Sorry blockchain is just a simple sequential file. Just have a look in the directory on your computer, and you will see it.

So what do you guys think blockchain is? I don't mean Bitcoin, and I don't mean the software layers superimposed on a blockchain, and of course decentralisation has nothing to do with blockchain.

Well as an English outsider, I think people are getting smarter. They voted for Brexit, they voted for Trump, and other countries have similar changes. They have got the globalists on the run, and they are starting to question the actions of Big Pharma, and the wasted money in health don't-care and war mongering. I see the dollar is on the way up again, and I really hope that Trump gets the support he needs to rebuild the US infrastructure, and get people working again.

Thanks for that post Lauda - I guess I started this thread as a sort of rant about the confusion between Bitcoin and blockchains. I guess such a forum would do nothing to help that. The other reason followed a post about monetising the operation of a full node, and there seem to be very few ways to do this. I guess I hoped that this sort of thing could be discussed on such a board, but on reflection, one would probably get a broader set of responses on the tech board.

re: the privacy matter -  surely one could discover this by looking at the IP in most cases.

The fictional hype that surrounds it, and seems to be in most of the "information" pages describing or attacking it.

Well that is true - without blockchain there would be no Interet, because a web page is transmitted as a sequenced packet stream ie. a blockchain.

That's a great reply, and it covers all of my points. I'm really grateful for that - thanks.

The board could be viewable by all, but you would need to prove that you ran a full node to start and reply to threads on the board.
It might offer an encouragement to some members to host full nodes. It could also be useful for discussions about running full nodes with a reduced incidence of sig spamming in the threads.

It's something that I've thought about, and commented on in this forum. The only thing I've seen so far, is the sale of a full current blockchain on a memory stick. This saves time for people starting a node with a slow Internet connection.

A start would be a "club" for node operators. Maybe there could be a closed board on Bitcoin talk. In fact I might suggest that.

The OP was asking about blockchain and not about Bitcoin.

I appreeciate that it allows me to use what many consider to be a superior wallet, and it gives me access to the blockchain to investigate transactions. I can also see the benefit in providing an additional copy of the complete blockchain for the node community. But what about my contribution ( if any ) to block confirmations, and the reduction of forks in the chain. If I give a few examples, please could you tell me if I am correct in my assumptions. In all cases I will assume a simple chain of two blocks A and B as a start point. Any blocks added at the same height will have the next sequential letter ie. C and then D. If a fork occurs then records at the same height in each fork will be referred to as C1 and C2 etc. The number will identify the fork.

Case 1
I receive a new block and I verify it including the contained transactions. My blockchain now contains the 3 valid blocks A,B and C

Case 2
This follows the case 1 situation. I receive a new block that appears valid, but is built on block B, and not on block C. I now have two blocks C1 and C2, and C1 is stored in my blockchain. I ignore block C2.

Case3
This follows case 2. I receive a new valid block that is built on C1. I add this to my blockchain and call it block D, and I throw away block C2

Case 4
This follows case 2. I receive a new valid block that is built on C2. I delete C1 from my blockchain, and I add C2 and D. I discard C1

What happens to my mempool, as it may contain a mix of transactions from blocks C1, C2 and D. Do I take the mempool from the miner who created block D? Now, how am I contributing to the confirmation process? It seems to me that I would only have some influence in the unlikely event that a miner picked up my files.

Well first, that has nothiung to do with blockchain concepts, but it is a Bitcoin problem.

I'm not sure it has solved that problem. If you believe that block generation times are too long, but they cannot be reduced because of disruption to the blockchain recording process, and you believe that long transaction confirmation times will lead to a drift away from Bitcoin, then it would appear that the BGP is still present as a problem.

Do you mean Europe or the EU - don't forget that Russia is a European country, but not a member of the EU. The EU is trying to suck in some non-European countries to try to prop up the moribund DoucheBank. Hopefully we ( the UK ) can get out of the EU fairly fast, and start to rebuild our economy after the destruction and theft that resulted from membership of the EU.

The EU was only started as a stage in the path to globalism, and to reduce the cost of German exports. Now that the world is turning away from globalism, the EU should be broken up quickly to allow it member "states" to rebuild their countries.

Blockchain is massive hype at the moment. A blockchain is just a simple sequential file with a couple of fields to maintain the sequence. I don't believe that it's even relational, the inter-record relationships are established by the Core software and the wallet as I understand it. SegWit and side chains create some other interesting relationships, but those are Bitcoin specific, and not a basic component of a blockchain.

I suggest we stop calling it the blockchain, and call it a blocktrain. It's a whole load of carriages pulled by an engine ( the Bitcoin Core).

POS - point of sale is already contained in Bitcoin as long as you don't try to convert to fiat, and you trust that the transaction will be confirmed.

POS - proof of stake can't really be used imho until all the coins are mined.

There are some great replies inthis thread.

The impression that I get is that there are a number of objectives that have been discussed ( blocksize is a possible solution and not an objective).

- Speed up transaction confirmation for end users
- Reduce bloat in transactions
- Reduce the number of records required for each transaction
- Maintain the de-centralisation of mining.

At the moment block generation time is too long, and it can result in transactions taking up to an hour to be confirmed. Bitcoin won't remain competitive if this continues, or gets worse. I read the replies to my thread suggesting a reduction in the generation time, and I am grateful for the informed comments, and I accept the reasons for not reducing the time in the current environment. I think it is desirable for better minds than mine to address this problem to see if there can be a way to reduce the generation time.

Reducing bloat in transactions - one way to do this is to REDUCE the blocksize, maybe to 500K, and combine this with faster block generation. Obviously this is subject to the constraints mentioned above. SegWit should be  great help with this as well.

Reducing the number of records - there was an interesting suggestion about combining micro-payments  into one transaction within a wallet. It would be useful if this could be done with a zero fee transaction, but would miners be prepared to support this. There is not the same priority for the confirmation of these consolidations, so maybe they could wait for anything up to a week, Listing them in a consolidatation pool after they have been verified could give miners a handy alternative to mining empty or near empty blocks. This would help to speed up future payments from that wallet, and it would reduce the number of transactions waiting to go into a block. You wouldn't need a fork for this, as miners not supporting it would just ignore the second pool, and those who did support it would create blocks that were valid under the current rules - is this true, or am I misunderstanding the block filling process?

Maintaining the decentralisation of mining. I accept the point that reducing the block generation time can create "churning" of the blockchain, and would give larger miners an advantage when the block generation time is minimal. If it were possible to enforce a minimum time for the generation of  a new block ( say one minute) then surely that would cut out much of the churning, and may even attract a few small miners to return to mining.

Side chains are also beneficial, and maybe we can explore the way to increase their use more effectively. Maybe all faucet payments should be moved onto a specialist side chain for example.

Banks have adjusted.

- I get free instant transfers to and from my account, as long as the other account is a UK sterling account
- I get 1.25% interest on a savings account, and I have instant withdrawal from that account
- I have up to 2 months to pay for goods purchased with my credit card, and I get a 0.5% cashback credit on most purchases.

Bitcoin can't compete with this, and Bitcoin payments take longer to confirm. So why do I think Bitcoin is so good? It's international, and it isn't based on a fiat currency.

Are banks worried about Bitcoin? I suspect not. I think they see the tested technology as something they can adopt to their advantage to save costs and gain more control. The new Royal Mint Gold shows the way governments and banks will move to force/persuade customers to switch from cash.

The blockchain is just a simple sequential file with some fancy linking between records. Please don't push the myth that "The Blockchain" is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a sophisticated library of software routines, and a peer group that agrees to replicate and maintain copies of that file. The blockchain is just a small part of the system, and the concept can exist in many other forms on different systems. The idea of a distributed ledger has nothing to do with the blockchain design. A manuscript can exist as a single typed document, or copies can be stored in many millions of locations around the world. Either way, it is still just a manuscript.

Wow - I searched for my address in Google, and this is the result count.

About 1,890 results (0.47 seconds)

It's a good job I don't do anything that I shouldn't.

Thanks for that explanation, I think I start to understand the problem. I need to work out the exact sequence of events from transaction submission to block acceptance. I'll do some reading and research, and perhaps I can return to this.