...

[pedrog]

You have been propagandized to believe that a block increase is possible using only XT. There are 4 alternative proposals. Don't demonize a progressive improvement in the functionality of Bitcoin because of two clowns and the mob fighting them.

Where can I read about and download those proposals?

[BombaUcigasa]

http://gtf.org/garzik/bitcoin/BIP100-blocksizechangeproposal.pdf
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0101.mediawiki
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6451
https://gist.github.com/sipa/c65665fc360ca7a176a6

[slaveforanunnak1]

increasing block size is not the solution. even at 1 TB you cannot fit all of the day to day transactions for billions of people + IoT + all of the financial stuff build ton top + micro transactions + unknown unknowns.  Lightning network is the best solution that i see so far.

[RocketSingh]

http://gtf.org/garzik/bitcoin/BIP100-blocksizechangeproposal.pdf
https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/blob/master/bip-0101.mediawiki
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6451
https://gist.github.com/sipa/c65665fc360ca7a176a6

More here - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1154536.0

[leopard2]

Note that alot of the spike recently was a stress test, it just dropped back down to where it should be under 0.4 mb. Still growing at a good clip but will be years if you extrapolate it not including the spam attack/stress test.

Sure. Disregarding the spike, even in the chart you posted, you can see the average block size has nearly doubled in one year. If that continues, we'll hit 0.8mb per block in a year or so, and that's assuming a steady growth rate. A year or so to start hitting the 1 mb ceiling seems like a safe estimate if you want to figure out what to do about it before you find out experimentally, like it or not.

Then we should do the hard fork when 0.8mb is reached, not now. Don't fix it if it ain't broken.  

Fixing it via a hard fork to say, 2MB is easily and quickly done; consensus will be there if the limit is almost reached. I agree with turtlehurricane about waiting, though I am a bit more pro hardfork.

[QuintLeo]

but it doesn't mean it would double every year, unless the number active wallet grew explicitly fast, it would be impossible to double the block size per year. plus, i am tired to see most of the junk transactions in the blockchain.

Not every year, no. Next year, though? I don't think you can rely on that not happening.

 It's not a "number of wallets" issue. It's a "how many transactions happen in a given (shortish) timeframe" that's going to become the "chokeup limit".

 Bumping transactions fees will NOT address this issue.


 It's a lot better to fix an issue EARLY than wait and wait then try to rush to fix it at the last minute. Some of us REMEMBER the "year 2K bug" issues, and that they were being worked on for 2+ YEARS before they actually happened - and STILL had some stuff not fixed in time, as well as had a few "fixes" turn out to be bugged due to inadaquate testing.

 It's also impossible to predict when sale spikes will happen, other than the known ones around Christmas (and probably Black Friday for Bitcoin, given the high "tech gear" level of Black Friday sales), and TOTALLY impossible to predict for sure how big spikes will be.

[Dissonance]

1) You are talking about an event that will take place over a hundred years from now .  Its just silly to talk about it.

2) Long time? it will be less than 18 months before we hit a wall. 


3) This may buy you some time but if bitcoin starts to get really adopted removing "dust" transactions won't be enough.  It also takes away a usecase of bitcoin which is micro transactions.

4) If blocks fill then people will bid up fees and compete for the right to be processed.  This will bid up tx costs and weaken another use case for bitcoin. Bitcoin needs to remain cheap to send.  Miners can make money via volume if t/s goes up.


5) Bitcoin is designed to fork and miners have a strong incentive to resolve the fork quickly.

6) The core team is only a few guys , will alot of centralized control of bitcoin.  The core team is the one real weakness of bitcoin.  We need to diversify the development process.


If bitcoin can't process several hundred transactions per second its going to be a expensive hobby and not the dominate global payments systems that we all want it to become.  ACH processes about 600 t/s vis and mastercard process thousands a second.  Nobody is going to take bitcoin seriously if it can only do 7 t/s.  The block limit is arbitrary and ulitimately unnecessary now that we have tthin clients.  When satoshi set the limit it was durign a time where everyone was running core  and the blockchain needed to be small.  We have moved beyond that now.

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

Transaction fees increase so transactions decrease, just about equal and opposite forces so no backlog develops.

So how long do you think we can support an ever decreasing number of transactions? And at what number of transactions do you think we will have full equilibrium? 1? 10?

In this scenario, everyday transactions just move to sidechains and bitcoin becomes simply a unit of account for sidechains with no value outside it. Fees become a settlement channel between sidechain operators and the miners directly.

[BombaUcigasa]

bitcoin becomes simply a unit of account for sidechains with no value outside it

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Code:

A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online
payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a
financial institution.

[Eodguy149]

I agree with Nick Szabo when he stated that the block size debate needs more computer science and less noise. I want actual numbers and tests, not opinions.

[leopard2]

I agree with Nick Szabo when he stated that the block size debate needs more computer science and less noise. I want actual numbers and tests, not opinions.

THIS.

And so far the tests show 0.4 when the limit is at 1.0, and getting close to that limit will not mean failure or breakage, but just queuing

---> therefore delaying the dangerous and risky upgrade makes sense

[LiteCoinGuy]

If fees ever do get too crazy I'd support a block size limit increase too, but I don't expect that to happen for over a decade if ever.

i think the point is that we cannot wait that it become necessary to increase the blocksize, to actually increase it, we must forecast this, before it happen

if it happen next year what you will do, proceed to fork anyway and built even a bigger mess than what we are facing right now?

if it must be done at some point, it's better to do it early, it's always like that for every thing, not only bitcoin

most people cant anticipate things. they wait and fail.

we need bigger blocks to be ready for the next millions of users.

[leopard2]

your statement would only be correct if blocksize was a bottleneck, and increasing it would lead to more usage/adoption

it is not

regulation and adoption are the bottlenecks, and therefore we could safely wait until we get closer to the limit...

it is like a dangerous surgery, that can be postponed without harm 

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

bitcoin becomes simply a unit of account for sidechains with no value outside it

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online
payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a
financial institution.

ftfy

[runpaint]

1) Bitcoin block rewards will eventually become infinitesimal, at that point transaction fees will be the only rewards miners get. Right now transaction fees are around 0.1-0.5 BTC per block, which is nowhere near enough funding to secure the network by itself. We need transaction fees to go up, and the only thing that will force them up is the blocksize limit. Increasing block size might cause fundamental damage to Bitcoin due to this.

That's possible, but Fractalcoin just got mined out and the price shot up.  We'll see if people think it's worth mining for just transaction fees as time goes on, it'll be a good look into the far future of Bitcoin.  Theoretically, the lower rewards will still be worth it if the price goes up enough.

[cryptworld]

That list is stupid

block increase is needed and necessary in bitcoin enviroment

[Linuld]

1) Bitcoin block rewards will eventually become infinitesimal, at that point transaction fees will be the only rewards miners get. Right now transaction fees are around 0.1-0.5 BTC per block, which is nowhere near enough funding to secure the network by itself. We need transaction fees to go up, and the only thing that will force them up is the blocksize limit. Increasing block size might cause fundamental damage to Bitcoin due to this.

You realize that you will destroy bitcoin when you try to make up block halving losses with higher fees? I wonder how you guys think that could somehow work.

Besides that... you know that we have way way too many miners? Mining is way too rewarding at the moment, the profits are way too high. We need less miners, not higher fees.

At the moment we have a so high hashrate that we could handle 100 times more transactions and the network would still be safe. So we have 100 times more hashrate then we need.

And after this relatively new study, each bitcoin transaction is using the electricy that 1.75 average us households use in one day. For ONE single bitcoin transaction.

No, really, we don't need higher fees.

2) Currently average block size is less than 0.4 mb now that the stress test bullshit is over. Gonna be a long time until we even hit the 1 mb limit.

Though still we will hit it. And the plans for 8MB are longterm. It will happen in months.

By the way... with 1 MB we have no space for a sudden bitcoin adoption rise. If big players accept bitcoins and the transactions rise up then bitcoin would brutally fail. And it would get a hit that would be really hefty. Very bad user experience. Deadly.

3) Once we hit the 1 mb limit free and nearly no fee transactions will be forced off chain. There is TONS of dust, spam, and gambling that can be done off chain. Over half of all Bitcoin transactions right now are basically dusty junk. This will make plenty of room for legitimate transactions.

Only because you live in a rich country doesn't mean that people with less money than you do "junk" transactions.

And when you take this important feature of bitcoin, what will you have then? Another paypal? Great. Why should someone switch to use bitcoin again then?

4) Once almost all the junk is forced off chain the rise in fees will be very gradual, and it will take a long time for the fees to become an issue for people. In any case the blockchain will function perfectly fine regardless of transaction data volume, fees will simply rise.

See again my answer to point 1. There is simply no need for rising fees now. And "simply rising" fees are a problem. Might be it is unimportant for you but free and cheap transactions are a key plus feature of bitcoin.

If fees ever do get too crazy I'd support a block size limit increase too, but I don't expect that to happen for over a decade if ever.

Then why again do we need 100 times more mining power and so costly transactions, power wise, that we look like a danger to ecology?

5) Hard fork of Bitcoin is dangerous and can result in mass confusion, double spends, and loss of Bitcoins. It will damage the value of Bitcoin at least temporarily.

Yes, the confusion is there. FUD spread from all sides, way too emotional. Though that is something that happens on both sides.

I wonder if there will be a problem. I think the fear of the fork is already the worst thing. The actual thing will go through without problems i think.

6) We need to maintain a group of scientists which reach a consensus, not just centralize Bitcoin under a couple of developers.

Feel free to add if I missed any.

I felt free too add.

[Linuld]

"We need transaction fees to go up, and the only thing that will force them up is the blocksize limit."

We don't need fees to go up, cheap transactions is one of the major points of using bitcoin.

This is an argument for increasing the block size.

"Once we hit the 1 mb limit free and nearly no fee transactions will be forced off chain. There is TONS of dust, spam, and gambling that can be done off chain. Over half of all Bitcoin transactions right now are basically dusty junk. This will make plenty of room for legitimate transactions."

Decentralization is one of the major points of using bitcoin, off-chain transactions are centralized, again, this is an argument for increasing block size.

Don't know what a "non legitimate transaction" is, as far as know, if it follows the network rules it's "legitimate".

Yeah... it somehow reminds of him wanting that someone decides what transactions are valid and which not. Illegitime transactions, dust and so on are unworthy to be part of bitcoin. They should be done "off chain". Well, that is the very definition of centralization, insecurity and totally not what bitcoin was created for.

[Linuld]

"We need transaction fees to go up, and the only thing that will force them up is the blocksize limit."

We don't need fees to go up, cheap transactions is one of the major points of using bitcoin.

This is an argument for increasing the block size.

Tradeoff with accessibility issue ... would you rather let everyone pay 5 cent for a tx or would you rather exclude half the planet from using it?

And who is mining for free? Raising max txs ahead of demand will weaken the network in the future aswell as exclude billions of users and push centralisation.

Arguing for a contentious hardfork, hostile takeover of btc by Gavin/Mike and all that is really a lost cause...

No one wants Hearns crazy ideas. Not even the one that chose xt temporarely.

And why the fear of miners working for free? You realize that mining is so rewarding nowadays that we have 100 times more hashrate than needed to make the whole bitcoin network secure? Bitcoin mining is way too rewarding at the moment. You really should not fear that miners drop their work. Miners NEED to drop their work. It does not make sense that it costs 1.75 average us households daily power usage for one single bitcoin transaction.

[Linuld]

"We need transaction fees to go up, and the only thing that will force them up is the blocksize limit."

We don't need fees to go up, cheap transactions is one of the major points of using bitcoin.

This is an argument for increasing the block size.

Tradeoff with accessibility issue ... would you rather let everyone pay 5 cent for a tx or would you rather exclude half the planet from using it?

And who is mining for free? Raising max txs ahead of demand will weaken the network in the future aswell as exclude billions of users and push centralisation.

Arguing for a contentious hardfork, hostile takeover of btc by Gavin/Mike and all that is really a lost cause...

Then we need to increase transactions on-chain to generate more fee revenue, not the other way around, off-chain transactions are the centralized ones, unless you have a real proposal for decentralized off-chain transactions...

If users choose XT, XT it is!

And because of bitcoin network nature changes need to be planed way ahead.

YOU don't CREATE transactions. They occure or they don't. Bloating the chain won't make more txs magically appear - well, maybe spam and dust-junk increases. But when you want a bloated chain full of junk, why would you want to tarnish bitcoin for that?  

Increased spam and junk is not genuine growth.

Then why do you fear that ominous spam coming when turtle claimed we are not even half full with our block? Shouldn't we have full blocks already when your spam fear would be true?

The blocks are not full with spam because it is costly. And it will be even more costly filling 8 MB blocks. No one would pay that because there would be no reason to do so.

I always wonder where suddenly all the spam should come from that does not even now happen. And the spam attacks that happen now only make sense because there is so few space in the block anymore. Otherwise the cost for spamming would be way way higher. And no one would pay for it.