Bitcoin at risk.

[agath]

During all the life of bitcoin the number of transactions kept increasing everyday. In these days they are reaching new records. We are experiencing many full blocks. The mempool is becoming huge. Transactions are taking more and more time to be confirmed. To make things worse, bitcoin value is increasing and attracting even more users.

I may agree that sidechains and lightning networks could be good solutions for the small transactions or everyday use, but they don't exist now and who knows when they will be ready.

In one of the next days, if bitcoin news will appear on a major site it will be a complete wreck.

The attempt by Blockstream to take the whole market of the microtransactions is mining the future of bitcoin. I am worried and scared of this.

1 MB block limit is totally absurd and inadequate and even a fool can realize it.

[Amph]

i think we can handle double of the current transaction per second, with a bit of delay even x3 or x4 that, i remember that with the stress test we went to 140 tx per seconds, which is a crazy numbers

but still the network has proceeded it eventually

[franky1]

bitcoin allows upto 4200 transactions per block.
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-block
currently hovering at half of that.

the problem of bottlenecked transactions is not too many transactions. but is miners ignoring transactions in favour of ones with fee's and leaving other transactions for later.

imagine it like a 40 seater bus, and 20 people waiting for the bus..
the bus driver is selling seats at a first class premium. anyone willing to pay the premium gets the seat, while the others are left waiting for the next bus..

yea buses come every 10 minutes on average, but it might take an hour waiting at the bus stop for a generous bus  driver to just let anyone waiting to get onboard

[CoinNation]

With the development of side chain, and also the gradual increase of the block size. Bitcoin can handle many more transactions. At present, to insure your transaction go through, just pay a higher fee.

[dothebeats]

The block size limit issue again?

Yes, we are having a static 1MB limit per block atm, and today each block contains--most of the time--half of that limit. I wonder where'd you get that we are having a large mempool and many full blocks.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Block size limit will be increased when there is a need for it. Can we keep this crap in the XT (is dead) thread?

[franky1]

With the development of side chain, and also the gradual increase of the block size. Bitcoin can handle many more transactions. At present, to insure your transaction go through, just pay a higher fee.

enforcing a fee is not helping transactions flow, but aiding greedy miners to want to ignore 'second class' (free) transactions.. it's reinforcing and telling the miners that their greed is allowed.

so asking people to 'just pay a higher fee' is not positive advice, and is not the point of bitcoin.
if everyone paid a fee, then miners would then cherry pick the highest fee's and then ignore the minimal fee transactions. which will lead to a ongoing cycle of increasing fee's. which will drive away small purchase items if it costs more then those things just in tx fee's.

bitcoin meant to be devisible to 10million parts.. but if it costs 0.0001 just to send. then businesses that use things like google adsense cannot pay users pennies or parts of pennies. because it costs 3cents to send the tx..

this 3cent will increase, not just by people paying more btc to get priority in and endless priority war, but also because bitcoin has risen in fiat value .. meaning its not long before the average tx will cost 4 cents.. then 5c, then 6 cents

so imagine it next year if 1btc=$1000, and imagine everyone paying a fee..
people will end up not paying 0.0001 but 0.0002, which will be 20c/tx..

its simply not helpfull to bitcoin and is purely about greed of miners. this is why the block limit needs to rise, so miners cant make priority excuses to ignore transactions. and instead just do their job of accepting transactions.. which is what bitcoin should be about

i know there is no actual issue at the moment in regards to data confines of a 1mb block as statistics and other peoples observations have shown blocks on average are only half filled.. but its more about removing the limit to get greedy miners to stop pretending that the limit is the cause of their greed

[mezzomix]

The mempool is becoming huge.

No:

Code:

> bitcoin-cli getmempoolinfo
{
    "size" : 2106,
    "bytes" : 15622789
}

[neurotypical]

The 7tps thing is a peak. To reach this peak we still have a lot of margin. No need to rush things, but sure, I like to think with a futuristic mind so we should get ahead of the curve.

In any case, big blocks are a death sentence for Bitcoin if it translates into centralization of mining, thats why anyone with some common understanding of all of this should be against XT and any BIP that raises the blocksize to ridiculous levels that would alienate the average joe running a node specially in countries that aren't as advanced.

[coinpr0n]

Everyone is aware of the oncoming limits and are already working on it (and having the right discussions). I don't think any who needs to know doesn't know the situation already. The urgency is blown a little out of proportion IMO. As a node operator I worry about possible consequences of simply upping the block-size at fear of a few full blocks.

[zimmah]

During all the life of bitcoin the number of transactions kept increasing everyday. In these days they are reaching new records. We are experiencing many full blocks. The mempool is becoming huge. Transactions are taking more and more time to be confirmed. To make things worse, bitcoin value is increasing and attracting even more users.

I may agree that sidechains and lightning networks could be good solutions for the small transactions or everyday use, but they don't exist now and who knows when they will be ready.

In one of the next days, if bitcoin news will appear on a major site it will be a complete wreck.

The attempt by Blockstream to take the whole market of the microtransactions is mining the future of bitcoin. I am worried and scared of this.

1 MB block limit is totally absurd and inadequate and even a fool can realize it.

I thought this problem was settled by now?

It's sad too see it still hasn't.

[zimmah]

Block size limit will be increased when there is a need for it. Can we keep this crap in the XT (is dead) thread?

yes let's wait till the very last moment to start discussing the issue, let alone implement it.

Very smart idea.

[spazzdla]

Block size limit will be increased when there is a need for it. Can we keep this crap in the XT (is dead) thread?

yes let's wait till the very last moment to start discussing the issue, let alone implement it.

Very smart idea.

Most people support 8mb, if we need it will be implymented.  I believe the idea is hopefully we have another way to fix this when the time comes instead of jacking up the block size.

It's a race can we get side chains and things going before we need to increase block size.  If btc is to bubble again soon.. we'll need 8mB asap.

[brg444]

Block size limit will be increased when there is a need for it. Can we keep this crap in the XT (is dead) thread?

yes let's wait till the very last moment to start discussing the issue, let alone implement it.

Very smart idea.

Most people support 8mb, if we need it will be implymented.  I believe the idea is hopefully we have another way to fix this when the time comes instead of jacking up the block size.

It's a race can we get side chains and things going before we need to increase block size.  If btc is to bubble again soon.. we'll need 8mB asap.

No. 

[UserVVIP]

When you think about it btc will only ever go up or down. not left or right.

[maokoto]

When we see that something can go wrong, we tend to worry. But many many times things go wrong even when we have no idea they could go wrong.


That is to say, even if block limit was increased tomorrow, still something could go wrong. I will take care of block limit, but not be too stressed about it while nothing is still happening.

[mezzomix]

Block size limit will be increased when there is a need for it. Can we keep this crap in the XT (is dead) thread?

yes let's wait till the very last moment to start discussing the issue, let alone implement it.

Implementation is simple but it makes sense to reach consensus between most of the users (not miners!). Personally I can live with a value between 1MB and 8MB - but not with the 8GB limit in BXT.

[Mickeyb]

Well OP haven't you thought that we need exactly this to happen so everyone can get scared. Then I am sure, we will raise blocks size limit in no time.

Anyways, I am sure this will be solved in the end of the year after the next Hong Kong workshop in December. But the a big price rise and a bug influx of new users could help us to put some much needed pressure on devs to reach consensus.

[NorrisK]

If the price keeps rising the volume of transactions will also increase with it.

This will show the developers that an increase is actually needed. Current solutions may not be optimal as every side has some interests in their own solutions, but a new one will be found when it is really needed.

[jaberwock]

Only half of a block is used every time and we survived the stress tests.

Block size will not be a problem unless the adoption increases by one order of magnitude in 1 month or so