Bitcoins 7 Transaction Per Second Limitation

[franky1]

There are no fixed and absolute limits. The number of transactions per block can vary hugely. What you shall consider is that the Visa credit card network can handle hundreds of transactions per second while BTC can't.

yes but thats because visa has separate databases, one for each country.. so their total TPS is based on adding all their database(ledgers) together.. not based on the individual subsidiary systems

[johnyj]

The Fedwire system which handles transactions between thousands of banks in whole US works at 4 tps. It's much more than enough right now if you don't fill the blockchain with coffee and candy transactions (they usually do not end up in blockchain anyway). In fact the larger the transaction, the greater the benefit of using blockchain

[Mickeyb]

Is it true that Bitcoin is limited to 7 transactions a second which are recorded in 1 block every 10 minutes? Does that mean 1 block can only hold 7 x 60 x 10 = 4200 transactions? With the growth of Bitcoin usage this has to be a drastic limitation oversight by Satoshi? How can Bitcoin be scaled for a global audience?

Opinions.

I have no idea how long you weren't active for in a past (I don't actually have time to check your profile and post history), but I guess that you have missed the whole block size increase debate that was raging during the past three months.

Much debate has been taking place and it's still not decided about this 1MB limit. Satoshi has designed this 1MB limit just as a temporary solution. We will see what will be decided.

Now when I think off, it's not bad that you have missed this whole debate. You have saved yourself a lot of nerves!

Where are the satoshi quotes where he said 1mb was temporal? what did he think about off chain transactions as a solution for this? I wonder what would he think about 8 mb raise, let alone 20..

There are many quotes from which we can see that the limit was supposed to be temporary. Like I said, all of this was already talked about many, many times in the many threads over the last 3 months. Go and dig through them. I don't have time to do such a thing. But the quotes do exist from 2010 if my memory serves me well.

[MicroGuy]

He would have raised the limit to 8MB (static) and everyone would have gone along merrily; because after all - he's Satoshi.

F*k Your Satoshi

You took my post out of context. I was replying to someone who was speculating on what Satoshi would have done.

But I personally don't see any harm in speculating what Satoshi would do since he was after all the original creator. It doesn't mean his views on a particular subject would have been ideal, but in a way it helps us stay true to the spirit of his original vision.

[~Bitcoin~]

Yes the number of transaction that can be included depends upon the transaction size not on the no. of transaction only. So what you said is absolutely incorrect. Bitcoin will be future, without limitation and complete ananomous.

[DooMAD]

I'm confident that after the second scaling conference in december, we'll be gravitating towards some sort of break in the deadlock.  Probably the 2-4-8 thing, but we'll see if anyone comes up with something better in the meantime.  I'd still like to see something a little more flexible and dynamic.

typical bullsieht thread; LIKE YOU NOOBS JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT BITCOIN's LIMITATIONS.. FORK OFF IF YOU FEEL BAD ABOUT WHATEVER YOU FEEL ABOUT.

We will.  We're just waiting for the right moment.  We're going to take the merchants, miners and vast majority of users with us and leave you to run a hollow shell of a network all by yourselves.  A few MP fanboys acting in isolation does not constitute a consensus network.  You need the rest of the world to agree with your abhorrent views and they're not going to do that, so have fun trading your altcoin amongst your fellow converts in complete obscurity while the rest of the world happily ignores you.

[Carlton Banks]

I'm confident that after the second scaling conference in december, we'll be gravitating towards some sort of break in the deadlock.  Probably the 2-4-8 thing, but we'll see if anyone comes up with something better in the meantime.  I'd still like to see something a little more flexible and dynamic.

Yeah, that seems like a pretty sober assessment of what's actually likely to happen here and now.

typical bullsieht thread; LIKE YOU NOOBS JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT BITCOIN's LIMITATIONS.. FORK OFF IF YOU FEEL BAD ABOUT WHATEVER YOU FEEL ABOUT.

We will.  We're just waiting for the right moment.  We're going to take the merchants, miners and vast majority of users with us and leave you to run a hollow shell of a network all by yourselves.  A few MP fanboys acting in isolation does not constitute a consensus network.  You need the rest of the world to agree with your abhorrent views and they're not going to do that, so have fun trading your altcoin amongst your fellow converts in complete obscurity while the rest of the world happily ignores you.

Eh?

How can you switch from agreeing to the most significant consensus position right now (2-4-8), and then still argue in favour of a minority blockchain fork?

You did the switch in the same post, am I missing something? Are we both crazy?

[DooMAD]

I'm confident that after the second scaling conference in december, we'll be gravitating towards some sort of break in the deadlock.  Probably the 2-4-8 thing, but we'll see if anyone comes up with something better in the meantime.  I'd still like to see something a little more flexible and dynamic.

Yeah, that seems like a pretty sober assessment of what's actually likely to happen here and now.

typical bullsieht thread; LIKE YOU NOOBS JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT BITCOIN's LIMITATIONS.. FORK OFF IF YOU FEEL BAD ABOUT WHATEVER YOU FEEL ABOUT.

We will.  We're just waiting for the right moment.  We're going to take the merchants, miners and vast majority of users with us and leave you to run a hollow shell of a network all by yourselves.  A few MP fanboys acting in isolation does not constitute a consensus network.  You need the rest of the world to agree with your abhorrent views and they're not going to do that, so have fun trading your altcoin amongst your fellow converts in complete obscurity while the rest of the world happily ignores you.

Eh?

How can you switch from agreeing to the most significant consensus position right now (2-4-8), and then still argue in favour of a minority blockchain fork?

You did the switch in the same post, am I missing something? Are we both crazy?

I'm saying if anyone tries to fight the tide and go against the 2-4-8 or whatever we end up agreeing on, they'll be in the minority.  If hdbuck wants to keep fighting and try to dismiss even moderate and reasonable increases, he's going to get left behind.  I bet a few of them desperately try to cling on to 1MB.  At least watching them marginalise themselves will be a fun spectacle, though.

[Carlton Banks]

I bet a few of them desperately try to cling on to 1MB.  At least watching them marginalise themselves will be a fun spectacle, though.

brg444 reports from the scaling workshop that there are a whole plethora of angles to come at the transaction throughput problem from, without changing (aka 1MB). I'd be surprised if it's possible, but I'm not gonna write it off without hearing the details. That even Adam Back doesn't mind compromising with the 2-4-8 schedule suggests otherwise, but I'm gonna have to look at it all alot more closely from here on in

[DooMAD]

I bet a few of them desperately try to cling on to 1MB.  At least watching them marginalise themselves will be a fun spectacle, though.

brg444 reports from the scaling workshop that there are a whole plethora of angles to come at the transaction throughput problem from, without changing (aka 1MB). I'd be surprised if it's possible, but I'm not gonna write it off without hearing the details. That even Adam Back doesn't mind compromising with the 2-4-8 schedule suggests otherwise, but I'm gonna have to look at it all alot more closely from here on in

The problem I'm having there is that anything a few select individuals think is a great idea is something I'm going to be inherently skeptical of because I don't trust them or their rather extremist views of what the future of Bitcoin should look like.  The more they express their preference towards an elitist and exclusive chain, the less I want to share a chain with them.  I want consensus, but not if exclusivity is the ultimate outcome.

[Carlton Banks]

I bet a few of them desperately try to cling on to 1MB.  At least watching them marginalise themselves will be a fun spectacle, though.

brg444 reports from the scaling workshop that there are a whole plethora of angles to come at the transaction throughput problem from, without changing (aka 1MB). I'd be surprised if it's possible, but I'm not gonna write it off without hearing the details. That even Adam Back doesn't mind compromising with the 2-4-8 schedule suggests otherwise, but I'm gonna have to look at it all alot more closely from here on in

The problem I'm having there is that anything a few select individuals think is a great idea is something I'm going to be inherently skeptical of because I don't trust them or their rather extremist views of what the future of Bitcoin should look like.  The more they express their preference towards an elitist and exclusive chain, the less I want to share a chain with them.  I want consensus, but not if exclusivity is the ultimate outcome.

Depends on what kind of exclusivity you're talking about. I can see how keeping low value transaction off the main chain would work, so that's one type of exclusivity.

But making the Bitcoin userbase exclusive? Bad idea. Some other crypto will just fill the gap.

[x_Molotov]

Sounds like more that Bitcoin has 7 transactions per second, not limited to .

[oblivi]

Unfortunately Bitcoin will never be able to scale as a world global payment network without compromising at a certain level, either by handling transactions into a private company (blockstream) whose will deal with transactions that don't pay an enough high fee, or by becoming totally centralized since the node will be way enough for the average joe to deal with, so I would rather have the blockstream solution. This is all better than what we have now.

[Carlton Banks]

Unfortunately Bitcoin will never be able to scale as a world global payment network without compromising at a certain level, either by handling transactions into a private company (blockstream) whose will deal with transactions that don't pay an enough high fee, or by becoming totally centralized since the node will be way enough for the average joe to deal with, so I would rather have the blockstream solution. This is all better than what we have now.

It's not handing processing to Blockstream at all. All Blockstream are doing is writing software protocols, so the actual operating of all side chains or lightning hubs will be open to competition. We'll see how competitive the incentive structures are when the details get firmer.

[brg444]

Unfortunately Bitcoin will never be able to scale as a world global payment network without compromising at a certain level, either by handling transactions into a private company (blockstream) whose will deal with transactions that don't pay an enough high fee, or by becoming totally centralized since the node will be way enough for the average joe to deal with, so I would rather have the blockstream solution. This is all better than what we have now.

It's not handing processing to Blockstream at all. All Blockstream are doing is writing software protocols, so the actual operating of all side chains or lightning hubs will be open to competition. We'll see how competitive the incentive structures are when the details get firmer.

Exactly.

To anyone with a hint of foresight it was always clear that Bitcoin would not support all of the world's financial infrastructure on its own blockchain. In order to provide us with a decentralized protocol layer Satoshi had to make considerable design compromises, often at the cost of efficiency and flexibility.

By enabling the creation of this quasi-trustless source of monetary value Satoshi allowed for an unprecedented, permissionless development of financial tools creating true market competition for more open-source, efficient & trust-minimizing platforms supported by Bitcoin's liquidity.

While the notion of "being your own bank" is a cool marketing gimmick it really isn't practical considering the effort one has to go through to make actual, proper use of Bitcoin. Yes, that involves running a full node. No, "bitcoinating" has nothing to do with web wallets, consumer-friendly "killer apps" & "merchant processors".

Consequently, if you decide to trust your "Bitcoin" business with such entities then it would seem to me other similar "users" should have no problem relying on second-level layers for their VISA payment network pipedreams.

Fortunately the trade-off really isn't as bad as I make it sound. The market-lead demand for these solutions will necessarily lead to valuable innovations in true open-source fashion. Lightning, side-chains are early demonstrations of this and more is to come.

[johnyj]

Consequently, if you decide to trust your "Bitcoin" business with such entities then it would seem to me other similar "users" should have no problem relying on second-level layers for their VISA payment network pipedreams.

I think one day VISA is going to integrate bitcoin payment for micro transactions. From their view, it is just another foreign currency that they need to integrate into their payment network, nothing more. And from bitcoin's point of view, it will save lots of work that VISA has done. VISA is currency independent, it works with all the currencies

Since it is bitcoin, they don't need to cooperate with banks, but bitcoin exchanges/online wallet providers. Since most of the user in each country usually only use domestic currency, the merchant need to install a special bitcoin POS terminal so that you can get a bitcoin quote to charge your VISA bitcoin cards (, maybe people would still like to be quoted in local currency, then using bitcoin works like traveling abroad: you only get a quote in local currency anywhere around the world)

[countryfree]

There are no fixed and absolute limits. The number of transactions per block can vary hugely. What you shall consider is that the Visa credit card network can handle hundreds of transactions per second while BTC can't.

yes but thats because visa has separate databases, one for each country.. so their total TPS is based on adding all their database(ledgers) together.. not based on the individual subsidiary systems

Well, actually I don't know how Visa manages its systems, but I've used my cards in many different countries, so the databases must be linked somehow. Besides, even when compared to one single country, BTC is substantially inferior to Visa. I'm sure that in the UK only, Visa handles way more transactions that the blockchain could handle.

[leopard2]

The Fedwire system which handles transactions between thousands of banks in whole US works at 4 tps. It's much more than enough right now if you don't fill the blockchain with coffee and candy transactions (they usually do not end up in blockchain anyway). In fact the larger the transaction, the greater the benefit of using blockchain

use Litecoin to pay for the coffee and candy, or Dogecoin, it confirms faster too 

[achow101]

Apologies if the following point has already been discussed ad infinitum elsewhere, but I've noticed that whenever I have sent BTC, the transaction has always been published instantly, even though it took a few minutes to actually confirm. If the Bank of America or Visa were to use the BTClockchain for their own internal purposes, they would certainly have procedures in place to prevent their employees from trying to double-spend the BTC sent to addresses to establish transactions. Since such published transactions are sure to be confirmed, shouldn't publication alone be sufficient both for legally accountable record-keeping and to initiate or complete smart contracts? If so, doesn't this mean that, for such uses by such institutions, there is no transaction-time limitation?

No. Even if a transactions is broadcast, there is no guarantee that it will confirm and thus become irreversible. Sometimes transactions have some issues like low fees or dust outputs which prevent that transaction from being confirmed. With the upcoming Opt-In RBF feature, it may not be safe to take unconfirmed transactions if it has opted in to be able to be replaced by another transactions with a higher fee.

[franky1]

Apologies if the following point has already been discussed ad infinitum elsewhere, but I've noticed that whenever I have sent BTC, the transaction has always been published instantly, even though it took a few minutes to actually confirm. If the Bank of America or Visa were to use the BTClockchain for their own internal purposes, they would certainly have procedures in place to prevent their employees from trying to double-spend the BTC sent to addresses to establish transactions. Since such published transactions are sure to be confirmed, shouldn't publication alone be sufficient both for legally accountable record-keeping and to initiate or complete smart contracts? If so, doesn't this mean that, for such uses by such institutions, there is no transaction-time limitation?

imagine it as if funds where debited out of your account instantly. but the recipient cant use them yet as they havnt been credited to him until its confirmed.
many people can still mess around and cause issues before its confirmed. and so for large purchases its not enough to rely on the publishing of a tx, but rather wait till its confirmed.

bitcoin is still not perfect in regards to the limbo between publishing a tx and having it confirmed.. however there are many idea's in the woodwork that are all aiming to sort that out.
that way payment systems can have 100% trust that once a transaction is published, its then locked in the waiting list to be confirmed. and any attempt to respend the same origin funds elsewhere will be ignored