The future of Bitcoin

[VVine]

Okay, so I'm confused with the whole thing of Bitcoin XT, ok, the current blocks are 1MB and Bitcoin XT's are 8MB, is that the whole fork?
And if Bitcoin Core suddenly accepts the idea and starts supporting 8MB blocks, so what will be the difference between XT and Core? nothing? will the price be sky high then?

Please explain to me, I tried to read but I don't really get the entire picture.


Thanks in advance.

[frankenmint]

Okay, so I'm confused with the whole thing of Bitcoin XT, ok, the current blocks are 1MB and Bitcoin XT's are 8MB, is that the whole fork?
And if Bitcoin Core suddenly accepts the idea and starts supporting 8MB blocks, so what will be the difference between XT and Core? nothing? will the price be sky high then?

Please explain to me, I tried to read but I don't really get the entire picture.


Thanks in advance.

Here try this read, I wrote.

[Lauda]

I would advise you to stay out of the politics unless you're interested in the technical discussion (if your skill set is up for it). Basically Gavin wanted to push 20 MB blocks into Core which was rejected because obviously that can't work today (it would put some nations at a disadvantage in comparison to others when mining). Gavin then teams up with Mike Hearn on his XT project. XT stops being only an alternative client, but rather now wants to be a hard fork candidate (in reality, it's more of a programmed altcoin). Almost everyone is against 20 MB blocks, thus Gavin was forced to scale down to 8 MB.
XT is basically Bitcoin Core with 8 MB blocks and a few very controversial and buggy patches. Let's also not forget that aside from liking the idea of a Bitcoin dictator, Hearn was also advocating blacklisting in the past.

Bitcoin Core has it's own proposals to increase the block size which is BIP 100 and BIP 102. BIP 100 would make a soft limit of 2 MB and a maximum of 32 MB (as it was in the past). BIP 102 is the backup plan and limited to 2 MB and nothing further for now.

This is pretty much a simplified version of what has been going on during 2015. XT just caused unnecessary drama and problems.

[VVine]

I would advise you to stay out of the politics unless you're interested in the technical discussion (if your skill set is up for it). Basically Gavin wanted to push 20 MB blocks into Core which was rejected because obviously that can't work today (it would put some nations at a disadvantage in comparison to others when mining). Gavin then teams up with Mike Hearn on his XT project. XT stops being only an alternative client, but rather now wants to be a hard fork candidate (in reality, it's more of a programmed altcoin). Almost everyone is against 20 MB blocks, thus Gavin was forced to scale down to 8 MB.
XT is basically Bitcoin Core with 8 MB blocks and a few very controversial and buggy patches. Let's also not forget that aside from liking the idea of a Bitcoin dictator, Hearn was also advocating blacklisting in the past.

Bitcoin Core has it's own proposals to increase the block size which is BIP 100 and BIP 102. BIP 100 would make a soft limit of 2 MB and a maximum of 32 MB (as it was in the past). BIP 102 is the backup plan and limited to 2 MB and nothing further for now.

This is pretty much a simplified version of what has been going on during 2015. XT just caused unnecessary drama and problems.

Why doesn't Bitcoin Core adds support for 8MB or 4MB blocks for example? bandwidth? and what's the idea of doubling the block size every two years? Internet bandwidth doesn't double every two years, it's worse than Moore's law in 2020.

[Lauda]

Why doesn't Bitcoin Core adds support for 8MB or 4MB blocks for example? bandwidth? and what's the idea of doubling the block size every two years? Internet bandwidth doesn't double every two years, it's worse than Moore's law in 2020.

Well that's Gavin's thinking plan. He thinks that storage costs and the growth of internet bandwidth will support a doubling every two years. While this might be true for a few parts of the world (very developed places) it is definitely fall for all others. This is not sustainable and would cause centralization and orphan problems soon.

Did you just not read what I posted. Core developers do not believe that Gavin's approach is good, and they are correct. Thus, Jeff Garzik has proposed BIP 100.

Hard fork to remove 1MB block size limit.
Simultaneously, add a new soft fork limit of 2MB.
Schedule the hard fork on testnet for September 1, 2015.
Schedule the hard fork on bitcoin main chain for December 11, 2015.
Default miner block size becomes 1MB (easily changeable by miner at any time, as today).
Changing the 2MB limit is accomplished in a manner similar to BIP 34, a one­way lock­in upgrade with a 12,000 block (3 month) threshold.

This means that every 3 months the block size can either grow (maximum 32 MB per block) or shrink to a certain degree. However, if Core doesn't implement either BIP100 or 102 (or some other increase), then they will have problems.

[jacktheking]

I would advise you to stay out of the politics unless you're interested in the technical discussion (if your skill set is up for it). Basically Gavin wanted to push 20 MB blocks into Core which was rejected because obviously that can't work today (it would put some nations at a disadvantage in comparison to others when mining). Gavin then teams up with Mike Hearn on his XT project. XT stops being only an alternative client, but rather now wants to be a hard fork candidate (in reality, it's more of a programmed altcoin). Almost everyone is against 20 MB blocks, thus Gavin was forced to scale down to 8 MB.
XT is basically Bitcoin Core with 8 MB blocks and a few very controversial and buggy patches. Let's also not forget that aside from liking the idea of a Bitcoin dictator, Hearn was also advocating blacklisting in the past.

Bitcoin Core has it's own proposals to increase the block size which is BIP 100 and BIP 102. BIP 100 would make a soft limit of 2 MB and a maximum of 32 MB (as it was in the past). BIP 102 is the backup plan and limited to 2 MB and nothing further for now.

This is pretty much a simplified version of what has been going on during 2015. XT just caused unnecessary drama and problems.

That make a good TLRD. Well, I heard about all these fork and BitcoinXT. However, I did not actually go into commenting them. As you said, "stay out of the politics unless you're interested in the technical discussion". I'm interested in the technical discussion. Just that I dont know what's happening so I did not comment. Your post make cleared some of my doubt. And I think 8mb or 1mb wont matter to me. I can now listen to the politics about Bitcoin. .

[Brad Pitt]

It's really confusing and also slightly worrying for those that don't really understand all the tech talk fully. I think staying out of the politics is a good idea but that doesn't stop the potential problems from arising, though I think bitcoin will work itself out in the end.

[VVine]

I also think that Gavin's thinking isn't correct. A large part of Bitcoin is based in China and their network and technology isn't developing as fast as USA or some of Europe.
And what could happen if Bitcoin XT becomes a major part of the full nodes? Thanks for explaining everyone.

[Lauda]

That make a good TLRD. Well, I heard about all these fork and BitcoinXT. However, I did not actually go into commenting them. As you said, "stay out of the politics unless you're interested in the technical discussion". I'm interested in the technical discussion. Just that I dont know what's happening so I did not comment. Your post make cleared some of my doubt. And I think 8mb or 1mb wont matter to me. I can now listen to the politics about Bitcoin. .

Thank you. I try my best to inform others in a short and understandable manner. Since you are interested into the technical discussion, I might as well add this here:
This is what Bitcoin XT includes (for now) aside from bigger blocks:

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

-snip-
And what could happen if Bitcoin XT becomes a major part of the full nodes? Thanks for explaining everyone.

Nodes are not relevant to this. As far as I know once 75% of the blocks are mined with XT software, then it will fork.

-snip- I think bitcoin will work itself out in the end.

XT has the potential to severely damage Bitcoin with a economic split.

[balu2]

Okay, so I'm confused with the whole thing of Bitcoin XT, ok, the current blocks are 1MB and Bitcoin XT's are 8MB, is that the whole fork?
And if Bitcoin Core suddenly accepts the idea and starts supporting 8MB blocks, so what will be the difference between XT and Core? nothing? will the price be sky high then?

Please explain to me, I tried to read but I don't really get the entire picture.


Thanks in advance.

Why would price rise from bigger blocks? Won't happen. The opposite would happen. It's best to ignore XT (aka Gavincoin).