Next level Bitcoin stress test -- June 29-30 13:00 GMT 2015

[Alley]

So 2 failed stress tests in a row?  Who are these guys again?

[1713290325]

1713290325

[Envrin]

These "stress tests" are a little dumb, and nothing more than a propaganda stunt.  We all know what the limits of bitcoin are, and the core devs definitely do.

It's like me putting a pot of water on the stove at 150C, and saying, "see, it boils!  the stress test proved itself!".

It defeats the purpose.  Those conducting these tests know exactly what the limits of the network are, so obviously if you push a test over those limits it's going to fail.  Same as if I said I'm going to "stress test" aluminum, put it under a temperature of more than 660C, then say, "see, it melted, hence failed the test!".  Well, I knew from the onset that was going to be the result.

[ajareselde]

These "stress tests" are a little dumb, and nothing more than a propaganda stunt.  We all know what the limits of bitcoin are, and the core devs definitely do.

It's like me putting a pot of water on the stove at 150C, and saying, "see, it boils!  the stress test proved itself!".

It defeats the purpose.  Those conducting these tests know exactly what the limits of the network are, so obviously if you push a test over those limits it's going to fail.  Same as if I said I'm going to "stress test" aluminum, put it under a temperature of more than 660C, then day, "see, it failed the test!".  Well, I knew from the onset it was going to fail that test.

You are right to some point, it will fail, but it will also give some useful information. You see, even tho stress test seams useless, it does at least show :

-how much "damage" can only one entity/organisation do to the network
-it will show costs needed to do such a stunt
-you can use that data to understand what the next move in securing the network should be.

I'm not a fan of these  "tests" either, especially when they come at a time of my weekly debit card top-up   , but bitcoin is at a point where it will be tested in many ways,
just for people to see it's capabilities, because it's not the question of what can bitcoin do and how it can preform now, it's about how it will preform when it starts doing
what it was created to do - to be the worldwide general audience means of transfering and storing of value.

4k+ unconfirmed transactions, so far.
Total Fees   1.04582505 BTC
Total Size   1922.1826171875 (KB)

cheers

[hf100]

There are over 3000 unconfirmed transactions now. Is that the normal number?



There were quite a few closely spaced blocks but now the gaps are increasing and the last block was almost 1 MB. The tester said the test would run for 24 hours. Is there a chance it might start disrupting the network if it takes longer than normal to find blocks from now on?

[Envrin]

You are right to some point, it will fail, but it will also give some useful information.

Oh, definitely.  I'm more than in support of stress tests themselves, as they're an integral part of any network.  Basically, I'm just questioning the motive of these recent "stress tests" due to the timing.  I'm assuming it's just Gavin and Mike trying to say, "see, bitcoin is broken, move over to XT", although I could be wrong.

[AgentofCoin]

You are right to some point, it will fail, but it will also give some useful information.

Oh, definitely.  I'm more than in support of stress tests themselves, as they're an integral part of any network.  Basically, I'm just questioning the motive of these recent "stress tests" due to the timing.  I'm assuming it's just Gavin and Mike trying to say, "see, bitcoin is broken, move over to XT", although I could be wrong.

I don't think it is Gavin and company (or the other devs).
During the last test, the "testers" discovered that when they pushed so many transactions, bitcoind crashed.
That is what happens normally. A custom setup or etc should be used for such a test and frankly, if the network was "attacked" by some nefarious group (governments, bankers, hackers, etc) they would being using custom progs to damage the network.

So, since the testers didn't know that bitcoind could handle it the first time, makes me believe it isn't any of the devs.

[ajareselde]

You are right to some point, it will fail, but it will also give some useful information.

Oh, definitely.  I'm more than in support of stress tests themselves, as they're an integral part of any network.  Basically, I'm just questioning the motive of these recent "stress tests" due to the timing.  I'm assuming it's just Gavin and Mike trying to say, "see, bitcoin is broken, move over to XT", although I could be wrong.

Bitcoin is both core version and xt, bitcoin is not broken. The only question is; is it needed to increase it's block size , and i agree it is.
It makes much more sense to do the "upgrade" while it's still doing the job, rather than wait for it to be too late., don't you think so ?

cheers

[ChetnotAtkins]

They said on Reddit that the test is happening tomorrow. Can we believe them this time?

[gentlemand]

They said on Reddit that the test is happening tomorrow. Can we believe them this time?

Who gives a shit any more? I don't know what they hoped to gain from the first one, let alone all the other blanks they've fired.

[ChetnotAtkins]

I give a shit

[wlefever]

You are right to some point, it will fail, but it will also give some useful information.

Oh, definitely.  I'm more than in support of stress tests themselves, as they're an integral part of any network.  Basically, I'm just questioning the motive of these recent "stress tests" due to the timing.  I'm assuming it's just Gavin and Mike trying to say, "see, bitcoin is broken, move over to XT", although I could be wrong.

Bitcoin is both core version and xt, bitcoin is not broken. The only question is; is it needed to increase it's block size , and i agree it is.
It makes much more sense to do the "upgrade" while it's still doing the job, rather than wait for it to be too late., don't you think so ?

cheers

I agree with this.  I think this sort of thinking ahead is very important at this stage.

[unamis76]

There are over 3000 unconfirmed transactions now. Is that the normal number?

There were quite a few closely spaced blocks but now the gaps are increasing and the last block was almost 1 MB. The tester said the test would run for 24 hours. Is there a chance it might start disrupting the network if it takes longer than normal to find blocks from now on?

Yes, it's a "normal" number. If blocks take longer, the impact would be bigger, as it would take more time for confirms to happen in relation to if blocks were found each and every 10 minutes... But it's worse when blocks don't include any transactions.

[franky1]

These "stress tests" are a little dumb, and nothing more than a propaganda stunt.  We all know what the limits of bitcoin are, and the core devs definitely do.

It's like me putting a pot of water on the stove at 150C, and saying, "see, it boils!  the stress test proved itself!".

It defeats the purpose.  Those conducting these tests know exactly what the limits of the network are, so obviously if you push a test over those limits it's going to fail.  Same as if I said I'm going to "stress test" aluminum, put it under a temperature of more than 660C, then say, "see, it melted, hence failed the test!".  Well, I knew from the onset that was going to be the result.

no....
its like a bunch of grumpy maids saying that the pot of water wont boil until 2000 people breath on it and generate enough heat and prove there is a 2000 strong demand for hot water to make coffee...

the stress tests are that if one person making just 1 transaction a second, can cause other peoples tx's to be bottle-necked and delayed.... then waiting for a year until the demand actually forces a upgrade is just waiting for the problem before looking for the best solution...

it is like letting someone sodomize you in your own bed.. before setting rules to not let anal lovers follow you home.


did you know that something like this happened before..
many core coders didnt want to strengthen and expand bitcoin to cope with change.. and it took satoshidice to spam the network for the coders to then stop sitting on their hands and implement code to decrease the spam..

most coders think they are gods. that their code is perfect and does not need changing.. it always takes outsiders to prove them wrong..

to me coders are like people who wont lock their doors and allow themselves to be violated a few times before thinking about whats needed to secure things.

[johnyj]

It is very interesting to see how people reacts to the situation

When a bank is closed during weekend, would people change to mobile bank or just wait until Monday to do transaction again? What if that wait will be one week/month? Or you just pay a little bit more to get your transaction through? Usually people are willing to pay a little bit more to get faster delivery

Greece just had a capital control today and the maximum money you can take out from any ATM is 60 euro, and we all saw that does not affect Euro's value that much, in fact Euro even rose

[RodeoX]

These "stress tests" are a little dumb, and nothing more than a propaganda stunt.  We all know what the limits of bitcoin are, and the core devs definitely do.
...

Agreed. The first time was a cute trick. But if this is your new hobby then you should be testing on the "test net". Perhaps you can glean it's use from the name "TEST NET".

[Scamalert]

What is the purpose of these blocktrain stress tests? You have a newbie account so I assume you are not part of the bitcoin dev team (I could be wrong ofc...).
Is the test for >>Academic study<< for some kinda a univericity thesis or paper?

[NUFCrichard]

These "stress tests" are a little dumb, and nothing more than a propaganda stunt.  We all know what the limits of bitcoin are, and the core devs definitely do.
...

Agreed. The first time was a cute trick. But if this is your new hobby then you should be testing on the "test net". Perhaps you can glean it's use from the name "TEST NET".

Exactly, when governments do bank stress tests they don't disrupt real bank transactions whilst doing so!
I had thought that they should just make an Alt bitcoin, then test that, but yes, Test net seems more suitable really.

It is crazy to think that the entire transaction network can be disturbed by so little money, imagine if someone important really had a grudge, seems like they could take down bitcoin easily!

[weex]

I don't agree with these stress tests since they should be carried out on testnet rather than cost real users money. In any case, if you do want to be able to view what's going on during the test in terms of fees, you can check out

http://bitcoinexchangerate.org/fees

I'm capturing these images to make animations so if someone can tell me when whatever test starts and finishes (PM please) then I can put together a gif.

Thread here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1101202

[johnyj]

It is crazy to think that the entire transaction network can be disturbed by so little money, imagine if someone important really had a grudge, seems like they could take down bitcoin easily!

That's the truth. P2P network are not able to scale well with large amount of communications

In traditional payment network, there is very little transaction done between participants, most of the transactions are cleared inside one financial institution, and settled between institutions. Similar to trading on an exchange, you never really buy or sell anything, you just play with numbers that represent those things in their database. This makes it very scalable, because everyone is accessing the same database at the same place

However, on P2P network, all the databases are spread across the globe, you have to broadcast transactions throughout the network to update each of them, and those communication will increase exponentially with the increase of network size. So maybe raising the block size is not a long term sustainable solution, but at least it is most simple to implement right now

[tss]

What is the purpose of these blocktrain stress tests? You have a newbie account so I assume you are not part of the bitcoin dev team (I could be wrong ofc...).
Is the test for >>Academic study<< for some kinda a univericity thesis or paper?

the purpose of these stress supposed tests is to create fear mongering among members who don't really understand the repercussions of acting in haste and fear.
to change the system "upgrade" and allow endless blockchain spam for very low fees is a very bad idea for bitcoin. 

market forces and side chains/alt coins should provide the transactions per second necessary to be in the crypto world. 

(for dummies) you don't have to use your btc in starbucks if you can buy a starbucks gift card. also its not for storing pictures or websites or code.