What are the downsides to 8MB blocks?

[knight22]

A good argument against the bitcoiners that demand 1MB blocksize because "Miners have to be rewarded" is the electricity that goes away with that. I recently read an article about a study saying that currently 1! bitcoin transaction costs so much electricity like 1.75 normal US households use in a day.

We can't let all these miners survive artificially by raising the fees. The amount of miners need to be trimmed down and the bitcoin security be more power efficient. That was always happening and it should and can't be held up artificially. The bitcoin network would be still very very secure with less miners.

Unfortunately miners are the mighty ones in the game. We only can hope that the sane one are the biggest ones. And that they see the need of bitcoin adoption for getting future profits.

That is a sick amount of power... So mining one block consumes the power of a full city? That is insane and not sustainable, especially if it keeps rising...

I do agree that's a lot to secure this level of Bitcoin transactions as of today. But I also read that current amount of hashing power is enough to secure even a 100 fold increase in the transaction number and user number. So to say, if we would have 100 million users, the network would be secured with today's hash rate.

That's why I don't understand the opponents of the block size increase. Bitcoin has to scale in order to be sustainable in the long run! For that we need bigger blocks!

but WHO will ever be able to download 8MB

8 FUCKING MASSIVE MEGA BYTES

this will surely make minning WAY more centralized

Not me! My 56K modem can't handle it 

[Mickeyb]

A good argument against the bitcoiners that demand 1MB blocksize because "Miners have to be rewarded" is the electricity that goes away with that. I recently read an article about a study saying that currently 1! bitcoin transaction costs so much electricity like 1.75 normal US households use in a day.

We can't let all these miners survive artificially by raising the fees. The amount of miners need to be trimmed down and the bitcoin security be more power efficient. That was always happening and it should and can't be held up artificially. The bitcoin network would be still very very secure with less miners.

Unfortunately miners are the mighty ones in the game. We only can hope that the sane one are the biggest ones. And that they see the need of bitcoin adoption for getting future profits.

That is a sick amount of power... So mining one block consumes the power of a full city? That is insane and not sustainable, especially if it keeps rising...

I do agree that's a lot to secure this level of Bitcoin transactions as of today. But I also read that current amount of hashing power is enough to secure even a 100 fold increase in the transaction number and user number. So to say, if we would have 100 million users, the network would be secured with today's hash rate.

That's why I don't understand the opponents of the block size increase. Bitcoin has to scale in order to be sustainable in the long run! For that we need bigger blocks!

but WHO will ever be able to download 8MB

8 FUCKING MASSIVE MEGA BYTES

this will surely make minning WAY more centralized

Well then we have a huge freaking problem! Then Bitcoin isn't ready for mass adoption and how will ever be ready? What solution is there besides sidechains, if the sidechains are even possible?

[Linuld]

it will take a lot of time until the bitcoin network will have enough adoption to fill 8 MB Blocks.

It won't take a lot of time until DoS 'stress tests' fill up 8 MB blocks.

Sure. And will you pay that? You realize the cost of the recent spam attacks? And those were only some KB. You speak about filling up a lot MB with spam. I wonder if you will find someone who will do the spamming.

And of course i referred to the natural adoption of bitcoin that will fill the blocks. Spamming won't happen since it does not make sense then anymore in any way for the spammer.

for now this is a non existing problem.

 

I guess you only misinterpreted. Read above.

Miners are struggling with blocks far smaller than 750KB blocks and resorting to SPV mining
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-August/010283.html

The existing problem is that you don't know WTF you're talking about. 

Or... maybe... you don't have a clue what i'm talking about.

Your link, by the way, is all fine and so but there is already a walkaround since ages: http://bitcoinrelaynetwork.org/

I would SPV-Mine too when i would own a big farm. Though i would validate the previous block once i received all data. Then act accordingly. Simply because it would be a little bit faster. That doesn't mean that the advantage is so big that it really makes a big difference.

[Linuld]

A good argument against the bitcoiners that demand 1MB blocksize because "Miners have to be rewarded" is the electricity that goes away with that. I recently read an article about a study saying that currently 1! bitcoin transaction costs so much electricity like 1.75 normal US households use in a day.

We can't let all these miners survive artificially by raising the fees. The amount of miners need to be trimmed down and the bitcoin security be more power efficient. That was always happening and it should and can't be held up artificially. The bitcoin network would be still very very secure with less miners.

Unfortunately miners are the mighty ones in the game. We only can hope that the sane one are the biggest ones. And that they see the need of bitcoin adoption for getting future profits.

That is a sick amount of power... So mining one block consumes the power of a full city? That is insane and not sustainable, especially if it keeps rising...

I do agree that's a lot to secure this level of Bitcoin transactions as of today. But I also read that current amount of hashing power is enough to secure even a 100 fold increase in the transaction number and user number. So to say, if we would have 100 million users, the network would be secured with today's hash rate.

That's why I don't understand the opponents of the block size increase. Bitcoin has to scale in order to be sustainable in the long run! For that we need bigger blocks!

but WHO will ever be able to download 8MB

8 FUCKING MASSIVE MEGA BYTES

this will surely make minning WAY more centralized

8 Megabytes per 10 Minutes and you think we will get in problems with that? What kind of internet connection do you have in order to fear that?

On top... you know that the current blocks are not even filled full. They only are full when these spammers act. And there is no reason to assume that suddenly, with 8 Megabyte Blocks, these blocks will be full. Where should all these transactions come from?

[RoadTrain]

Linuld, really... you are asking the same questions that have been answered like a thousand times, and making arguments that have been countered a thousand times...

I will only comment on some of them:

On top... you know that the current blocks are not even filled full. They only are full when these spammers act. And there is no reason to assume that suddenly, with 8 Megabyte Blocks, these blocks will be full. Where should all these transactions come from?

There's a perfect reason to assume that blocks are suddenly 8Mb -- if there's a specific attack vector linked to full 8Mb blocks, it will be used. It's not that expensive, especially when fees are gravitating towards infignificant amounts due to big blocks.

8 Megabytes per 10 Minutes and you think we will get in problems with that? What kind of internet connection do you have in order to fear that?

A decentralized network robustness depends not on an average throughput, but on the throughput of bottlenecks, namely network bottlenecks (China-ROW, e.g.), CPU bottlenecks and others.
CPU bottlenecks are currently being worked on by core devs.

Sure. And will you pay that? You realize the cost of the recent spam attacks? And those were only some KB. You speak about filling up a lot MB with spam. I wonder if you will find someone who will do the spamming.

Do you realize that yeaterday's attack created more than 35Mb transaction backlog -- enough to fill more than four 8Mb blocks.
The previous attack had much larger backlog.

And of course i referred to the natural adoption of bitcoin that will fill the blocks. Spamming won't happen since it does not make sense then anymore in any way for the spammer.

"Sense"? What's the sense for an attacker currently? Do you realize that with this natural adoption even 8Mb blocks will get full at some point, and the closer they get to 8Mb, the less costly is a spam attack.
We can't solve the spam attack by allowing for more bloating, we can fight it only with fees, which are bound to go towards zero if we keep increasing blocksize limit beyond demand.

[fonsie]

Linuld, really... you are asking the same questions that have been answered like a thousand times, and making arguments that have been countered a thousand times...

I will only comment on some of them:

On top... you know that the current blocks are not even filled full. They only are full when these spammers act. And there is no reason to assume that suddenly, with 8 Megabyte Blocks, these blocks will be full. Where should all these transactions come from?

There's a perfect reason to assume that blocks are suddenly 8Mb -- if there's a specific attack vector linked to full 8Mb blocks, it will be used. It's not that expensive, especially when fees are gravitating towards infignificant amounts due to big blocks.

8 Megabytes per 10 Minutes and you think we will get in problems with that? What kind of internet connection do you have in order to fear that?

A decentralized network robustness depends not on an average throughput, but on the throughput of bottlenecks, namely network bottlenecks (China-ROW, e.g.), CPU bottlenecks and others.
CPU bottlenecks are currently being worked on by core devs.

Sure. And will you pay that? You realize the cost of the recent spam attacks? And those were only some KB. You speak about filling up a lot MB with spam. I wonder if you will find someone who will do the spamming.

Do you realize that yeaterday's attack created more than 35Mb transaction backlog -- enough to fill more than four 8Mb blocks.
The previous attack had much larger backlog.

And of course i referred to the natural adoption of bitcoin that will fill the blocks. Spamming won't happen since it does not make sense then anymore in any way for the spammer.

"Sense"? What's the sense for an attacker currently? Do you realize that with this natural adoption even 8Mb blocks will get full at some point, and the closer they get to 8Mb, the less costly is a spam attack.
We can't solve the spam attack by allowing for more bloating, we can fight it only with fees, which are bound to go towards zero if we keep increasing blocksize limit beyond demand.

Most of your comments are bullshit which can be countered a thousand times too.

[RoadTrain]

Linuld, really... you are asking the same questions that have been answered like a thousand times, and making arguments that have been countered a thousand times...

I will only comment on some of them:

On top... you know that the current blocks are not even filled full. They only are full when these spammers act. And there is no reason to assume that suddenly, with 8 Megabyte Blocks, these blocks will be full. Where should all these transactions come from?

There's a perfect reason to assume that blocks are suddenly 8Mb -- if there's a specific attack vector linked to full 8Mb blocks, it will be used. It's not that expensive, especially when fees are gravitating towards infignificant amounts due to big blocks.

8 Megabytes per 10 Minutes and you think we will get in problems with that? What kind of internet connection do you have in order to fear that?

A decentralized network robustness depends not on an average throughput, but on the throughput of bottlenecks, namely network bottlenecks (China-ROW, e.g.), CPU bottlenecks and others.
CPU bottlenecks are currently being worked on by core devs.

Sure. And will you pay that? You realize the cost of the recent spam attacks? And those were only some KB. You speak about filling up a lot MB with spam. I wonder if you will find someone who will do the spamming.

Do you realize that yeaterday's attack created more than 35Mb transaction backlog -- enough to fill more than four 8Mb blocks.
The previous attack had much larger backlog.

And of course i referred to the natural adoption of bitcoin that will fill the blocks. Spamming won't happen since it does not make sense then anymore in any way for the spammer.

"Sense"? What's the sense for an attacker currently? Do you realize that with this natural adoption even 8Mb blocks will get full at some point, and the closer they get to 8Mb, the less costly is a spam attack.
We can't solve the spam attack by allowing for more bloating, we can fight it only with fees, which are bound to go towards zero if we keep increasing blocksize limit beyond demand.

Most of your comments are bullshit which can be countered a thousand times too.

Go ahead, I'm eagerly waiting. Thousand times is not necessary, one will be enough.

[fonsie]

 you are asking the same question that has been answered like a thousand times

Why can't you accept that some people like "big blocks" and some don't?


What if the blocksize could only contain 1 transaction costing 1 BTC, if we increase this to 2 transactions costing 0.5BTC each, the miners would make 1 BTC either way...

BUT

After our increase, we doubled the amount of users that can make transactions in 10min intervals.

What's the point of Bitcoin if you can only send money to a limited amount of people?

[RoadTrain]

you are asking the same question that has been answered like a thousand times

Got it, another cheap-talker (unlike you, I have answered to Linuld in detail). Welcome to my ignore list.

[fonsie]

you are asking the same question that has been answered like a thousand times

Got it, another cheap-talker (unlike you, I have answered to Linuld in detail). Welcome to my ignore list.

Mr Moron, please read my full post. If you keep ignoring everybody that doesn't treat you like your mummy does, you'll be all alone in here.

[RGBKey]

I see the only downside of 8MB blocks being the possible larger size of the blockchain in the future. I also believe by that time we will have larger storage standards. I do not however, support XT as an implementation of a block size increase.

[RoadTrain]

you are asking the same question that has been answered like a thousand times

Got it, another cheap-talker (unlike you, I have answered to Linuld in detail). Welcome to my ignore list.

Mr Moron, please read my full post. If you keep ignoring everybody that doesn't treat you like your mummy does, you'll be all alone in here.

You have edited it after I submitted mine. I'll give you a reply soon.

[RoadTrain]

Why can't you accept that some people like "big blocks" and some don't?

I can and I do. But that's irrelevent to my reply to Linuld.

What if the blocksize could only contain 1 transaction costing 1 BTC, if we increase this to 2 transactions costing 0.5BTC each, the miners would make 1 BTC either way...

If we increase this to 2 txs, and the second tx doesn't appear (spare space), then the first tx will simply lower its fees (blocksize becomes non-scarce).

BUT

After our increase, we doubled the amount of users that can make transactions in 10min intervals.

We doubled the amount of possible transactions, but we can't magically double the actual amount of them.

What's the point of Bitcoin if you can only send money to a limited amount of people?

That's not my point. I want Bitcoin to scale while still retaining its unique characteristics.

[fonsie]

Look, I'm not XT Jezus, but at this point it's the only working available code and whatever your personal (non)affection for Mike and Gavin.
XT has put a fire under the whole blocksize debate.

I do strongly think that 1MB is simply too low and if we keep it that low and put some centralized lightning shit on top of it, just throw in the towel then and keep the old system in place(=banks).

We need bigger blocks, but it should all work in harmony, everything, from miner to hodler, to ..... But the numbers that should be able to be in harmony have to get bigger.

I'm also not implying that nothing should get built on top of bitcoin, because even with 8GB blocks it will be necessary.

[adamstgBit]

A good argument against the bitcoiners that demand 1MB blocksize because "Miners have to be rewarded" is the electricity that goes away with that. I recently read an article about a study saying that currently 1! bitcoin transaction costs so much electricity like 1.75 normal US households use in a day.

We can't let all these miners survive artificially by raising the fees. The amount of miners need to be trimmed down and the bitcoin security be more power efficient. That was always happening and it should and can't be held up artificially. The bitcoin network would be still very very secure with less miners.

Unfortunately miners are the mighty ones in the game. We only can hope that the sane one are the biggest ones. And that they see the need of bitcoin adoption for getting future profits.

That is a sick amount of power... So mining one block consumes the power of a full city? That is insane and not sustainable, especially if it keeps rising...

I do agree that's a lot to secure this level of Bitcoin transactions as of today. But I also read that current amount of hashing power is enough to secure even a 100 fold increase in the transaction number and user number. So to say, if we would have 100 million users, the network would be secured with today's hash rate.

That's why I don't understand the opponents of the block size increase. Bitcoin has to scale in order to be sustainable in the long run! For that we need bigger blocks!

but WHO will ever be able to download 8MB

8 FUCKING MASSIVE MEGA BYTES

this will surely make minning WAY more centralized

Well then we have a huge freaking problem! Then Bitcoin isn't ready for mass adoption and how will ever be ready? What solution is there besides sidechains, if the sidechains are even possible?

I have a typical home connection downloading 8MB might take me anywhere from 2 to 6 seconds

if i'm streaming a movie it could take 12seconds i guess

so it clearly unacceptable to expect miners to download 8MB, so there can be no doubt 8MB WILL centralize bitcoin mining.

[uxgpf]

Some idiots are still running nodes on Raspberry Pis or Beagle Bones.

Exactly what is so idiotic about supporting the Bitcoin network by running dedicated devices as nodes (like Raspberry Pis) ?

Yeah, why don't you buy 2 TB SSD to everybody in Bitcoin community Mr. Donator Legendary rich fella? Almost everybody in this community wants to run Bitcoin Core as node.
Or you want to limit node usage to some secret elite society? More centralization is definitely a good idea, huh?

Why would you need 2 TB SSD to store 512 MB of data? (we are talking about running a node here, right?) Even if you wanted to store the full blockchain 2 TB HDDs are cheap and would be enough for long time to the future.

The block chain size alone is 40 GB> right now. Where'd you get those 512 MB of data? o.o You need to have the full copy of the block chain since the genesis block to become a full node.

He's talking about blockchain pruning -- currently possible with Core client. Though it's not a full node really until UTXO commitments are in place. You still need full nodes to do initial sync and full validation, and someone must be running them.

I'm running XT, but yes. It downloads the full blockchain to validate it and prunes it to a set size. Sync will take as long as it normally would (as it needs to validate the whole blockchain), advantage is that only preset amount of storage space is used.

[fonsie]

A good argument against the bitcoiners that demand 1MB blocksize because "Miners have to be rewarded" is the electricity that goes away with that. I recently read an article about a study saying that currently 1! bitcoin transaction costs so much electricity like 1.75 normal US households use in a day.

We can't let all these miners survive artificially by raising the fees. The amount of miners need to be trimmed down and the bitcoin security be more power efficient. That was always happening and it should and can't be held up artificially. The bitcoin network would be still very very secure with less miners.

Unfortunately miners are the mighty ones in the game. We only can hope that the sane one are the biggest ones. And that they see the need of bitcoin adoption for getting future profits.

That is a sick amount of power... So mining one block consumes the power of a full city? That is insane and not sustainable, especially if it keeps rising...

I do agree that's a lot to secure this level of Bitcoin transactions as of today. But I also read that current amount of hashing power is enough to secure even a 100 fold increase in the transaction number and user number. So to say, if we would have 100 million users, the network would be secured with today's hash rate.

That's why I don't understand the opponents of the block size increase. Bitcoin has to scale in order to be sustainable in the long run! For that we need bigger blocks!

but WHO will ever be able to download 8MB

8 FUCKING MASSIVE MEGA BYTES

this will surely make minning WAY more centralized

Well then we have a huge freaking problem! Then Bitcoin isn't ready for mass adoption and how will ever be ready? What solution is there besides sidechains, if the sidechains are even possible?

I have a typical home connection downloading 8MB might take me anywhere from 2 to 6 seconds

if i'm streaming a movie it could take 12seconds i guess

so it clearly unacceptable to expect miners to download 8MB, so there can be no doubt 8MB WILL centralize bitcoin mining.

Are you being serious here Adam or ....?

I also have a typical home connection and 8MB would take me about 0.5-1 sec, if I would be a miner, I wouldn't stream a movie on the connection, but buy a second one.
If my current connection is to slow I still have the possibility to upgrade to a higher speed connection.

So if I can do it, surely a miner making millions should be able to figure it out.

[adamstgBit]

A good argument against the bitcoiners that demand 1MB blocksize because "Miners have to be rewarded" is the electricity that goes away with that. I recently read an article about a study saying that currently 1! bitcoin transaction costs so much electricity like 1.75 normal US households use in a day.

We can't let all these miners survive artificially by raising the fees. The amount of miners need to be trimmed down and the bitcoin security be more power efficient. That was always happening and it should and can't be held up artificially. The bitcoin network would be still very very secure with less miners.

Unfortunately miners are the mighty ones in the game. We only can hope that the sane one are the biggest ones. And that they see the need of bitcoin adoption for getting future profits.

That is a sick amount of power... So mining one block consumes the power of a full city? That is insane and not sustainable, especially if it keeps rising...

I do agree that's a lot to secure this level of Bitcoin transactions as of today. But I also read that current amount of hashing power is enough to secure even a 100 fold increase in the transaction number and user number. So to say, if we would have 100 million users, the network would be secured with today's hash rate.

That's why I don't understand the opponents of the block size increase. Bitcoin has to scale in order to be sustainable in the long run! For that we need bigger blocks!

but WHO will ever be able to download 8MB

8 FUCKING MASSIVE MEGA BYTES

this will surely make minning WAY more centralized

Well then we have a huge freaking problem! Then Bitcoin isn't ready for mass adoption and how will ever be ready? What solution is there besides sidechains, if the sidechains are even possible?

I have a typical home connection downloading 8MB might take me anywhere from 2 to 6 seconds

if i'm streaming a movie it could take 12seconds i guess

so it clearly unacceptable to expect miners to download 8MB, so there can be no doubt 8MB WILL centralize bitcoin mining.

Are you being serious here Adam or ....?

I also have a typical home connection and 8MB would take me about 0.5-1 sec, if I would be a miner, I wouldn't stream a movie on the connection, but buy a second one.
If my current connection is to slow I still have the possibility to upgrade to a higher speed connection.

So if I can do it, surely a miner making millions should be able to figure it out.

if miners can't stream 3 HD pron movies all at once while mining on a typical home connections , mining will become centralized! simple as that.

[poeEDgar]

No worries. Hearn says that miners whose bandwidth is too limited can create their own altcoin and leave bitcoin.

[fonsie]

A good argument against the bitcoiners that demand 1MB blocksize because "Miners have to be rewarded" is the electricity that goes away with that. I recently read an article about a study saying that currently 1! bitcoin transaction costs so much electricity like 1.75 normal US households use in a day.

We can't let all these miners survive artificially by raising the fees. The amount of miners need to be trimmed down and the bitcoin security be more power efficient. That was always happening and it should and can't be held up artificially. The bitcoin network would be still very very secure with less miners.

Unfortunately miners are the mighty ones in the game. We only can hope that the sane one are the biggest ones. And that they see the need of bitcoin adoption for getting future profits.

That is a sick amount of power... So mining one block consumes the power of a full city? That is insane and not sustainable, especially if it keeps rising...

I do agree that's a lot to secure this level of Bitcoin transactions as of today. But I also read that current amount of hashing power is enough to secure even a 100 fold increase in the transaction number and user number. So to say, if we would have 100 million users, the network would be secured with today's hash rate.

That's why I don't understand the opponents of the block size increase. Bitcoin has to scale in order to be sustainable in the long run! For that we need bigger blocks!

but WHO will ever be able to download 8MB

8 FUCKING MASSIVE MEGA BYTES

this will surely make minning WAY more centralized

Well then we have a huge freaking problem! Then Bitcoin isn't ready for mass adoption and how will ever be ready? What solution is there besides sidechains, if the sidechains are even possible?

I have a typical home connection downloading 8MB might take me anywhere from 2 to 6 seconds

if i'm streaming a movie it could take 12seconds i guess

so it clearly unacceptable to expect miners to download 8MB, so there can be no doubt 8MB WILL centralize bitcoin mining.

Are you being serious here Adam or ....?

I also have a typical home connection and 8MB would take me about 0.5-1 sec, if I would be a miner, I wouldn't stream a movie on the connection, but buy a second one.
If my current connection is to slow I still have the possibility to upgrade to a higher speed connection.

So if I can do it, surely a miner making millions should be able to figure it out.

if miners can't stream 3 HD pron movies all at once while mining on a typical home connections , mining will become centralized! simple as that.

Can't argue with that, lets vote for H265.