Simply put, if some large segment of the network became disconnected (probably China) each side of the split would continue building on whichever piece of the fork was closest to it, adding new transactions, confirming new blocks. This happens regularly for a block or two but if the split was protracted, many blocks could be "confirmed". When the net rejoins, the fork with the least hashrate gets evaporated and all the transactions undone. Some (most) of those transactions will get incorporated later in the winning chain but if it happens (less likely every year but who knows with what's going on), it could be the kind of thing that top English scientists would describe as a "brouhaha"

Indeed, I believe there was some fuss a little while back and that was only two-or-three blocks.

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-double-spend-that-never-happened

Jeez, that was just one block.

That's actually a picture from fairly early in the debate. I'd assume that Samsung is poking fun at the suggestion of dead bulls what with the recent price rises. Then again, Samsung hasn't always been the best communicator (no idea why Blockstream picked him as CSO) so who knows?

You will perhaps be glad to know that the little demo I did a few days ago moved things closer to being ready.


To be fair, if things string out more than a couple of weeks, the difficulty adjustment will take care of things. Conversely though, we don't currently have large adoption of time critical transactions such as would be the case if second layers were heavily adopted (and I do expect them to be).


It wasn't really speculation about the future as an observation about events which occurred. Though yes, it seems statistically likely that Bitcoin will take another hit to the hashrate at some point as much as it is likely California have the quake it is overdue for or the New Madrid fault will cause problems a bit closer to home. Shit happens and China's engineering projects are often of questionable quality.

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I actually think the big test for Bitcoin is going to be if we see a protracted netsplit where a significant number of blocks are mined on competing chains. It will all be sorted out per Bitcoin's rules, of course but the normies are going to throw a fit.

https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf


It does make a number of assumptions, some conservative, some less so. These things arise from the way the Lightning Network works which anyone not familiar with should make themselves so. All these things were being discussed quite robustly on both sides before Theymos did his big purge (which also precipitated me leaving at the time although I was not directly affected). Peter Rizun has some interesting dissection on the implications of the way LN is implemented too (I'm sure many here don't like him but he is smart and honest). LN itself is not really suitable for "buying a coffee". It's fine if you want to set up a coffee-buying relationship with an establishment though or perhaps deal with some Visa-like centralized payment processor (say, Visa).


We've all been waiting for that since Bitcoin's blocks became full in 2016


Well, some of those. Others of those I think are just fads and will die out naturally. Satoshi himself also mentioned several options that were very interesting. I will just put in that I do agree that there is an apparent concern that unbounded block sizes could lead to bloated blocks. I don't think that's as likely a problem as you probably do but it is one that should be addressed (note, however that most looking for bigger blocks would have been happy with *incremental* increases. Probably more on that later.). I am also not really that interested in complex eth-style contracts and agree that eth is fine pursuing that endgame (though doubtless some do want that in Bitcoin). Note that high transaction fees have some quite serious security implications, including people relying on custodial wallets, added friction on mixers and making wallet management tasks expensive. It also tends to make dust too expensive to aggregate/spend (meaning UTXO bloat, something you have expressed concern about). And, of course, there's layer 2 solutions which typically require a couple of on-chain transactions somewhere along the line.


I mean, sure it would (or at least a good part of the way there - just saw you wrote 10k), just as every capacity increase for computing in the past has improved things. We're no longer on acoustic couplers, 10 base T is now only a few components in the bottom of my junk drawer to me. You mention Raspberry Pis but Bitcoin was already two years old when the Raspberry Pi launched and now is up to the RPi 4 with commensurate increases in processor speed and storage and communication speed. An order of magnitude (10MB) would not be out-of-line at this point IMO. And RPi's are a pretty bad baseline. I've been throwing out MB/CPU combos that out-perform RPis. RPis have their place but any application as a Bitcoin node is for novelty purposes only (and yes, I've done it. It was not a pleasant experience even in 2012)


(Hah, $281.33. Cute.)

I guess the question is, perhaps, what is the "right size" for the block size. Well, not for everyone. Some believe that changing the protocol in any way is a fork and thus not Bitcoin. There is, perhaps some truth in that though it should be noted that Bitcoin *has* already forked the protocol several times in the past and that this ideal is one that CSW holds for his own shitcoin (so fine company there). But for those who are more open to discussion, it is one to be had. So let's start with "Why 1MB?". Satoshi apparently was concerned with spam so added it as a limit that was small enough to prevent horrible network disruption but large enough (approximately 100x the block size at the time) that it would not affect normal operation. He even suggested a way that it could be removed. Now, it's fashionable to disparage Satoshi's opinion when it's convenient but then why should we give any more weight to his arbitrary choice of 1000000 bytes? As far as I know, only Luke-Jr has seriously suggested that blocksize should be smaller.

I feel we have a lot of common ground outside of this issue so I think I can safely talk about the free market with you here. Fees buy space on the blockchain. Normally, in a free market, if demand for something goes up, this causes rising prices which encourages more supply of the thing in demand. The problem with the block size limit as it stands is that there is no way to increase that supply. Block space is effectively provided by a mandatory cartel where supply is fixed. Can you imagine if Henry Ford would have never been able to expand beyond his original factory? If, when GM came onboard (I may have my chronology incorrect there), he had to split his ability to produce vehicles with them? Can you imagine how expensive cars would be? The non-monopoly price for a transaction would be the nominal cost to mine a fraction of a block and store the transaction (a piddling number of bytes) with a multiplier because miners often don't win any given block and then a small amount as profit. Realistically, we're talking sub-10c. More indicates a market failure and when we're up into tens or twenties of dollars, it's an indication something is seriously amiss (if we're talking free markets). Now, it can be argued that this aspect of Bitcoin is not supposed to be free market (after all, the 21 million cap isn't really either) but then let's not be talking about free market forces.

The problem is that Bitcoin itself is not adequate to support the L2 systems being constructed for it. (Something explicitly acknowledged by the LN developers by the way). The problem is not that Bitcoin is inadequate to the purposes to which I would like to see it put (which might have fallen by the wayside, admitedly) but also to those you are suggesting for it.

I'm not going to argue for bigger blocks right now though. I think the need is going to become ever more self evident. Indeed, the recent hashrate crash would have been largely a non-even if there was adequate capacity.

I used to work for a company that grew huge buying up smaller companies in the same field (healthcare) that were struggling under the regulatory burden. I think they swallowed up over 300 small hospitals by the time I left. They're not the only company doing similar stuff either.

Yup. 100kB or bust. Then onward to 10kB. After that, zero transaction blocks are only a short step away and no transactions = 100% SOV security.

The irony being that a cryptographically secure project like Bitcoin is a much better system for addressing wealth imbalance than giving more wealth and power to the government.

The irony, of course, is that thinking other races are incapable of correct math is itself a form of white supremacy.

Ironic.

Socialism is a system of government. How is passing wealth onto others that?

You jinxed it.

This is the wall observer thread, not the Bolshevik agitator one. I suggest giving Reddit a try.

Last time I was back in the UK I hopped on the M4 and it was scary how narrow the lanes are. I'm sure they're no narrower than when I lived there but you kind-of get used to not being able to count the nose-hairs of the guy driving the car in the next lane.

I'll lend you one.

As I said to my friend, many of these new coins, even if they have good ideas behind them (which most don't) have only small teams and will struggle to grow and survive. Like in a forest where the tall trees overshadow and prevent new growth. Maybe one will eventually prevail but that's a gamble with very poor odds.

To millionaires and billionaires, just to be clear. The poor it's claimed to be taken for usually only see a small fraction of it.

There are often allowances and sometimes longer time invested means lower tax.