Mempool is now up to 25.5 MB with 22,200 transactions waiting.

[VeritasSapere]

Consensus in the literal meaning of the word is impossible among large groups of people. If that was true though Bitcoin would be a "dictatorship of consensus" or a tyranny of consensus, since any significant change would be impossible. The truth is that Bitcoin is ruled by the economic majority, if the majority wants the blocksize to be increased it will be whether the minority likes it or not, at least with a hard fork they have the option to stay behind if they want. That is freedom, where both sides can have the Bitcoin they want. This is why alternative implementations like Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited are very important, since they give us the freedom of choice.

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[bargainbin]

Consensus in the literal meaning of the word is impossible among large groups of people. If that was true though Bitcoin would be a "dictatorship of consensus" or a tyranny of consensus, since any significant change would be impossible. The truth is that Bitcoin is ruled by the economic majority, if the majority wants the blocksize to be increased it will be whether the minority likes it or not, at least with a hard fork they have the option to stay behind if they want. That is freedom, where both sides can have the Bitcoin they want. This is why alternative implementations like Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited are very important, since they give us the freedom of choice.

Without qualifying, "consensus" is rather ambiguous. Wikip on consensus:
"The level of agreement necessary to finalize a decision is known as a decision rule.[3][7] Possible decision rules for consensus vary within the following range:

    Unanimous agreement
    Unanimous consent (See agreement vs consent below)
    Unanimous agreement minus one vote or two votes
    Unanimous consent minus one vote or two votes
    Super majority thresholds (90%, 80%, 75%, two-thirds, and 60% are common).
    Simple majority
    Executive committee decides
    Person-in-charge decides"

Most of the bickering could be avoided if people define the terms they use/stop conflating consensus (as used within the Bitcoin protocol) with level of consensus required to make changes to the protocol. With so many coders here, kinda' weird that this needs to be brought up.

[chopstick]

But forcing these solutions on to everyone through the artificial limitation of the blocksize is just downright dirty.

And attempting a hostile takeover of Bitcoin through a hard fork is the work of angels?

The better solution is freedom.  Make it possible to choose between different mechanisms.  Lightning, if you want instant secure confirmations. Use a sidechain if you want larger blocks with the possibility of other features like shorter times between blocks.  I'm sure you can get all of the big block supporters to agree on a sidechain to use.  Diversity is not a problem, because you are free to move bitcoin between different sidechains and the main chain.  Use the blockchain directly if you want to use the most limited resource, but expect to pay to use everyone's diskspace.  Just don't try to force your "solution" upon everyone, a "solution" which every schoolkid in the world can see won't solve any real world problems.

For some companies, like Coinbase which confiscate user funds on the basis of blockchain analysis, the increased privacy of transactions on the side is bad.  In my opinion the improved privacy is required in today's hostile environment of Big Brothers watching everywhere.  It is more in the spirit of Bitcoin.

And yet Core's hostile takeover of bitcoin and it's development cycle is somehow acceptable.... Their increasingly shady reasons for keeping the blocksize at 1 MB isn't a big enough redflag? What about the fact we have now found out that one of their investors is tied to both the Bilderberg meetings and is an HSBC banking boardmember? How is this not a direct hostile takeover?

Thank God for Classic, it gives me some hope that they won't be successful into turning Bitcoin into a Banker-controlled settlement coin.

[toknormal]

And yet Core's hostile takeover of bitcoin and it's development cycle is somehow acceptable.... Their increasingly shady reasons for keeping the blocksize at 1 MB isn't a big enough redflag? What about the fact we have now found out that one of their investors is tied to both the Bilderberg meetings and is an HSBC banking boardmember? How is this not a direct hostile takeover?

Thank God for Classic, it gives me some hope that they won't be successful into turning Bitcoin into a Banker-controlled settlement coin.

Lets take all the personalities out of the equation for a moment and look at the stark facts.

What's happening now is that the transaction cost is being driven up - whether intentionally or unintentionally. That drives up the marginal revenue on any proprietary scaling technology. (I don't care if it's open source or not, it's still effectively proprietary since any off-chain scaling infrastructure will be run by centralised third parties almost by definition, just as mining pools are otherwise there wouldn't be any point in them).

If you have large investors with tens of millions of dollars ploughed into such technology who simultaneously employ personel who are at the heart of the influencing the debate over whether bitcoin should be made to scale natively or not, how is that not a conflict of interest ?

To me it's about as glaring, unhealthy a conflict of interest as you could get. As I say, take the personalities out of it - all of whom we must still assume are acting in good faith - and those are the simple facts.

Why can we not have a natively scaling blockchain ? Is it really too much to ask over a decade into the 21st century ?

Bitcoin as a clearing layer for customer facing, proprietary transaction interfaces is no different from JP Morgan with a blockchain in the back room. More money will be made from providing access to the blockchain than will be saved from using it. It may still be big and it may still make money but it won't be free of counterparties anymore. They'll all just creep right back into the equation like they're starting to do now with this blocksize weakness.

Thin end of the wedge.

[sturle]

This is not the place for ELI5s of how bitcoin works.  See Satoshi's whitepaper.

No ELI5 was asked for. If you got nothing, just say "I got nothing."
If you wish to reference something specific, clarify plz

Short version: If you want a dictator to own your money, just give them to someone.  You don't need Bitcoin for that.

With Bitcoin you have your own money, controlled by hard consensus rules which were set in stone from the first day.  The rules are enforced by every node in the entire network, and to change the rules, e.g. to steal all the money and take taxes for the dictator, you have to change every single node.  This is not doable in practice.  Therefore all changes have to be in line with the consensus rules, and the powers of the developers are limited.

[ATguy]

With Bitcoin you have your own money, controlled by hard consensus rules which were set in stone from the first day.  The rules are enforced by every node in the entire network, and to change the rules, e.g. to steal all the money and take taxes for the dictator, you have to change every single node.  This is not doable in practice.  Therefore all changes have to be in line with the consensus rules, and the powers of the developers are limited.

Give us 32 MB back then  . You could be compatible with the original Satoshi client if you just patched technical mistake with lock openDB making many transactions in block unable to validate. But the consensus was 32 MB block size limit from first day, so obviously this is not such hard consensus rule set in stone to change because it was changed once already...

[bargainbin]

This is not the place for ELI5s of how bitcoin works.  See Satoshi's whitepaper.

No ELI5 was asked for. If you got nothing, just say "I got nothing."
If you wish to reference something specific, clarify plz

Short version: If you want a dictator to own your money, just give them to someone.  You don't need Bitcoin for that.

With Bitcoin you have your own money, controlled by hard consensus rules which were set in stone from the first day.  The rules are enforced by every node in the entire network, and to change the rules, e.g. to steal all the money and take taxes for the dictator, you have to change every single node.  This is not doable in practice.  Therefore all changes have to be in line with the consensus rules, and the powers of the developers are limited.

>You don't need Bitcoin for that.
Looks like this is what I'm getting, needed or not.

>hard consensus rules which were set in stone from the first day.
In stone? My understanding is once upon a time, blocksize limit was 32MB? Not so?

>take taxes for the dictator
Bitcoin is getting taxed just fine, afaik. Proceeds of crimes getting seized (albeit not always, see TradeFortress/Cryptocyprus/Pirateat40/etc., etc.). What am I missing?

>Therefore all changes have to be in line with the consensus rules
Which brings us back to my original post: "'Long as the the dictator gets to define [dictate the meaning of] consensus, I see no problems."
There seem to be multiple schools of thought on what constitutes consensus, and those in politically-favorable positions get to decide which one counts





Bitcoin's consensus mechanism in action. A thing of beauty to behold
P.S. You've previously alluded to Satoshi's white paper, can you clarify which part, in particular?

[sturle]

The blocksize can be increased now on the other hand and double the capacity of the network.

First of all it has already been trivially shown in this thread that a blocksize increase won't solve the problem at hand.  If you think every bitcoin user in the world can just switch to different software yesterday evening, and use bigger blocks by now, you are having fantasies.  Fortunately noone suggest anything like that either.  Deploying larger blocks will take much longer, since every single node in the world has to upgrade.  Unless you plan to deploy an altcoin, which you are free to do of course.

We could have sufficient bigger blocks today if people planned ahead. About one year ago Gavin predicted we run to the problems with capacity in first half of 2016, which could be faced one year ago, long time for every full node to upgrade.

And Gavin proved to be wrong.  We are still far from hitting the limit for normal transactions, even during peaks.  No block size, not even Gavin-sized blocks, can withstand malicious spam attacks.  Gavin doesn't have a solution for that.  Only the current Bitcoin developers are working to solve the problem, and provide real scalability to Bitcoin.

But you must plan ahead, not just react when something become broken. BIP 109  28 days grace period makes sence as a urgency fix of the issue, in this light BIP 109 become well planned again because Gavin predicted the capacity problems. Pitty Gavin is not Bitcoin lead developer anymore, he proving once again he know what Bitcoin needs to stay as #1 cryptocurrency. Oh well

Don't be a fool.  BIP 109 is a plan to make matters worse through a hostile takeover.  No blocksize can prevent spam attacks.  Gavin hasn't contributed meaningfully to Bitcoin for years.  He is busy collecting money from Coinbase to create diversion and prevent privacy improvements to Bitcoin.

If the goal was to increase capacity, why not reduce the transaction size instead?  It can be halved by using different addresses and signatures.  This is a hard fork as well, and the deployment will be equally hard.  But it is a harder sell, because it isn't as intuitive as a block size increase to the uneducated masses who think larger blocks will prevent spam.  To take control over Bitcoin, Coinbase needs a solution which is easier to sell to the uneducated masses.

[sturle]

With Bitcoin you have your own money, controlled by hard consensus rules which were set in stone from the first day.  The rules are enforced by every node in the entire network, and to change the rules, e.g. to steal all the money and take taxes for the dictator, you have to change every single node.  This is not doable in practice.  Therefore all changes have to be in line with the consensus rules, and the powers of the developers are limited.

Give us 32 MB back then  . You could be compatible with the original Satoshi client if you just patched technical mistake with lock openDB making many transactions in block unable to validate. But the consensus was 32 MB block size limit from first day, so obviously this is not such hard consensus rule set in stone to change because it was changed once already...

Ah, you obviously don't understand how the rules work.  You can make the rules stricter.  I.e. a majority of nodes will no longer accept blocks or transactions which were previously valid.  This is not a problem, because all nodes will still work.  All blocks which are valid to the majority will be valid for all.  Some transactions will just seem to never confirm for non-upgraded nodes.  Satoshi did this many times, e.g. by limiting the blocksize.

Removing or changing rules to be more permissive, is impossible.  If a majority of nodes start accepting blocks where more coins are generated, are larger, or violate the hard rules in some other way, the rest of the nodes will simply not accept their chain, and continue their own valid chain.  This is how altcoins are created.

This is what makes Bitcoin safe from e.g. a government takeover or hostile developers.  If government want to change Bitcoin by e.g. making it deduct a tax from every transaction, they could easily mandate that if it was possible to change the rules by convincing some developer to do so.  Coinbase are even trying to prove they can by launching a forks and convince idiots to use it, but the majority is not that easily fooled.

[rizzlarolla]

https://tradeblock.com/bitcoin/


Need a blocksize increase now. But we're all retarded. People will stop using BTC when it takes 3 days for their tx's to confirm

Did you try to send btc, with proper fees, before opening this thread?

This backlog seems to be low fee based, therefore not really anything to do with block size.
Block size may be a pressing issue. But this is not why, as explained by Lauda and others, and now me.

[sturle]

>hard consensus rules which were set in stone from the first day.
In stone? My understanding is once upon a time, blocksize limit was 32MB? Not so?

Please go back to Reddit instead.  You will feel more at home among the trolls there.

You may want to read this article about how the consensus works, but I doubt you really care.

[Zarathustra]

There's no such thing as "spam transactions"

So per your definition the "stress tests" in the past were not 'spam' but rather legit transactions? 

Once again, bitcoiner are frustrated with spam transaction on bitcoin network.

Once again you can thank all the people who are behind Classic and BU for this event.

What amazes me is the fact that some people claim in public that a larger blocksize will solve the spam problem.  Obviously primary school isn't compulsory everywhere in the world. 

You can easily identify a few which didn't go there by reading this thread.

Boah, the Gox Sturle and the Staff Girl. Dream Team.

[bargainbin]

>hard consensus rules which were set in stone from the first day.
In stone? My understanding is once upon a time, blocksize limit was 32MB? Not so?

Please go back to Reddit instead.  You will feel more at home among the trolls there.

You may want to read this article about how the consensus works, but I doubt you really care.

From your enlightening article:
"For these and other reasons, the Bitcoin Core development team has said that it will typically require a super-majority of 95 percent of hash power to agree on soft forks."

So yeah, Core decides what constitutes consensus; core dictates consensus rules. Where do you see a problem in my post?

...
>Therefore all changes have to be in line with the consensus rules
Which brings us back to my original post: "'Long as the the dictator gets to define [dictate the meaning of] consensus, I see no problems."
There seem to be multiple schools of thought on what constitutes consensus, and those in politically-favorable positions get to decide which one counts





Bitcoin's consensus mechanism in action. A thing of beauty to behold
P.S. You've previously alluded to Satoshi's white paper, can you clarify which part, in particular?

[sturle]

>hard consensus rules which were set in stone from the first day.
In stone? My understanding is once upon a time, blocksize limit was 32MB? Not so?

Please go back to Reddit instead.  You will feel more at home among the trolls there.

You may want to read this article about how the consensus works, but I doubt you really care.

From your enlightening article:
"For these and other reasons, the Bitcoin Core development team has said that it will typically require a super-majority of 95 percent of hash power to agree on soft forks."

So yeah, Core decides what constitutes consensus; core dictates consensus rules. Where do you see a problem in my post?

You don't understand the difference between a hard and a soft fork.  A soft fork adds new rules, which can be done without breaking the consensus defined by Bitcoin Core (all versions).

[bargainbin]

>hard consensus rules which were set in stone from the first day.
In stone? My understanding is once upon a time, blocksize limit was 32MB? Not so?

Please go back to Reddit instead.  You will feel more at home among the trolls there.

You may want to read this article about how the consensus works, but I doubt you really care.

From your enlightening article:
"For these and other reasons, the Bitcoin Core development team has said that it will typically require a super-majority of 95 percent of hash power to agree on soft forks."

So yeah, Core decides what constitutes consensus; core dictates consensus rules. Where do you see a problem in my post?

You don't understand the difference between a hard and a soft fork.  A soft fork adds new rules, which can be done without breaking the consensus defined by Bitcoin Core (all versions).

Drop the patronizing tone. I understand the difference between soft & hard forks; it is irrelevant to my point.
The point being: who gets to define consensus. Which, in the linked article, is Core.
P.S. Are you the *humph* author of the linked piece of Core shillery?

[shorena]

This user was nearly scammed for 0.5 BTC today.  He was saved by being able to double spend the tx at a higher fee several hours later.

LOL....


I thought double spending was going to be impossible with RBF, or at-least several people told me on this forum anyway.

RBF wasnt used, just a straight up double spend with a higher fee (777 satoshi per byte).

btw, I just did a TX, sucked it up and paid the fee core estimated (44 satoshi per byte, big TX, so 60 cent EUR total) and it was confirmed after ~2 minutes.

[gmaxwell]

The mempool was nearly empty at around 1-1.5 two days ago.

No it wasn't-- maybe on that site, but only due to it filtering things.

Because of ongoing low level spam attacks any long running 0.12 node has had a 300MB mempool (which is the limit) for months now.   There are about 800 MBytes of unconfirmed valid transactions that I'm aware of... 

None of this is especially interesting: one should always assume that the number of transactions at a fee of 0 is effectively infinite.

The spammers moved to paying more than 1e-8 BTC per byte; which is still much lower than most ordinary transactions; but high enough to move the needle on tradeblock... this lets people spin a bunch of FUD.  Meanwhile for most people transactions continue to function like normal: a total non-event.

[sturle]

You don't understand the difference between a hard and a soft fork.  A soft fork adds new rules, which can be done without breaking the consensus defined by Bitcoin Core (all versions).

Drop the patronizing tone. I understand the difference between soft & hard forks; it is irrelevant to my point.
The point being: who gets to define consensus. Which, in the linked article, is Core.
P.S. Are you the *humph* author of the linked piece of Core shillery?

Yes, Core defines consensus for Bitcoin, and the core consensus rules were set in stone from the point when Satoshi released version 0.1.  If you don't believe me, read his words for it here.  If you see two posts later down, you will see Gavin defining his future role in Bitcoin.

Attempts to break the consensus rules will make an altcoin.  In principle anyone can do a soft fork by enforcing new rules, stricter than the rules in Core, and this will make a soft fork.  It will not succeed however, unless there is a clear majority supporting it.  Older nodes, all versions, will continue working after a soft fork.

I have been using Bitcoin since 2010, and exchange bitcoins for a living.  The health and development of Bitcoin is vital to my business, and for that reason I follow it closely.  I have no connection with the author of the article.

[Lauda]

The mempool was nearly empty at around 1-1.5 two days ago.

No it wasn't-- maybe on that site, but only due to it filtering things.

My post had a mistake there (missing 'k' behind the numbers). However, this thread seemed to reference popular blockchain explorers. I've seen the mempool at those numbers at the mentioned time on blockchain.info. However, I can't provide evidence of this as there was no need to screenshot it at that time (I wasn't expecting this to happen just a day or two after).

There are about 800 MBytes of unconfirmed valid transactions that I'm aware of...  None of this is especially interesting: one should always assume that the number of transactions at a fee of 0 is effectively infinite.

This is nice to know. I didn't really look at it from that perspective. I'm hoping to be able to provide better numbers in the future once I re-deploy a full node with a lot of memory.

The spammers moved to paying more than 1e-8 BTC per byte; which is still much lower than most ordinary transactions; but high enough to move the needle on tradeblock... this lets people spin a bunch of FUD.  Meanwhile for most people transactions continue to function like normal: a total non-event.

This is exactly what I've been trying to tell people and it can be easily seen here: https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ .

[shorena]

I suspect the main "problem" is that people use fixed fees instead of good estimates (like e.g. via core, electrum or "cointap" provides). At least some of the problematic TX come from services that are most likely based on API calls with fixed fees of 10k satoshi per start kbyte.