...

[redsn0w]

I don't know if it was already posted, but this is the maaku7 opinion :

Bitcoin is already centralized. Do you realize that a cabal of a half-dozen people (I'm not talking about the developers) have the power, even if they have yet to exercise it, to arbitrarily control bitcoin? That this power also rests with anyone who controls the networks used by this cabal, which is presently confined to a small number of datacenters? That if they were in the US all it would take is a couple of national security letters for full control over the bitcoin network? I assure you the Chinese government has much stronger strings to pull.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3h7eei/greg_luke_adam_if_xt_takes_over_and_wins_the/cu53eq3

[bitboy11]

If there were Bitcoin police him and the XT people would be the #1 suspects for the mass spam attack. Never gonna be able to prove it 100% cause I'm sure they know how to remain completely anonymous.

Fortunately the mass spam attack didn't hurt anyone so it's not a big deal. Actually provided good data that substantiated the consensus we don't need bigger blocks.

Maybe I'm wrong but you sound like you are either a bigshot miner or you're a blockstream guy.

[ColderThanIce]

Took that way out of context, I was referring to the massive spam attack which is not how things usually work by any means. The increased tx fees helped clear out the backlog during the attack.

Currently on average less than 0.4 mb is used per block. Once blocks are 1 mb then dust, spam, gambling, faucets, etc. will be gradually forced off chain, over 50% of transactions are of these types so it will give legit transactions ALOT more room. Then once that is existed fees will slowly rise.

Rising fees is crucial to the future of sustainability of Bitcoin, it will be the only earnings miners get for running and securing the network. Without transaction fees Bitcoin would become weak enough to destroy.

I'm not sure where you're getting that average block size of less than 0.4 MB from, but from what I've seen most blocks are between 0.5 and 0.85 MB in size, so the block size limit of 1MB isn't going to cut it forever. Even though a decent portion of the transactions are gambling, faucets, etc the network is growing, and in turn, there are more transactions per second. With a larger block size limit, the network will be able to accommodate growth in the future. I'm supportive of 8MB blocks because the network will need larger blocks eventually, and like Quickseller said, just because there's an 8MB limit doesn't mean every block will be 8MB in size.

[redsn0w]

...

Rising fees is crucial to the future of sustainability of Bitcoin, it will be the only earnings miners get for running and securing the network. Without transaction fees Bitcoin would become weak enough to destroy.

It should be the contrary, if the fee will raise the people will move on and search another thing. For a real 'sustainability" (not really the correct word) the fee should rest low  and the value (usd) grow.

[fryarminer]

Please use your eyes and read this: Bitcoin transaction fees go up when transaction data volume goes up, the blockchain functions perfectly normal regardless of transaction # or size. This is what the Bitcoin core developers already agree on.

ignoring everything I wrote and posting a red herring is aggravating. Ignorance is the only reason this debate still exists. I will no longer respect people who spread this misinformation.

Fees work to eliminate spam. But when we have a large quantity of genuine users making genuine transactions, what are fees going to do then? When you are paying 0.1 BTC fees and still can't get your transaction accepted from sheer volume, you will quickly see that fees don't fix the problem, they just aggravate it.

[fryarminer]

Maybe you're right about fees. Let's put it in perspective. California charges $0.10 for one plastic bag. Now nobody uses plastic bags anymore.
If BTC fees are forced to be high, nobody will use BTC anymore. They will look for an altcoin with lesser fees. So maybe the blockchain will not be used anymore. And as a consequence the value of BTC will tank.

[Fishbones78]

I'm kind of hoping XT crashes and burns. If a wave occurs and the majority of us move to it, some people are going to be losing a serious amount of money. The current Bitcoin would be worthless once it gets to the 75% hashing power. I don't think it will happen anyway, everything is running smoothly at the moment (right?).

[redsn0w]

...

Rising fees is crucial to the future of sustainability of Bitcoin, it will be the only earnings miners get for running and securing the network. Without transaction fees Bitcoin would become weak enough to destroy.

It should be the contrary, if the fee will raise the people will move on and search another thing. For a real 'sustainability" (not really the correct word) the fee should rest low  and the value (usd) grow.

You don't have much faith in the power of Bitcoin then. I know plenty of people that would pay 20-30% fees on thousands of dollars for the privilege of using Bitcoin. The anonymity, security, efficiency, and speed makes it incredibly valuable.

I know I lot of people will stop use bitcoin if the fee 'would raise' due sum circumstances, they will simple search another way to transfer value. I think you know than bitcoin is not even the unique cryptocurrency in the circulation and it is obvious that in the next 'years' it will be more & more...


more competition  = better service  (with lowest fee).

[Liquid71]

There is so much misinformation or baseless assumptions in this thread it difficult where to start, but I think this would be a good place.

If there were Bitcoin police him and the XT people would be the #1 suspects for the mass spam attack. Never gonna be able to prove it 100% cause I'm sure they know how to remain completely anonymous.

Fortunately the mass spam attack didn't hurt anyone so it's not a big deal. Actually provided good data that substantiated the consensus we don't need bigger blocks.

No, the number 1 suspects is not Gavin but rather the miners themselves (mining pools). What better way to increase revenue than to create an artificial catastrophe, forcing everyone from developers to the users and everyone in between to re-evaluate the fee structure to put higher fee's in place.


I dont know that you know this (based on another post of yours), but miners can be selective what gets propagated and what does not. It's "encouraged" by the devs (Luke Jr's words) for them to do this.

It wouldn't make sense for the miners to spend money to increase the small revenue they get from tx fees. The higher fees only lasted during the spam tx flood it wasn't a permanent increase in their revenue. Also the mining pools are the ones worried about increased orphan blocks with an increased block size, so hard to see the logic in doing the spam flood of tx during the block size debate.

The first "spam attack" was a stress test done by coinwallet.eu  http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-network-survives-stress-test/

So the first tx spam was a stress test, not sure who was behind the second wave of tx spam but I sincerely doubt it had anything to do with the miners.

[TheMage]

There is so much misinformation or baseless assumptions in this thread it difficult where to start, but I think this would be a good place.

If there were Bitcoin police him and the XT people would be the #1 suspects for the mass spam attack. Never gonna be able to prove it 100% cause I'm sure they know how to remain completely anonymous.

Fortunately the mass spam attack didn't hurt anyone so it's not a big deal. Actually provided good data that substantiated the consensus we don't need bigger blocks.

No, the number 1 suspects is not Gavin but rather the miners themselves (mining pools). What better way to increase revenue than to create an artificial catastrophe, forcing everyone from developers to the users and everyone in between to re-evaluate the fee structure to put higher fee's in place.


I dont know that you know this (based on another post of yours), but miners can be selective what gets propagated and what does not. It's "encouraged" by the devs (Luke Jr's words) for them to do this.

It wouldn't make sense for the miners to spend money to increase the small revenue they get from tx fees. The higher fees only lasted during the spam tx flood it wasn't a permanent increase in their revenue. Also the mining pools are the ones worried about increased orphan blocks with an increased block size, so hard to see the logic in doing the spam flood of tx during the block size debate.

The first "spam attack" was a stress test done by coinwallet.eu  http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-network-survives-stress-test/

So the first tx spam was a stress test, not sure who was behind the second wave of tx spam but I sincerely doubt it had anything to do with the miners.

I know that the first one was by coinwallet.eu, I thought we were discussing the second wave here (unidentified individuals)?


Fee structure =! block size increase is my point. turtlehurricane claims it was done in order to secretly lobby for increase block size, and I think its more to do with the fee structure (which really when you boil down to it, these two are not mutually exclusive by nature of the ecosystem and what is being discussed).


Regardless of who is behind it and the intentions, I can say with near 100% certainty that it was done in order to influence economic policy for the Bitcoin network in one way shape or form. I'm of the mindset that Blockchain technology implementations via code are all economic policy. All of Bitcoin is a vast ecosystem, and any changes to the ecosystem (especially code changes) ripples throughout that system.

[Odeyin]

I think BTC should be forked. It should be a whole new updated protocol that is future proof (see quantum proof) and resets the whole miner paradigm. ( back to decentralized mining and away from how it is going more and more centralized going towards those with the resources to take over and control the network.)

[philipma1957]

I don't see why we can't blend bigger block and bigger fees.

a 2mb block ------------- not an 8mb block-----------------  much harder stand here on 2mb


below a bit more fuzzy ---------------

a 0.00005 minimum fee  -----------  or a 0.0001 minimum fee. --------------- or a 0.0002

and if you go lower you wait and wait and wait and wait for confirms

[johnyj]

If you upgrade to XT, then the risk of fork will become higher

[Quickseller]

Increased transaction fees result in less Bitcoin transactions, which helped expedite the clearing of the backlog. There is plenty of room to be more concise with transactions, right now something like 50% of blockchain transactions are gambling. They can send these transactions for basically free since blocks are still only partially filled, in the future once it becomes costly theyll take it off chain. Also we can optimize software to use as little data as possible for transactions. And in general instead of sending around dust people will think more carefully about sending Bitcoin. Kind've like how people don't send 25 cents through western union, they only use it for important things.

So your solution to allowing for Bitcoin to support a larger number of transactions per second is for users to send a smaller number of transactions per second?

I really don't think this is s a very solid argument.

The current TPS limit is somewhere between 2-3 with a  1 MB max block size. Unless you have a way to make transactions smaller while still keeping the same level of security, then the only way for the Bitcoin network to process more then 3 TPS over the long run is to increase the maximum block size to be above 1 MB.

Just because the maximum block size is 8 MB (for example), that does not mean that miners will fill their blocks with 8 MB worth of free transactions.

Took that way out of context, I was referring to the massive spam attack which is not how things usually work by any means. The increased tx fees helped clear out the backlog during the attack.

Currently on average less than 0.4 mb is used per block. Once blocks are 1 mb then dust, spam, gambling, faucets, etc. will be gradually forced off chain, over 50% of transactions are of these types so it will give legit transactions ALOT more room. Then once that is existed fees will slowly rise.

Rising fees is crucial to the future of sustainability of Bitcoin, it will be the only earnings miners get for running and securing the network. Without transaction fees Bitcoin would become weak enough to destroy.

Well once gambling/faucets/ect. are moved entirely off chain (I am not 100% sure this will be a good thing), then the average block size will be smaller, however it will still be growing, and it will eventually grow to close to the current 1 MB limit.

Even as the average block size approaches 1 MB, there will be periods of long delays when there are sudden spikes in traffic (similar to how rush hour works in many cities), which will cause confirmation times to sometimes be very long.

Overall transaction fees do need to increase over the long run. If Bitcoin is limited to 2 TPS, then over the long run, transactions on average, will need to include a tx fee of .0208BTC, which is roughly $5.41 at current exchange rates, and $24.96 at $1,200/btc. The later price is generally going to be more expensive then the likes of Western Union, Money Gram, and Walmart-2-Walmart, while the former would be competitive with W2W, but still very expensive. However if bitcoin is going to truly go mainstream, then it's price will need to dramatically increase (you can't use something to trade hundreds of billions of dollars worth of transactions per day on something that has a market cap of ~$3.7 billion), and once this were to happen, the necessary transaction fee to keep the network similarly secured as it is today would mean that it would be prohibitively expensive to send bitcoin unless you are sending on behalf of many people at the same time (e.g. many people are using off chain transactions).

It should be beyond obvious that the maximum block size needs to be increased. Over the long run it will need to be increased many thousands of times if Bitcoin is going to potentially replace the VISA (and/or MasterCard and/or AMEX) network(s), although this is a very long way away. For now the best course of action is to increase the max block size to 8MB (or some other amount based on consensus), and then continue to increase it over time as the actual average block size increase, as well as based on currently available technology and pricing (e.g. of network equipment, network services, HDD, and RAM).

[kingscrown]

is 51% of network votes to fork, its gonna be forked.
and loads of people will loose money on transfers then.