BIP100, BIP 101 and XT nodes status

[achow101]

BIP 101 is the proposal to increase the block size limit to 8 mb and doubling every 2 years. It is implemented within the XT client but is not XT itself and XT is not necessarily BIP 101. BIP 101 can be implemented elsewhere without all of the other stuff that is included inside XT.

Well BIP 101 is still not a great solution, doubling every two years gives a huge block size that could come under a spam attack easily. Seriously in 10 years 256mb blocks? That seems like a pretty huge jump and then we start getting in trouble 4 years later 1gb blocks? I know technology moves fast but that seems to be a bit too quick.

ten years ago i only had 128kb isdn; now i have 50mbit.

It keeps going until it reaches 8 GB. The idea is that technology will continue to grow and we will be able to support such large blocks.

[Lauda]

-snip-
ten years ago i only had 128kb isdn; now i have 50mbit.

It keeps going until it reaches 8 GB. The idea is that technology will continue to grow and we will be able to support such large blocks.

So? Ten years ago I had 4 mbps at my old house and now it has 20mbps. According to Gavin my speed should be much higher now (it is not; at that house). Gavin's proposal might only keep track of the development in 1st world countries. Everything else won't keep up with doubling every two years.

[onemorexmr]

-snip-
ten years ago i only had 128kb isdn; now i have 50mbit.

It keeps going until it reaches 8 GB. The idea is that technology will continue to grow and we will be able to support such large blocks.

So? Ten years ago I had 4 mbps at my old house and now it has 20mbps. According to Gavin my speed should be much higher now (it is not; at that house). Gavin's proposal might only keep track of the development in 1st world countries. Everything else won't keep up with doubling every two years.

you only need 110mbit to be able to use 8GB blocks (if any block is full)
at home you can use a SPV wallet if you want (eg electrum-server on a vps and electrum at home)

edit: this does NOT include transaction and block relay: so it is more... but it is enough for a parasitic listening node

[Klestin]

So? Ten years ago I had 4 mbps at my old house and now it has 20mbps. According to Gavin my speed should be much higher now (it is not; at that house). Gavin's proposal might only keep track of the development in 1st world countries. Everything else won't keep up with doubling every two years.

Yes, and your 20 mbps connection of today can transmit a 1MB block size in 1/4 of a second.  The 8 MB size proposed for the next two years?  A whopping 2 seconds to transmit.  If your Internet speed doesn't change one iota for the next ten years, a completely full block will take ..... 32 seconds to transmit.  Wow!  

Nobody is saying that 8GB blocks are reasonable today, but 2036 is a long way off. Many things will change well before 2036.

Some other salient points:
- Just because the cap moves to X does not mean the average block size (or any block size) will be X.
- No miner is forced to include any transaction they don't want to. There are blocks mined today with only one transaction.
- The block size cap of BIP 101 can be adjusted down with a soft fork.

[uvt9]

I have been trying to avoid the constant debate but BIP100 definitely seems like the best decision, I am happy that there was all the drama as it looks to have come to a true solution and fixes the issues we have had and would have had in the future.

Unfortunately, BIP 100 allows a miner with 21% of the hash rate to prevent any and all block size cap increases.

The other 79% of the miners could theoretically collude and begin ignoring size cap votes under a certain threshold, but that is hardly ideal, and antithetical to the idea of Bitcoin - they would be knowingly ignoring valid blocks.  Do we really want to head down that road?

These large mining pools care about one thing, profit and they aren't going to prevent any and all block size cap increases if it hurts the price of bitocoin, they don't even care about the size much they were all fine with it being 8mb blocks as it really doesn't hurt them to do that.

Murphy's law: What can go wrong will go wrong. History of Bitcoin has proved that: 0day exploit, MtGox collapse, BTCGuild having 50% hashpower, ....

And there are so many way that Bitcoin can go wrong with BIP 100. Giving miner more power to control Bitcoin is horrible idea, it's even worse than keeping 1MB limit. Oh wait, Jeff Garzik is working for a mining firm, that why he has this proposal.

Miners should only do the job that they are designated to do: include transactions to blocks.

[onemorexmr]

Murphy's law: What can go wrong will go wrong. History of Bitcoin has proved that: 0day exploit, MtGox collapse, BTCGuild having 50% hashpower, ....

And there are so many way that Bitcoin can go wrong with BIP 100. Giving miner more power to control Bitcoin is horrible idea. Oh wait, Jeff Garzik is working for a mining firm, that why he has this proposal.

Miners should only do that job that they are designated to do: include transactions to blocks.

the same is true when we dont change anything.
all the problems you listed where there with 1mb blocks.

there are a lot of problems we can get when we stay at 1mb.

i cant see the future, do you? if we dont do anything thats not a guarantee that there wont be a new problem...

[Klestin]

That's download speed not upload speed, take a little whirl of speedtest.net and tell me your upload speed would you because I bet it is under 5mb/s so it should really take around 27 minutes if his interest never changed. Upload speed doesn't increase as much as download speed for some reason.

Your math is off.  At 5 mbit, the transfer time in 10 years would be just over 2 minutes, not 27.

take a little whirl of speedtest.net and tell me your upload speed would you

Sure. From my house:

[uvt9]

I have been trying to avoid the constant debate but BIP100 definitely seems like the best decision, I am happy that there was all the drama as it looks to have come to a true solution and fixes the issues we have had and would have had in the future.

Unfortunately, BIP 100 allows a miner with 21% of the hash rate to prevent any and all block size cap increases.

The other 79% of the miners could theoretically collude and begin ignoring size cap votes under a certain threshold, but that is hardly ideal, and antithetical to the idea of Bitcoin - they would be knowingly ignoring valid blocks.  Do we really want to head down that road?

These large mining pools care about one thing, profit and they aren't going to prevent any and all block size cap increases if it hurts the price of bitocoin, they don't even care about the size much they were all fine with it being 8mb blocks as it really doesn't hurt them to do that.

Murphy's law: What can go wrong will go wrong. History of Bitcoin has proved that: 0day exploit, MtGox collapse, BTCGuild having 50% hashpower, ....

And there are so many way that Bitcoin can go wrong with BIP 100. Giving miner more power to control Bitcoin is horrible idea. Oh wait, Jeff Garzik is working for a mining firm, that why he has this proposal.

Miners should only do that job that they are designated to do: include transactions to blocks.

Miners control the network and always have, if they wanted they could always have formed up a super pool and killed the network or force any action they want to dissolve, they just don't want to ruin their profits.

You're blindly trusting miners to be not evil. I would like to remind that #1 reason for people using Bitcoin is that we don't have to trust anyone with our money.

Mining centralization is the problem that even Satoshi didn't foresee it when he designed Bitcoin and POW. So why would we want to make this problem worse ?

People are thriving to see bigger blocks and they are willing to jump in any "proposal" satisfying that without thinking about long term consequences, first BIP 101, now this. Any reckless decision now can lead to collapse of system.

[achow101]

You're blindly trusting miners to be not evil. I would like to remind that #1 reason for people using Bitcoin is that we don't have to trust anyone with our money.

You are already doing that now. You are blindly trusting miners to include your transaction, to actually mine and to secure the network. As kingcolex said, miners could have completely destroyed the network if the wanted to. They could all stop mining now and the network would be dead. They could refuse to include people's transactions or include their own.

BUT, it is in their best interest to include your transactions and to continue to allow Bitcoin to grow. They are after profits, so it is in their best interest to get people to use Bitcoin and to get more transactions into their blocks for more fees.

Mining centralization is the problem that even Satoshi didn't foresee it when he designed Bitcoin and POW. So why would we want to make this problem worse ?

People are thriving to see bigger blocks and they are willing to jump in any "proposal" satisfying that without thinking about long term consequences, first BIP 101, now this. Any reckless decision now can lead to collapse of system.

That is true, any reckless decision now can lead to a collapse. But these aren't reckless proposals and have been thought out for several years. Remember, the discussion about increasing the blocksize has been around for a very long time. It was even around when Satoshi was still here and could weigh in.

If you don't like BIP 100, what do you want? What kind of voting scheme do you propose?

[Klestin]

See that little thing in the lower right "faster than 89% of the United states"
According to http://testmy.net/country/us
" The United States Average Upload Speed: 5.4 Mbps (673 kB/s)"
This reminds me I forgot it is in Mega bit per second
1Megbit =.125megabyte
an 1gb is 1024 mb this *8 =8192mb
at the current average of 673 kB/s
it gives us 12172 seconds which divided by 60 to get the minutes =202

Wouldn't this be the true time per 8gb block?

You are the one who asked for my upload speed. I provided it.  Let's stick with the 5 megabit transfer rate, shall we?

The discussion at hand was about the time to transfer blocks in ten years.  Under BIP 101, in ten years from today, the maximum block size will be 128 MB, not 8 GB.  At 5 mbit, 128 MB takes ... just over 2 minutes to transfer.

[Lauda]

Please stop throwing random numbers here and using speedtest with servers in your vicinity. When it comes to testing the Bitcoin network you need to calculate China first else the big blocks will give more orphans (=more centralization).


This happens with a 60/6 Mbit connection to Bejing.

[TibanneCat]

Bobby Lee (BTCChina) announced they will be supporting BIP100 and explains why
https://vip.btcchina.com/page/noticetemplate?id=100

[Klestin]

Please stop throwing random numbers here and using speedtest with servers in your vicinity. When it comes to testing the Bitcoin network you need to calculate China first else the big blocks will give more orphans (=more centralization).

This happens with a 60/6 Mbit connection to Bejing.

Why on Earth would miners in Beijing make all their connections directly to someone halfway around the world. That's not the way the Internet works.

But fine, let's test your theory.  Here's my connection from eastern coast US to Hong Kong:

[infofront]

It looks more and more like we'll be going the BIP100 route.

[VeritasSapere]

Bobby Lee (BTCChina) announced they will be supporting BIP100 and explains why
https://vip.btcchina.com/page/noticetemplate?id=100

That is very interesting, and their arguments are compelling. I support BIP100 over BIP101 because of the 32MEG limit within BIP100. However if that 32MEG limit also exists within Bitcoin XT and or BIP101. For me this would actually change my opinion in support of BIP100. Since I do think that the miners are the people that are best incentivised to do what is best for Bitcoin. I certainly do trust proof of work more then I do any development team. lol

Can anyone here with a deeper technical understanding confirm that even if the network forked to XT that this 32MEG limit would still be in place? Since that was the only reason why I preferred BIP101 compared to BIP100.

I have one more concern however, which is that no client that I can download now has BIP100 implemented and no plans for a hard fork have yet been made. Which means that for me to truly and wholeheartedly support BIP100 we would need these things in place and introduced in similar way that Bitcoin XT was. Since I do not want to just trust or believe that the Core team will implement BIP100 into the client themselves, since that was the entire reason for the existence of XT in the first place, since the Core development team seems to be unable to implement any of the BIP proposals. Which is why it will most likely need to be another alternative client that should push for this change. However since this does not exist yet, is why on some levels BIP100 is not a viable solution yet. I do hope that this will change soon.

[achow101]

Please stop throwing random numbers here and using speedtest with servers in your vicinity. When it comes to testing the Bitcoin network you need to calculate China first else the big blocks will give more orphans (=more centralization).


This happens with a 60/6 Mbit connection to Bejing.

Why on Earth would miners in Beijing make all their connections directly to someone halfway around the world. That's not the way the Internet works.

They wouldn't. But the slow part is any traffic going into and out of China due to the Great Firewall of China.

I ran 2 tests one to Taipei, Taiwan (near china but not in China) and one to Fuzhou China which is right across the strait from Taiwan and roughly the same distance.


As you can see, going into China drastically reduces the speed. And the problem is because of the Great Firewall of CHina. Since a lot of miners are Chinese, we need to take into account their network speed to the rest of the world when doing block time calculations.

[Klestin]

As you can see, going into China drastically reduces the speed. And the problem is because of the Great Firewall of CHina. Since a lot of miners are Chinese, we need to take into account their network speed to the rest of the world when doing block time calculations.

There is nothing that requires a mining operation in China to run its full node inside China.  The full hash power of the mining operation can remain inside China, and connect via a node anywhere in the world.  The transactional data is absolutely not required for the mining hardware to operate.

[infofront]

Bobby Lee (BTCChina) announced they will be supporting BIP100 and explains why
https://vip.btcchina.com/page/noticetemplate?id=100

That is very interesting, and their arguments are compelling. I support BIP100 over BIP101 because of the 32MEG limit within BIP100. However if that 32MEG limit also exists within Bitcoin XT and or BIP101. For me this would actually change my opinion in support of BIP100. Since I do think that the miners are the people that are best incentivised to do what is best for Bitcoin. I certiainly do trust proof of work more then I do any development team. lol

Can anyone here with a deeper technicall understanding confirm that even if the network forked to XT that this 32MEG limit would still be in place? Since that was the only reoson why I prefered BIP101 compared to BIP100.

I have one more concern however, which is that no client that I can download now has BIP100 implemented and no plans for a hard fork have yet been made. Which means for me to truly wholeheartly support BIP100 we would need these things in place and mostly introduced in simaliar way that Bitcoin XT was. Since I do not want to just trust or believe that the Core team will implement BIP100 into the client themselves, since that was the entire reoson for the existance of XT in the first place, since the Core development team seems to be unable to implement any of the BIP proposals. Which is why it will most likely need to be another alternitive client that should push for this change. However since this does not exist yet, that is why on some levels BIP100 is not a viable solution yet. I do hope that this will change soon.

The limit doubles every two years with BIP101, starting with 8MB.

[VeritasSapere]

Bobby Lee (BTCChina) announced they will be supporting BIP100 and explains why
https://vip.btcchina.com/page/noticetemplate?id=100

That is very interesting, and their arguments are compelling. I support BIP100 over BIP101 because of the 32MEG limit within BIP100. However if that 32MEG limit also exists within Bitcoin XT and or BIP101. For me this would actually change my opinion in support of BIP100. Since I do think that the miners are the people that are best incentivised to do what is best for Bitcoin. I certiainly do trust proof of work more then I do any development team. lol

Can anyone here with a deeper technicall understanding confirm that even if the network forked to XT that this 32MEG limit would still be in place? Since that was the only reoson why I prefered BIP101 compared to BIP100.

I have one more concern however, which is that no client that I can download now has BIP100 implemented and no plans for a hard fork have yet been made. Which means for me to truly wholeheartly support BIP100 we would need these things in place and mostly introduced in simaliar way that Bitcoin XT was. Since I do not want to just trust or believe that the Core team will implement BIP100 into the client themselves, since that was the entire reoson for the existance of XT in the first place, since the Core development team seems to be unable to implement any of the BIP proposals. Which is why it will most likely need to be another alternitive client that should push for this change. However since this does not exist yet, that is why on some levels BIP100 is not a viable solution yet. I do hope that this will change soon.

The limit doubles every two years with BIP101, starting with 8MB.

So this other 32MEG limit is not a limit that is contained within BIP101, like BTCChina claims it is. Why would they say that? So is what BTCChina is saying factually incorect?

[onemorexmr]

As you can see, going into China drastically reduces the speed. And the problem is because of the Great Firewall of CHina. Since a lot of miners are Chinese, we need to take into account their network speed to the rest of the world when doing block time calculations.

There is nothing that requires a mining operation in China to run its full node inside China.  The full hash power of the mining operation can remain inside China, and connect via a node anywhere in the world.  The transactional data is absolutely not required for the mining hardware to operate.

imho its more likely that other countries will put their mining nodes into china... as china seems to have the most hashrate why should they move?