Which innovation in Bitcoin do you REALLY want?

[Carlton Banks]

Please add two options:
1) no Mike and no Gavin
2) better decentralisation

Thanks for thinking up suggestions, but I don't think they fit what I am trying to measure. If you think you can justify those suggestions with an argument, feel free.

[2btc]

Bigger blocks are going to be needed eventually, but I'm not sure what size they should be.

Please add two options:
1) no Mike and no Gavin
2) better decentralisation

What would better decentralization entail and how would we ensure that?

[jacktheking]

I have been hearing about Bitcoin & BitcoinXT and Bitcoin Hard Fork for days. However, I'm not really sure what's happening. Anyway, looking at these three options, I think "More transactions per second" will make Bitcoin go to a even higher stage. The current block is fine to me and bigger block wont affect me much - so I did not vote. I dont know much about BitcoinXT so I did not choose it. .

[zero01]

i think thats Bigger blocks  

[OmegaStarScream]

Bigger blocks. But without consensus, there is only XT. Same old problem. I would be okay with BIP 100 / 101 too...

I'm not totally against BIP 100, but I would prefer BIP 101. I think we all know I won't be switching to XT though.

Bigger blocks of course however they aint doing that without BitcoinXT and this shit is increasing here http://xtnodes.com/ in last week from 0 to 500 nodes (not even sure if they are legit numbers or just some automatic counter lol)

Relax, those nodes are probably all running from the same server box that was doing the transaction flooding attacks a few weeks back. I could run 500 XT nodes myself on my computer, as long as I didn't want to use it for anything else 

What are you exactly telling me here ? Are you saying that Mike Hearn and Gavin are responsible for the attacks on the blockchain just to run their project ?
Also how do they run several nodes from one PC , you need shitload of RAM and we would know since it's the same IP , no ?

[agath]

I want bigger blocks, and if Core is not going to support them, I switch to XT.

[lottery248]

more flexible block size limit, not just higher block size - it won't ever solve the problem.

[Carlton Banks]

Bigger blocks of course however they aint doing that without BitcoinXT and this shit is increasing here http://xtnodes.com/ in last week from 0 to 500 nodes (not even sure if they are legit numbers or just some automatic counter lol)

Relax, those nodes are probably all running from the same server box that was doing the transaction flooding attacks a few weeks back. I could run 500 XT nodes myself on my computer, as long as I didn't want to use it for anything else  

What are you exactly telling me here ? Are you saying that Mike Hearn and Gavin are responsible for the attacks on the blockchain just to run their project ?

No. I am telling you that whoever was responsible for those attacks has interests that are aligned with those pushing XT adoption, although it is fair to say that it is possible that there may have been some alternative explanation. Unlikely, but we'll never actually know for sure, we can only guess.

Also how do they run several nodes from one PC , you need shitload of RAM and we would know since it's the same IP , no ?

Server boxes typically have a "shitload" of RAM, and also virtualised operating systems to allow for multiple instances of a one-instance-only piece of software like Bitcoin (and of course, multiple IP addresses). Bitcoin Core 0.11 made this job even easier; all versions of bitcoin previously managed their use of system memory in a less efficient way. Version 0.11 uses ~150 MB of RAM with today's UTXO set, whereas previous versions would use between 500 and 600 MB to do the same job.

[Kakmakr]

Truth be told, I think faster transaction confirmation would solve the possible most people associate with Bitcoin.
This is better for users and for smaller merchants. I do not want to sacrifice affordability for speed, but if it means that it would increase adoption and the price, I would say GO FOR IT and give us faster tps. ^heh^

[ashour]

Truth be told, I think faster transaction confirmation would solve the possible most people associate with Bitcoin.
This is better for users and for smaller merchants. I do not want to sacrifice affordability for speed, but if it means that it would increase adoption and the price, I would say GO FOR IT and give us faster tps. ^heh^

Bitcoin transactions should be made instant, but the blocks would get filled faster and that would't be good overall.

[tiggytomb]

I would like to see faster transactions making it less frustrating, giving it that extra sparkle when trying to move towards mass adoption.  For a technology like Bitcoin and living in a fast paced society, having to wait around for minutes and minutes for a transaction to complete is madness, I have seen many other coins with amazing almost instant transactions and it ls quite satisfying.

[Carlton Banks]

I would like to see faster transactions making it less frustrating, giving it that extra sparkle when trying to move towards mass adoption.  For a technology like Bitcoin and living in a fast paced society, having to wait around for minutes and minutes for a transaction to complete is madness, I have seen many other coins with amazing almost instant transactions and it ls quite satisfying.

You've misidentified the issue, I think. You're complaining about the block interval, not the transaction rate limit.

Transactions get processed only when a block gets solved by a miner. This is set currently to average out at 10 mins (when the network is mining at a constant rate). It could be decreased, but there are potential issues. It's nothing at all to do with the XT debate though, no-one is proposing any changes to it now or at any time, AFAIK

[Aswan]

More Transactions per [time frame] of course. Right now, the blockchain is barely used as a data storage (other than the data of a bitcoin transfer that is).
If we can achieve this without increasing the block size, that would be absolutely fantastic.
Bandwidth is a resource that costs money as well, just as transaction fees are. Yeah, people have flat rates with big bandwidths and no limit on volume, but if bitcoin traffic gets more and more, if might eventually become too expensive for ISPs and soon contracts will include a part saying you cannot use the line for bitcoin blockchain traffic. Or even worse: because they have monetary incentives to do so, they might do research for cheap ways to identify bitcoin traffic in order to find contract violations, which leads to governments who want to ban bitcoin to be able to use this technology that is already readily available.

TL DR;
Bandwidth costs money as well. I'd rather have more Tx per [time frame] without bigger blocks.

[Carlton Banks]

If we can achieve this without increasing the block size, that would be absolutely fantastic.

That looks good written down, but I wonder if it's really possible in practice. I would be happy to be proven wrong though.

Bandwidth is a resource that costs money as well, just as transaction fees are. Yeah, people have flat rates with big bandwidths and no limit on volume, but if bitcoin traffic gets more and more, if might eventually become too expensive for ISPs and soon contracts will include a part saying you cannot use the line for bitcoin blockchain traffic. Or even worse: because they have monetary incentives to do so, they might do research for cheap ways to identify bitcoin traffic in order to find contract violations, which leads to governments who want to ban bitcoin to be able to use this technology that is already readily available.

TL DR;
Bandwidth costs money as well. I'd rather have more Tx per [time frame] without bigger blocks.

Yep, bitcoin network exists as a part of the rest of the internet, where there is a competition for bandwidth already. Right now it's not an issue for bitcoin, but the increase schedule that XT adheres to has the potential to really hurt bandwidth costs as some steeper part of the curve coincides with a future bandwidth crunch of some kind. That may not happen, but it's difficult to plan for IMO

[Ilove-Obama]

It seems to me like the issues in this debate are heavily conflated. What is everyone actually arguing about? What do you really want, a brand name product, more storage space on the ledger, or higher transaction rates? If you have to choose only one, which?

less disk space and increase block

[Carlton Banks]

For those that didn't vote earlier this week...

[pawel7777]

Why would anyone vote for 'bigger blocks' option? If the main purpose of bigger blocks is to increase tx/sec, then why not vote for 'More transactions per second'?

[harrymmmm]

Why would anyone vote for 'bigger blocks' option? If the main purpose of bigger blocks is to increase tx/sec, then why not vote for 'More transactions per second'?

heheh. Of course.
It seems 30% of voters have forgotten why they wanted bigger blocks in the first place.

[Carlton Banks]

Why would anyone vote for 'bigger blocks' option? If the main purpose of bigger blocks is to increase tx/sec, then why not vote for 'More transactions per second'?

heheh. Of course.
It seems 30% of voters have forgotten why they wanted bigger blocks in the first place.

If only logical arguments always won lol

[Carlton Banks]

Another bump I think.

While I'm here, I'll say that I've not voted myself in this poll, and don't intend to (seems like the wrong thing to do somehow when I devised the poll)

Results are interesting so far, but I'd like more people to vote.