What are the downsides to 8MB blocks?

[Nas]

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?

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[uxgpf]

i have had trouble trying to get a node up and running as it is.

What kind of problems?

I'd guess bandwidth saturation while syncing? You only need to sync once and after the blockchain is downloaded the bandwidth and processor usage is minimal. If you're willing to run a node (and thus keep it up for months or years) few days to sync the blockchain isn't an issue. (IMO)

[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.

[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.

[Nas]

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.

How do you maintain all blockchain when block size limit will be 8 MB? Blockchain is almost 50 GB already. It'll be 63 GB before new year. Imagine we see 8 MB blocks every 10 minutes. Even 2 TB would be obsolete in 5 years.
If you don't want any problems you don't store your blockchain in HDD. You need a good SSD. Running Bitcoin Core is very expensive even right now.

[uxgpf]

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.

How do you maintain all blockchain when block size limit will be 8 MB? Blockchain is almost 50 GB already. It'll be 63 GB before new year. Imagine we see 8 MB blocks every 10 minutes. Even 2 TB would be obsolete in 5 years.
If you don't want any problems you don't store your blockchain in HDD. You need a good SSD. Running Bitcoin Core is very expensive even right now.

I'm actually using SSD myself too, so I don't know if there would be problems using HDD. What would they be?

8MB block limit doesn't mean that all blocks will be full. But let's say they were. 5 years is still a very long time and by then larger drives would be cheaper.

Also why should everybody store the full blockchain? Blockchain size doesn't really matter (aside from sync time) if most nodes use a pruned chain that only contains the latest history.

[fonsie]

Better call Netflix to stop their 4K releases, otherwise nobody will be able to watch Netflix anymore if everything is 4K.

Let's hope Windows 11 can fit back on a floppy, otherwise we are doomed.

[fonsie]

If you don't want any problems you don't store your blockchain in HDD. You need a good SSD. Running Bitcoin Core is very expensive even right now.

And why exactly is that?

I think my HDD can handle writing a 8MB block every 10 min, luckily I also have some RAM, doesn't your PC?

[johnyj]

This chart says it all



For broadcasting large blocks, it will take 0.25 second for each KB to reach every nodes. So 1MB blocks would take 250 seconds e.g. more than 4 minutes to reach all the network, or 80 seconds to reach majority of the network

It is easy to calculate, for 8MB blocks, it will take 32 minutes to reach all the nodes, or 10.6 minutes to reach majority of nodes, it is obviously too slow, the next block is already mined before the previous one arrived, so the previous one is always orphaned, the network will be segmented

http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~rich/class/cs290-cloud/papers/bitcoin-delay.pdf

Of course there will be workarounds to broadcast only the block header first then followed by the block, but that function is not implemented yet and have its own weakness. Currently some chinese miners try to include as little transaction as possible to increase the speed of their block's broadcasting

[Jeremycoin]

afaik some bandwidth problem for miners(chinese) and probably the fact that 8MB is not a final solution, because you need to fork again in the future, that will arise all the same problems, that we are facing right now, for this size increase

[IMHO]
I believe this problem would solved in the future, just like internet speed it will always increase to higher speed.

[iCEBREAKER]

Besides the technical challenges for 8MB blocks (verification and propagation), there are even more difficult economic entailments:





If you want to prevent formation/maturation of fee markets sufficient to replace block subsidies, raising the maximum size is the best way to do it.

[ranochigo]

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.

How do you maintain all blockchain when block size limit will be 8 MB? Blockchain is almost 50 GB already. It'll be 63 GB before new year. Imagine we see 8 MB blocks every 10 minutes. Even 2 TB would be obsolete in 5 years.
If you don't want any problems you don't store your blockchain in HDD. You need a good SSD. Running Bitcoin Core is very expensive even right now.

SSD is not a viable option for most. SSD is quite expensive due to the speed and they don't help much except in the initial synchronization when it would help to speed up the synchronizing process. But headers-first synchronization would have already speed up this process largely already, when block pruning is implemented fully, most don't need to store the entire blockchain. SPV clients are pretty much the option for everyone, they offer good features while occupying small space.

Bandwidth don't come at a cheap price and some ISP in the world have cap on the bandwidth. This could pose as a problem.

[Linuld]

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.

How do you maintain all blockchain when block size limit will be 8 MB? Blockchain is almost 50 GB already. It'll be 63 GB before new year. Imagine we see 8 MB blocks every 10 minutes. Even 2 TB would be obsolete in 5 years.
If you don't want any problems you don't store your blockchain in HDD. You need a good SSD. Running Bitcoin Core is very expensive even right now.

Then where will all these transactions come from suddenly? You know that the 1MB blocks were not full until the spamming began? It is not imaginable that suddenly 8MB blocks are always happening. Even spammers could not afford these costs.

So you shouldn't fear these block sizes.

[Linuld]

This chart says it all



For broadcasting large blocks, it will take 0.25 second for each KB to reach every nodes. So 1MB blocks would take 250 seconds e.g. more than 4 minutes to reach all the network, or 80 seconds to reach majority of the network

It is easy to calculate, for 8MB blocks, it will take 32 minutes to reach all the nodes, or 10.6 minutes to reach majority of nodes, it is obviously too slow, the next block is already mined before the previous one arrived, so the previous one is always orphaned, the network will be segmented

http://www.cs.ucsb.edu/~rich/class/cs290-cloud/papers/bitcoin-delay.pdf

Of course there will be workarounds to broadcast only the block header first then followed by the block, but that function is not implemented yet and have its own weakness. Currently some chinese miners try to include as little transaction as possible to increase the speed of their block's broadcasting

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

Second... there is a network that is used to propagate blocks fast to get above 50%. Which is what it needs to not being orphaned anymore. That network was set up for exactly that reason and it can propagate full 1MB blocks very fast. Only a couple seconds.

That was done to show that miners don't need to create 1 transaction blocks in order to have an advantage in propagation.

So for now this is a non existing problem.

[iCEBREAKER]

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.

for now this is a non existing problem.

 

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. 

[dothebeats]

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.

[RoadTrain]

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.

[NorrisK]

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...

[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!

[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