Capacity increases for the Bitcoin system

[var53]

A BIP update should already have been rolled out. We can all see the effects already, with the usual 0.0001 BTC TX fee, we are starting to have to wait multiple blocks. Recently, I withdraw from a gambling site which forced me to use the 0.0001 TX fee, and it took me 6 hours to withdraw.

Good to see bitcoin changing, not just all proposed changes.

I tried withdrawing from a site that forced me to use the usual 0.0001 BTC TX fee, and getting a single confirmation took over an hour. My transaction was missed out of five blocks that were mostly crammed so full they were almost up to the 1MB limit. However, my transaction was also missed out of a few very small blocks that had plenty of room left to include it. The apparent spare capacity isn't always being used.

It was frustrating for me, but for noobs it could be a problem that puts them off Bitcoin. I understand that things are slowly changing, but a noob wouldn't.

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[RealBitcoin]

Capacity increases for the Bitcoin system

    -Very soon libsecp256k1 will be used for verification, which speeds up initial sync time by 400%-700% and reduces CPU load for all full nodes.

    -A segregated witness softfork will be done ASAP (within 3-6 months, probably). This will at least double the effective transaction capacity (ie. it is equal to or better than BIP 102), and at the same time it will provide features important for safely scaling even more in the future.
    -There will not be any hardfork for at least the next ~year.

    -To pave the way for scalable hardfork max block size increases (which will eventually be necessary), and because it is already dearly needed, improved block/tx broadcasting technology such as weak blocks and IBLT will be implemented, hopefully soon after SegWit.

    -The BIPs necessary for efficient deployment of Lightning are already in the pipeline and should be rolled out in 2016. Lightning will allow for almost all of the security, features, and decentralization of Bitcoin transactions while drastically reducing the number of on-blockchain transactions that each individual will need to perform. This is expected to be the real eventual solution to scaling.

https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases

Cool, but make sure academic mathematicians verify those algorithms , i dont want to find out 2 years later that those algorights are flawed and can be broken.

[oldbute]

What do you think is safe? We must keep a safety margin, don't we? On my hard disks, I always keep at least 15% of free space. In my car, whose engine can rev to 6,500 RPM, I rarely exceed 4,500.

Good chance they already engineered that 15% into the 6,500 red line.  My 1978 Yamaha motorbike red lines at 9,000 I try to get there all the time.  Come on let those horses run!

[tl121]

still not sure about segregated witness, if it not carry any risk, why satoshi has not think about it since the beginning, when he limited the block to 1?

i welcome the synching speed up, this is needed for those that have not strong machine, not my case, as i can sync and open the client in 20 seconds..

Yes, it will be great to be able to open the client faster, in my case, it is very much needed, because my hardware is 5 years old now. About the segregated witness feature, im not sure but if it only has an impact on light clients, it's still important because consider that most people aren't going to be running full nodes anyway, so improvements on this department are welcome.

The code speedup is a useful improvement.  However, it does not increase the capacity of the bitcoin system since the capacity is limited artificially by the 1 MB blocksize limit. 

Segregated witness does nothing for light clients.  It may increase the network capacity in a complex way, because it changes what counts in the 1 MB block limit.  It does not reduce bandwidth usage at all, so it amounts to a complex way of partially bypassing the 1 MB block limit.  The same effect could be achieved with much less effort by a simple increase in the block size, say to 2 MB.  Segregated witness also requires all of the clients to be updated in a non-trivial way, including SPV clients which don't care about the block limit. 

What you are seeing is a political game being played by bitcoin core to make it look like they are doing something.  For someone who knows how bitcoin works they are not doing good engineering.  In particular, they are not following the KISS principle. (Keep It Simple Stupid.  Don't do something complex when a simple change can accomplish the same thing.)

We can't raise the blocksize too much because it would compromise decentralization of nodes. For example, for me downloading the blockchain is a pain in the ass. If the blockchain gets bigger im just not going to deal with running a node. Slowly less and less people with care and we distribution of nodes will be centralized, which banks and governments would love.
But yes 2 MB seems like a good compromise, even tho it solves shit nothing in the long run tho.. in the long run we aren't scaling up without something like the LN anyway.

Downloading the blockchain was slow until a few months ago, when a change in networking software provided a big speedup, making verification the limit on most computers.  In the pipeline is faster software for validating signatures, which should provide another large speed up.  As the size of the blockchain expands (as it will with time unless Bitcoin dies) there will be more pressure onto software improvements to speed things up.  This pressure will be maximized if the block limit is raised or removed.  Finally, it is possible to prune the block chain and this is in the process of being phased in.

[btcdevil]

Capacity increases for the Bitcoin system

    -Very soon libsecp256k1 will be used for verification, which speeds up initial sync time by 400%-700% and reduces CPU load for all full nodes.

    -A segregated witness softfork will be done ASAP (within 3-6 months, probably). This will at least double the effective transaction capacity (ie. it is equal to or better than BIP 102), and at the same time it will provide features important for safely scaling even more in the future.
    -There will not be any hardfork for at least the next ~year.

    -To pave the way for scalable hardfork max block size increases (which will eventually be necessary), and because it is already dearly needed, improved block/tx broadcasting technology such as weak blocks and IBLT will be implemented, hopefully soon after SegWit.

    -The BIPs necessary for efficient deployment of Lightning are already in the pipeline and should be rolled out in 2016. Lightning will allow for almost all of the security, features, and decentralization of Bitcoin transactions while drastically reducing the number of on-blockchain transactions that each individual will need to perform. This is expected to be the real eventual solution to scaling.

https://bitcoin.org/en/bitcoin-core/capacity-increases

I dont know much about bitcoin transaction and technical things, but if their is any development on the bitcoin it is very good , as their would be some improvement in the blocksize transaction delays, that most of the big users are facing.