https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/litecoin-transactionfees.html

No matter if the LN (Bankers Network) charged zero, the initial fee will still cause it to be unsuitable to a low cost transactions.

Fact of the matter is, you are better off buying a prepaid visa card than using LN. (Bankers run both anyway.)
Less fees and higher transaction capacity and definitely does not require a genius to constantly monitor channels to avoid loss of funds.

Or use a crypto such as litecoin with a decent average transaction fee, and plenty of onchain capacity and bypass the bankers networks.

That is the problem when onchain transaction capacity is artificially limited like bitcoin.
You're better off using a system that is not being limited.  8)

FYI:
If you ever close the LN channel, you have to pay a 2nd onchain transaction fee.
Note: Their are LN hubs funded with litecoin and litecoin activated segwit before bitcoin did.
Bitcoin Costs to fund & close LN channel = $27.26 in onchain fees alone not counting the fees charged in LN offchain bankers scam
Litecoin Costs to fund & close LN channel =  $0.06 cents in onchain fees alone not counting the fees charged in LN offchain bankers scam

Thanks to these low fees, Litecoin will become quite insecure once their block subsidy dwindles down to insignificance.

It's difficult to say with absolute certainty due to the scrypt algorithm it uses.  If people have specialist ASIC hardware for mining scrypt coins, there may only be a limited number of coins that are worth mining with that hardware (there are a boatload of scrypt coins, but I can't imagine all of them are profitable).  It's conceivable people might continue to mine as hobbyists if other coins with that algorithm fall out of use, purely because the hardware is optimised for that algo.

But, regardless of subsidy, in terms of raw hashrate, it's already far lower than Bitcoin.  I get the impression no other coin comes close to BTC.  I don't know if any other coin can even denote their hashpower in exahash as Bitcoin does (without resorting to sub-whole units). 

As always, it's a question of where users choose to strike the balance between convenience and security.

It has not much to do with the choice of PoW. If the daily Litecoin issuance in dollars is not very significant, then
only a small fraction of whatever hardware is optimized for that PoW (e.g. scrypt ASICs) will be able to profitably mine on Litecoin, and it will be cheap to rent a bunch of the remaining hardware to mount a 51% attack on Litecoin.


Comparing hashrate of different PoW is generally meaningless.

Ha ,  No.

The Fact that Litecoin has 4X bitcoin transaction capacity ,
means the litecoin miner have the opportunity to make 4X the transaction fees.

LN (Bankers Network) does nothing to pay the miners, so it is irrevelant in the Miners profit margin.

Bitcoin has the bigger problem, because as rewards drop if the onchain artificially imposed block size limit continues.
Their ability to survive off transaction fees is 4X lower than litecoin.

Bitcoin current block reward is 6.25 bitcoins per block, with a price of ~$32000 ,
so a miner earns $200000 every block found.

Bitcoin average transactions ~2500 per block , meaning to achieve the current payout,
each transaction fee will need to be at least  $80 minimum.   :D
*FYI: If the price of bitcoin continues to increase as many of the btc supporters hope and pray,
this minimum transaction fee will continue to increase.*
* Litecoin minimum transaction fee would be $20 , 4X cheaper than bitcoin.*

At that price, it is cheaper to hand write checks and mail them off, over using bitcoin.  ;)
As far as security, that check is federally insured, your bitcoin has no insurance if you send to the wrong address or lose your private key.
The number of hashes is just something to point the clueless at, so they don't realize how little it matters.
IE: The security is the exact same now as it was 6 years ago, top 4 mining pools secure the network (over 51%) then and do so now.
# of hashes are of little consequence.  
4 mining pool secure bitcoin, 4 mining pools secure litecoin, from a security standpoint they are exactly even.
Because at the end of the day, your security is trusting 4 pool operators not to collude and double spend.

If someone finds Litecoin to be better, they can always choose to use it the way they want. A lot of people do use it to move funds from centralized exchanges as its cheaper to do. if enough people use it and it gets as popular, who knows, it may well get to the same point as bitcoin.

The argument about lower blocktime giving more of an opportunity to generate fees is interesting though. Don't know if this is an over-simplification but in 10 minutes, it will process 4 times as many transactions getting the fees. Reducing blocktime may well be one of the scaling options in the distant future for Bitcoin itself.

The true scaling options have always been

1.  Increase Block Size
2.  Faster Block Speed

Nothing else increases scaling.

At some point the block size bottleneck absolutely must be addressed. It's very sad for Bitcoin and the community that it wasn't just addressed and solved back in 2016-2018 when there was such loud debate about it. Could have solved it back then. Gets harder for community to do a hard fork the bigger Bitcoin gets in the world. We don't even need a perfect solution, just A solution that allows bitcoin capacity to grow as bitcoin adoption grows. The worst thing to do was do nothing...which is what was done  :-\

But yeah LN and centralized third party processors (fintech/banks/etc) are the only way truly low cost transactions at mass scale can happen. Ideally those centralized third parties get on the LN so we have a network of individual power users and companies who service millions each all on LN creating an instantaneous and nearly free bitcoin payment network that is easy for a random Joe to join and use but also allows techie power user Joe to use on his own.

Of course, even with LN you STILL need block size increase on layer 1. Because you need space for all the normal layer 1 tx's plus you need space for all the onboarding, offboarding, topping up LN tx's.

Hopefully in the near future the scaling bottleneck will rear its head again in the community and actual force a solution, for the future of Bitcoin in general but also layer 2 solutions like LN if they are to ever take off.


Personally I have love been a fan of simply adding a block size increase to the halving. A block size increase halving (8x, 4x, 2x, 1.5x, 1.25x, etc - for example) so every four years the block size increases to handle increased adoption, but at a reasonable rate that allows the network and storage & internet speed tech to improve gradually with it. This would allow Bitcoin to gradually increase adoption as an actual transactional medium every four years, and only ever need a single hard fork to solve the problem. It would also allow the LN to grow if indeed it does take off in the future.

Scaling is not something that can be solved once and for all. It needs to be addressed every now and then so that we improve upon it and move on until next step in the future. It was addressed in mid 2017 already. We'll address it again with Schnorr fork.

I disagree. There is nothing hard about hard forks. They are just harder to perform, otherwise the network can easily upgrade to new version in the signalling period just like they upgrade for the soft-forks. It is not even an issue for light client users, take Electrum for example. Clients lower than 3.3.0 can no longer connect to network, so it is a mandatory update for everyone, similar to what happens in a hard fork.

If people want centralized middle men they can go back to banking system. Otherwise we have LN that they can use in a decentralize manner just as they use bitcoin mainnet.

But define “scaling”. If it’s simply to increase the Block Size, and decrease the time between blocks, DESPITE centralizing the validators, then that’s NOT scaling. It has to improve the network’s functionality, but without decreasing the network’s security/decentralization.

Based on the proposals I was seeing at the time, I'm not convinced of that.  If we had taken any static blocksize increase, that still wouldn't have been a "solution".  There was always more work to do later.  The reason an adjustable blocksize/blockweight wasn't implemented at the time is because no one could guarantee that their proposal at the time was safe from manipulation.  I was following them all rather closely.



Except that's wrong.  At the time of writing, the last block mined was 1468.97kb.  That's 468.97 we didn't have before.  Or, put another way, a ~47% increase over the old 1mb blocks.  People need to stop pretending that we haven't added additional capacity.

The next question in this riddle is how to define decentralization.

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

Adding resources to a system, in short: bigger blocks or more blocks in a shorter time frame.


The flaws in your thoughts are the following.

Scaling has zero to do with security.
Security is provided in a PoW coin, by the Mining Pools that together control greater than 51%.
Size or speed of the blocks or emptiness or fullness of the block are irrelevant to the above.
# of non-mining nodes are irrelevant to the above , as they only relay block data.
(Their is a false belief that more non-mining nodes actually help secure the network, sorry if you believe that your understanding is false.)

Decentralization is a buzzword , that you use as holy scripture, when you are utterly wrong.
All that matters are the mining nodes, 1 non-mining node or 1 billion, they do nothing but relay blocks.
1 block explorer (mining or non-mining) is all one needs to see if miners modify the block rewards or code ,
just 1 , running other non-mining nodes offer no real value except as a personal receipt holders ,
which if you are not making personal transactions daily is a waste of time.
*Note a valid 51% attack will reorg the chain mining or non-mining will not stop it , only relay it.
*When Satoshi started bitcoin, all nodes mattered because all were mining.*

LN, your supposed solutions is the most centralized design of all.
LN hubs have to process millions of transactions, have to lock millions of value, and need millions of users to be practical.
What institutions process million of transaction storing millions of dollars, and have millions of users. ie: Banks
LN hubs were designed from the beginning to be for bankers, as individuals will never have the resources to actually profit from them.
So LN users, you just help beta test the banks new software before they LN fee you into slavery again.  

Ask yourself,
Why does Litecoin have 4X the transaction capacity of bitcoin?
Why can Dogecoin do 10MB in 10 minutes and bitcoin can't?
Why do other coins have increased transaction capacity at transaction fees ~400X lower than bitcoin.
Why does bitcoin need LN and all of the others don't?
Why is bitcoin technically inferior to these lower cost coins.

If you have a semblance of honestly , you should realize the only reason is bitcoin is being artificially limited by it's supposed developers.

Odds are you will just fall back into your bitcoin cult mantra chants, and ignore the reality facing you.

 8)

I don't know if you're spouting idiocy because you simply want to expose your ignorance, or if you're genuinely trying to convert anyone with your abject drivel, but I don't think anyone in the Development & Technical Discussion subforum, of all places, is going to fall for it.

Network governance is either something you don't understand or fail to appreciate the significance of.  Part of the security we're talking about is the strength of the network to resist implementing terrible ideas that would weaken it.  If there were solely SPV users and miners, it would be far easier for corruption to set in and allow pools to collude and force undesirable changes to the protocol.  Non-mining full nodes prevent that.   If you can't comprehend the part where running a full node is an enacting of will where you quite literally enforce rules by rejecting any blocks that don't adhere to the requirements denoted within the software, then don't bother commenting because you just sound like an imbecile.

You are one of the bitcoin dev bootlickers,

Explain:
Why does Litecoin have 4X the transaction capacity of bitcoin?
Why can Dogecoin do 10MB in 10 minutes and bitcoin can't?
Why do other coins have increased transaction capacity at transaction fees ~400X lower than bitcoin.
Why does bitcoin need LN and all of the others don't?
Why is bitcoin technically inferior to these lower cost coins.

Go ahead, or is that beyond your false religion?