Bitcoin Forum

Any achievement humanity has made, is due to our ability to record and pass down our progress, as well as recognize our mistakes. Likewise, by looking at bitcoin's history, we can learn to improve this technology that millions of people have come to be using.

The famed "blocksize debate" that took place between 2015-2017 had a profound effect to the bitcoin community as well as bitcoin's future as a whole. So in this post a I'd like to make reference to some important proposals, as well as highlight the takes of several industry heads at the time.

The point of contention
Circa 2014 bitcoin developers were caught between arguments on what methods should be used to address bitcoin's apparent lack of capacity for more transactions. Apparently bitcoin's 1MB hard limit for block size was for many considered a limiting factor on how much bitcoin could grow to accommodate a potential increase in demand to transact on bitcoin's blockchain. For that, different developers and groups came up with different solutions, most prominent of which will be mentioned below.

Bitcoin scaling solutions proposed during the 2015-2017 block size debate
First we have Bitcoin XT, proposed by Mike Hearn and Gavin Andresen: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_XT
This was a bitcoin client that would lead to a hardfork if more than 75% of miners agreed to its proposals in the last 1000 blocks.
The proposed solution to the scaling debate was to increase the block size to 8 MB, also doubling it every two years.

Bitcoin Classic was another proposed hardfork. It was developed b Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik most famously among others (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Bitcoin_Classic).
Classic's proposal was to hard fork to a 2MB block size limit, and by 2017 transition to a dynamic max_block_size.

Segregated Witness is the solution that passed. It has essentially allowed for 4MB blocks without requiring a hard fork. It also opened up bitcoin functionality enough to make the Lightning Network concept viable for operation as well as allowing more advanced scripting. It's also worth noting that SegWit finally begun its implementation on mid 2017 (https://cointelegraph.com/news/bitcoin-scaling-segwit-passes-emergent-consensus-at-last), way later than when the debate had reached its peak.

Further solutions
The following solutions are still being worked on to potentially be used on top of bitcoin alongside with SegWit.

Sidechains are also worth a mention. Sidechains are the solution preferred by Adam Back, who has openly stated that he prefers sidechains as a scaling solution to Lightning (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp9lURGClHc) transactions. He and his company Blockstream are currently developing the Liquid sidechain.

The Lightning Network is perhaps the most talked about scaling solution for bitcoin, currently having a capacity over 5000 BTC which has kept being expanding fast over the last few years. 

The concerns over big and dynamic blocks in 2015
It's important to not forget what the talking points for each proposed solution were back when it was decision time.
In early 2016, Jonas Schnelli, a full time bitcoin Core maintainer, was quoted stating the following against 2MB blocks.


In this quote its easy to see how conservative bitcoin developers sought to be with the blockchain size, and how an increase in block size might severely affect the decentralization of bitcoin due to bandwidth constraints in many parts of the world. Contrary to the path projects like Ethereum have followed by having a full blockchain size in the terrabytes, bitcoin still chooses to form its network with full nodes. Users of bitcoin can still to this day download and easily synchronize the full blockchain therefore also contributing to decentralization. This lack of compromise is what has defined bitcoin through the years.


What's currently going on with scaling solutions?
The current state of affairs with bitcoin scaling solutions it that even after several years of development, we aren't sure if a scaling solution is ready to be put in place for widespread use. The Lightning Network's integrity was recently put in question by one of its core developers, shaking the project's very foundational principles and questioning if it would even be viable as a widely used scaling solution.

We're left with sidechains, the decentralization and robustness of which hasn't really been studied widely. While sidechains are still in development, it's almost certain the compromises in trustlessness and decentralization will be far from what on-chain bitcoin transactions can offer. So it's questionable if a sidechain could fulfill bitcoin's promise for an electronic form of cash that would complete trustless transactions in a decentralized manner. Essentially the best talking point for sidechains up until now is that they bring more functionality on top of bitcoin, but probably this happens at the expense of other foundational principles.

Is bitcoin ready for scale after SegWit?
So far, with the existing demand on bitcoin transactions, SegWit has been contributed positively to containing the demand. As of writing this article BTC transactions are reaching record levels of cheapness at least for the last few years. However, one must think with a wider time scope when examining such issues. Taking into account the 2021 boom in demand for bitcoin transactions, it's obvious that there was a period when bitcoin transaction fees remained at high levels between 2020 and 2021 (https://ycharts.com/indicators/bitcoin_average_transaction_fee).

So really we see a fundamental issue that was constantly being brought up in 2015 at play here. When the crypto boom of 2021 happened, bitcoin's existing infrastructure wasn't exactly ready to welcome all the transactions from people that wanted to use the blockchain. While the transaction capacity didn't particularly need to be large in 2015, it would have been nice for infrastructure to be in place. This brings to mind the "If you build it, they will come." principle that is often associated with infrastructure. Anything intended for widespread public use, must be future proofed. Building something for the masses requires the architect to be forward looking...

And when demand in 2021 exploded, bitcoin's infrastructure wasn't there to sere everyone. Certainly back in 2021 having transactions cost $60 was a deterrent for many that would have wound up using alternative methods to transact value. And with on-chain transaction demand driving fees to levels like that as recently as 2021, it's certain that bitcoin's technology has yet to offer a solution for the masses to make cheap transactions on bitcoin. Be it sidechains or Lightning Network, we're just not there yet.

Weaknesses of SegWit from the 2015-2017 scaling debate scope
However, looking back at things, it might have been easy to forget that back in the day, Chinese miners didn't exactly follow the sentiment of minimum bandwidth through and through. At some point in 2016, Antpool, who was the biggest pool and associated with the biggest miners back then, was signalling that they wouldn't support SegWit if it wasn't accompanied with a blocksize increase (https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/antpool-will-not-run-segwit-without-block-size-increase-hard-fork-1464028753). So in hindsight, the authenticity of the bandwidth conservation argument that was so often cited against a block size increase in 2015 comes into question.

Another thing worth mentioning in hindsight is that even SegWit pioneer Peter Todd later admitted that in the end it was a waste of resources to implement SegWit without a hardcoded blocksize increase coupled with it (https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-segwit2x/2017-November/000685.html). Moreover, a detail many people miss is that Bitcoin XT was criticized by Adam Back for requiring a threshold of support of 75% to be implemented (https://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/20/bitcoin-splits-will-it-break-or-be-better-than-ever.html), calling it too low, while by 2019, more than two years after SegWit's activation, only an estimated 36% of bitcoin transactions were using it (https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2019/01/17/one-year-later-whats-holding-back-segwit-adoption-on-bitcoin/).


'Trash' on the blockchain?
Aside for high demand for transactions actually fulfilling bitcoin's intended purpose, transacting monetary value, on-chain scripting has allowed for recent trends like Ordinals and the so called BRC-20 tokens has been taking a lot of space in the bitcoin blockchain. Which combined with SegWit's 4MB block limit, makes up for a radical departure from the reasons why other solutions weren't adopted as a result of the blocksize debate.

If we are to examine the considerations of bitcoin Core developers that were expressed during the 2015-2017 period, the bandwidth bitcoin would consume was a very serious concern. Even scaling to above 1MB was worrisome as seen by the quote mentioned above. However, SegWit took quire a radical departure from this principle. Even more so recently, bitcoin developers Luke Dash Jr, came out very much against certain developments like Ordinals and BRC-20 that SegWit has allowed for in bitcoin (https://www.cryptotimes.io/bitcoin-developer-calls-to-kill-ordinals-brc20/).

Conclusions
The blocksize debate set bitcoin's development back and made quite a few prominent scientists turn away from developing bitcoin (Namely and perhaps most notably Gavin Andresen, Jeff Garzik and Mike Hern). In the end it's hard to determine if much progress was achieved through all these years. It appears as though bitcoin's future was based on a vision of relying on external solution, that in the end aren't getting close to providing a reliable off-chain solution for fast and cheap transactions even after all this time.

One might feel the need to ascribe hidden interests behind decisions that were taken. But the real valuable takeaways would be to recognize mistakes. Are we to believe that everything was done right in terms of scaling bitcoin? Were the aforementioned bitcoin developers that stopped contributing to the project after the debate was over just wrong on their proposals altogether? Should bitcoin perhaps make some radical changes now, better late than never? All these questions and more are worth seeking the answers to realize a better future for bitcoin.

Bigger blocksize will be non-sense if nobody uses it. Roger Ver and his scam team, made Bitcoin Cash, a scam fork from Bitcoin source code to scam investors.

They said Bitcoin Cash is a real Bitcoin, focuses on Satoshi Nakamoto's vision. That coin has a better blockchain with bigger block size but 6 years after 2017 fork, that Bitcoin Cash blockchain is a dead chain if we compare it to Bitcoin blockchain.

Comparison of two blockchains in their network hash rates.
https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/hashrate-btc-bch.html#alltime

Bitcoin Cash is dead.

But today it seems to be necessary at least that is what I think.

Today's days there are over 40K pending transactions, most of them caused by the euphoria about the news around the bitcoin ETF of bitcoin. But those Transactions are going to be distributed in approximately 119 Blocks

Lets remember the news some month ago: Bitcoin mempool reaches 600K transactions  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5465738.0).

I think that some long run proposals at least should be taken into consideration.

For example lets to said that more of the 50% of the volume of the transactions is moved to the Lightning Network, I think that at this point miners aren't going to be happy, for they it should be cheap stop mining and start Lightning nodes?

I propose something like add 1MB per block each 8 halvings that is every 32 years

Quoting some concerns about it:


If in 32 years in the future send a extra megabyte is still a concern, i think that we should be disappointed of that future

you gotta laugh at their lame excuses for not allowing more transaction flow onchain per block

the old "2mb is bad" yet they allow 4mb of junk meme images that have nothing to do with bitcoin payment flow.. and now say lets not stop the junk.. yet that same 4mb allowance has not caused a 4x of transaction flow. due to the cludgy way they implemented it

I didn't make this post to say that bcash is good. I made this post so we can look back and maybe learn a thing or two. With even Peter Todd saying that it was a waste of resources to implement SegWit without a blocksize increase, maybe it's time to accept that at least to some degree there were mistakes that were made. How else are we going to improve? Cryptocurrency isn't a race to the bottom. If we somehow prove that is trash, that doesn't improve bitcoin... We have to be more practical.

I'm not going to engage into a block-size-war conversation, with taking sides in either camp, but I'm about to ask this; how come no hardforks succeeded? Let's assume that the hardforks SegWit2x, Bitcoin XT etc., were indeed superior blockchain implementations, how come nobody supports them currently?

It appears to me that keeping the community together is what's invaluable for the community itself.

Where exactly did he say that? The linked mail was sent by several developers, but not by Peter Todd.

bitcoinXT was treated not as a bitcoin option. but as something that should be REKT and treated as an enemy. it gave core the ultimate power of single dev team ownership of protocol decision control

segwits nov2016-june2017 never gained more then 45% because the community did not see personal benefit of actual tx discount(making legacy cheaper) nor a real up-count of transactions per block.. core thought community would just upgrade nodes to the newest and comply within 9 months due to the REKT's of any other brand out of the choice.  .. but people just didnt upgrade to newest core to flag compliance
(it only required mining nodes to show compliance.. they declined)

the segwit2x was a bait and switch. it was done by the same side of the NYA who just wanted segwit activated. the x2 base was never coded but a empty promise for "later".
(it required economic(exchanges/merchants/services) to threaten to ignore pools who dont comply. forcing pools into compliance to stay engaged with services)

the reason none of the bips of many ways to allow more transactions per block from 2015-2017 were methods that did not meet blockstreams(core) roadmap. and so with all the REKT's and mandatory drama. core solidified its authoritarianism to rule out any deviants to their plan.

if you look at DCG (nya) portfolio. of blockstream, bloq you soon see all the options that were available and not smashed instantly in REKT drama all had the same people.. gavin and garzig(bloq) were funded by the same team of blockstream NYA

so all the options were bait and switch options to get the end result they wanted.. segwit with not base block adjustment

anything that did involve code that would dynamic change, adjust or multiply the base blocksize. were REKT and treated as non bitcoin/enemies of bitcoin by sponsored trolls

You are right, I think I meant to also link his commentsry but forgot. Here it is https://twitter.com/peterktodd/status/928308564208373761

Why? Didn't XT have its own developers and userbase? Why do you blame Core?

If it didn't gain the necessary recognition back then, how come everybody uses it nowadays? Has it ever crossed your mind that the benefit of "making legacy cheaper" could be outweighed by the risk of splitting the community in half?

In that tweet, I understand that SegWit2x was wasteful, not Segwit.

In this part of his sort of interview, he pretty much seems pro-Segwit: https://piped.video/watch?v=27Bp9ZU2KWw&t=530.

dont play dumb you are fully aware of the term REKT campain. it has been told to you many times. do not play your forum-wifes game of selective amnesia every 3 months
instead of forgetting things every three months. just check your post history of the last few years to remind you of things been said to you before

the initial segwit consensus vote began as a november 2016 origin requiring super majority mass consent to activate.. YOU KNOW THIS DONT PLAY DUMB
in june-july it never got above 45%. YOU KNOW THIS DONT PLAY DUMB
it never reached above 45% becasue what core was offering was not what the community wanted..

so the sponsors of the core devs (DCG(NYA) via blockstream) then instigated the bait and switch via a mandatory activation by august.. YOU KNOW THIS DONT PLAY DUMB
the mandatory activation was a blackmail event to force mining pools to comply or have their blocks rejected by the economic nodes(cant spend rewards).. YOU KNOW THIS DONT PLAY DUMB

it activated not due to community desire. but by threat and blackmail between mining pools and economic nodes
it was also not requiring the super majority of user nodes to vote, due to the non-requirement of usernode to upgrade to be compliant, due to the "backward compatibility" trick to bypass needing network readiness of usernode to accept the new rules. YOU KNOW THIS DONT PLAY DUMB

if a new feature that needed a hard fork had actual community benefit then usernodes, economic nodes and miningpools would review, accept the benefit and upgrade their nodes. they would not need threats and blackmail and bypass tricks to get something activated

if core actually offered things the mass community were begging for. core would not have had 2 years of fighting. core would not have needed to get their sponsors involved to push a few malicious campaigns. there would have been no 2015-2017 drama
the only reason there was drama is because the community wanted a onchain upgrade to allow more transactability onchain and cheaper fees onchain. however the core roadmap wanted to offer a tollbooth gateway to a subnetwork bridge as "the solution".. YOU KNOW THIS DONT PLAY DUMB

I wasn't aware that this topic generate such kind of debate... It is interesting to read you

Anyway... i am interested in see what kind of proposal are apart of LN.

Just to put some data on this, acording to this page: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214629621004813


I don't know how much percentage of the population will use bitcoin in the future, also here is a graph of how population can grow according to some UN report:


https://www.talkimg.com/images/2023/10/28/T43ha.png

The above graph show some 9 billion of population for the future but that is just a forecasts.

Lets to said that only 10% of the population will use bitcoin in the future, that will be 900 Million of people, comparing it againts the current active number of users of the network is a HUGE GAP.

Seriously the Bitcoin network need something NOW to scale it. On Chain or OFF chain

i understand if we put bitcoin into context of fiat. bitcoin and fiat should not be limited to one payment app/method of spend. a dollar is not locked to only be spent as cheques. people can use wire transfer, visa-debit cards, store branded giftcards/loyalty cards, heck even store branded debit cards. but to just go with the argument "cheques are dead, bank of americore visa credit is the only solution" is not the answer. especially if everyone knows bank of americore visa has many flaws and bugs the managers admit they cant fix

saying that cheques should only also be bank of americore cheques and any other brand is an enemy is also bad precedent to by implying

---

the most funniest of the REKT campaigns was certain group screaming how 2mb per block of valid transactional lean data would kill the network
and then later same group are saying 1mb base+3mb of junk space bloat filled with meme images unrelated to transactional data(4mb) is fine and we should not do anything to stop the nonsense junk bloat. nor should we reutilise the now acceptable 4mb to be fit for just lean transactional data to propel transactions per block average to be 4x the 2016 1mb limit.

there are other subtle things they imply, such as bitcoin transactions are no longer (in their view) signed by the owner, but instead "witnessed" as being moved. where the evidence of proof is just a weight of evidence from a witness.. trying to make bitcoin seem less secure in its proof
other things like trying to force people who have sole ownership of keys to instead use newer transaction formats by premiumising the cost of legacy transactions. where the new features are only beneficial if people deposit funds into multisig(more then one person control).

these people are not interested in making bitcoin more useful for the many users wanting self control of wealth. they want to make bitcoin become a headache inducing network to make people avoid using it and pick their subnetwork that has middlemen fee's and require fund managers controling the flow of value

anyways
these subnetworks that function via middlemen is how the sponsors of core devs 2014-19 want to earn returns on their investments. its why certain people are hyper promoting a certain subnetwork to the extreme and getting aggressive if anyone announces the flaws of the subnetwork in question. because they are paid to promote it and hope millions of users move over to the subnetwork and abandon daily use of the bitcoin network

it has become soo obsurd that they have even invented 'greenlight' and other hub/factory systems of account/channel management to centralise their subnetwork all so they can be the payment processors taking a fee. yet their favoured subnetwork still has not garnered the popularity it thought it would. some call it Eltoo solution.. i call it Elvis. everyone has heard of him but 99% have not experienced him personally

i am not against subnetworks that fit a need and function securely.. much like im not against all the different fiat payment apps. but when their last 6 years has been headstrong driving down one roadmap direction of one flawed path. its time they build a new road, several roads, all offering different experiences(niches).. and we still need to expand the bitcoin network. and not just push people down these niche routes to avoid using the bitcoin network

as for stats
did you know
in 2022 avalanche had more liquidity in its 3 years of existance than LN had in its 5
other bridges like WBTC have multiple amount of liquidity than LN

i personally have other issues with those two too. but when certain people exaggerate LN's utility and popularity and yet dont take time to fix the flaws or learn from mistakes. LN becomes the worse example of subnetwork bridges trying to steal bitcoin fame while actually making bitcoin look worse

The problem is that it is a temporary solution. When you get full, will you increase the mass again? We will come up with a model in which the block size is one gigabyte, which may eventually lead to the currency being centralized.
Also, the developers did not put much effort into it. The development that happened to Bitcoin Cash was slow compared to Bitcoin, which all shows that easy solutions are useless.

Those paragraph could give people false impression that Sidechain generally isn't ready to use, while in fact Sidechain is ready to use. There are already some exchange and wallet which support sidechain Liquid and RSK.


That's why increasing block size should consider cost to build and run full node.

That argument flat out does not work anymore. Drive prices are falling fast, and that is unlikely to change.

2TB SSD are well under $100 new.
https://www.microcenter.com/product/665454/inland-platinum-2tb-ssd-3d-tlc-nand-sata-iii-6gb-s-25-internal-solid-state-drive
https://www.amazon.com/Crucial-BX500-NAND-2-5-Inch-Internal/dp/B07YD5F561

I have a stack of well used 1TB SSD with still over 95% life according to crystal disk info that I can't give away. For the cost of shipping and a bit of bubble wrap and an anti-static bag might as well get a new one.

Spinning drives are just as bad...how about a 6TB for $60
https://www.amazon.com/MaxDigitalData-7200RPM-Internal-Surveillance-MD6000GSA12872DVR/dp/B097CYT437

Looking at other parts of the world it's even worse. 2TB are even cheaper in India then the US and someone I know in Egypt is getting 2 gen out new old stock Samsungs (the 850 line and still plenty fast) for a lot less then used here.

The cost of the rest of the system is the rest of the cost of the system. Should not change much.

The IBD and ongoing bandwidth, might be an argument, but even a 4x increase in size you are still around 2TB. Which is a lot but not undoable.

-Dave

Scalability has been a big issue for Bitcoin in recent times and with how the community is divided into various school of thought, I don't really see a consensus in the short term. Every ideas brought up offer an answer to the problem but with diverse weaknesses. There's no perfect solution, all available solution requires a compromise and many don't want to

Side chains require validators which is against the permissionless and trustless ethos of Bitcoin.
Block size increment would increase scalability and transaction fees which is a benefit to everyday user but not to miners since it becomes a situation of lots of sellers and few buyers and the cheapest Trx wins. Besides an increase would create a fork.

The battle on scalability has been ongoing for years and no side have been able to convince the other. Sharding? I came across it sometime ago and read that ethereum are working on their very own sharding technique. Like other solution to Bitcoin scalability it is limited by its flaws maybe it would be better if it could be implemented off chain.

No matter how much you yell about this, if you can't provide a single example of a threat, then you don't make a point.

Core is not writing code in the name of "mass community", whatever the hell that means. If you don't like how Core operates, then you've got to take advantage of Bitcoin's nature being released under an MIT license, and attempt to cover the aforementioned issues.

But, to turn your question in the other way around: "If Bitcoin hardforks actually offered things the mass community were beggining for", then... I presume we'd be using them? Somehow we don't.

again to answer your question and break through your amnesia, (the tool you use so you can stay happily married to your insane forum-wifes beliefs)

with core being the CORE implementation/reference client/ authoritarian brand.. other dev teams get REKT even before they have a chance to allow users a client they can download and populate the network.
(there are proof of REKTS, dont play dumb)

when non-core implimentations that offer protocol level fork options. those clients are treated not as bitcoin clients, but opposition/enemy/altcoin clients.
(there are proof of REKTS, dont play dumb)

the only time hard forks do happen in recent decade(such as the mandatory hardfork done by blackmailing pools to upgrade or be kicked off the network) are done now by core and only core.
(there is literally code and block bit flagging signal proofs of this, dont play dumb)

each time there is a mandatory deadline for mining pools to comply and upgrade or be ignored by the economic nodes(thrown off network) is a hardfork.
the threat causes a UNNATURAL 100% compliance super majority.
EMPHASIS: UNNATURAL
(there is literally code and block bit flagging signal proofs of this, dont play dumb)

and if you want to pretend these conversations have never happened or pretend there is no proof .. please check your post history, and stop asking for me to blast you all over again with the proof just for you to ignore all over again..
emphasis the graph of the blue red lines of how the activations occured to an unnatural 100% diagonal+straight line (you know exactly what i am referring to: dont play dumb)

Most people run Bitcoin Core, no doubt about that. But, Bitcoin Core is merely a client. When another client connects to the Bitcoin network, given that it follows the same consensus rules, will be treated equally.

However, it seems quite reasonable to metaphorically "get rekt" by the Core community if they decide to enforce something that contradicts Core's beliefs about how the system should operate. To avoid speaking in theoretical terms, could you direct me to a client that has implemented a policy contrary to Core's? Excluding hardforks for obvious reasons.

There has never been a single hardfork in Bitcoin's history supported by Core. To which are you referring to?

it FOLLOWS
im talking about and this topic is talking about implementation clients that offer a proposal for a change of the protocol... and its these protocol proposition changes that are treated unfairly and as the enemy

only clients that FOLLOW core and just allow core to make the decisions are not given grief

you are guided by your insane forum-wife that has gaslit you into thinking that 2017 segwit activation was a UASF.. it was not soft. nor user assisted

stop listening to your forum-wife and stop playing dumb just to stay in a happy relationship with your forum wife.. then you might learn something

there is actual blockdata. code and historic events.. you have been informed of them before so dont play dumb pretending its new to you. its just not what your forum-wife told you so you ignore it to stay in a relationship with your forum wife even when they are wrong

Yeah, I'm listening to my "forum-wife". Meanwhile, every sane person within and outside this board calling segwit a softfork.

Got it. Replying to you was a mistake, I guess. Back to ignore.

I think one of the best thing that came out of that debate, was the exit of Gavin Andresen (CW so-called proof of Satoshi) and also (Tantrum Baby) Mike Hern from Bitcoin. We do not need Google spies and 3Letter agency snitches ..being in our core developers.

Let's not forget that Satoshi vanished after Gavin talked to the government.  ::)  Yes, the solutions for Bitcoin scaling might not be perfect, but it is working. Let's just build on that and improve the technology that we love.  ;)

Is increasing the block size really a solution? Let's imagine that the block size is increased significantly. Even then, each transaction will take around 10 minutes to be validated on the network (and this is an average, it can sometimes take up to 1 or 2 hours), so I don't see how increasing the block size would solve the scalability problem. In fact, on average, the amortised analysis will tell us that the network will be capable of carrying out thousands/millions of transactions per second, but we'll still have to wait for the transaction to be finally validated. A more logical solution would be to reduce the time between blocks (without touching the supply, all we would have to do is divide the reward for blocks by 100 if we want an average time of 6 seconds per block, for example), but this is obviously unthinkable given the decentralisation problem it would pose. But if one day the price of hard disks were to be divided by 100, or by 1000, would that still be a problem? A 100TB hard drive for $50, for example. As we saw above, you'd need to get a network that's scalable enough for 9 billion people, and without doing any calculations that seems very complicated to me. I prefer a second-layer solution like LN, but for the moment there's no miracle solution.

1) True.

2) If you don't have the bandwidth to move that kind of data then you probably should not be running a node but using a SPV wallet. Not saying it's good or bad it just is. Having a transaction not go though because your are on a bad / low speed connection is probably going to be worse then the privacy loss using using something like electrum

3 & 4) An i3-4130 with 4GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD running windows 10 (ok it's not running it's walking really fast) can more then run (walk really fast) core. And IBD in a couple of days if you have the bandwidth. Getting them from wherever they are to a low income location is the expense. The PCs are being given away by the truckload from corporations.

5) Yeah, probably a ton of stuff we are not considering.

-Dave

higher cost to build?
im sorry to inform you but to run bitcoin needs LESS resources then a PC used gaming
im sorry to inform you but to run bitcoin needs LESS resources then a PC used to stream online movies all day

so if you want to cry about the developing countries and think bitcoin is dead because x y z.. then you are saying that netflix and gaming industry is not fit for people to entertain themselves with

a normal desktop computer at standard spec has more resources to run bitcoin.

normal desktop computers only possible consideration is the hard drive for futureproof-ness of the data..
yet 1-4TB hard drives are real. they exist. we are not stuck in 1993 where 4GB was seemed to be the limit of hard drive

even funnier core devs themselves used the quoted stupid/debunked arguments even in june 2017.. yet by august 2017 were happy with 4mb blocks

again we are not stuck in 1993 the data resource argument is stupid..

but with all that said..  not everyone NEEDS to be a full nodes. yes some "nerds" that like gaming like to up-spec their PC to dominate and do fantastic things. but you dont need a super spec PC to "nerd out" on bitcoin

even this year when people are mentioning that a 4x of lean bitcoin transactional ability compared to 2015 lean transaction thresholds has not occured.. yet certain idiots are happy that one transaction with only a couple inputs and outputs but a 3.95mb bloated meme image is perfectly fine
yes they are ok with a block only having a few transactions and 99% junk data.. but argue forever that bitcoin should not be doing 10k+ transactions a block

read between the lines of myth busted arguments the core devs make.. their "conservatism" has not been about allowing the 3rd world full node access.. its about not expanding transaction counts because they want people to get annoyed by bitcoin and be promoted into using subnetworks that give middle men fee's
remember the core devs were given hundreds of millions of dollars in sponsorship to add features that open gateways to subnetworks.. these sponsors want to get returns on their investment on the subnetworks..
read between the lines and work out the real reasons stupid illogical arguments were made to not expand transactional ability on the bitcoin network

as for fee's instead of charging users 4x more per tx. they should have allowed 4x more transactions per block.. if their real reason for wanting higher fee's were to compensate mining pools

franky1 is right on resource cost though. These days you can buy an all in one mini desktop for $300 USD. Buy it refurbished and it'll be even less. There's very cheap options that will be up in par with running BTC. The current block limit of 4MB with SegWit was not shy when it comes to how resource intensive it was in 2017, but computing has progressed since then... And don't forget that back in 2015 devs were saying that even above 1MB was too much but obviously that was a lie.

^myths of 2017 mantra of treating onchain scaling as a danger

why in 2023 are people still spouting debunked scripts from 6+ years ago

blocks are upto 4mb. ram is measured in gigabytes.. meaning processing thousands per second.
as for internet speed..
relaying thousands of transactions or a whole block is measured in milliseconds

with bitcoin being "tor safe" knowing tor is the most slowest annoying internet speeds of the whole world... it means standard ADSL is fine, fibre and 5g which in 2023 is nearly the norm is more then fine

if people want to go extremes using tor. expect their node to be slow due to TOR not bitcoin

if you want to exaggerate concerns.. then why are you not crying about downloading or sharing MP3 files. or doing VOIP or streaming on twitch

Exactly. Not to mention that on-chain scaling will make the Blockchain centralized. That's because node operational costs will increase (higher storage + bandwidth costs), making it harder for the average person to help support the network. Scaling with a sidechain or an L2 network is the way to go. Unfortunately, Bitcoin's Lightning Network (an L2 scaling solution) has proven to be extremely-vulnerable against external attacks. It's full of bugs. Sidechains aren't even a thing, especially when the majority are focused on altcoins (ETH, BNB, etc.). They're experimental from what I can tell.

I'd expect Bitcoin-based forks (BCH, BSV, eCash) to die in the long run, due to lack of interest/demand from mainstream investors. Things might change if they start bringing real use cases to the world. It's not about the hype, but rather utility and innovation. Maybe someday Bitcoin will finally solve the "scaling problem" without sacrificing decentralization? Just my two sats. :D

When I talk to people who have no idea about Bitcoin, they look at me as if I were a god, but it's because I talk to them so well, that at once they become interested , of course I don't talk to them about casinos, because I use them in most of them. People around me see it as something bad, that is another thing that they should educate themselves, but they are people who are very old-fashioned, they believe that banks are the safest, and that is Something that cannot be so easy to remove the thought, but if I talk to them about how the best Investment can be above real estate and also Above gold , I don't know if in the end they will listen to me , but I will comply with telling them that it is the best 'for their Future.

I think a lot does come down to that.
If you are in the situation where yes the cost of getting a PC that can run a full node is a large expense based on your economic situation then you are either:
1) Not going to do it
2) Do it in a way that may be very difficult to keep going because you had to cut so many corners to make it work
3) Use the PC for web surfing / doing other things and that leads to security / privacy concerns.

There is no good answer.

-Dave

EG YOU said.. developing countries have HIGHER BUILD COSTS

usually people interested in technology already have a pc.. its not like they need to "build" a high spec gaming machine..
standard pc is fine

please stop using silly outdated scripts pretending that africa/india has dial-up internet or dont have pc access... fact is they have fibre/5g internet that is better then most 1st world countries
i know media show africa as the mud-hut scenes of people walking 10 miles for water... but those people dont even want to use youtube
if you actually look at Ethiopia in 2023 you will see cities.

..
did you know for people that want to daily transact on bitcoin would need to pay $2 a day(1-2tx a day) meaning $730 a year
yet they can get a desktop pc for under $400 that lasts 4 years = under $100 a year

if your concern was costs.. you would PAY ATTENTION that its the fee war that ends up costing a bitcoiner the most

if there were more transactions allowed per block each user pays less in fees.

mos african/indian people i speak to are concerned and annoyed by the fee's and lack of transaction count. not the price of their desktop computer

you are still stuck in the DEBUNKED theory of needing to BUILD a super computer to multitask
you still think the cost of a PC that lasts more than 4 years is more of a concern compared to tx fee..

instead of reading and repeating other peoples scripts. try some maths out for yourself

the cost of a pc is not the deterrent.. the actual deterrent of running a full node is if you are not using the network daily you wont see any advantage to keep node running daily. (logic: if you dont play a games console each day, you dont have a games console on 24/7)

so all these gimmick solutions of offramping users to another network which time locks people into one month thus not wanting/needing to check the blockchain for a whole month because they are using some litwallet channel manager host means people wont want to be full nodes.
(i truly laugh at people who promote the subnetworks acting like users are experiencing all the features of bitcoin)

however if fee's were reasonable onchain and people used it daily, more people would be full nodes just because of that, (still not caring about their PC cost)
and again if you think that while running a full node means people cant stream movies or do normal work tasks on their standard pc then you have been listening to the wrong script writers

every time i hear them scripts it makes me feel like they are users of windows 98 based computers.. dont they even know the core devs have said that bitcoin system requirements are not recommending 98,me,xp,vista. so a standard 2023 windows 11 base price pc is fine for next many years. even a few year old windows 8-10 is fine.. so dont use scripts that sound like your Pc is windows XP(decades old).. because the options is not XP vs super computer custum build).. the actual option is current standard pc most people buy standard spec every 3-5 years. (not every 2nd decade)

The "expensive hardware" argument fore full nodes is fully outdated by now. Bitcoin's requirements have stayed relatively stable compared to moore's law progress. And to put that to perspective, the most major hardware requirement now is the hard drive space. But you can now get a NEW HDD of 1 TB for ~20$. A full mini PC which can easily run as a server would set you back ~150$ with the hard drive included, refurbished, like new. These things are everywhere these days. There's no shortage of ex-office computers these days.

I want to better illustrate this with an image:

https://i.ibb.co/bXMp9DG/image.png

This price even includes 24% VAT. Windows included, and 2TB hard drive included. This is a computer ready to go and anyone can buy it as a plug and play bitcoin core server. And it's not like this is a machine where bitcoin will barely run. Even without upgrades, this computer will still be able to run bitcoin for years. Even if you were to buy a Raspberry Pi 5 these days, it'd cost around 90€, and that's without a case, without cooling or even a power adapter.

So, when bitcoin can effectively run on hardware that's only a tiny bit more expensive than modern single board computers, it's a win for how sustainable its requirements is. And this also means that there's space for increasing requirements.

The "expensive hardware enlargement is entirely moot at this point. So what remains? Perhaps the argument against increases in bandwidth. Well, just remember that all those sounding the alarm about "bandwidth limitations" in 2015 ended up supporting a solution that allowed for blocks 4 times the 1MB limit that existed prior. So perhaps that's also a pretty silly enlargement. Bitcoin could surely use some upgrades in on-chain infrastructure. The arguments against that are just not there anymore (and its unsure if these arguments held any merit even back then to begin with). Unless some new arguments have come up.

The article you mentioned is very long, and is a solution to a future problem that may happen to Bitcoin, not a current problem. Almost all of us believe that as long as they pay low fees and their transactions are confirmed in a small time then Bitcoin works efficiently. If you notice that the volume of transactions is increasing annually, despite this, the network fees are still within acceptable limits. the current solutions for expanding the Bitcoin network are excellent, but everyone must know that you cannot enjoy absolute decentralization in exchange for fast transactions, especially if everyone uses the Bitcoin network, but this does not mean providing faster solutions such as side networks and the Lightning Network and trying to reduce signatures to make the block the size of one megabyte capable of It contains transactions worth more than 8MB.
Continuous development and more minds joining Bitcoin will contribute to strengthening this issue.

The main problem that's responsible for the situation created is the mentality that the user with the lowest specs should be able to be part of the network . Bitcoin isn't a communist experiment . Bitcoin was always a race to the top . Better chips created because of it , renewable energy is powering more and more miners , ideas about the heat produced by them etc . What btc is trying to do right now is to stagnate all the other uses that society can get benefit from . Cheap remittances , cheap payments , microtransactions , supply chain integrity , voting , governance and much more . This whole thing could be compared with R&D where no one can use an advantage ( knowledge , money ) against the most vulnerable researcher . This has become a race to the bottom , completely opposite from what bitcoin was meant to be . Example https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2016-May/012652.html

The main excuse is decentralisation . But no one defines it . I have asked many times people about the definition . I will pose the question here .
Can a network with 5 nodes be decentralised and a network with 10000 nodes be centralised ?

Decentralisation doesn't come from the number of nodes . For me , the silliest excuse for the 1 MB limit is that each user should be able to be part of the network . There are thousands , even millions of people that would be willing to spend tens and hundreds of thousands to be part of the network and gain from that , contributing to decentralisation not by running only a node but also profiting from it . With the current btc model no one other than pools/miners , exchanges and scammers get profit . And it's funny that nodes in L2 have the option to profit from their channels , while in L1 the same is anathema .



    
 

1. you talked about 3rd world countries BUILD COST like they have extra expense compared to normal office use
you are also not realising that although computers are made in asia. by the time they reach UK/US alot of profiteering and greed is added and retail prices of pc in US/UK are higher than what someone in asia/africa pay. so you assuming africans/asian pay at the lifestyle rate of us/uk is a hint that you did not think much passed the real costs developing countries actually pay for their goods. its like you gave an auto-pilot script answer without thinking beyond what you read
(a US sold pc at $600.. does not cost $600 to people in developing countries, they have cheaper options)
yep people in africa/asia are frugal. they can not only buy a pc CHEAPER than a UK/US.. but they can build one even cheaper again.

2. if people dont use something daily they wont leave app open daily. the more they use something the more chance they will leave app open, test the theory with anything.. those that only use facebook once a week dont leave app open. but those messaging daily probably will. so there is a correlation between utility vs access
look at your own browser tabs. most of them are for things you frequent more regularly. but things you only use once a month you probably dont have open

3. when you use old scripts without you thinking if they are true or not. without testing the theory. it makes me laugh that you then want to say you dont use the scripts..

yes people can think up their own reasons of pro-con of something. but if your just repeating verbatim a script that has been heard before. i will assume you read someone elses script instead of having an independent thought

i have no problems with people thinking for themselves. but its the irritation of the blind leading the blind just repeating a debunked script and re energising it into a new viral cycle of echo chambers until they all believe its true because they hear each other say it.. as if its a valid argument again.. that script is dead, dont bring it back from the dead. we are not in the windows 98/xp/vista/win 7 era .. its 2023

its the biggest problem of this forum. certain people "group think" and blind repeat something, to the point they believe it to be true because its said so much, there is a huge lack of people thinking for themselves and looking at the source/details and scrutinising it.

bitcoin was/is supposed to be about independent review, independent verification. not blind trust copying
its like the "backward compatible 'isvalid' " bypass where the same echo chamber group tell idiots that their node is still a full node even if their node is not fully validating/archiving..
they say that as long as someone at centre of network validated it and then streamed the data out its trustable and still decentralised because in their mind as long as users are distributed, thats good enough(facepalm).. yet the point of bitcoin is/was to independently verify and archive to be full node