To those who ask for blocksize increase - are you running a full node?

[hatshepsut93]

A lot of people, mostly newcomers, who are frustrated about current fees are asking for immediate blocksize increase as a solution.

My question is simple - do you run a full node, or are you using a light client or even online wallet? Because rising the blocksize would increase the burden on full nodes - the underlying network that makes Bitcoin so valuable. Asking for blocksize increase is asking volunteers who don't get a single satoshi from their contribution to donate even more resources. Also, decreasing the number of nodes is likely to make Bitcoin less secure and less valuable.

And bonus question: does your wallet support SegWit?

[Jet Cash]

I'm on your side - I run a full node - 0.15.1 , and I do it over public WiFi.

I used to run two - the second one was on a Ubuntu machine, but I decided that it wasn't worth keeping the second one. However, I think I'll reload it, and send my cons onto the Linux wallet. Then I can play with the forked coins via the Windows machine.

ps. I'm the one who thinks blocksizes should be halved, but block generation should be speeded up.

[coolcoinz]

Bitcoin is going forward faster than expected. I guess Satoshi hasn't expected this surge and such increase in the number of transactions.
I'm not running a full node because it takes up too much HDD space and like most people nowadays I'm using an SSD. If I were to run a full node that would cut my usable space in half and since we're getting exponentially more transactions every year it's going to get much harder to run a node even with 1mb blocks. It's really going to become a problem in 2-3 years when you'll need a couple TB to be able to run a node and updating it from 0 will be taking weeks... Not many people will want to run it for free as it is. With larger blocks not many people will be able to.

[bug.lady]

A lot of people, mostly newcomers, who are frustrated about current fees are asking for immediate blocksize increase as a solution.

My question is simple - do you run a full node, or are you using a light client or even online wallet? Because rising the blocksize would increase the burden on full nodes - the underlying network that makes Bitcoin so valuable. Asking for blocksize increase is asking volunteers who don't get a single satoshi from their contribution to donate even more resources. Also, decreasing the number of nodes is likely to make Bitcoin less secure and less valuable.

And bonus question: does your wallet support SegWit?

So maybe the problem is with Bitcoin itself. If you are saying that either nobody can run full nodes OR nobody can use bitcoin (because, frankly, it is UNUSABLE right now), then maybe it was a flawed idea from the beginning.

Actually, when you come to think about it - holding and preserving EVERY transaction happenning in the world indifinitely LONG sounds like a really BAD idea to me now. I don't know why anybody (me included) expected that volume to be managable.

Or maybe say last 1000 blocks should be preserved and all the rest discarded ?

Thank you for your attention

[Lieldoryn]

Why not adjust the block size depending on the load? Bitcoin is becoming more popular and this will inevitably lead to an increase in the number of transactions. A mechanism for increasing the speed of their confirmation is simply necessary. Without this, bitcoin does not have a future. If nothing is done then we can face the fact that bitcoin will give way to someone else. For example bch. I don't want to.

[hatshepsut93]

Why not adjust the block size depending on the load? Bitcoin is becoming more popular and this will inevitably lead to an increase in the number of transactions. A mechanism for increasing the speed of their confirmation is simply necessary. Without this, bitcoin does not have a future. If nothing is done then we can face the fact that bitcoin will give way to someone else. For example bch. I don't want to.

Because miners will rip all the profits while nodes will bear the burden, and this can be used as another vector of attack - by spamming the network with expensive fees, like its happening now, attackers will be able to weaker kick nodes out of the network, making it less decentralized. Bitcoin was created to make it impossible to take down, and with 80% of mining power being already controlled by a single entity, our network of nodes is the last line of defense against attempts to kill or takeover Bitcoin, and I'd say survival is more important than someone's $100 transactions that are most likely sent to an exchange to dump Bitcoin at ATH.

[bug.lady]

Why not adjust the block size depending on the load? Bitcoin is becoming more popular and this will inevitably lead to an increase in the number of transactions. A mechanism for increasing the speed of their confirmation is simply necessary. Without this, bitcoin does not have a future. If nothing is done then we can face the fact that bitcoin will give way to someone else. For example bch. I don't want to.

Because miners will rip all the profits while nodes will bear the burden, and this can be used as another vector of attack - by spamming the network with expensive fees, like its happening now, attackers will be able to weaker kick nodes out of the network, making it less decentralized. Bitcoin was created to make it impossible to take down, and with 80% of mining power being already controlled by a single entity, our network of nodes is the last line of defense against attempts to kill or takeover Bitcoin, and I'd say survival is more important than someone's $100 transactions that are most likely sent to an exchange to dump Bitcoin at ATH.

OK you are advocating survival but it is not constructive: you are saying don't do this and don't do that but you are actually not proposing any solution. I run a bitcoin full node AND at the same time I sometimes have to do a transaction so I think I am entitled to tell you that the disk size is not a problem, while the tx price is a problem and will kill bitcoin is nothing is done - that I can tell you for sure. And I share Lieldoryn's sentiment: I don't want to.

You are saying Bitcoin was created to make it impossible to take down. Well, it doesn't look that way to me

EDIT: if you adjust block size to the number of transactions, miners will NOT rip the profit. It will still be profitable to include every, even a small fee tx compared to NOT including it in a newly mined block. They may reasonably choose not to include only absolutely no fee transactions.

[hatshepsut93]

Why not adjust the block size depending on the load? Bitcoin is becoming more popular and this will inevitably lead to an increase in the number of transactions. A mechanism for increasing the speed of their confirmation is simply necessary. Without this, bitcoin does not have a future. If nothing is done then we can face the fact that bitcoin will give way to someone else. For example bch. I don't want to.

Because miners will rip all the profits while nodes will bear the burden, and this can be used as another vector of attack - by spamming the network with expensive fees, like its happening now, attackers will be able to weaker kick nodes out of the network, making it less decentralized. Bitcoin was created to make it impossible to take down, and with 80% of mining power being already controlled by a single entity, our network of nodes is the last line of defense against attempts to kill or takeover Bitcoin, and I'd say survival is more important than someone's $100 transactions that are most likely sent to an exchange to dump Bitcoin at ATH.

OK you are advocating survival but it is not constructive: you are saying don't do this and don't do that but you are actually not proposing any solution. I run a bitcoin full node AND at the same time I sometimes have to do a transaction so I think I am entitled to tell you that the disk size is not a problem, while the tx price is a problem and will kill bitcoin is nothing is done - that I can tell you for sure. And I share Lieldoryn's sentiment: I don't want to.

You are saying Bitcoin was created to make it impossible to take down. Well, it doesn't look that way to me

EDIT: if you adjust block size to the number of transactions, miners will NOT rip the profit. It will still be profitable to include every, even a small fee tx compared to NOT including it in a newly mined block. They may reasonably choose not to include only absolutely no fee transactions.

How can fees kill Bitcoin? They are only as high as people are willing to pay, it's an open and dynamic bidding on blockspace - if people would start leaving Bitcoin because they don't want to pay high fees, fees will go down because there will be less competition for blockspace.

Disk space is only a part of full node resource requirements, it also consumes CPU processing power, RAM, bandwidth, disk reading and writing. If you will increase the blocksize, all of those factors will increase in O(n), weaker nodes will be knocked off the network, more powerful nodes will notice that Bitcoin takes so many resources that it's impossible to run it in the background while they run their programs, and people who buy powerful computers are doing this for a reason - either work or entertainment, so they will be turning off their node software, which will result in lower uptimes. And all this negative stuff won't solve the scaling, it will merely kick the can down the road and fees will be high again in short time.

[buwaytress]

OK you are advocating survival but it is not constructive: you are saying don't do this and don't do that but you are actually not proposing any solution. I run a bitcoin full node AND at the same time I sometimes have to do a transaction so I think I am entitled to tell you that the disk size is not a problem, while the tx price is a problem and will kill bitcoin is nothing is done - that I can tell you for sure. And I share Lieldoryn's sentiment: I don't want to.

You are saying Bitcoin was created to make it impossible to take down. Well, it doesn't look that way to me

EDIT: if you adjust block size to the number of transactions, miners will NOT rip the profit. It will still be profitable to include every, even a small fee tx compared to NOT including it in a newly mined block. They may reasonably choose not to include only absolutely no fee transactions.

I don't think he's saying Bitcoin was created to make itself invincible... I doubt its creators even had any high hopes of it becoming anything resembling what it looks like today.

Anyway, your point stands. Disk size is not a problem for you, but even for me - and I'm still very much in the upper middle class, the disk size requirement already prohibits me from running a node even if I wanted to. But disk size is one problem, and not the problem of scaling.

OP: And on Segwit, good question. Big blockers or not, why aren't people using it more? I ask myself also why I don't and am unfortunately bound to use non-SW for as long as I need to sell Bitcoin. I can't yet find a single avenue I trust that uses Segwit.

[bug.lady]

OP: And on Segwit, good question. Big blockers or not, why aren't people using it more? I ask myself also why I don't and am unfortunately bound to use non-SW for as long as I need to sell Bitcoin. I can't yet find a single avenue I trust that uses Segwit.

OK, than maybe I can suggest something. Currently both the popular hardware wallets support segwit. I moved all my funds recently from the cold wallets I created years ago to the hardware wallet I bought (to segwit addresses). While I obviously had to pay regular transaction fees for all the transactions involved (not the lower segwit fee, I mean, because the initiating address was non-segwit), it was a one-time payment that I decided to pay.

Now I am good to go and use segwit.