No-one's really talking about scaling, you've all been talking about transaction capacity. Which is not scaling.


Segwit is not a scaling solution, it increases transaction capacity, and lays the groundwork for only some types of future scaling, which are not part of the Segwit fork

Barrycoin is not a scaling solution, it increases transaction capacity, and also changes the Segwit implementation details too, apparently (not interested in how, tbh)




If you're going to start a thread about scaling solutions, is there any way that people could talk about them, you're all off-topic (including this meta on-topic post)

Sounds pretty spurious.

Keynes wrote that inflationary currencies benefit manufacturers, as the value of their capital outlay for production is always exceeded by the price they can expect when they bring their goods to market. Deflationary currency environments can cause uncertainty for manufacturers, as the value of the money they spend on capital outlay for production might be more than the produced goods, due to the money itself gaining more market value than the manufacturer can add value to their materials as a result of the manufacturing process. Keynes was essentially a corporate fascist at heart, this economic paradigm benefited the dominant industrial entities most of all. And not really anyone else.


So, revolution? Not really. Or maybe, in a way.

The outcome will be to push the low cost, high volume, manufactured obsolescence grade of goods out of the market. There's little value for manufacturers in chasing the lowest common denominator in a price deflation environment. But it's still not a revolution, or only in the sense that we'll be going back to the days of high quality goods that are passed from grandparents to grandchildren, because of the inherent scarcity of goods that price deflation engenders.

The information age will be manifestly kicking the ass of all those who pay no heed to it's theme: information is the 21st commodity

Do you know?
Is it true?
Is it false?
What does it mean?
What are the consequences?
How does it change the way we evaluate what we already knew, or believed we knew?


It's a thing, this information game.

32.5% are already signaling BIP 141 Segwit fork, so it shouldn't be too hard to get them to switch to BIP 148 ..... but it hasn't happened yet, of course.


Very succinct summary of the situation. The soft fork nature of BIP148 causing re-orgs in the legacy chain really puts the BIP 148 chain in a very strong position, providing it edges closer and closer to 50% of the overall Bitcoin hashrate. And the hashrate could be very prone to moving in that direction as a result.

Yeah, you're right, it's actually 0.05%. My bad.

BIP148 is a multi-layered force majeur. The effect being leveraged is the protectionist tendencies of the miners, appealing to their desire to protect the value of BTC on the markets. The more smoothly BIP148 activates, and the quicker the 1MB chain is swallowed up by the BIP148 chain, the less disruption there will be in the BTC price. All very motivating for miners and users alike.


Segwit BIP148 could easily take a majority of users with it, causing the market price of the 1MB chain to drop. There's no point mining a blockchain with no users, although fiat money could be used to pump the 1MB chain up of course (to wit, Ethereum has no users, and a huge market cap to match.... strange huh).

This is because the 1MB chain would be at a serious practical disadvantage: the transaction capacity that (supposedly) forms the crux of the whole blocksize debate. The BIP148 chain would have at least 2 times the on-chain capacity (so ~600,000 transactions per day) and the 1MB chain would still have only 300,000 transactions per day. And Lightning would kick off pretty quickly on the BIP148 chain also, so both these things together, combined with pre-existing popularity with users, could easily make the BIP148 chain more popular to use, as Lightning on a BTC based chain could send utility into the stratosphere, bricks and mortar shops could suddenly accept BTC over Lightning incredibly easily and smoothly.

Those factors combined would put alot of pressure on the 1MB chain miners, especially if the BIP148 chain became more popular to mine and on the markets. Fiat money can be used to pump either chain, but the pump would be more believably driven by real, distributed demand (i.e. real people acting in concert to buy) in the case of the BIP148 chain.

And once BIP148 mining hashrate is higher than the 1MB chain's hashrate, it's game over for the 1MB chain. The 2 chains are compatible, as a result of Segwit being a soft fork. A minority BIP148 hashrate causes a chain split because of this, but a minority hashrate for 1MB causes the 1MB chain to get orphaned out of existance.


It's a high wire strategy that Shaolinfry is employing, for sure. But it could well work, I can't help but admire the boldness and determinism, but it really needs that majority or super majority user support. I think it's sitting somewhere around 30% or 40% of full nodes right now, but that's majority people just using the version string comment, which I don't believe would actually work to activate the BIP148 fork too smoothly. It needs 50%+ nodes to run the actual BIP148 compliant Bitcoin node software to stand a chance. I hope it works, but I''m on the fence right now.

And Bitcoin is now 5% of Gold's market cap. Not bad.

Better yet, Bitcoin is something like 150% of silver's market cap. Don't understand what happened to that story TBH, saw no reporting of it anywhere

It's not unlikely, but not definite either, that miners mining on those pools who aren't supporting UASF will switch their miners to the pools that do support it.

It makes sense, as they'd protect the value of BTC on the exchanges far better this way, by making a minority Segwit chain the majority chain, forcing the minority legacy chain miners to accept the new chain (BIP148 strangles non-BIP148 supporting block solutions at birth, the anti-Segwit miners really would have no choice ). Current support is at ~32.5 % hashrate for Segwit BIP141, BIP148 would need another 17.5% of miners on non-Segwit pools to really make the fork viable.

---

I'm not sure I really think that setting a dated deadline of August 1st to UASF is the most sensible way to do it. The softfork needs 50%+ hashrate to do it anything like safely, so why not use the hashrate as the activating parameter? I think Shaolinfry (BIP148 programmer) is being too aggressive, and remember folks, that's coming from me.

But user support among nodes on the Bitcoin network is growing. I might reconsider this position, and take the aggressive stance, if user support grew beyond 50%. Certainly if it were as high as 66% or 75%.

Even Segwit is probably a compromise too far, 4MB is x4 the blockszie we have now, and the Bitcoin network is not exhibiting a healthy trend in the node count even with today's 1MB blocks.

All this really demonstrates is that the suits are desperate (I'll refrain from using expressions like "hell bent", lol) to push the biggest blocks they possibly can no matter what, even if the earliest opportunity is 6 months away. Gee, I wonder whether the 8MB Barrycoin gets all 8MB spammed up straight away, and we get the same suits and their troll army coming back saying "so, 32MB blocks then, ya?". It was introduced as an anti spam limit for, oh I dunno, a reason, maybe?

Forget it. Bitcoin is what it is because the Bitcoin transaction network is decentralised, period. Take that away, and we have miner ruled Fiat 2.0.

The answer's pretty obvious.

With 2 mutually irreconcilable sides, there must be a fork whereby both sides can continue in peace on separate blockchains. An agreement, or a technical safeguard, to allow each other to continue peacefully is essential to that plan succeeding.

What's your reasoning for saying that hard-fork Segwit doesn't prevent ASIC boost, pereira?

As far as I'm aware, Segwit 8MB hard fork (i.e. 2MB base + 6 MB witness, aka Barrycoin) is exactly what it sounds like, a hard fork of the Bitcoin Core Segwit soft fork that includes a 2MB base blocksize and 6MB witness blocks.

Well, I hope you all have fun with your Bitcoin fork. I'll be selling my Barrycoins, TYVM


Re-centralisation for the win, lol

[thumps cognition]

What makes you think that 2 MB base + 6 MB witness blocks aren't going to get filled up to the 8MB max very quickly? That's a potential 40GB+ of new blockchain per month, 360GB per year.

Are you stupid? Because it's either me or you that is

*sigh*

There is no point in variable blocksize, because there's no way of stopping it being turned into "gigablocks by midnight", your caricature of preference when it comes to making a point, seeing as you've got no valid arguments against the fact that variable blocksize is easily gamed, hence your moratoirum on that argument in your so-called discussion thread.

And my argument, that you didn't anticipate having to censor, was that allowing such tiny increases is pointless anyway. It's not the size of the increase that makes the slightest bit of difference, it's the actual method you're arguing for, "market driven" variability in blocksize.

See if this can penetrate the thickness of your skull: the market includes people that don't like Bitcoin, and want it to become centralised and fail. Those people will push the blocksize as high as possible no matter what cost to them, and the more well financed such opponenets are, the more likely they are to throw every resource they have at raising that blocksize to the absolute max.

Hence, blocksize should always be a programmed constant, with step changes, sure, but a programmed constant, just like the coin supply. Now, argue that (irrefutable) point, or shut your mouth

You're wrong.

You may as well pull out Keynsian economics arguments in favour of making the 21 million BTC supply variable too. It's been explained to you a million and 1 times why variable blocksizes are not a sensible design, but you put your fingers in your ears and start shouting about variable blocksizes again, in a vain attempt to wish all the problems with that idea away.

Variable blocksizes do not have any valid design, you tried to make the design valid by making the variability neglible, and therefore pointless. If, and let me repeat, if, someone can design a variable blocksize algorithm that's actually going to work in this inconveniently real world, by all means, make the case. But in the meantime, seeing as no valid design exists, please be quiet

This is often said, but it's not true.


The mempool wouldn't exist if unconfirmed transactions didn't serve a useful purpose; it's all about setting the price of transactions per byte. Unconfirmed transactions are dropped from the mempool in a rolling 1 week window, but it's really easy to fill up the mempool while the window is still open.

There's nothing anyone can do to stop the mempool filling up in an unsustainable way, all you need is just 1 Bitcoin output, and you can send the same output again and again and again from one address to the next ad infinitum, totally spamming the mempool. Some of the spam attacks literally were exactly that, the same BTC sent in a massive chain of thousands of unconfirmed transactions (way to make it obvious)

Have fun with your 8MB BarryCoin (it's not 2MB, it's 2 MB + 6 MB extra for witness blocks)

So, everyone should just make their own personalised Bitcoin, with exactly the rules and limits they want, "because decentralise all the things" ?


Do it. I'm sure everyone will be accepting DooMADCoin and CarltonCoin without question, they'll audit our code themselves, just a quick 5 minute job before they trade with us for the first time ever, and they'll keep their "money" with all the other IndividualCoins thye get from everyone else.


You're not very smart for someone who tries to behave like they're relevant in this debate. The market can choose what it wants, and a good standard, whether it's money or any other economic good, is something the market frequently settles on, however long that standard lasts for. And standards are, wait for it.......... inherently centralised, by definition.

Bitcoin is a paradox, a centralised standard for decentralising money. Cry onto your Ayn Rand pillowcases, why don't ya

These comments should be serving simultaneously as Wences Cesares' resignation letter to PayPal, because in a world where 1 BTC was worth $1 million, guess how much PayPal will be worth?

BBC reporter, I disagree with your analysis.

Firstly, Bitcoin Unlimited displayed little evidence of being grass roots (i.e. user) supported at all. There were alot of frequent (and vocal) BU proponents talking anonymously both here and on reddit, but real world proponents, even in the corporate world of Bitcoin, were few and far between.

Secondly, grass roots, user-led movements are those which hold the real balance of power in Bitcoin, it is that model of power distribution (i.e. the decentralised network of Bitcoin software nodes) that even makes Bitcoin such a brilliant concept to begin with, the Bittorrent of money, if you will.

And so, the suits have very little clout (power) to force their will on this situation, Satoshi deliberately designed Bitcoin such that powerful outsiders (or insiders for that matter) would find it very difficult to acquire enough power to change Bitcoin at will.

All that can be done is to convince Bitcoin users that any changes proposed make sense for them (and the value of their BTC). Anything that seems in any way contrary to that is not going to see alot of support on the Bitcoin network, and that is reflected in the low popularity of Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited (all supported by the suits and corporations, all of which failed).

Segwit 8MB (i.e. 2MB base + the 6MB need for Segwit) as proposed by Silbert and DCG is too much when Bitcoin nodes have rested at about 6500 for so long now. We really need something to boost that number, and even the Segwit 4MB proposal from Bitcoin Core developers may harm (and can do nothing to help) the number of Bitcoin nodes on the Bitcoin network. Maybe Lightning Network rollout will help improve the Bitcoin node count, it should in theory.

I put so much emphasis on the number of Bitcoin network nodes because that metric is most vital to Bitcoin's dollar value, as that is what allows Bitcoin to survive as peer-2-peer digital gold. The decentralised network is the fundamental essence of what makes Bitcoin what it is, and why it's becoming so valuable on the exchanges in 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014 & 2017 (and more to come...). All Bitcoiners really need to understand why this is so, as the value of your BTC is backed, not by government, law, gold or silver, it is backed by your fellow humans forming an unbreakable chain of cryptographic trust. It's called the Bitcoin network, join today.