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[tertius993]

You are not answering the question - how does increasing transaction fees increase the capacity for legitimate transactions?

By making it impractical to send dust and spam due to cost, leaving more room for legitimate transactions.

Which is not increasing capacity is it?  Merely prioritising the capacity we have.  And when the block is full of legitimate transactions, all paying a fair fee, what then?

My first response to you covers that. Literally 50% of the blockchain is gambling, that will be one of the first things to be taken off chain. There's tons of other dust transactions from faucets, advertising sites, etc.

The fair fee continually rises, so the transactions with higher fees will go through faster, resulting in equilibrium. And this is only after we get all the bullshit off the blockchain which will be over a decade from now.

Not to mention software doesn't optimize transaction size, I'm sure we could make them much smaller if this was actually a problem.

So basically once we do hit full blocks consistently (were not even close to that yet) the rising transaction fee will ensure legitimate transactions continue to go through in the next block.

Also this is probably something you haven't considered: As miner rewards approach zero transaction fees will be the only incentive to mine and keep the network secure. We need fees to rise in the longterm to keep Bitcoin secure. Increasing block size totally ruins this and could be catastrophic for the network in the long run.

No, your first response does not cover that.  We still have a hard capacity limit, all increasing fees will do is prioritise transactions, it does not increase capacity one iota. 

Again, once the network capacity is full of legitimate fee paying transactions how will increasing the fees increase that capacity - to put it another way how will increased fees allow say 14 TPS instead of the current 7 TPS?

[DooMAD]

Also this is probably something you haven't considered: As miner rewards approach zero transaction fees will be the only incentive to mine and keep the network secure. We need fees to rise in the longterm to keep Bitcoin secure. Increasing block size totally ruins this and could be catastrophic for the network in the long run.

We've considered that just fine, thanks.  What you're not considering is the following:

Assume Network 'A' can process a maximum of 2000 transactions per block and the average fee is .0001

Assume Network 'B' can process a maximum of 10000 transactions per block and the average fee is .00005

Which network can potentially generate a higher amount in fees?  That's right, the one that can support more transactions.  Raising fees is not the most efficient way to increase mining revenue.

we need fees to increase up to 0.50 $ , 1 $ - the poor people on the planet can use something else!

 
/s

As miner rewards approach zero....in 2140  

And also this.  There's a moral argument to go along with the one where small-blockians aren't very good as simple math (more transactions equals more fees, not less, it isn't rocket science).  The more people who are able to use Bitcoin, the stronger it becomes.  What some people think of as a "lesser" transaction could mean a not-insignificant amount of money for those in other parts of the world.

Please use your eyes and read this: Bitcoin transaction fees go up when transaction data volume goes up, the blockchain functions perfectly normal regardless of transaction # or size. This is what the Bitcoin core developers already agree on.

Yes, we will clearly continue to be able to fit 10 minutes worth of transactions from a global populace into two-thirds of a floppy disk for the rest of forever.   

Fees alone will not solve scalability.  If you honestly believe that then you don't understand this system as well as you claim to. 

Here's an honest question to those who advocate keeping a 1MB block:  how long would the backlog of transactions have to get before increasing the blocksize would become a viable option in your opinion?  I genuinely want to know just how far you're prepared to cripple the network to justify your agenda.

Under organic circumstances the Bitcoin transactions per day will increase slowly, and a slight increase in transaction fees will keep things running smoothly. Currently we are nowhere needing a blocksize increase, and Bitcoin transactions per day are growing steadily but definitely not exponentially.

I love Bitcoin so of course if there was a problem I'd support the fix. There simply is no problem though. Spam attacks helped prove that, transactions increased by insane amounts that would never happen naturally and network still ran fine.

Perhaps there was some ambiguity in my post.  That's not what I asked.  Those recent transactions may well have been spam, but if the network did grow to a point where it was filled by legitimate transactions, what figure in MB would you be willing to see the backlog reach before supporting larger blocks?

Still waiting for an answer on this one.  Be honest.

[TinEye]

the panic seems to begin. We have seen the price drop and we see more in the next days. This move from Gavin is very stupid and not necessary atm. In my opinion is suspicious to do this in this period of time when bitcoin  seems to stabilize almost one year after the mtgox problem and crash.

yes but bitcoin can't grow if this issue isn't resolved, we can't wait forever for it, the deadline is approaching fast, something must be done now, i see this tx cap increase as a good thing for delaying the issue momentarily, afterward we study further ways to resolve it without increase it again in the future, like sidechain or something else

[Mickeyb]

Well it's only 300+ until now, but how long is this going on, a bit more than 2 days. People do need time to update and to decide.

When will we see the real decision? How long should we wait, is it 2 weeks or a month to see how many nodes are on the XT and how many nodes are with the core? This I would like to know!

Opinions everybody!

[Denker]

Let's not forget that the bitcoin core developers excommunicated Gavin for being a selfish nutcase. Now he is trying to destroy bitcoin with outright terrorism via month long transaction spam attacks and declaring Bitcoin is forked when he does not have the ability to do so. He's causing the entire bitcoin community to lose money just because he is butthurt

Please back up your claim with evidence about gavin being the culprit behind the recent spam attack on the bitcoin network.

Otherwise please STFU 

thanks

I know it was him and the BitcoinXT crew, they were trying to prove Bitcoin needs bigger blocks and failed miserably. He is so desperate at this point it is amusing.

The only thing Gavin destroyed was his reputation and credibility. Maybe he should do something useful and terrorize Dogecoin.

Man this is pure FUD! Either you can prove that Gavin was behind those spam attacks, which highly doubt you can, or this whole statement is not more than just bs.
Furthermore as far as I know it's only the blockstream guys who are against an blocksize increase.

[redsn0w]

Let's not forget that the bitcoin core developers excommunicated Gavin for being a selfish nutcase. Now he is trying to destroy bitcoin with outright terrorism via month long transaction spam attacks and declaring Bitcoin is forked when he does not have the ability to do so. He's causing the entire bitcoin community to lose money just because he is butthurt

Please back up your claim with evidence about gavin being the culprit behind the recent spam attack on the bitcoin network.

Otherwise please STFU 

thanks

I know it was him and the BitcoinXT crew, they were trying to prove Bitcoin needs bigger blocks and failed miserably. He is so desperate at this point it is amusing.

The only thing Gavin destroyed was his reputation and credibility. Maybe he should do something useful and terrorize Dogecoin.

Man this is pure FUD! Either you can prove that Gavin was behind those spam attacks, which highly doubt you can, or this whole statement is not more than just bs.
Furthermore as far as I know it's only the blockstream guys who are against an blocksize increase.

Do you mean these guys?

 - https://www.blockstream.com/team/

[BornBlazed]

 No Designated Driver too this Massive 'BitCoin Bus". With Several hands fighting over the Steering Wheel is it wise too stay on the Bus?  

[tertius993]

That could be done by making the software more efficient with data use. FYI right now it's between 1-2 transactions per second, and thats with all the gambling, spam, dust, and other BS. I get what you're trying to say but it's simply not a thing to worry about, I'm sure decades from now we'll be able to fit transactions into less than a kilobyte. This might never be a problem.

OK, so you agree that increased fees do not increase the capacity of the network? Good let's put that to bed and not use it as an argument again.

Instead you are now arguing that some future technical development - not yet defined or specified I guess? -  will allow the current network to carry more transactions?  Further you suggest that it will be "decades" before this is needed - can you show how you came to this estimate?

[Blazr]

If there were Bitcoin police him and the XT people would be the #1 suspects for the mass spam attack. Never gonna be able to prove it 100% cause I'm sure they know how to remain completely anonymous.

Fortunately the mass spam attack didn't hurt anyone so it's not a big deal. Actually provided good data that substantiated the consensus we don't need bigger blocks.

There are so many people with the resources, ability and motive to execute those mass spam attacks. I don't see any reason to suspect the XT developers were behind it, honestly could've been anyone, the cost wasn't extraordinarily high.

[redsn0w]

If there were Bitcoin police him and the XT people would be the #1 suspects for the mass spam attack. Never gonna be able to prove it 100% cause I'm sure they know how to remain completely anonymous.

Fortunately the mass spam attack didn't hurt anyone so it's not a big deal. Actually provided good data that substantiated the consensus we don't need bigger blocks.

Think at this scenario :


After the next bitcoin halving the block reward will be 12,5 BTC , so 1/2 . Add to the halving a spam TX attack made by someone who have a lot or (don't have) of btc.



A catastrophe or what?

[Mickeyb]

Let's not forget that the bitcoin core developers excommunicated Gavin for being a selfish nutcase. Now he is trying to destroy bitcoin with outright terrorism via month long transaction spam attacks and declaring Bitcoin is forked when he does not have the ability to do so. He's causing the entire bitcoin community to lose money just because he is butthurt

Well this is a pretty bold statement to make without any proofs. I honestly don't see Gavin being behind the spam attacks, he just doesn't seem as a man capable of doing that. Also, he has smarter things to do than to be dealing with these nonsense spam attacks.

Spam attacks might be the product of some people that do support bigger blocks and tbey were also doing this just to prove their point.

[jonald_fyookball]

That could be done by making the software more efficient with data use. FYI right now it's between 1-2 transactions per second, and thats with all the gambling, spam, dust, and other BS. I get what you're trying to say but it's simply not a thing to worry about, I'm sure decades from now we'll be able to fit transactions into less than a kilobyte. This might never be a problem.

OK, so you agree that increased fees do not increase the capacity of the network? Good let's put that to bed and not use it as an argument again.

Instead you are now arguing that some future technical development - not yet defined or specified I guess? -  will allow the current network to carry more transactions?  Further you suggest that it will be "decades" before this is needed - can you show how you came to this estimate?

You completely ignore that gambling and alot of other things will be taken off chain, making alot more room for legitimate transactions. And also that we are at 1-2 transactions per second now so we won't even see gambling and dust go off chain for a long time.

Maybe someone can provide insight on how transactions can be made with less data,  I'm sure it's possible. Not an issue until way down the road.

No way to calculate time frame, who knows how fast Bitcoin will grow, or if it will die at some point. I could extrapolate with the current linear trend but that wouldnt have much skill.

Basically I'm saying first we gotta reach the blocksize limit, then fees will rise a bit and free transactions will stop happening, dust and guys rolling dice will be taken off chain. That will free up something like half the space for legit transactions. Then fees will slowly rise and to make transactions you gotta pay more. If this truly became a problem, say fees were $10, then it would be time to reduce data per transaction.

Average blocksize is currently under 0.4 mb, it will definitely be years until we even get to the first step of forcing dust off chain.

Number of transactions seems to be about double from last year.   "decades away" is hogwash afaic. We will be hitting the limit soon and it seems foolish to wait till we hit the limit.   Better to expand the capacity now by simply raising the blocksize.

Also .4 may be average, but that doesn't mean we won't increasingly see spikes toward 1 mb.  shouldn't the idea be to have excess bandwidth, not frequently have backlogs needing to be cleared because we spiked above the limit?  

[Liquid71]

If blocksize is increased transactions with zero fees will continue to be accepted, so miners would make nothing. Pretty much all zero fee transactions get confirmed when blocks are partially filled, albeit slowly. This isn't a huge deal now, but when block rewards become infinitesimal it will be a crucial factor.

Basically in the future everyone who wants to use Bitcoin will be paying to keep the network secure and fast, rather than new money being printed to pay for that.

Bitcoins need to rise in value to incentivize miners as block rewards dwindle. Those dust transactions today can be worth much more in the future and pricing them out of the market is capping the utility of BTC. Artificially raising tx fees by limiting the amount of transactions does nothing to add value to Bitcoin, it only limits it's potential. If Bitcoin rises dramatically in value, those artificially high tx fees will limit use of the blockchain to only when absolutely necessary and for high value transactions. I've also read quotes from Satoshi that the size of the blockchain would have to rise in the future, so there was never any plan to stay at 1mb blocks indefinitely to incentivize miners as block rewards drop.

That said XT is the wrong way to go about it, and only causes confusion for average joe public users that don't know or care how it works not to mention scaring off newbies from getting involved in and trusting BTC. 

[Liquid71]

That could be done by making the software more efficient with data use. FYI right now it's between 1-2 transactions per second, and thats with all the gambling, spam, dust, and other BS. I get what you're trying to say but it's simply not a thing to worry about, I'm sure decades from now we'll be able to fit transactions into less than a kilobyte. This might never be a problem.

OK, so you agree that increased fees do not increase the capacity of the network? Good let's put that to bed and not use it as an argument again.

Instead you are now arguing that some future technical development - not yet defined or specified I guess? -  will allow the current network to carry more transactions?  Further you suggest that it will be "decades" before this is needed - can you show how you came to this estimate?

You completely ignore that gambling and alot of other things will be taken off chain, making alot more room for legitimate transactions.

So now we need an authority to designate which transactions are legitimate 

[cellard]

At the end of the day all of this will not matter in 10 years when people are using Bitcoin, no one will know what the hell happened back then, this is like in the early days of TCP/IP the mega geeks and mega early enthusiasts having battles over what is the best thing to do to scale it up.

[TheMage]

There is so much misinformation or baseless assumptions in this thread it difficult where to start, but I think this would be a good place.

If there were Bitcoin police him and the XT people would be the #1 suspects for the mass spam attack. Never gonna be able to prove it 100% cause I'm sure they know how to remain completely anonymous.

Fortunately the mass spam attack didn't hurt anyone so it's not a big deal. Actually provided good data that substantiated the consensus we don't need bigger blocks.

No, the number 1 suspects is not Gavin but rather the miners themselves (mining pools). What better way to increase revenue than to create an artificial catastrophe, forcing everyone from developers to the users and everyone in between to re-evaluate the fee structure to put higher fee's in place.


I dont know that you know this (based on another post of yours), but miners can be selective what gets propagated and what does not. It's "encouraged" by the devs (Luke Jr's words) for them to do this.

[Lauda]

-snip-
tl;dr it's just Bitcoin Core but with ability to have larger blocks, a bug fix, and two minor things that are useful for app developers.

Stop spreading misinformation. Let me show you what that "bug fix" is and those two minor things are:

bug fix:
If "relay the first observed double spend" were generally accepted as a bug with a clean fix available, it'd be fixed in Core; superficial searching says it got reverted as problematic and contentious but I don't know the whole story, nor do I have an opinion on the change.
two minor things:
One is for Hearn's Lighthouse project, and also got merged, found buggy, and reverted. Without those eyeballs, would the lack of testing have been addressed and the bug in getutxos have been spotted before it was widely rolled out?
The other is adding back the bitnodes seed node that was removed for behaving in fishy ways, and adding a seed run by Mike

Is XT basically going to be every patch Mike Hearn ever had refused by NACKs in Core? Where does that road take you as a user of XT?

Cleaner and simplified version:

• Automatic blacklisting controlled by the Tor project (AFAIK without their consent).
• Buggy block size validation.
• Lighthouse slave support.
• Incomplete/buggy double spend detection.

Conclusion: the block size has to be increased and XT has to be stopped.  
Update:
Yes. While I do support a block size increase (to what limit, is debatable), I am completely against XT.
Update 2:

http://gtf.org/garzik/bitcoin/BIP100-blocksizechangeproposal.pdf

Yes, I'm aware of both BIP 100 and 102. The problem is that many users are not aware of BIP 100 or do not understand it.

[redsn0w]

...
Conclusion: the block size has to be increased and XT has to be stopped.  

Is this your personal opinion?

[Tirapon]

-snip-
tl;dr it's just Bitcoin Core but with ability to have larger blocks, a bug fix, and two minor things that are useful for app developers.

Stop spreading misinformation. Let me show you what that "bug fix" is and those two minor things are:

bug fix:
If "relay the first observed double spend" were generally accepted as a bug with a clean fix available, it'd be fixed in Core; superficial searching says it got reverted as problematic and contentious but I don't know the whole story, nor do I have an opinion on the change.
two minor things:
One is for Hearn's Lighthouse project, and also got merged, found buggy, and reverted. Without those eyeballs, would the lack of testing have been addressed and the bug in getutxos have been spotted before it was widely rolled out?
The other is adding back the bitnodes seed node that was removed for behaving in fishy ways, and adding a seed run by Mike

Is XT basically going to be every patch Mike Hearn ever had refused by NACKs in Core? Where does that road take you as a user of XT?

Cleaner and simplified version:

• Automatic blacklisting controlled by the Tor project (AFAIK without their consent).
• Buggy block size validation.
• Lighthouse slave support.
• Incomplete/buggy double spend detection.

Conclusion: the block size has to be increased and XT has to be stopped.  
Update:
Yes. While I do support a block size increase (to what limit, is debatable), I am completely against XT.

http://gtf.org/garzik/bitcoin/BIP100-blocksizechangeproposal.pdf

[Quickseller]

Increased transaction fees result in less Bitcoin transactions, which helped expedite the clearing of the backlog. There is plenty of room to be more concise with transactions, right now something like 50% of blockchain transactions are gambling. They can send these transactions for basically free since blocks are still only partially filled, in the future once it becomes costly theyll take it off chain. Also we can optimize software to use as little data as possible for transactions. And in general instead of sending around dust people will think more carefully about sending Bitcoin. Kind've like how people don't send 25 cents through western union, they only use it for important things.

So your solution to allowing for Bitcoin to support a larger number of transactions per second is for users to send a smaller number of transactions per second?

I really don't think this is s a very solid argument.

The current TPS limit is somewhere between 2-3 with a  1 MB max block size. Unless you have a way to make transactions smaller while still keeping the same level of security, then the only way for the Bitcoin network to process more then 3 TPS over the long run is to increase the maximum block size to be above 1 MB.

Just because the maximum block size is 8 MB (for example), that does not mean that miners will fill their blocks with 8 MB worth of free transactions.