Bitcoin under attack!

[HCLivess]

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=60days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

block size limit = 1 mb
300 kb to go

[Metadextrous]

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=60days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

block size limit = 1 mb
300 kb to go

What will happen if the limit reached? And also is a big block size a problem?

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=60days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

block size limit = 1 mb
300 kb to go

What will happen if the limit reached? And also is a big block size a problem?

No one knows what can happen if we hit the limit. Some say nothing will hapen, other's say the consequences can be "catastrophic", which is why they support Gavin with the blocksize increase to buy time for a lack of a better solution.

[alani123]

Nothing is under attack. Someone was probably spending great amounts of BTC in transaction fees to put some pressure in the block size debate. IMO, if that's his goal, he's achieving the opposite so far. Transaction processing is still normal and showcases that even with the current block size somewhat full blocks aren't that of a big problem while at the same time the operation to purposely fill blocks must be somewhat expensive. It brings up the fee argument that the block size debate spawned. Also, most pools mine a blocks with the default 750kb.

https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/397ds9/are_blocks_full/

[Amph]

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=60days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

block size limit = 1 mb
300 kb to go

What will happen if the limit reached? And also is a big block size a problem?

from a logical point of view, a queue list will be created, with those transactions, that were left out, to be introduced in the next second and so on, but this will lead to a queue position that, will get bigger everytime this happen

[JeromeL]

Bitcoin under attack!

What makes you think it's an attack?

[neoneros]

Didn't they do stresstests? Running a test chain on test miners and nodes apart from the blockchain to see what happens when 1 mb blocks start piling up? And are there any results to be found? That would be interesting to see.

[spazzdla]

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=60days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

block size limit = 1 mb
300 kb to go

What will happen if the limit reached? And also is a big block size a problem?

from a logical point of view, a queue list will be created, with those transactions, that were left out, to be introduced in the next second and so on, but this will lead to a queue position that, will get bigger everytime this happen

This is actually a pretty decent way to attack bitcoin... :S...

[el kaka22]

Bitcoin's block size limit is in fact a big problem for it to become popularized. Only some people knowing bitcoin in the Internet already cause the block size to be 70% full. It's hard to imagine how the block size will be if bitcoin could be a country/world's currency.

[tvbcof]

Yeah, 'under attack' by people who, in an expression of monumental ignorance, think that using one of the most powerful financial settlement systems ever devised makes sense as a means of buying their morning coffee.  The level of ignorant self-centeredness necessary to think that some trivial and inconsequential bit of financial activity deserves to become a permanent part of the ledger that everyone supports and carries along forevermore is stunning.

Obviously logic is not going to break this cycle of delusion.  Finally bumping up into the 1MB limit is necessary and way overdue.

I'm not going to be a jackass and pretend that I know Satoshi's thoughts and motivations, but I will observe that his 1 MB 'temporary hack' had the result of ensuring that we hit this moment in history at a time when the entire un-pruned and verifiable blockchain could still be packed around on a single and affordable storage device.  If he/they foresaw this when making certain decisions I would not be surprised.

[spazzdla]

Yeah, 'under attack' by people who, in an expression of monumental ignorance, think that using one of the most powerful financial settlement systems ever devised makes sense as a means of buying their morning coffee.  The level of ignorant self-centeredness necessary to think that some trivial and inconsequential bit of financial activity deserves to become a permanent part of the ledger that everyone supports and carries along forevermore is stunning.

Obviously logic is not going to break this cycle of delusion.  Finally bumping up into the 1MB limit is necessary and way overdue.

I'm not going to be a jackass and pretend that I know Satoshi's thoughts and motivations, but I will observe that his 1 MB 'temporary hack' had the result of ensuring that we hit this moment in history at a time when the entire un-pruned and verifiable blockchain could still be packed around on a single and affordable storage device.  If he/they foresaw this when making certain decisions I would not be surprised.

Sounds like you'd support higher fees more than a hard fork...

I've always said BTC should become like gold an an altcoin or side chain should become the "spending" currency.

[melody82]

I don't really see how this is an attack.  If the 1mb limit is reached then transactions will slow down.  Either fees will go up, people will leave btc, or both until an equilibrium is achieved.  of course there is no way to predict exactly what will happen and when, but this is my understanding of what will happen.

[LiteCoinGuy]

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=60days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

block size limit = 1 mb
300 kb to go

What will happen if the limit reached? And also is a big block size a problem?

then we will go to daa moon!  

[tvbcof]

Yeah, 'under attack' by people who, in an expression of monumental ignorance, think that using one of the most powerful financial settlement systems ever devised makes sense as a means of buying their morning coffee.  The level of ignorant self-centeredness necessary to think that some trivial and inconsequential bit of financial activity deserves to become a permanent part of the ledger that everyone supports and carries along forevermore is stunning.

Obviously logic is not going to break this cycle of delusion.  Finally bumping up into the 1MB limit is necessary and way overdue.

I'm not going to be a jackass and pretend that I know Satoshi's thoughts and motivations, but I will observe that his 1 MB 'temporary hack' had the result of ensuring that we hit this moment in history at a time when the entire un-pruned and verifiable blockchain could still be packed around on a single and affordable storage device.  If he/they foresaw this when making certain decisions I would not be surprised.

Sounds like you'd support higher fees more than a hard fork...

I've always said BTC should become like gold an an altcoin or side chain should become the "spending" currency.

I already pay somewhere in the range of a $10/transaction fee when I use Bitcoin in native P2P form just so I can practice what I preach.  It is much less than I pay for an international bank wire and vastly faster and has proven more reliable as well.  In short, it's one hell of a deal for me.

I've looked forward for literally  years to a point when I could peg portions of my stash to a sidechain and feel comfortable to use it for buying trinkets, doing micro-tips, etc.  Now it looks like sidechains are actually going to happen, and in time for Bitcoin to be rescued from the bloaters who seek to destroy it.  These fuckheads have to bloat and popularize Bitcoin as a pre-requisite to collapsing it through fungibility attacks (implemented as blacklisting.)

[Lauda]

How away we are from this ? How come I never heard about those informations
Then I guess we should simply follow Gavin for the block size increase so we buy more time . I don't think Bitcoin need this now ... It can be pretty bad (depends what's gonna happen)

How about reading and doing research rather than spamming for your signature campaign?
https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=all&daysAverageString=100

We aren't even averaging 0.4MB blocks yet. Someone is filling the blocks to maybe force the network to decide on the block size debate.
https://np.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/397ds9/are_blocks_full/
However, this does no actual damage and you can make your transactions process by including a higher fee.

I already pay somewhere in the range of a $10/transaction fee when I use Bitcoin in native P2P form just so I can practice what I preach.  It is much less than I pay for an international bank wire and vastly faster and has proven more reliable as well.  In short, it's one hell of a deal for me.

I've looked forward for literally  years to a point when I could peg portions of my stash to a sidechain and feel comfortable to use it for buying trinkets, doing micro-tips, etc.  Now it looks like sidechains are actually going to happen, and in time for Bitcoin to be rescued from the bloaters who seek to destroy it.  These fuckheads have to bloat and popularize Bitcoin as a pre-requisite to collapsing it through fungibility attacks (implemented as blacklisting.)

I have problems understanding your stance towards the matter. You've mentioned that Bitcoin shouldn't be used for things such as buying coffee but you're comfortable with e.g. micro-tips using sidechains?

[tvbcof]

I already pay somewhere in the range of a $10/transaction fee when I use Bitcoin in native P2P form just so I can practice what I preach.  It is much less than I pay for an international bank wire and vastly faster and has proven more reliable as well.  In short, it's one hell of a deal for me.

I've looked forward for literally  years to a point when I could peg portions of my stash to a sidechain and feel comfortable to use it for buying trinkets, doing micro-tips, etc.  Now it looks like sidechains are actually going to happen, and in time for Bitcoin to be rescued from the bloaters who seek to destroy it.  These fuckheads have to bloat and popularize Bitcoin as a pre-requisite to collapsing it through fungibility attacks (implemented as blacklisting.)

I have problems understanding your stance towards the matter. You've mentioned that Bitcoin shouldn't be used for things such as buying coffee but you're comfortable with e.g. micro-tips using sidechains?

What in God's green earth is difficult to understand about this!?!

I make one peg operation on the global blockchain to put some value on a sidechain then do 10,000 micro-tips for the year.  The load of these inconsequential transactions impacts a chain that I don't care about and which does not threaten the global backing system which I (and every other person and sub-system) relies on for significant value storage and transactions.

Being lite and tight, the global backing system (Bitcoin) can hide out in various nooks and crannies of the global internet and (hopefully) evade even the most dedicated attacks by those who it threatens.

This is so common-sense from a system analysis and engineering point of view that for a long time I attributed malice to those who claim to not understand it.

[Lauda]

What in God's green earth is difficult to understand about this!?!

I make one peg operation on the global blockchain to put some value on a sidechain then do 10,000 micro-tips for the year.  The load of these inconsequential transactions impacts a chain that I don't care about and which does not threaten the global backing system which I (and every other person and sub-system) relies on for significant value storage and transactions.

Being lite and tight, the global backing system (Bitcoin) can hide out in various nooks and crannies of the global internet and (hopefully) evade even the most dedicated attacks by those who it threatens.
This is so common-sense from a system analysis and engineering point of view that for a long time I attributed malice to those who claim to not understand it.

I know how sidechains work. I was referring to your other post:

Yeah, 'under attack' by people who, in an expression of monumental ignorance, think that using one of the most powerful financial settlement systems ever devised makes sense as a means of buying their morning coffee.  The level of ignorant self-centeredness necessary to think that some trivial and inconsequential bit of financial activity deserves to become a permanent part of the ledger that everyone supports and carries along forevermore is stunning.

Essentially you're saying that micro transactions should be on the sidechain(s) only correct? If this is the case then I have to agree.
However, I do not think that a 1MB limit will be enough even for only bigger transactions in the future. Although this really depends on the adoption of Bitcoin in the coming years.
20 MB blocks (4 or 8 is okay) are way too much, however it looks like XT will be rolling out in the coming week(s).

As I've mentioned in another post, increasing the block size for any other reason(s) than buying time for side chains or other technology would be a mistake. If Bitcoin was only processing the amount of transactions that Visa does during peak times (45 000 tps), we would need 400 Petabytes per year. In other words 400 million Gigabytes. The blockchain even needs to be pruned as it is now (~40GB) !

[tvbcof]

Essentially you're saying that micro transactions should be on the sidechain(s) only correct? If this is the case then I have to agree.

Correct.

However, I do not think that a 1MB limit will be enough even for only bigger transactions in the future. Although this really depends on the adoption of Bitcoin in the coming years.
20 MB blocks (4 or 8 is okay) are way too much,

This addresses the 'problem' in only a minor way.  A small integer multiple.  A system of sidechains holds the promise to address the bloat problem by orders of magnitude.

I'll agree that 1MB may eventually be to tight for even reasonable settlement activity in support of an efficient sidechains ecosystem, but that is a ways out.  If/when this proves to be the case and it is VERY clear that native Bitcoin is unencumbered and unthreatened by attacks such as the blacklisting/fungibility attacks I mentioned, I'll be quite in favor of it.  I suspect that many others will be as well and 'consensus' will not be all that difficult to achieve.

however it looks like XT will be rolling out in the coming week(s).

Looks to me like it will be rolling out into it's doom as it should.  The main reason to roll it out would be to create a period of of instability and fear which would make people feel that Bitcoin is not a viable option for wealth protection.  I'll expect it to be scheduled (or re-scheduled) for economic problems in fiat-land.

As I've mentioned in another post, increasing the block size for any other reason(s) than buying time for side chains or other technology would be a mistake. If Bitcoin was only processing the amount of transactions that Visa does during peak times (45 000 tps), we would need 400 Petabytes per year. In other words 400 million Gigabytes. The blockchain even needs to be pruned as it is now (~40GB) !

As long as a new REAL full node can be brought to life with a laptop HDD or thumb drive, and the data load of the Bitcoin network can be steganographically transmitted Bitcoin will be very difficult to kill (and thus the value within the Bitcoin blockchain will remain solid.)  I believe that the most viable attacks will be on these two aspects.  If I were charged with killing the system I would do so by bloating it to expose various weaknesses in it's shell.

I personally would expect and be comfortable with losing whatever value I entrusted to a sidechain under an attack scenario.  That is why I am fairly ambivalent to risks on those.

[bryant.coleman]

From a logical point of view, a queue list will be created, with those transactions, that were left out, to be introduced in the next second and so on, but this will lead to a queue position that, will get bigger everytime this happen

That will be really bad for the widespread adoption of Bitcoin. Already people are complaining that the confirmation time is too long (and right now, it is around 5 to 30 minutes). And imagine what will happen, when it get stretched to 1 hour, or even 2 hours. I think we should seriously consider supporting Gavin's proposal.

[tvbcof]

From a logical point of view, a queue list will be created, with those transactions, that were left out, to be introduced in the next second and so on, but this will lead to a queue position that, will get bigger everytime this happen

That will be really bad for the widespread adoption of Bitcoin. Already people are complaining that the confirmation time is too long (and right now, it is around 5 to 30 minutes). And imagine what will happen, when it get stretched to 1 hour, or even 2 hours. I think we should seriously consider supporting Gavin's proposal.

Bitcoin never was and never will be suitable for real-time purchases without being augmented by off-chain solutions of some sort (sidechains or otherwise.)  It's simply not in the design and it will never be competitive in this role.  That's just the way it is, and trying to change things by a simplistic setting like max block size cannot solve the problem.  It can, however, cause bloat which will open up a variety of chinks in the armor, and I think it a very strong hypothesis that that is the primary driving force behind XT and the bloatchain folk's activities.