Bitcoin Forum

Bitcoin => Bitcoin Technical Support => Topic started by: neofelis on May 29, 2014, 10:57:46 PM



Title: How many transactions per second can bitcoin handle?
Post by: neofelis on May 29, 2014, 10:57:46 PM
I've heard that bitcoin can only handle about 7 transactions per second. Is this true? Seems to me that would be a limiting factor in worldwide adoption of bitcoin. Has this been addressed by developers?

What if bitcoin were adopted by every nation, every person. The only currency. Can this be done?


Title: Re: How many transactions per second can bitcoin handle?
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on May 29, 2014, 11:00:30 PM
Currently the protocol limits block size to 1MB.  This doesn't correspond to any specific transaction volume the 7 tps is an estimate based on average transaction size.   The block size can be increased and I don't see any scenario where it remains 1MB forever.  The debate is more on how should the limit be determined, how much should it be increase, when would it be appropriate.


Title: Re: How many transactions per second can bitcoin handle?
Post by: Coinsera on May 30, 2014, 08:50:38 AM
I've heard that bitcoin can only handle about 7 transactions per second. Is this true? Seems to me that would be a limiting factor in worldwide adoption of bitcoin. Has this been addressed by developers?

What if bitcoin were adopted by every nation, every person. The only currency. Can this be done?

I don't think so, 7 transactions is a very low level for a even simple server. 

Thanks


Title: Re: How many transactions per second can bitcoin handle?
Post by: cr1776 on May 30, 2014, 11:02:45 AM
D&T is right, and there have been tons of discussions about the issue if you want to read a lot more about it.  :-)


Title: Re: How many transactions per second can bitcoin handle?
Post by: KaChingCoinDev on May 30, 2014, 08:38:23 PM
I think we are safe for now. Bitcoin can always hard fork later to change the max block size.


Title: Re: How many transactions per second can bitcoin handle?
Post by: vm1990 on May 31, 2014, 09:30:20 AM
The limits been hit once or twice before where the big pool operators get together in there dark secret room and increase the block size limit I know they increased it to 512kb and assume now we are on 1MB it dosnt matter if they don't all increase it but if they don't then there's a delay for unfunded transaction


Title: Re: How many transactions per second can bitcoin handle?
Post by: Mobius7 on May 31, 2014, 10:13:28 AM
The limits been hit once or twice before where the big pool operators get together in there dark secret room and increase the block size limit I know they increased it to 512kb and assume now we are on 1MB it dosnt matter if they don't all increase it but if they don't then there's a delay for unfunded transaction

The 1MB is a hard limit, while the soft limit was 250KB and has been lifted already. :)

As DeathAndTaxes mentioned, we can only have 7 tps with 1 MB block size, but indeed we are still far from that.
You can find the average block sizes here. (second graph of https://blockr.io/charts)


Title: Re: How many transactions per second can bitcoin handle?
Post by: KaChingCoinDev on June 01, 2014, 12:58:11 AM
The limits been hit once or twice before where the big pool operators get together in there dark secret room and increase the block size limit I know they increased it to 512kb and assume now we are on 1MB it dosnt matter if they don't all increase it but if they don't then there's a delay for unfunded transaction
(second graph of https://blockr.io/charts)

Amazing! I am surprised how the block size follows the tx fee. Very strange!


Title: Re: How many transactions per second can bitcoin handle?
Post by: DannyHamilton on June 01, 2014, 01:47:33 AM
The limits been hit once or twice before where the big pool operators get together in there dark secret room and increase the block size limit I know they increased it to 512kb and assume now we are on 1MB it dosnt matter if they don't all increase it but if they don't then there's a delay for unfunded transaction
(second graph of https://blockr.io/charts)

Amazing! I am surprised how the block size follows the tx fee. Very strange!

Amazing?

???

You're surprised that blocks that include more fee-paying transactions have larger total block fees?

If you operated a toll bridge, would you be surprised if you made more money on the days that more people crossed the bridge?


Title: Re: How many transactions per second can bitcoin handle?
Post by: Taras on June 01, 2014, 04:32:17 AM
I currently believe we can handle a lot more than seven transactions per second. I'm assuming we can handle thousands; putting them into a block would be the hard part.