Thanks to people who support 1-2 MB blocks - great idea u fools...

[jonald_fyookball]

--links--

Uh, thanks for the links but I'm looking for a concise explanation of how a second layer could be decentralized and trustless.
Couple of paragraphs.  Anyone?

 

There is no such thing as trustless, even if I find myself using the term often it really is a misnomer.

The more correct term is trust minimizing.

Second layers might involve a bit more trust but will come with order of magnitude more utility.

Do you absolutely need the security of Bitcoin's blockchain for your everyday transaction?

I've looked at the LN white paper (briefly).  It seems complicated and theoretical.  From what I've heard, actually implementing this system will take years.

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[brg444]

--links--

Uh, thanks for the links but I'm looking for a concise explanation of how a second layer could be decentralized and trustless.
Couple of paragraphs.  Anyone?

 

There is no such thing as trustless, even if I find myself using the term often it really is a misnomer.

The more correct term is trust minimizing.

Second layers might involve a bit more trust but will come with order of magnitude more utility.

Do you absolutely need the security of Bitcoin's blockchain for your everyday transaction?

I've looked at the LN white paper (briefly).  It seems complicated and theoretical.  From what I've heard, actually implementing this system will take years.

Bitcoin seemed complicated and theoretical too at first.

I believe it's been said we could have a working implementation by next year.

You might also want to consider www.stashcrypto.com

This is obviously a long term plan but we are in no hurry to increase the limit considering we are now just barely grazing it.

It was first implemented as a spam limit and conventional wisdom suggests any time we approach it it is because of spam. Therefore you should understand why a lot of us don't see how it would be wise to raise it now as it is operating exactly as intended. 

[jonald_fyookball]

Where in the LN white paper is the structure and security of the actual micro channels explained?

[coalitionfor8mb]

Here is the summary of points that we have already figured out so far.

Definition of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin was created as a "single PoW-secured transparent unified ledger runnable by users at home". That's all we know about it since inception till present day. It has never been anything else and it's unclear if anything else is going to be as valuable. That's the area where it needs to excel in order to stay the master of its own game. However, the amount of home-based full nodes may vary during the transition stages as those are necessarily discreet (like electron orbits in the atom, which need to resonate with the whole ecosystem, in order to be accepted as stable).

Other security models have made different trade-offs impacting their long-term evolutionary dynamics and therefore cannot directly compete with Bitcoin, but anything that fits into the definition above must be taken seriously and acted upon in a timely fashion.

Side chains and other layers might be workable for as long as the main chain remains strong and relevant in its area of expertise. Finding the right balance there would become another challenge down the road. The biggest risks with this approach are systemic and therefore safety (fool-proof) mechanisms need to be carefully designed and placed accordingly.

Transition to the next stage.

There are multiple factors at play here. First and foremost the limit on block size must prove itself in action for that idea to be able to propagate itself further. Effective transaction volumes need to build up enough pressure before any considerations for raising the limit are made.

At some point the network may be flooded with excessive amounts of transactions and routine operations will grind to a halt. That's where the volume should begin shifting to competing solutions as people would find the current one inconvenient and expensive. As the volumes in other systems grow, while Bitcoin maintains its current limit, one of its closest competitors would begin aiming for domination in the area where Bitcoin has proven itself a leader (according to the definition above).

In the situation like this the decision for raising the limit needs to be made with commitment to at least double the theoretical capacity of the competitor in order for Bitcoin to stay in the game. There would be no time for intermediate smaller steps (like 2-4-8) and the limit would have to be raised straight to 8MB instead. The home user-base of full nodes may temporarily get shrunk in the process, but should be able to catch up at a later point as the new limit would keep the costs of running a node manageable if it stays strong long enough, which it must in order for Bitcoin to maintain its definition.

Failing to react timely in the situation above might result in a permanent loss of momentum without the ability to regain the lead due to the open source nature of the systems in question. Therefore a scaling plan should be worked out and ready in order to keep the competition in check. The most simple and robust solution often works best when many need to agree on it quickly. A single static limit also makes it easy to remember and verify if the need arises, while leaving enough entropy in the system to keep it attractive for internal competition.

Other considerations.

The best example of successful consensus-driven communities that comes to mind is that of scientists, where people are interested in figuring out how things work before resorting to judgments and opinions. It means, that if we are still arguing about one aspect of Bitcoin or another, we likely haven't figured something out, which is easily explainable by the fact that we haven't gone through the whole evolutionary cycle yet. Question others, question yourselves, if you feel the urge to side with anyone, dig for the truth and side with it instead.

Regarding motivations and driving factors in individual decision making, people are often being naively rational and hold potential profit considerations above network's fundamental properties not realizing that it's the uniqueness of Bitcoin's original design and the position of balance it sits in, that give it power and make it valuable.

[coalitionfor8mb]

Just noticed another interesting connection between the words: "pressure", "pleasure" and "precious",
which should be able to tie up different analogies floating around the concept of Bitcoin together.

It can go something like this.
Only the right kind of "pressure" would produce appropriate amounts of "precious" to bring us the most "pleasure".

Another thing is that "gold" is produced in a "star" and both are "shiny".
Gonna need those "star gods" and a whole ton of "good luck" to run the star of Bitcoin properly.

A quick glance at the forum's logo in the top-right corner
can always serve as a reminder that Bitcoin is a "simple machine" sitting in a "balance point".

Oh, and as the time passes, if you forget what the correct solution for scaling Bitcoin is
just "Remember The Name".

[SebastianJu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ&feature=youtu.be&t=12667

jgarzik suggests in his talk that Fidelity investment company has a beta bitcoin project which it is cannot turn on, because it would "max out" bitcoin capacity and future capacity growth is unknown

If they have such high throughput needs, why use bitcoin in the first place and not create their own altcoin?

They could have it merge-mined or secured by regular checkpoints stored in the BTC blockchain instead, using BTC just for security rather than using it as a storage network.

Basic question being why should a common shared blockchain become the one every single company with massive upscaling plans needs to be in?

For full scale, blocks would need to be in the GB range, today, and tens of GB with tech growth in the future, which would completely change the nature of bitcoin.

You sound like it is not their bitcoin too. Like, if you don't like it use something different. Though in fact it is their bitcoin the same way it is yours. And they can wish for changes to be done.

It would be a pity when bitcoin would be so limited that you would need other altcoins to still make it work.

[SebastianJu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ&feature=youtu.be&t=12667

jgarzik suggests in his talk that Fidelity investment company has a beta bitcoin project which it is cannot turn on, because it would "max out" bitcoin capacity and future capacity growth is unknown

We are not responsible for your inability to understand fundamental facts about bitcoin scalability issues and
centralization. It seems that you keep supporting bigger blocks. For the last time, please understand that
our hardware is not capable of handling bigger blocks. This will be devastating for bitcoin, and will turn many people
on altcoins, which they have the same scalability issues or even worse.
Ohh wait! How convenient! Your nickname looks self-explanatory. LiteCoinGuy, how many litecoins do you own?
Well not everyone is invested in LiteCoin, which is just a copy of bitcoin, and 2.5 minute blocks make it even harder to scale compared to bitcoin.

I'm not sure where you life so that "our" hardware is not capable of using bigger blocks. In practically all countries i know it would be no problem at all.

Might depend on where you live.

[cbeast]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ&feature=youtu.be&t=12667

jgarzik suggests in his talk that Fidelity investment company has a beta bitcoin project which it is cannot turn on, because it would "max out" bitcoin capacity and future capacity growth is unknown

We are not responsible for your inability to understand fundamental facts about bitcoin scalability issues and
centralization. It seems that you keep supporting bigger blocks. For the last time, please understand that
our hardware is not capable of handling bigger blocks. This will be devastating for bitcoin, and will turn many people
on altcoins, which they have the same scalability issues or even worse.
Ohh wait! How convenient! Your nickname looks self-explanatory. LiteCoinGuy, how many litecoins do you own?
Well not everyone is invested in LiteCoin, which is just a copy of bitcoin, and 2.5 minute blocks make it even harder to scale compared to bitcoin.

I'm not sure where you life so that "our" hardware is not capable of using bigger blocks. In practically all countries i know it would be no problem at all.

Might depend on where you live.

There's the rub. Some countries have miners with the advantage of bigger blocks and some have miners with the advantage of smaller blocks. If you get away from the hardware issue and focus on the end user, then more tps and larger blocks becomes evident.

[SebastianJu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ&feature=youtu.be&t=12667

jgarzik suggests in his talk that Fidelity investment company has a beta bitcoin project which it is cannot turn on, because it would "max out" bitcoin capacity and future capacity growth is unknown

We are not responsible for your inability to understand fundamental facts about bitcoin scalability issues and
centralization. It seems that you keep supporting bigger blocks. For the last time, please understand that
our hardware is not capable of handling bigger blocks. This will be devastating for bitcoin, and will turn many people
on altcoins, which they have the same scalability issues or even worse.
Ohh wait! How convenient! Your nickname looks self-explanatory. LiteCoinGuy, how many litecoins do you own?
Well not everyone is invested in LiteCoin, which is just a copy of bitcoin, and 2.5 minute blocks make it even harder to scale compared to bitcoin.

I'm not sure where you life so that "our" hardware is not capable of using bigger blocks. In practically all countries i know it would be no problem at all.

Might depend on where you live.

There's the rub. Some countries have miners with the advantage of bigger blocks and some have miners with the advantage of smaller blocks. If you get away from the hardware issue and focus on the end user, then more tps and larger blocks becomes evident.

Not really. What you describe would be some stoneage country. Every computer nowadays can deal with it. And we surely don't need to make sure that bitcoin nodes can run on a C64, don't you think? One can go too far easily...

[cbeast]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ&feature=youtu.be&t=12667

jgarzik suggests in his talk that Fidelity investment company has a beta bitcoin project which it is cannot turn on, because it would "max out" bitcoin capacity and future capacity growth is unknown

We are not responsible for your inability to understand fundamental facts about bitcoin scalability issues and
centralization. It seems that you keep supporting bigger blocks. For the last time, please understand that
our hardware is not capable of handling bigger blocks. This will be devastating for bitcoin, and will turn many people
on altcoins, which they have the same scalability issues or even worse.
Ohh wait! How convenient! Your nickname looks self-explanatory. LiteCoinGuy, how many litecoins do you own?
Well not everyone is invested in LiteCoin, which is just a copy of bitcoin, and 2.5 minute blocks make it even harder to scale compared to bitcoin.

I'm not sure where you life so that "our" hardware is not capable of using bigger blocks. In practically all countries i know it would be no problem at all.

Might depend on where you live.

There's the rub. Some countries have miners with the advantage of bigger blocks and some have miners with the advantage of smaller blocks. If you get away from the hardware issue and focus on the end user, then more tps and larger blocks becomes evident.

Not really. What you describe would be some stoneage country. Every computer nowadays can deal with it. And we surely don't need to make sure that bitcoin nodes can run on a C64, don't you think? One can go too far easily...

It takes more than computing power to support larger block sizes. Some countries can't handle the bandwidth of those large blocks to propagate them.

[brg444]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ&feature=youtu.be&t=12667

jgarzik suggests in his talk that Fidelity investment company has a beta bitcoin project which it is cannot turn on, because it would "max out" bitcoin capacity and future capacity growth is unknown

We are not responsible for your inability to understand fundamental facts about bitcoin scalability issues and
centralization. It seems that you keep supporting bigger blocks. For the last time, please understand that
our hardware is not capable of handling bigger blocks. This will be devastating for bitcoin, and will turn many people
on altcoins, which they have the same scalability issues or even worse.
Ohh wait! How convenient! Your nickname looks self-explanatory. LiteCoinGuy, how many litecoins do you own?
Well not everyone is invested in LiteCoin, which is just a copy of bitcoin, and 2.5 minute blocks make it even harder to scale compared to bitcoin.

I'm not sure where you life so that "our" hardware is not capable of using bigger blocks. In practically all countries i know it would be no problem at all.

Might depend on where you live.

There's the rub. Some countries have miners with the advantage of bigger blocks and some have miners with the advantage of smaller blocks. If you get away from the hardware issue and focus on the end user, then more tps and larger blocks becomes evident.

Not really. What you describe would be some stoneage country. Every computer nowadays can deal with it. And we surely don't need to make sure that bitcoin nodes can run on a C64, don't you think? One can go too far easily...

It takes more than computing power to support larger block sizes. Some countries can't handle the bandwidth of those large blocks to propagate them.

You don't even have to look into other countries: 50% of rural americans wouldn't have the connection to handle 8mb blocks, that's roughly 30 million people in the United States alone.

[da2ce7]

People cry for exponential expansion of the Bitcoin ecosystem; then propose a linear increase in the blocksize as the "solution". 

[SebastianJu]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgjrS-BPWDQ&feature=youtu.be&t=12667

jgarzik suggests in his talk that Fidelity investment company has a beta bitcoin project which it is cannot turn on, because it would "max out" bitcoin capacity and future capacity growth is unknown

We are not responsible for your inability to understand fundamental facts about bitcoin scalability issues and
centralization. It seems that you keep supporting bigger blocks. For the last time, please understand that
our hardware is not capable of handling bigger blocks. This will be devastating for bitcoin, and will turn many people
on altcoins, which they have the same scalability issues or even worse.
Ohh wait! How convenient! Your nickname looks self-explanatory. LiteCoinGuy, how many litecoins do you own?
Well not everyone is invested in LiteCoin, which is just a copy of bitcoin, and 2.5 minute blocks make it even harder to scale compared to bitcoin.

I'm not sure where you life so that "our" hardware is not capable of using bigger blocks. In practically all countries i know it would be no problem at all.

Might depend on where you live.

There's the rub. Some countries have miners with the advantage of bigger blocks and some have miners with the advantage of smaller blocks. If you get away from the hardware issue and focus on the end user, then more tps and larger blocks becomes evident.

Not really. What you describe would be some stoneage country. Every computer nowadays can deal with it. And we surely don't need to make sure that bitcoin nodes can run on a C64, don't you think? One can go too far easily...

It takes more than computing power to support larger block sizes. Some countries can't handle the bandwidth of those large blocks to propagate them.

Yeah, i know, there are not a few places even in the US. But it is simply no solution to let bitcoin act after the poorest available internet connection. And i would await that a miner who seriously wants to mine, will prepare a proper power solution and internet. if he doesn't then we surely won't adjust the bitcoin protocol only because someone wants to be stupid.

It is simply a matter of fact that bitcoin can't survive when the daily amount of legit transactions exceed the 1MB blocksize limit. IT CAN't POSSIBLY WORK! because everytime legit transaction fell over and will never be confirmed. A currency like that is dead. Regardless of some lightning network.

[Gimpeline]

Most blocks are just half full after all this time. We have a few years until we have to raise the limit. No need to rush in to it

[zimmah]

Most blocks are just half full after all this time. We have a few years until we have to raise the limit. No need to rush in to it

you're really not very smart if you think we have several years before we hit the limit.

The adoption rate of any technology, including bitcoin, is exponential.

So we don't have nearly as much time as you think.

[brg444]

Most blocks are just half full after all this time. We have a few years until we have to raise the limit. No need to rush in to it

you're really not very smart if you think we have several years before we hit the limit.

The adoption rate of any technology, including bitcoin, is exponential.

So we don't have nearly as much time as you think.

So what do you suggest? Surely not a linear increase in block size? Or should we make it exponential as well?

[jaberwock]

Most blocks are just half full after all this time. We have a few years until we have to raise the limit. No need to rush in to it

Adoption may increase by orders of magnitude in low time, like happened some times in the past(at least with the price).

If you wait until the blocks are full, you may be caught in a dangerous situation with the network about to collapse

[Quantus]

This video is relevant to this thread.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[SebastianJu]

Most blocks are just half full after all this time. We have a few years until we have to raise the limit. No need to rush in to it

You are right: https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size

Though you see the constant trend right? And you know how easily and without high costs it is possible to fill these blocks up to 1MB? Now imagine what happens in the case of a fast adoption of bitcoin. Like amazon accepting bitcoins directly. Bitcoin blocks would be full instantly and bitcoin would practically die in the same time. Since all the new users would have a terrible user experience. Bitcoin would not confirm most transactions and nobody needs a currency that even lost such a crucial advantage. Why should anyone use an unreliable currency like that?

[SebastianJu]

Most blocks are just half full after all this time. We have a few years until we have to raise the limit. No need to rush in to it

you're really not very smart if you think we have several years before we hit the limit.

The adoption rate of any technology, including bitcoin, is exponential.

So we don't have nearly as much time as you think.

So what do you suggest? Surely not a linear increase in block size? Or should we make it exponential as well?

I suggest dropping that limit completely. Fighting spam with minimum fees and such. There simply is no need for crippling bitcoin that way. There was no problem with full blocks until the spamming started. And the spamming would not have been started with unlimited blocks. Way too expensive and spam would be useless.