There are also a small number of people expressing more militant views that Bitcoin should become more of an asset for a privileged few than a global currency and argue for a permanent 1MB blocksize
I would hope seeing the mess the current debate for change has created you would understand why some people are against any change to the consensus protocol as long as Bitcoin works as intended. Global currency as you like to refer to it, is technically impossible on a single layer, and considering Proof-of Work and its distributed consensus design. So yea, privilege it is. For the rest there is mastercard. or ripple... but XT not even since its been #REKT..  I swear this debate brought the biggest posers out of the woodwork.... Everyone is acting like a spoiled child pretending like all of their transactions absolutely need censorship resistance and billions of dollars of proof of work piled on them I am confident I should encounter only on a few occasions, in my whole life, a situation where Bitcoin blockchain security will be absolutely mandatory. For everything else, there's gonna be Lightning  |
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What is a small purchase? a cup of coffee? Where did satoshi specifically say that bitcoin wasn't made to buy coffee but to buy I don't know... Xboxes? where is the cutoff from "this belongs in the blockchain but this doesn't because its too small"??
What does satoshi have to do with this? Do you believe that he was some majestic coder? Because he was not. Bitcoin was never designed for small transactions auch as buying coffe or micro transactions. It is going to be a difficult task to get it to scale like that. According to the Bitcoin white paper, it was designed for "small casual transactions" that are too costly with conventional trust-based online payment methods (e.g., Visa, Paypal, etc.)  source: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf...I really don't see how you're still trying to fight for including all of the world's transaction on the blockchain when there is consensus among pretty much all the qualified engineers (that would include Gavin although I'm increasingly doubtful about his qualifications) that a POW system is simply not able to efficiently service this type of load/transactions…. I don't believe the Blockchain will be useful for sub-penny micropayments (for example); I like the idea of payment channels for that. The point of my post was to show that @manselr was correct: Bitcoin was designed for small casual online transaction that are too costly with our present trust-based model. Whether it continues to meet that design objective, the truth is that no one knows. Will the threshold for direct Blockchain access be sour-candies from 7-11, Xboxes from BestBuy, or something else? Why is the payment channel idea not good enough for most transactions that do not require censorship resistance? |
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What is a small purchase? a cup of coffee? Where did satoshi specifically say that bitcoin wasn't made to buy coffee but to buy I don't know... Xboxes? where is the cutoff from "this belongs in the blockchain but this doesn't because its too small"??
What does satoshi have to do with this? Do you believe that he was some majestic coder? Because he was not. Bitcoin was never designed for small transactions auch as buying coffe or micro transactions. It is going to be a difficult task to get it to scale like that. According to the Bitcoin white paper, it was designed for "small casual transactions" that are too costly with conventional trust-based online payment methods (e.g., Visa, Paypal, etc.) source: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdfMan... that's like your own interpretation. Have you considered that Satoshi's proposition was to create a trustless layer from which services enabling these transactions could be created? I really don't see how you're still trying to fight for including all of the world's transaction on the blockchain when there is consensus among pretty much all the qualified engineers (that would include Gavin although I'm increasingly doubtful about his qualifications) that a POW system is simply not able to efficiently service this type of load/transactions. You and cypherdoc's crew are really alone in your own little world and it's quite worrying to see you entertain this cargo cult |
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I wouldn't recommend this thread to anyone. It's certainly the biggest circlejerk currently running in the Bitcoin community. |
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There are also a small number of people expressing more militant views that Bitcoin should become more of an asset for a privileged few than a global currency and argue for a permanent 1MB blocksize
I would hope seeing the mess the current debate for change has created you would understand why some people are against any change to the consensus protocol as long as Bitcoin works as intended. |
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It seems like any of the proposals would work and it's turned into a big head game. Why don't they just take the cap out completely? It was put in to avoid spamming the blockchain. Obviously we're not worried about spam any longer or they wouldn't raise it at all. If we are still worried about spam then that problem will just reappear in a few years after a bunch of the increases go into effect. I still don't get all the excitement about it. Seems like much ado about nothing.
Lifting it completely is not an option. Your logic about the constant need for re-adjustment is sound. Personally, my hope is that the blocksize is kept as low as possible until different payment channels such as Lightining and other safe & efficient off chain solutions (OpenTransactions?) are made available and easy to use. When we reach that point I would consider it reasonable to freeze the block size forever. If you care enough this is an excellent read by Greg Maxwell on why we need to proceed with caution: https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-May/007880.html |
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I've stayed out of this debate because I really don't understand it. Maybe one of you can explain it to me. Here's what I see.
Everyone is delusional and believes there are 100 million users out there in the ether just dying to use Bitcoin but can't because the current limit keeps it from being used (Satoshidice proved that to be false long ago). We have to find a fix for this spam restriction issue within the next year or chicken little is going to fall from the sky and take a giant shit on Bitcoin. There's a couple of ways to do it that involve different levels of increase. The Chinese (mining majority) want an 8mb increase because 8 is a lucky number in China and their bandwidth isn't good enough to support a larger change. Part of the tiny dev team want sidechains to do it because they work for a company that will profit from it. Another part wants to raise the cap some and another part wants to raise it a lot.
Am I close at all and if not what am I missing?
No. That's not entirely correct. The story is hard to sammarize at this point. Gavin proposed the controversial BIP101 which was rejected and thus he teamed up with Hearn. XT came to life as a potential fork. In the meantime new proposals started coming ip, most notably, BIP100. You can track support of various proposals on blocktrail. Current BIP100 is leading with ~60% support. XT has zero support now. Thanks What's the difference between the different proposals? Is it a huge difference or are people being drama queens? Between the two extremes it's the difference between Bitcoin running on Google datacenters or staying decentralized. Both are decentralized. I'd really love if that could be true but no. BIP101 (or XT for that matter) is highway to centralized hell. |
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I've stayed out of this debate because I really don't understand it. Maybe one of you can explain it to me. Here's what I see.
Everyone is delusional and believes there are 100 million users out there in the ether just dying to use Bitcoin but can't because the current limit keeps it from being used (Satoshidice proved that to be false long ago). We have to find a fix for this spam restriction issue within the next year or chicken little is going to fall from the sky and take a giant shit on Bitcoin. There's a couple of ways to do it that involve different levels of increase. The Chinese (mining majority) want an 8mb increase because 8 is a lucky number in China and their bandwidth isn't good enough to support a larger change. Part of the tiny dev team want sidechains to do it because they work for a company that will profit from it. Another part wants to raise the cap some and another part wants to raise it a lot.
Am I close at all and if not what am I missing?
No. That's not entirely correct. The story is hard to sammarize at this point. Gavin proposed the controversial BIP101 which was rejected and thus he teamed up with Hearn. XT came to life as a potential fork. In the meantime new proposals started coming ip, most notably, BIP100. You can track support of various proposals on blocktrail. Current BIP100 is leading with ~60% support. XT has zero support now.What? https://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoinxt/http://xt.coin.danceSounds about right. Not enough support to be relevant. |
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I've stayed out of this debate because I really don't understand it. Maybe one of you can explain it to me. Here's what I see.
Everyone is delusional and believes there are 100 million users out there in the ether just dying to use Bitcoin but can't because the current limit keeps it from being used (Satoshidice proved that to be false long ago). We have to find a fix for this spam restriction issue within the next year or chicken little is going to fall from the sky and take a giant shit on Bitcoin. There's a couple of ways to do it that involve different levels of increase. The Chinese (mining majority) want an 8mb increase because 8 is a lucky number in China and their bandwidth isn't good enough to support a larger change. Part of the tiny dev team want sidechains to do it because they work for a company that will profit from it. Another part wants to raise the cap some and another part wants to raise it a lot.
Am I close at all and if not what am I missing?
No. That's not entirely correct. The story is hard to sammarize at this point. Gavin proposed the controversial BIP101 which was rejected and thus he teamed up with Hearn. XT came to life as a potential fork. In the meantime new proposals started coming ip, most notably, BIP100. You can track support of various proposals on blocktrail. Current BIP100 is leading with ~60% support. XT has zero support now. Thanks What's the difference between the different proposals? Is it a huge difference or are people being drama queens? Between the two extremes it's the difference between Bitcoin running on Google datacenters or staying decentralized. |
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I've stayed out of this debate because I really don't understand it. Maybe one of you can explain it to me. Here's what I see.
Everyone is delusional and believes there are 100 million users out there in the ether just dying to use Bitcoin but can't because the current limit keeps it from being used (Satoshidice proved that to be false long ago). We have to find a fix for this spam restriction issue within the next year or chicken little is going to fall from the sky and take a giant shit on Bitcoin. There's a couple of ways to do it that involve different levels of increase. The Chinese (mining majority) want an 8mb increase because 8 is a lucky number in China and their bandwidth isn't good enough to support a larger change. Part of the tiny dev team want sidechains to do it because they work for a company that will profit from it. Another part wants to raise the cap some and another part wants to raise it a lot.
Am I close at all and if not what am I missing?
Close but no cigar  The first few sentences are quite correct. You might want to add that the imaginary 100 million users are supposedly unlike the existing majority of Bitcoin holders in that they can't wait to fill up the blockchain with transactions from the plethora of retail use cases at their disposition. The Chinese are not the one who decided on the 8mb increase and in fact most of them are apparently against it. The lucky 8mb number is actually a story made up by Mike Hearn and Gavin to try to sell the increase to miners. Suffice to say it didn't quite work out as planned. As for sidechains they are not an actual scaling solution so that statement doesn't hold. I can't be bothered with giving you a full rundown but this reddit post provide so needed context if you care: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3ilbit/mike_hearn_responds_to_xt_critics/cuhpil1 |
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Into the 240's I see. Nice little surprise, but where are the double digit couns we were promised as a result of Hearn's (FAIL) XT plan? Bitcoin is not going anywhere & will not be destroyed by a pair of power hungry ass holes.
No, Bitcoin is going to fade into irrelevance because of a 7 transaction per minute network capacity unless someone (perhaps a pair of power hungry assholes) can save it. don't confuse a symptom with the disease. Maybe you should sell us some blockspace to help with the problem How's that supposed to work? How many "blockspace" do I get for 1 bitcoin?
Easy. 1/21,000,000th of the whole chain. I answered your question, now you answer mine. If I'm not buying space on the blockchain when I'm buying bitcoin, what am I buying? |
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11% is not bad. good to have a choice now = XT
when people have to pay 1 USD for a transaction, people can switch to XT easily.
I hope that you understand this argument properly. Paying $1 as a fee for transferring $10M is really a lot. Bitcoin was never designed for very small purchases, and a substantial proposal/implementation is needed for this to happen. I really doubt that even with a big backlog of transactions that the fees would rise up to $1 in a short matter of time. Currently the optimal fee/kb is $0.03. So who's winning, red or blue? I can't tell you guys apart anymore for all the name-calling and tantrums.
It is obvious.  What is a small purchase? a cup of coffee? Where did satoshi specifically say that bitcoin wasn't made to buy coffee but to buy I don't know... Xboxes? where is the cutoff from "this belongs in the blockchain but this doesn't because its too small"?? Supply vs. demand. If you can't pay the fee required to secure the Bitcoin blockchain then it is likely your transaction don't belong there. |
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We are fucked with XT and we are fucked with 1MB blocks. Solution: A reasonable blocksize increase with blockstream. Unfortunately it seems you have to choose between decentralization of nodes or low fees for everyone (at the expense of centralizing the nodes).
 Everything fine over here... |
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2016: 1MB endures, aided by Alts, Sidechains, and Lightning
Wet dreams of an Alt-Shill. Dream on ... Why won't you keep your useless blatter for your little pet forum over there? |
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There you go again, with your process objection meta. I'll fetch your fainting couch because in an unprecedented outbreak of ill manners, several Bitcoiners (having uncharacteristically strong opinions) have expressed themselves vehemently!
Clearly my attempt to cajole some kind of topical response out of you failed. It's clear that you're against XT, and have grievances with how the whole project was brought about. You might use more pointed terms, I suppose. May I ask where you stand on the underlying issue of what Bitcoin's design goal should be? Do you have an opinion on whether it (on-chain transactions) should be an expensive-to-use settlement network or a cheap-to-use payment network? Personally I feel the latter case - direct mass adoption - would be better if it can be technically supported, which I'm not sure about. If mass adoption is not possible I'm left doubting a settlement network alone is viable. That's my current feel on the matter, I'd be interested to hear what you think. Myself I'd be interested to know why you apparently feel mass adoption of retail consumer is the only way leading to success for Bitcoin? You do understand we're trying to build an economy and not the next big start-up? |
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Do sidechains require any modification to the Bitcoin protocol?
If they can work with Bitcoin as it is now, what is the problem with them?
They require a softfork that would reintroduce advance scripting functions so that the SPV proofs used to move coins between chains can be recognized by the mainchain. |
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Bitcoin currently has a serious long term fundamental problem; namely the 1 MB blocksize limit that prevents any meaningful growth of the Bitcoin network. The upside potential is actually capped at close to the current transaction rate by the protocol while there remains a very significant downside risk. The risk vs return ratio is makes very little sense at current prices. Until the blocksize issue is resolved in a manner that allows for the Bitcoin network to grow, I remain a bear.
TIL transaction growth = Bitcoin growth Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, Bitcoin has more appeal than just as a payment network? We're now sitting pretty at an average of 350kb blocks, where is this demand for growth you speak of? Well you can either use past data to predict the future and identify trends and be prepared in advance, thus averting a disaster or you can remain ignorant until you get hit by the train by which time the problem will already be a major issue. Sure, let's do that. So... past data shows transaction increase in the last year and a half but... where is the Bitcoin growth |
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Which is?
Meanwhile some people are expecting that somehow a massive amount of nodes (thanks to the artificially kept small blockchain) will be run on a network that nobody can really use but a few niche areas.
Basically, who will care running a node at all? Oh... that... well..it would be a legitimate point if it made any sense at all..unfortunately it doesn't. Without nodes there's no Bitcoin and without Bitcoin there is no payment channels, sidechains, off-chain services, nothing. So basically by running a node you are not only supporting Bitcoin but all of its ecosystem. Imagine when nodes get commoditized and every one can set easily set up one and maintain it a little to no cost, the ultimate decentralization! Of course that can't happen if you bloat the blockchain so much that you'd need specialized hardware/datacenters to run it. Look I'm not here to argue that decentralization + having a maximum of full nodes and security is not important. It is and I do care about that a lot just like you do. But how does that solve any problem about bloating? The bloat will just go elsewhere btw and there will still need people to run sidechain nodes with massive bloat. Another thing, how do you expect to keep most of the miners on the main chain if most transaction volume happen on sidechains? How do you know if a sidechain will, at some point, become much more profitable to mine than the main chain? You don't, just like myself but risk is very real because big transaction volume = big potential transaction fees. You should think about the consequences of this very probable scenario. I'm not sure what is this sidechain nodes you refer to... Bloat is dealt with by layers on top with more efficient ways to deal with transactions, see Lightning as an example. The important thing is not to externalize the cost of this bloat to the Bitcoin nodes which are not rewarded for their work. I don't know about Lightning but sidechains requires nodes just like the bitcoin blockchain. If merged-mining is enabled miners can effortlessly mine different chains at once (like they do with Namecoin atm)
I guess it could work but that's a big if. AFAIK sidechains use the same nodes as Bitcoin. Note it might have been a bad idea of me to mention sidechains since they are not a proper scaling method.. I'm sure there are a couple of magic tricks they can pull given a little more trust added but they are still limited themselves by the block size. |
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Which is?
Meanwhile some people are expecting that somehow a massive amount of nodes (thanks to the artificially kept small blockchain) will be run on a network that nobody can really use but a few niche areas.
Basically, who will care running a node at all? Oh... that... well..it would be a legitimate point if it made any sense at all..unfortunately it doesn't. Without nodes there's no Bitcoin and without Bitcoin there is no payment channels, sidechains, off-chain services, nothing. So basically by running a node you are not only supporting Bitcoin but all of its ecosystem. Imagine when nodes get commoditized and every one can set easily set up one and maintain it a little to no cost, the ultimate decentralization! Of course that can't happen if you bloat the blockchain so much that you'd need specialized hardware/datacenters to run it. Look I'm not here to argue that decentralization + having a maximum of full nodes and security is not important. It is and I do care about that a lot just like you do. But how does that solve any problem about bloating? The bloat will just go elsewhere btw and there will still need people to run sidechain nodes with massive bloat. Another thing, how do you expect to keep most of the miners on the main chain if most transaction volume happen on sidechains? How do you know if a sidechain will, at some point, become much more profitable to mine than the main chain? You don't, just like myself but risk is very real because big transaction volume = big potential transaction fees. You should think about the consequences of this very probable scenario. I'm not sure what is this sidechain nodes you refer to... Bloat is dealt with by layers on top with more efficient ways to deal with transactions, see Lightning as an example. The important thing is not to externalize the cost of this bloat to the Bitcoin nodes which are not rewarded for their work. If merged-mining is enabled miners can effortlessly mine different chains at once (like they do with Namecoin atm) |
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Bitcoin currently has a serious long term fundamental problem; namely the 1 MB blocksize limit that prevents any meaningful growth of the Bitcoin network. The upside potential is actually capped at close to the current transaction rate by the protocol while there remains a very significant downside risk. The risk vs return ratio is makes very little sense at current prices. Until the blocksize issue is resolved in a manner that allows for the Bitcoin network to grow, I remain a bear.
TIL transaction growth = Bitcoin growth Have you considered that maybe, just maybe, Bitcoin has more appeal than just as a payment network? We're now sitting pretty at an average of 350kb blocks, where is this demand for growth you speak of? |
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