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

[lorylore]

Did the stress test affected today tx. ? I had a small tx. and payed fee but took to long about 4h to get confirmed.

[publicjud]

if the blocks were 20mb, there would be no controversy as all tx's would fit happily with no bottleneck..

yeah. I really think, that we need some change with this block magic asap, because now waiting almost hour for FIRST confirmation, even I paid fee. we should be lucky, that bitcoin is not massively adopted yet, because this is like waiting 1h for email delivery..

Use blackcoin.  Way faster and more secure and you wouldn't have the issue of pools blacklisting transactions.

[pooya87]

is there any report of the stress test released like the last time?
for the last test i saw this: http://redd.it/3au3rs but i can't find anything like it for this one.

[tspacepilot]

if the blocks were 20mb, there would be no controversy as all tx's would fit happily with no bottleneck..

yeah. I really think, that we need some change with this block magic asap, because now waiting almost hour for FIRST confirmation, even I paid fee. we should be lucky, that bitcoin is not massively adopted yet, because this is like waiting 1h for email delivery..

Use blackcoin.  Way faster and more secure and you wouldn't have the issue of pools blacklisting transactions.

You probably don't have the issue of a company spending thousands of dollars to spam it with useless transactions either.  If you did, you might not consider that "blacklisting" to be problematic.

[kano]

imagine a company wanted to pay its 10,000 staff in bitcoin. and it sent out tx's as such.. luke jr would block the tx.

Hard to take you seriously when you just blatantly lie and slander me...

if the blocks were 20mb, there would be no controversy as all tx's would fit happily with no bottleneck..

No, if blocks were 20 MB, the damage would be 20 times worse and literally destroy Bitcoin.
No matter what the limit is, or how big blocks are, spam should never be mined, and can never be supported (it would literally require infinite block sizes).

FUD as usual from you.

The number of transactions on the bitcoin network is NOT decided by the block size limit.

At some point in the future it MAY be a major factor, due to the block size being smaller than the demand for bitcoin transactions, but that is NOT the case now.

[shorena]

if the blocks were 20mb, there would be no controversy as all tx's would fit happily with no bottleneck..

yeah. I really think, that we need some change with this block magic asap, because now waiting almost hour for FIRST confirmation, even I paid fee. we should be lucky, that bitcoin is not massively adopted yet, because this is like waiting 1h for email delivery..

No, your "mail" is delivered. Its just not confirmed yet. Besides what you experienced was the "normal" rush to ~6k TX. That is a daily even between ~1800 CEST and ~0100 CEST. Its probably european/us prime time to spend/move coins.

-snip-
No, if blocks were 20 MB, the damage would be 20 times worse and literally destroy Bitcoin.
No matter what the limit is, or how big blocks are, spam should never be mined, and can never be supported (it would literally require infinite block sizes).

Bigger blocks would - for one - make these kinds of attacks more expensive. This stress test is only slightly effecting others because OP is burning coins as fees and miners are - as its intended - greedy. If the max blocksize is 2 MB the same attack would have needed 40 BTC instead of 20 BTC[1] to have the same effect. How bigger blocks would worsen the effect is not right away clear to me, if they are full, they are full and others have to wait.

[1] According to OP that are the funds dedicated to this test, I did not check how realistic this is.

[Xialla]

because this is like waiting 1h for email delivery..

No, your "mail" is delivered. Its just not confirmed yet.

uhh ok, so the mail is delivered, but I'm unable to read to content and have to wait unknown time, because lot of guys sending mails.. (btw, yesterday I have to wait 5 hours and 28 minutes for first confirmation)

..if you don't feel this like a problem, believe or not, but it IS problem.

[Luke-Jr]

because this is like waiting 1h for email delivery..

No, your "mail" is delivered. Its just not confirmed yet.

uhh ok, so the mail is delivered, but I'm unable to read to content and have to wait unknown time, because lot of guys sending mails.. (btw, yesterday I have to wait 5 hours and 28 minutes for first confirmation)

..if you don't feel this like a problem, believe or not, but it IS problem.

More like you can't prove who sent the email for unknown time. Which is actually true, since email is basically always insecure.

A better analogy would be credit card transactions. Those take 6 months to confirm.

[tspacepilot]

because this is like waiting 1h for email delivery..

No, your "mail" is delivered. Its just not confirmed yet.

uhh ok, so the mail is delivered, but I'm unable to read to content and have to wait unknown time, because lot of guys sending mails.. (btw, yesterday I have to wait 5 hours and 28 minutes for first confirmation)

..if you don't feel this like a problem, believe or not, but it IS problem.

More like you can't prove who sent the email for unknown time. Which is actually true, since email is basically always insecure.

Right, but in this analogy, you can't reply or act on the information in the email until you figure that out (no spending coins that aren't confirmed yours yet).  Actually, the analogy is getting rather stretched by now as you aptly transition to below.

A better analogy would be credit card transactions. Those take 6 months to confirm.

[Luke-Jr]

because this is like waiting 1h for email delivery..

No, your "mail" is delivered. Its just not confirmed yet.

uhh ok, so the mail is delivered, but I'm unable to read to content and have to wait unknown time, because lot of guys sending mails.. (btw, yesterday I have to wait 5 hours and 28 minutes for first confirmation)

..if you don't feel this like a problem, believe or not, but it IS problem.

More like you can't prove who sent the email for unknown time. Which is actually true, since email is basically always insecure.

Right, but in this analogy, you can't reply or act on the information in the email until you figure that out (no spending coins that aren't confirmed yours yet).

Except Bitcoin does allow spending unconfirmed coins.

[Xialla]

uhh ok, so the mail is delivered, but I'm unable to read to content and have to wait unknown time, because lot of guys sending mails.. (btw, yesterday I have to wait 5 hours and 28 minutes for first confirmation)

..if you don't feel this like a problem, believe or not, but it IS problem.

More like you can't prove who sent the email for unknown time. Which is actually true, since email is basically always insecure.

A better analogy would be credit card transactions. Those take 6 months to confirm.

yes, but average Joe don't care about 6 months, because he is not waiting during paying process more than 5 hours like me yesterday. He simply don't care about TX's in background between credit company, bank and other institutions and he will literally never find out, that it takes 6 months in "reality"

I got your point, but waiting endless hours for first confirmation (and LOT of services requires at least one confirmation) is imho not comfortable at all and should be somehow changed..

[ragi]

Why are there 3209 Unconfirmed Transactions with 4623.65234375 (KB) backlog. Is this still ongoing?

[el kaka22]

Why are there 3209 Unconfirmed Transactions with 4623.65234375 (KB) backlog. Is this still ongoing?

I don't think so. However there was no blocks mined within the last 30 minutes till the newest block was mined about 3 minutes ago. That block takes 0.39 BTC as transaction fees.

[sturle]

blocking a tx just because you think it is spam.. is bad.

Bitcoin Core does that.

i get the idea of blocking tx's that have values of less than a penny.. but blocking a tx due to data bloat needs careful consideration..

Blocking some kinds of spam is OK, but blocking other kinds of spam is not OK?  Avoiding data bloat (UTXO set) is the primary reason for blocking dust.  Of course every filter needs careful consideration.

imagine a company wanted to pay its 10,000 staff in bitcoin. and it sent out tx's as such.. luke jr would block the tx.

Congratulations!  You just discovered, all by yourself, one of many reasons for why centralization is bad.  Keeping the block size small is important to avoid more centralization.   Therefore we need to block malicious spam.  If Luke mined 100% of all blocks, which he could theoretically do if he got well over 51% of the hashrate, he could block the tx.

the problem is not that tx's need blocking. the problem is that the test is showing that even a small handfull of tx's can cause such controversy. if the blocks were 20mb, there would be no controversy as all tx's would fit happily with no bottleneck..

Now you lost me.  Which small handful of tx's caused controversy?

If the blocks were larger, blocking transactions will be easier.  The number of full nodes has already been reduced by 94% over the last year.  If you multiply the resource requirements for running a full node by 20, there won't be many full nodes left.  Not running a full node sacrifices both privacy and security.  Few full nodes makes it easier to block transactions, because a small set of nodes in a few datacenters are easier to control than a large set spread all over the world.

[ragi]

And the 5 blocks before this one was almost empty...

[turvarya]

blocking a tx just because you think it is spam.. is bad.

Bitcoin Core does that.

i get the idea of blocking tx's that have values of less than a penny.. but blocking a tx due to data bloat needs careful consideration..

Blocking some kinds of spam is OK, but blocking other kinds of spam is not OK?  Avoiding data bloat (UTXO set) is the primary reason for blocking dust.  Of course every filter needs careful consideration.

imagine a company wanted to pay its 10,000 staff in bitcoin. and it sent out tx's as such.. luke jr would block the tx.

Congratulations!  You just discovered, all by yourself, one of many reasons for why centralization is bad.  Keeping the block size small is important to avoid more centralization.   Therefore we need to block malicious spam.  If Luke mined 100% of all blocks, which he could theoretically do if he got well over 51% of the hashrate, he could block the tx.

the problem is not that tx's need blocking. the problem is that the test is showing that even a small handfull of tx's can cause such controversy. if the blocks were 20mb, there would be no controversy as all tx's would fit happily with no bottleneck..

Now you lost me.  Which small handful of tx's caused controversy?

If the blocks were larger, blocking transactions will be easier.  The number of full nodes has already been reduced by 94% over the last year.  If you multiply the resource requirements for running a full node by 20, there won't be many full nodes left.  Not running a full node sacrifices both privacy and security.  Few full nodes makes it easier to block transactions, because a small set of nodes in a few datacenters are easier to control than a large set spread all over the world.

That is just not true. The measurement of full nodes changed. We never really had that huge number of full nodes, some people are propagating.
Furthermore, it is complete bollocks, that you would need a datacenter to have a full node. Please stop spreading that nonsense.

[sturle]

Bigger blocks would - for one - make these kinds of attacks more expensive. This stress test is only slightly effecting others because OP is burning coins as fees and miners are - as its intended - greedy. If the max blocksize is 2 MB the same attack would have needed 40 BTC instead of 20 BTC[1] to have the same effect.

Why do you assume the price of a transaction – the txfee – will stay the same as the supply of transaction space increases?  This contradicts the law of supply and demand.  The price should go down when the supply increases and normal demand stays the same, and the cost of the attack against 2 MB blocks will be exactly the same as the cost of an attack against 1 MB blocks.

[Luke-Jr]

I got your point, but waiting endless hours for first confirmation (and LOT of services requires at least one confirmation) is imho not comfortable at all and should be somehow changed..

Yes, but all you can do today is ask services to trust your unconfirmed transaction like they do with credit cards.
If you defraud them, they can just terminate your service.
If people abuse this in retail, they may end up having to ask for photo id for Bitcoin purchases.
Given a year or so, hopefully Lightning will solve it in a nicer way.

The measurement of full nodes changed.

The measurement by multiple different people happened to all change in just the exact same way so that the same conclusions were drawn? Don't be ridiculous.

Furthermore, it is complete bollocks, that you would need a datacenter to have a full node.

20 MB blocks means you need 41 Mbps upload. Most people don't have that even available.

[DannyHamilton]

20 MB blocks means you need 41 Mbps upload. Most people don't have that even available.

Please share your calculations.

I'm apparently missing something.

If we assume that each transaction received is sent to 2 other nodes, then a full 20 MB block over 10 minutes would mean that you would have needed to send approximately 40 MB during that time.

40 MB X 8 bits per byte = 320 Mbit

There are 600 seconds in 10 minutes.

320 Mbit / 600 seconds = 533,333 kbps

That's only a bit more than half of 1 Mbps.

Somehow you ended up with a number that is almost 77 times larger than my calculation.

Does that mean you are assuming that each node sends every transaction it receives to 154 other nodes?  That doesn't seem like an accurate estimate.

What am I missing?

[kano]

... and it doesn't matter unless you are mining.
That is only the problem of pools and people using their nodes for solo mining.

Everyone should be running nodes, but most people shouldn't be using them for mining.
That's a risky thing to do ... even some pools do that badly ... like Eligius.

A transaction processing node doesn't need to get every block ASAP.
If it takes even a minute it doesn't matter.