The thing that will destroy Bitcoin.

[enhu]

I would also mention that altcoins are experimenting with a range of different approaches to blockchain bloat. If even one of them pans out, the software protocol of bitcoin can almost certainly be updated to implement the fix. (I would think sidechains would be a good solution to bloat as well.) People who declare that bitcoin is sure to die should first make sure their expected cause of death really is something intractable and unsolvable by changing the software. Bitcoin is not a fixed entity.

I think its fix is on going right now, the blackchain wallets lets users update and seem to take out the sign message. this is just one of the step they take to solve the block size.

it's actually 62gb only, and anyway based on the moor law, we have no problem handling it for the future

also 62 giga is very tiny compared to the enormous 6T and beyond, that we are currently able to purchase on the market for cheap

it will grow in the future. might even exceed 6T in a year once billions of users get to make transactions everyday.

[1715067985]

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[arbitrage]

I don't understand wallet 0.11 have reduced size of blockchain?
I don't see where is a problem then?
Only if you want to be node you need to have full blockchain?

[franky1]

it will grow in the future. might even exceed 6T in a year once billions of users get to make transactions everyday.

lol 6Tb?

um 2mb=104Gb a year
 to be 6Tb a year thats means the block limit would be 120Mb a block.

um, sorry thats not gonna happen in 2016

[FlyingSaucer]

I think the thing that will destroy bitcoin is greed.

[madjules007]

No, it's capped anyway. So I could never run a full time node. I'm in a major US city by the way. Not the middle of nowhere.

Do you have any evidence that "most people are able to get fiber"? According to broadbandnow.com/Fiber, 25% of the US has such coverage. And I'm willing to bet that it significantly skewed towards dense urban areas due to the prohibitive cost of building the infrastructure. (I don't think that we should limit bitcoin to those in major cities, for instance)

I'm saying the requirements to run a node are already prohibitive. Pushing for 2MB when all you can say is "2MB is fine, derp" is not really a good argument.

so essentially your saying that out of 1 million people in bitcoin. the reason for only 5000 full nodes is due to a possibility that only 0.1% of the bitcoin community can get fibre..

ok..

ill call Activision and tell them that online gaming is impossible because 0.1% of population cant play online constantly.
then ill call blizzard

oh and ill call youtube and tell them that they need to turn off their video upload feature because people cant upload.
wait. next ill call skype as their 3mb a minute video calls (30mb per 10 minutes) are impossible.

anyone else you want me to call? as it seems there must be a problem.. and strangely these services have not been aware..

Wait a second.

Where do you get "1 million people in bitcoin" and what does that even mean?

In regards to full node count, what is your explanation for the constant decline in nodes (over a period which, of course, average block size constantly increased)? And what proof (statistics, not just empty argument) can you offer?

You sort of glossed over the fact that only a minority (25% -- and likely heavily biased towards cities) have fiber. Do you really believe that block size has nothing to do with upload requirements? We aren't in 2009 here -- blocks are not 10 kb anymore. So yes, we need better and better (uncapped) upload capabilities if block size will continue to grow.

With my capped cable, in order to run a full node at 65-75 maxconnections, I would hit my cap every month without being able to use the internet for anything else. Do you really expect people to do that? And you want to make it worse?

Stop comparing bitcoin to online gaming and Youtube. With those, you're not redundantly propagating the same data to the network hundreds of times. You do it once.

[virtualdn]

It's not so big. There are PC games with that size. Stop saying something will destroy it because it won't you will see. At least 100 years it will be mined and used.

[greBit]

I would also mention that altcoins are experimenting with a range of different approaches to blockchain bloat. If even one of them pans out, the software protocol of bitcoin can almost certainly be updated to implement the fix. (I would think sidechains would be a good solution to bloat as well.) People who declare that bitcoin is sure to die should first make sure their expected cause of death really is something intractable and unsolvable by changing the software. Bitcoin is not a fixed entity.

I think its fix is on going right now, the blackchain wallets lets users update and seem to take out the sign message. this is just one of the step they take to solve the block size.

it's actually 62gb only, and anyway based on the moor law, we have no problem handling it for the future

also 62 giga is very tiny compared to the enormous 6T and beyond, that we are currently able to purchase on the market for cheap

it will grow in the future. might even exceed 6T in a year once billions of users get to make transactions everyday.

Some useless statements recently put forth by the top authorities has the ability to destroy the bitcoin. These days those statements were also made false with its value not growing or getting very low that what it was by the end of 2015

[franky1]

Wait a second.

Where do you get "1 million people in bitcoin" and what does that even mean?

its an estimate..it can be more. it can be less.
https://bugsnag.com/customers/coinbase
quotes 1.5mill customers. but i prefer to undersell numbers just to be more fair of regular users as oppose to those who just play with it once and then dont come back

In regards to full node count, what is your explanation for the constant decline in nodes (over a period which, of course, average block size constantly increased)? And what proof (statistics, not just empty argument) can you offer?

well there are more than 5000 full nodes.. but only 5000 running 24/7.
reasons why they dont run 24/7, because they only do one transaction a day or a week and dont really understand that being a fullnode means running 24/7.
people who are not running businesses dont need the RPC-API connections and so they just run it occassionally.

the reason there is not a 25% usage. is purely because home users dont leave computers on every day and over night.
most of those nodes are businesses and programmers. and hardly any of them are home users.

as for statistics.. well i know ur just baiting me with a trick question. after all bitcoin is decentralized,
but im sure if you do a WHOIS search on the IP addresses found on https://bitnodes.21.co/nodes
you will find alot of businesses rather than users.

so if its a real question you want answers to, ill leave you to investigate

You sort of glossed over the fact that only a minority (25% -- and likely heavily biased towards cities) have fiber. Do you really believe that block size has nothing to do with upload requirements? We aren't in 2009 here -- blocks are not 10 kb anymore. So yes, we need better and better (uncapped) upload capabilities if block size will continue to grow.

exactly we are not in 2009 anymore.. DSL isnt 2mb down 200k up... its higher.. and as i said fiber is even higher again.
as for 25% american population. which is 79million population so not something to ignore or downplay. i would think that anyone who's mindset is into the internet.. (rather than farmer Joe on a ranch). you know people that are savvi internet users.. are going to be by definition internet ready. and thus if we brush away all the farmer joe's that dont even use the internet and so wont even know or care about bitcoin.. and then just take the demograph that could find interest in bitcoin.. i think you will find atleast 50% of them possibly more are in fibre area's

With my capped cable, in order to run a full node at 65-75 maxconnections, I would hit my cap every month without being able to use the internet for anything else. Do you really expect people to do that? And you want to make it worse?

65-75 connections..?
lol no wonder your complaining
try 7-30 youll be happier.
maybe its worth looking into the term "7 degrees of separation" or the more modern term "7 degree's of kevin bacon" and you will learn that if 7 people who are connected to 7people who are .. blah blah blah eventually everyone is connected to each other.

so complaining about speed and then having your setting up so high, is much like blaming bitcoin for the argument you had with your fibre company.

so relax, set it to 7-30(30 very max) maybe even aim for 20 max. and you'll do fine.

oh and if you are only using it just for a couple hours a day just to resync, and you dont have the community spirit to be a true 24/7 full node.. then knock it down to under 7 connections. you will still get the data. but then you not pissing off the rest of the network by connecting to you temporarily where instead they can connect to other that want to be 24/7 full nodes

Stop comparing bitcoin to online gaming and Youtube. With those, you're not redundantly propagating the same data to the network hundreds of times. You do it once.

wait..so when i shoot a bullet or do a jump or move in the game, those commands only get sent once a day? but magically other players see me moving live and react to situations... are you sure its not a constant pinging of data as fast as my finger can press a key?
because im shocked.. thats like magic.. so i guess call of duty doesnt use the internet to send movement, shooting, target data.. that its instead done through psychic voodoo.. ok i got it thanks

[Jet Cash]

I run a full node over public WiFi, and I use a (relatively) cheap notebook to do it. Of course I don't run it 24/7, but I keep up to date by activating it three or four times a day. I've been doing this for virtually the whole time I've been a member of this forum, and so far I haven't encountered any problems. Except for the difficulty I have had in understanding the complexity and potential of Bitcoin.

I'm starting to think that Bitcoin may become the reserve currency for some altcoins in the future. Certainly if there is a proof of stake introduced as an addition to proof of work, it could leads to specialist alt coins being set up as side chains, and this could reduce the transaction volume in the main blockchain.

[franky1]

i'm starting to think that Bitcoin may become the reserve currency for some altcoins in the future. Certainly if there is a proof of stake introduced as an addition to proof of work, it could leads to specialist alt coins being set up as side chains, and this could reduce the transaction volume in the main blockchain.

kind of... team core.. AKA blockstream want it to be the reserve currency for their Liquid, which isnt even a true decentralised block ledger. its not mined as such its just signed off on by a dozen pre-selected computers, that way transaction settlement is near instant as its signing off on transactions rather than gathering them up as blocks of transactions. thus no proof of stake/work to be even considered.. just signatures that 12 people agree the data is valid.

but shhh no one is suppose to know that they are trying to kill off usability of bitcoin to shift people over to liquid

[eon89]

The thing that will destroy Bitcoins is simple. It will be the bloated size of the blockchain. Soon the blockchain will be so large, that we will need centralized "housing" to hold it. We will have to trust "Central" to state what is in the blockchain every time we want to use Bitcoin. And, this is the thing we are trying to get away from - centralization.

The blockchain is almost 70 gigabytes large right now. Imagine what it would be like if people around the world traded something like the Forex on it.

Someone better figure out a way to make it a whole lot smaller, and fast. Why fast? Because when fiat collapses, a lot of people will jump into Bitcoin. The blockchain will surge in size. In a short time it will be too large to use.

One solution that I can see would be to keep the current blockchain in total, on several servers around the world, including any person who thinks he has enough hard drive space to store it on, and enough bandwidth to handle all the transactions that hit Bitcoin at once. At the same time, implement a new kind of blockchain that keeps only a record of the first use of a new address, and, say, the last two uses of it. Everything else is deleted. This will be a reasonable solution, I think, until a better kind of blockchain can be developed.

What does anybody think about this?

What ideas do you have for overcoming this problem?




Okay. From the comments we have more points. So far we have...

1. Blockchain size for storage and downloading;

2. Number of transactions causes impractical updating of the blockchain because of bandwidth limitations;

3. Impractical confirmation time without a fee;

4. Unreasonably long confirmation time even with a fee;

5, (more?).

Holding the blockchain on "several servers around the world" is exactly what we're trying to avoid here. It's the exact template the banks use. And, at the same time, that's the secret of bitcoin, of everyone having the opportunity to have the blockchain so no one manipulate it.

[keepdoing]

FUD and Fedcoin will destroy Bitcoin.

Blockstream/Core supporters are creating such FUD that when Fedcoin (Ethereum) is increasingly introduced to the public with the upcoming Homestead rollout - it will be in tandem with negative stories about Bitcoin being a muddled, confused, dangerous mess.  And that perception is actually reality, since Blockstream/Core supporters seem to be little energizer FUD Bunnies on hyperdrive lately.

So this will weaken Bitcoin, strengthen Fedcoin.  Fedcoin WILL surpass Bitcoin.  That part is pretty much certain.  The question is how badly Bitcoin will sustain self inflicted damages, and will they be deadly wounds, or wounds they can recover from.

Blockstream/Core supporters are attempting to kill Bitcoin, and on the path to doig a very fine job of it.  Mark my words.... expect some dirty surprises at fork time.   And yes, I thin people should be worried.  Not of the technological issues of the fork, which would be a breeze normally.  But there will be really bad behavior I think.  And I think people are going to lose coins.

[Amph]

it will grow in the future. might even exceed 6T in a year once billions of users get to make transactions everyday.

lol 6Tb?

um 2mb=104Gb a year
 to be 6Tb a year thats means the block limit would be 120Mb a block.

um, sorry thats not gonna happen in 2016

and even if it will happen, hdd size is growing much faster and cost always much lower than the previous version each passing year

[BADecker]

The thing that will destroy Bitcoins is simple. It will be the bloated size of the blockchain. Soon the blockchain will be so large, that we will need centralized "housing" to hold it. We will have to trust "Central" to state what is in the blockchain every time we want to use Bitcoin. And, this is the thing we are trying to get away from - centralization.

The blockchain is almost 70 gigabytes large right now. Imagine what it would be like if people around the world traded something like the Forex on it.

Someone better figure out a way to make it a whole lot smaller, and fast. Why fast? Because when fiat collapses, a lot of people will jump into Bitcoin. The blockchain will surge in size. In a short time it will be too large to use.

One solution that I can see would be to keep the current blockchain in total, on several servers around the world, including any person who thinks he has enough hard drive space to store it on, and enough bandwidth to handle all the transactions that hit Bitcoin at once. At the same time, implement a new kind of blockchain that keeps only a record of the first use of a new address, and, say, the last two uses of it. Everything else is deleted. This will be a reasonable solution, I think, until a better kind of blockchain can be developed.

What does anybody think about this?

What ideas do you have for overcoming this problem?




Okay. From the comments we have more points. So far we have...

1. Blockchain size for storage and downloading;

2. Number of transactions causes impractical updating of the blockchain because of bandwidth limitations;

3. Impractical confirmation time without a fee;

4. Unreasonably long confirmation time even with a fee;

5, (more?).

Holding the blockchain on "several servers around the world" is exactly what we're trying to avoid here. It's the exact template the banks use. And, at the same time, that's the secret of bitcoin, of everyone having the opportunity to have the blockchain so no one manipulate it.

Exactly!

How large of a hard drive do you have (rhetorical)? The blockchain could easily jump to 1 terabyte if the world started using Bitcoin for their basic currency. It might even happen in one day.

What if the Forex (trades in the range of 4 or 5 trillion Dollars a day) were to use Bitcoin? Imagine a blockchain of 1 petabyte size. And what if it goes to a zettabyte or larger in a decade from now?

And the bandwidth to handle all those transactions would have to be enormous, especially when the blockchain system would have to track which fork is the most optimal one to use.

I'm not saying that there is nothing in the works to replace the current blockchain "style." But the current one will never work once the world opens up to bitcoin.

[bitboy11]

I think that when people notice that BlockStream is NOT what Bitcoin was meant to be and that it is actually an abomination of Satoshi's vision...they will simply move over to something else, be it Classic or some altcoin.

[commandrix]

Storage for the Blockchain won't need to be centralized any more than it is already, even if the problem gets so bad that the Blockchain can't be stored on a $100 external hard drive. I suggest looking at what Storj wants to do if you think this is going to be a problem.

[Bit_Happy]

I think the thing that will destroy bitcoin is greed.

No.
A profit motive can be very healthy for honest people acting in a (reasonably) free market.
Greedy criminals, like Big Vern & Mark Gox need to rot in jail for a very long time.

[amacar2]

I think the thing that will destroy bitcoin is greed.

Greed can only destroy the bitcoin price friend not the blockchain technology.
I think we need more and more wallet service like blockchain which are not interconnected and some of the large miners. In this way it will be decentralized also and everybody who uses don't have to run full nodes in his computer.

[jbreher]

The blockchain is almost 70 gigabytes large right now.

Oh the horror. It occupies $3.09 USD worth of disk space. Whatever shall we do?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236971

[owm123]

I think that when people notice that BlockStream is NOT what Bitcoin was meant to be and that it is actually an abomination of Satoshi's vision...they will simply move over to something else, be it Classic or some altcoin.

Blockstream is pushing the line with their pro-corporations and pro-banksters agenda. Just yesterday I installed Classic beta, and ditched Core.