Blocksize needs to be increased now.

[digaran2]

I hope it reach the 1MB limit . Nothing will happen other then threw natural selection the micro transactions will be pushed out of the blockchain.

[zimmah]

I hope it reach the 1MB limit . Nothing will happen other then threw natural selection the micro transactions will be pushed out of the blockchain.

https://blockchain.info/nl/block-height/431209
https://blockchain.info/nl/block-height/431108
https://blockchain.info/nl/block-height/431103
https://blockchain.info/nl/block-height/431033
https://blockchain.info/nl/block-height/430749

We are reaching 1MB blocks a lot.

Also more than half the blocks are at least 900 kB now.

[AlexGR]

Suppose I create a faucet.

I claim that I will give 1 satoshi for every request that is made through some web form. Meaning, any user who inserts his btc address will get 1 satoshi from me.

I place no limits on how many times users do that. A user may do it 100mn times and he'll get 1 BTC.

I am willing to pay 1 satoshi for fees per transaction (250 bytes).

So for every user who wants 1 satoshi, I pay 1 to him and 1 to fees.

What do you think will happen in terms of network demand?

Even if you have 10MB blocks, they'll be full.

My cost for doing that, and assuming nobody else transacted in the network, would be:

10mb per block / 250 bytes per tx = 40k txs per block x 144 blocks per day = 5.760.000 txs per day, moving 1 satoshi each and paying 1 satoshi in fees each = 11.52mn satoshi = 0.1152 btc per day.

So for 0.1152 btc per day, I can have 10mb blocks full by running a faucet that hands out money to everyone, no strings and no limits attached.

The number is 1.1152 btc per day for 100MB blocks, of which 0.576 btc will be donated to the users and the other 0.576 will go the network as fees.

For 11 btc per day, even 1 GB blocks can be full while users are scrambling to take the 5.76 BTCs that I'm donating (another 5.76 will go in fees).

As long as there are nodes relaying and miners mining my txs, this is quite achievable.

Do you understand why "blocks full" is irrelevant? The lower the cost of transacting, the bigger the demand for cheap txs, ensuring "blocks are full" for any capacity scenario (even 1gb blocks).

I'm seeing this right now: https://bitcoinfees.21.co/

In the last 24 hours, 512 txs had zero fees. Another 36000 txs had fees ranging from 1 to 9 satoshi per byte. So ~36500 txs were in the range of 0$ to 0.01$ in fees.

If there was real congestion, you wouldn't see these kind of transactions getting processed. They'd need at least 5-10x in fees.

[SparkedDev]

I believe they should just raise it 1mb more to allow the time to atleast talk it out and it won't dramatically cut the little guys out because of the cost. 

[AlexGR]

Is the little guy squeezed out?

In the last 24 hours, 512 txs had zero fees. Another 36000 txs had fees ranging from 1 to 9 satoshi per byte. So ~36500 txs were in the range of 0$ to 0.01$ in fees.

[Dabs]

I just made 4 transactions. Paid 0.001 each time. They all got confirmed in a block in ... I dunno 20 minutes. (I actually wanted to increase the tx fee, but the reference core client wouldn't let me.)

Each transaction except the last one was about 60kb. I tried to do a large transaction of 170kb but the reference core client wouldn't let me, said it was "too large". I looked up a few sites and found out that transactions above 100kb are not standard, so I broke up my thousands of inputs into 3 transactions. The 4th transaction was a consolidation of the previous three, to send to where I had intended to send originally.

So, I paid 0.004 total. Not so bad for 170kb total. This would only be a concern if the absolute total bitcoin amount was small. If you're moving 10 BTC or more, 0.001 isn't so bad, and you could get away with smaller, 0.0001.

[rizzlarolla]

^^^Link please

https://bitcoinfees.21.co/
Which fee should I use?
The fastest and cheapest transaction fee is currently 60 satoshis/byte, shown in green at the top.
For the median transaction size of 226 bytes, this results in a fee of 13,560 satoshis (0.07$).

[Dabs]

Here are the first three transaction and ID hashes:

Date: 2016-09-25 15:56
Total debit: -1.27887719 BTC
Transaction fee: -0.00100000 BTC
Transaction ID: e341a6b45cd349821b80c8fc5f6b92a1a983bddfd57cfd261e7c56ad2db9c37b

Date: 2016-09-25 15:59
Total debit: -6.65190598 BTC
Transaction fee: -0.00100000 BTC
Transaction ID: fe7e94741f42c83621f580cf846b1cc337c7f4a1cd10153df10a113a0eb9fde7

Total debit: -42.46593450 BTC
Transaction fee: -0.00100000 BTC
Transaction ID: d156bd503ae9fe8f8e83c2a8e7025a20f21f9dfc8a5678235a5a2d1c65703782

And the final transaction (which you can easily trace in any block explorer):

Date: 2016-09-25 16:16
Transaction fee: -0.00100000 BTC
Net amount: -50.39671767 BTC
Transaction ID: bb61536e9917297d1b8184edd3cb0fda5aed428b31953d9119694c4437e36885

You should use what you see in that website, or what is "recommended" by your client if you are using Bitcoin Core.

[traspy]

Bitcoin fork is on the way. I preditc 2-3 months.

[Dabs]

It's already been forked. I think. Or at least there are clients out there. I don't know who's using those other wallets, I'll stick to Core for now.

[Wind_FURY]

It's already been forked. I think. Or at least there are clients out there. I don't know who's using those other wallets, I'll stick to Core for now.

As a community member who has been here longer, what is your opinion on what will happen if a fork like Bitcoin Unlimited will gain enough support. Will it split the Bitcoin network in two just like what happened to Ethereum? The supporters of the fork all think it will be ok just like what Vitalik thought with the Ethereum hard fork.

Also if the hard fork does split the network in two, who is liable to be "hanged" by the community? Will Roger Ver step forward and own up to the mistake?

[Dabs]

I think Ver has mentioned he doesn't mind if bitcoin splits into two chains. He has an article on coindesk or his own site (bitcoin.com)

The market will decide. The miners. The users. The nodes.

This usually means all the big players, the big exchanges, the big payment processors, and all the online web wallets.

One thing I know, if the price goes down, good time to buy cheap coins on your choice of fork. Also the fork will cause two blockchains to be maintained so you could have double your coins for a short term.

[BitUsher]

For someone that is so concerned with Capacity throughput Ver certainly doesn't mind mining half filled or empty blocks way below the average of other pools.

https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/block/0000000000000000022a9997ce4448d1ef5da66f4e93431d8366972a2e7fbd7a

https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/pool/bitcoincom

Most other miners are mining around 1% empty blocks. Half of bitcoin.com blocks have not been full and over 10% of their blocks are almost empty. I would expect them to at least mimic other pools ratios. This doesn't look good, especially coming from people so concerned with capacity.
Empty blocks are very rare now a days . 2 large pools are even mining 0% empty blocks. And all others are below 1% , not higher than 10% like rogers pool. Look at the stats--

[Dabs]

Suppose I create a faucet.

I am willing to pay 1 satoshi for fees per transaction (250 bytes).

So for every user who wants 1 satoshi, I pay 1 to him and 1 to fees.

If you do that, the transaction won't get forwarded to any other nodes. You're under the threshold for "dust".

[AlexGR]

Suppose I create a faucet.

I am willing to pay 1 satoshi for fees per transaction (250 bytes).

So for every user who wants 1 satoshi, I pay 1 to him and 1 to fees.

If you do that, the transaction won't get forwarded to any other nodes. You're under the threshold for "dust".

Obviously. But that's the bigblocker counterargument right there: "Who are you to tell me that my transaction is spam/dust/invalid/not worthy" etc etc... They continue by saying "if I pay fees, I must get included!!!". They could also say, in the above scenario, "I'm paying 100% fees over the transacted amount, while others are paying 0.x% in percentage... is this fair?" etc etc.

[Dabs]

Obviously. But that's the bigblocker counterargument right there: "Who are you to tell me that my transaction is spam/dust/invalid/not worthy" etc etc... They continue by saying "if I pay fees, I must get included!!!". They could also say, in the above scenario, "I'm paying 100% fees over the transacted amount, while others are paying 0.x% in percentage... is this fair?" etc etc.

I don't really know. I don't make the rules. The fee rules are in the code and in the nodes that run on it, the miners, the whole network. The rules are based on the size of the transaction and the priority of the unspent inputs.

It used to be I could send small amounts with no fees. I'm not complaining now that I'm almost always required to spend more on fees. I understand how it works, maybe you do too. But according to the other devs there are all sorts of complications that arise if you change the one line of code that limits the block size.

The nodes just relay or forward your transaction. Anyone can change the logic of the nodes they control to forward or relay transactions with small or no fees.

The miners are the ones that actually confirm or include your transaction in a block.

I guess, the most apt saying is the one about "you get what you pay for"... You pay more, you get better chance (but no guarantee) of a confirmation. If you don't pay, you can always wait. I don't know if that's fair or not, although it looks fair to me.

Like you mentioned, if blocks become 1 GB in size, we'll eventually run into the same problem.

[AlexGR]

Obviously. But that's the bigblocker counterargument right there: "Who are you to tell me that my transaction is spam/dust/invalid/not worthy" etc etc... They continue by saying "if I pay fees, I must get included!!!". They could also say, in the above scenario, "I'm paying 100% fees over the transacted amount, while others are paying 0.x% in percentage... is this fair?" etc etc.

I don't really know. I don't make the rules. The fee rules are in the code and in the nodes that run on it, the miners, the whole network. The rules are based on the size of the transaction and the priority of the unspent inputs.

That's the other bigblocker counterargument: "Fuckin' blockstream, they have put limits on small txs, they want to make Bitcoin a settlement network and they are killing bitcoin for not including my 0.00x$ tx !!!"

The devs probably did the math, saw that if small spammy transactions are in high demand, coupled with practically zero fees, then virtually any block size can be full.

Monero implemented an adaptive block size which increases as more demand is applied, and where did that lead? To a spamming of the network, to kill the blockchain through bloat... and devs running to patch it with high fees per tx to prevent the ongoing attack. What more can you do? It's either limited block size, or high fees.

I've seen a variation applied in STEEM, where they use rate limiting for spammy txs, avoiding the block size vs high fees tradeoff, but that's because txs are tied to an account, so this becomes more possible (in bitcoin it wouldn't be).

[Dabs]

I think we all (devs and other users) saw when a popular on-chain dice site ... ... hehe ... I don't like "small spammy transactions" any more than you do.

I like bitcoin the way it is right now. If it does change, we'll see if the rest of the people follow. It'll be all over the news so I don't even really need to follow this.

[Wind_FURY]

I think Ver has mentioned he doesn't mind if bitcoin splits into two chains. He has an article on coindesk or his own site (bitcoin.com)

The market will decide. The miners. The users. The nodes.

This usually means all the big players, the big exchanges, the big payment processors, and all the online web wallets.

One thing I know, if the price goes down, good time to buy cheap coins on your choice of fork. Also the fork will cause two blockchains to be maintained so you could have double your coins for a short term.

Ok that makes sense. If he does not mind and he wants to make the market, miners, users and node maintainers decide then he should not criticize anybody if Bitcoin Unlimited or whatever fork he supports is discarded by the majority. He can campaign for his fork and try to take the power of development away from the core developers but first he should show that the developers of Bitcoin Unlimited is very competent.

Are the developers of Bitcoin Unlimited competent?

[hv_]

I think we all (devs and other users) saw when a popular on-chain dice site ... ... hehe ... I don't like "small spammy transactions" any more than you do.

I like bitcoin the way it is right now. If it does change, we'll see if the rest of the people follow. It'll be all over the news so I don't even really need to follow this.

Every post here should cost some Satoshis - than we might get closer do define SPAM or not SPAM - correct?