Not Bitcoin XT

[canth]

Well anyways guys, I`ll be hedging myself agains this calamity with some Litecoin and other big coins.

Whatever will happen after the september meeting of the devs, I am not taking chances, so pray that bitcoin will be ok after that.

I just dont see how the push for XT will resolve anything...

This conversation has been going on for years now. Is XT the solution? Only miners/merchants/users support will decide. However, XT is certainly pushing the conversation along more rapidly than it has been in the past. IMO, the scaling conference would not have been arranged without it.

[RealBitcoin]

Well anyways guys, I`ll be hedging myself agains this calamity with some Litecoin and other big coins.

Whatever will happen after the september meeting of the devs, I am not taking chances, so pray that bitcoin will be ok after that.

I just dont see how the push for XT will resolve anything...

This conversation has been going on for years now. Is XT the solution? Only miners/merchants/users support will decide. However, XT is certainly pushing the conversation along more rapidly than it has been in the past. IMO, the scaling conference would not have been arranged without it.

The funny thing is that Litecoin has XT scheduled too, but I hope they will implement it after Bitcoin.

So if bitcoin gets fucked up, then everybody could rush to Litecoin as an alternative. If they implement it in the same time then we are fucked.

Even though any modification is scheduled for january, I feel like we will have a cold autumn and  winter ahead

[canth]

Thats why I said this

The price for fees can change, more wallets need to implement this feature tho. That is all that is needed for there to be no queues.

The more efficient the market and price finding mechanisms are the less queues there will be. Even with a small block size.

If wallets allow for the fee price to be changed, queues for average users will be rare and there will be a known amount above which users can be certain of getting into a block immediately.

If wallets additionally have smart price finding mechanism the market will be even more efficient and queues will be rarer.

If you have  replace-by-fee as Peter Todd is trying to advocate, and wallets and pools implement that functionality, the market can be even more efficient and users can have a flawless experience without having to worry about fees at all.


I believe that having some fee pressure will push wallet developers to implement these relatively simple abilities. Some small block size increase(s) will be needed tho at some point.

Sure, let's say I agree with all of the above. To me, it's all moot without significant growth of users - growth that by your economic analysis won't happen with fees that are too high since the customers will go elsewhere. Either we can scale this thing 100X+ from where it is today or it's not interesting.

[danielW]

Thats why I said this

The price for fees can change, more wallets need to implement this feature tho. That is all that is needed for there to be no queues.

The more efficient the market and price finding mechanisms are the less queues there will be. Even with a small block size.

If wallets allow for the fee price to be changed, queues for average users will be rare and there will be a known amount above which users can be certain of getting into a block immediately.

If wallets additionally have smart price finding mechanism the market will be even more efficient and queues will be rarer.

If you have  replace-by-fee as Peter Todd is trying to advocate, and wallets and pools implement that functionality, the market can be even more efficient and users can have a flawless experience without having to worry about fees at all.


I believe that having some fee pressure will push wallet developers to implement these relatively simple abilities. Some small block size increase(s) will be needed tho at some point.

Sure, let's say I agree with all of the above. To me, it's all moot without significant growth of users - growth that by your economic analysis won't happen with fees that are too high since the customers will go elsewhere. Either we can scale this thing 100X+ from where it is today or it's not interesting.

I dont think scaling to 100x is best done by simply raising the block size limit. Its even less likely to work for scaling to 1000x or 100000x which I hope will be needed.


Right now an increase is not even needed. Maybe in about a year or two at the earliest.

Moderate increases over the next few years is the way to go I believe.

Sure, we have a small chance of touching the limit for a few months at some point if we have a sudden spurt. I dont believe there will be any sort of crash-landing doomsday scenario, in that event. It will not have a large impact on Bitcoin.

Fees might double, and wallets will have to implement some needed features (most should see it coming, infact some wallets already have these capabilities), whoopie doo, no big deal.

A contentious fork on the other hand is a much riskier and more damaging event.

[achow101]

A contentious fork on the other hand is a much riskier and more damaging event.

And a contentious fork in an emergency/panic is an even much more riskier and much more damaging event.

The whole point of planning and carrying out the fork in the near term is to preempt significant growth to prevent an emergency situation where the hard fork is done in a panic. That could be even worse. It is better to do it now when people are calm (mostly) and are thinking rationally (mostly) and various proposals can be heard and discussed. You never want to fix a problem when it becomes a problem.

[danielW]

A contentious fork on the other hand is a much riskier and more damaging event.

And a contentious fork in an emergency/panic is an even much more riskier and much more damaging event.

The whole point of planning and carrying out the fork in the near term is to preempt significant growth to prevent an emergency situation where the hard fork is done in a panic. That could be even worse. It is better to do it now when people are calm (mostly) and are thinking rationally (mostly) and various proposals can be heard and discussed. You never want to fix a problem when it becomes a problem.

But there will be no emergency. If there is panic it will be unwarranted, as it is now.

Nothing serious or bad will happen if we touch the limit. Its not a big deal.

You never want to fix a problem when it becomes a problem.

Why? premature scaling is often the cause of the death of many businesses. The reality is fixing problems when they occur is often the pragmatic way to go.

Right now people are stressing about what I consider to be an imagined problem that will not occur. I can see no clear reasoning or evidence for the emergency scenario.

 You always have to weigh issues up individually to be honest. Sometimes dealing earlier is a good choice, sometimes not.

It might even be a good thing if we hit the limit if it creates a fee market and incentivises better scaling solutions.


We are panicking now about an event that could be mildly positive or mildly negative, that probably will not occur anyhow.

[canth]

Hard forks area *always* going to be contentious, except in dire emergency situations (aka, levelDB in 2013). I don't believe that you'll ever get 95% miner support for block increases so that alone is an issue. Also, people will have lots of reasons to push it off.

- Aug 2015 - we can't do a blocksize increase now - there's no emergency.
- December 2015 - we do a blocksize increase now - there's not enough time before the next fee halving and it will be unpredictable
- Nov 2016 - we can't do a blocksize increase now - the fee market is just starting to mature and it will cause some miners to become unprofitable
- Aug 2016 - we can't do a blocksize increase now - the LN is too immature and we don't know how payment channels will alleviate load, etc.

... sometime in 2017
- how come the price of BTC is so low? How come we don't have more users?

It's always going to be contentious to change consensus. Might as well fight the fight now.

[achow101]

A contentious fork on the other hand is a much riskier and more damaging event.

And a contentious fork in an emergency/panic is an even much more riskier and much more damaging event.

The whole point of planning and carrying out the fork in the near term is to preempt significant growth to prevent an emergency situation where the hard fork is done in a panic. That could be even worse. It is better to do it now when people are calm (mostly) and are thinking rationally (mostly) and various proposals can be heard and discussed. You never want to fix a problem when it becomes a problem.

But there will be no emergency. If there is panic it will be unwarranted, as it is now.

Are you suggesting there won't be a panic when blocks are full and transactions are backlogged? Because that is pretty much what happened when the spam attacks happened. People panicked.

Nothing serious or bad will happen if we touch the limit. Its not a big deal.

You never want to fix a problem when it becomes a problem.

Why? premature scaling is often the cause of the death of many businesses. The reality is fixing problems when they occur is often the pragmatic way to go.

Right now people are stressing about what I consider to be an imagined problem that will not occur. I can see no clear reasoning or evidence for the emergency scenario.

Why do you consider this to be an imagined problem?

Even if there is no emergency, if a problem exists, why should you wait before it becomes serious? That is not a good way to deal with things because then you have an emergency situation.

You always have to weigh issues up individually too be honest. Sometimes dealing earlier is a good choice, sometimes not.

It might even be a good thing if we hit the limit if it creates a fee market and incentivises better scaling solutions.

If it creates a fee market, then what happens to the claim that Bitcoin is a free or low cost way to transfer small amounts of money? That vision and the whole micropayemnts thing is going to go away. It could cause Bitcoin to lose users or simply prevent other users from joining.

Also, what if better scaling solutions can't come up before this becomes a problem? If you prefer kicking-the-can-down-the-road, then you should consider BIP 102.

[danielW]

Are you suggesting there won't be a panic when blocks are full and transactions are backlogged? Because that is pretty much what happened when the spam attacks happened. People panicked.

The stress test did not impact me at all, when I paid a transaction fee my transaction got accepted. If we improve wallets the impact will be even milder.

The only significant effect will be that eventually fees will raise. Incase of a huge unprecedented spike they might increase to about 10cents, big deal. This would require a hard fork increase to relive fee pressure.

Maybe we should increase the limit slightly. I am ok with pretty much all proposals except Gavins, which has what I consider very aggressive increases to 8mb then 8gb.

[danielW]

That vision and the whole micropayemnts thing is going to go away. It could cause Bitcoin to lose users or simply prevent other users from joining.

You will need fees at some point to pay miners. Thats the reality.

To change that you need to:
Somehow move/change proof of work for Bitcoins blockchain security
Have some sort of constant inflation (i.e. get rid of 21 million limit).

Otherwise we will need fees, that will add up to millions per day.
 

[mmortal03]

Transactions wouldn't be going through, and the queue would get longer and longer. People would start going elsewhere to make payments, because the Bitcoin network would be taking too long for their transactions to confirm.

That wont happen because you simply have to pay a small fee for your transaction to be accepted. There will not be any queue.

Actually we are far below the limit now if you count fee paying transactions.

Please read the following. It covers the problem with this: https://medium.com/@octskyward/crash-landing-f5cc19908e32

[achow101]

That vision and the whole micropayemnts thing is going to go away. It could cause Bitcoin to lose users or simply prevent other users from joining.

You will need fees at some point to pay miners. Thats the reality.

To change that you need to:
Somehow move/change proof of work for Bitcoins blockchain security
Have some sort of constant inflation (i.e. get rid of 21 million limit).

Otherwise we will need fees, that will add up to millions per day.
 

What are you talking about?

Miners can get paid from fees if either fees go up or more people use Bitcoin. With increasing block size limits, fees can both go up (but to a lesser extent) and gain more users thus generating more fees. By keeping the limit, at a certain point, fees can only go up by usership won't have an affect except by perhaps increasing the fees some more. At some point, people will become frustrated with the fees that they just quit.

Are you suggesting there won't be a panic when blocks are full and transactions are backlogged? Because that is pretty much what happened when the spam attacks happened. People panicked.

The stress test did not impact me at all, when I paid a transaction fee my transaction got accepted. If we improve wallets the impact will be even milder.

The only significant effect will be that eventually fees will raise. Incase of a huge unprecedented spike they might increase to about 10cents, big deal. This would require a hard fork increase to relive fee pressure.

But a hard fork should never be done in an emergency as that can cause problems. It is best to do them when a problem that has potential to become an emergency has been identified.

Maybe we should increase the limit slightly. I am ok with pretty much all proposals except Gavins, which has what I consider very aggressive increases to 8mb then 8gb.

I agree. I prefer BIP 100. I am also in favor of action in the near future instead of waiting for this to become an actual problem.

BIP101 does not immediately jump from 8 mb to 8 gb. It increases exponentially over the course of several years.

edit: fixed linearly to exponentially. Thanks dooglus for pointing out my mistake.

[mmortal03]

But there will be no emergency. If there is panic it will be unwarranted, as it is now.

Nothing serious or bad will happen if we touch the limit. Its not a big deal.

Please see the article I just posted above.

[danielW]

That vision and the whole micropayemnts thing is going to go away. It could cause Bitcoin to lose users or simply prevent other users from joining.

You will need fees at some point to pay miners. Thats the reality.

To change that you need to:
Somehow move/change proof of work for Bitcoins blockchain security
Have some sort of constant inflation (i.e. get rid of 21 million limit).

Otherwise we will need fees, that will add up to millions per day.
 

I read it before and re-read it again now.

First thing, even Gavin said that he thinks this scenario is unlikely.

Anyhow.

The first half of the article is not really relevant because as he says memcache can be limited.

So that leaves the second part which has 3 main arguments:

The first two, are irrelevant because you simply have to pay a high enough fee. A fee market means there is always space if you pay a high enough fee. Thats how markets work. If the blocks start getting full the transactions get dropped of. There will always be space if you can pay a good fee. People of-course, will not attempt transactions with low fees just as nobody attempts to buy a mercades for $5.

Wallets can automatically estimate what fee is necessary.

The third argument; So let says it occurs in the scenario where a transaction was submitted but the fee estimated was too low (busy part of the day maybe). The transaction does not make it in.

Eventually it probably will make it because the market price can drop, and presumably the fee was not too far below the market price.

Replace-by-fee means that the transaction can be resubmitted with a higher fee. A wallet could do that automatically.

They resubmit, and nodes say … OK. I will kick out the lowest fee paying transaction and replace it with yours. However, the original sender of that transaction has gone offline and doesn’t know this has happened. Now their transaction is stuck — it will never confirm.

This part I can not understand. The wallet can create a new transaction automatically, to replace the old. Why does it have to be stuck?

If a wallet does not have that functionality, the user will have to resubmit it himself and not go to sleep.

If his wallet does not even allow to resubmit transactions, they should consider changing wallets. Some already allow that.

[JorgeStolfi]

What kind of professor are you?

Just an ordinary professor.  I cannot do miracles.  If students just repeat any bullshit that they read, without thinking critically, I cannot help them...

if the price can adjust then demand will always equal supply.  The price for fees can change, more wallets need to implement this feature tho. That is all that is needed for there to be no queues.

The "fee market" idea is nonsense in so many levels that I don't know where to begin. I give up.

Bitcoin's story is "nerds and libertarians learning the basics of how the world works, the hard way".  The "fee market" will be another lesson: "how to manage a lemonade stand."

[achow101]

They resubmit, and nodes say … OK. I will kick out the lowest fee paying transaction and replace it with yours. However, the original sender of that transaction has gone offline and doesn’t know this has happened. Now their transaction is stuck — it will never confirm.

This part I can not understand. The wallet can create a new transaction automatically, to replace the old. Why does it have to be stuck?

If a wallet does not have that functionality, the user will have to resubmit it himself and not go to sleep.

If his wallet does not even allow to resubmit transactions, they should consider changing wallets. Some already allow that.

The nodes will drop that low fee transaction from its mempool and since the sender has gone offline, then there is no one to continue to broadcast that transaction and it is forgotten by the network. When the node goes back online, the transaction may have disappeared. If it didn't, then it should be rebroadcasting the transaction every 30 minutes.

[dhenson]

What kind of professor are you?

Just an ordinary professor.  I cannot do miracles.  If students just repeat any bullshit that they read, without thinking critically, I cannot help them...

if the price can adjust then demand will always equal supply.  The price for fees can change, more wallets need to implement this feature tho. That is all that is needed for there to be no queues.

The "fee market" idea is nonsense in so many levels that I don't know where to begin. I give up.

Bitcoin's story is "nerds and libertarians learning the basics of how the world works, the hard way".  The "fee market" will be another lesson: "how to manage a lemonade stand."

This guy gets it. +1 for making me laugh.

[dooglus]

BIP101 does not immediately jump from 8 mb to 8 gb. It increases linearly over the course of several years.

That kind of misinformation isn't useful.

It increases exponentially, not linearly, doubling every 2 years for 20 years. 10 doublings, giving a 1024x increase. On top of the initial 8x increase, making an effective increase of 8192x.

[RealBitcoin]

Just an ordinary professor.  I cannot do miracles.  If students just repeat any bullshit that they read, without thinking critically, I cannot help them...

Whenever the demand is greater than the capacity, some transactions will inevitably be delayed.  

Whenever the demand is greater than the capacity (supply), then the transaction price increases and those who will pay more get their TX executed, those who dont will have to wait a bit more.

Thus you can still send your TX in normal amount of time, you just have to pay more to get it cleared.

And it's not random transactions we talk about, but depending on who pays more. It's an auction market, and who bids more will get priority.

[Cryddit]

The "fee market" idea is nonsense in so many levels that I don't know where to begin. I give up.

Bitcoin's story is "nerds and libertarians learning the basics of how the world works, the hard way".  The "fee market" will be another lesson: "how to manage a lemonade stand."

Yeeeah.  Right on the head.  I've given up talking to these clowns, but you're right.

Small blocks and high fees are NOT a viable way forward.