Blocks are full. Are pool owners sleeping ?

[defined]

When bitcoin was worth $1 or less the difficulty was already skyrocketing.

$1 bitcoin is $300 per hour, that could already buy a lot of hashing power. Apart from the competition to find blocks, the network would work just as well with much less miners.

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[organofcorti]

When bitcoin was worth $1 or less the difficulty was already skyrocketing.

$1 bitcoin is $300 per hour, that could already buy a lot of hashing power. Apart from the competition to find blocks, the network would work just as well with much less miners.

I don't understand.

[defined]

When bitcoin was worth $1 or less the difficulty was already skyrocketing.

$1 bitcoin is $300 per hour, that could already buy a lot of hashing power. Apart from the competition to find blocks, the network would work just as well with much less miners.

I don't understand.

For making payments with bitcoin, we do not need high powered miners. We need blocks that can fit our transactions. Miners have different interests than users have.

[organofcorti]

When bitcoin was worth $1 or less the difficulty was already skyrocketing.

$1 bitcoin is $300 per hour, that could already buy a lot of hashing power. Apart from the competition to find blocks, the network would work just as well with much less miners.

I don't understand.

For making payments with bitcoin, we do not need high powered miners. We need blocks that can fit our transactions. Miners have different interests than users have.

I still don't get it. I was correcting this statement:

The "real" cost for miners is caused by the high block reward. When bitcoin was worth $1 or less, miners were fine. They got $50! The higher bitcoin price has only caused the difficulty to go up, and that is the real cost to miners.

..since even when the exchange rate was $1 or less difficulty was still going up, faster than it is now. This means that the logical basis for this part of your claim is false.

[jacobmayes94]

The problem with this, is even if this IS transaction spam, mainstream adoption by more  consumers cannot simply happen without this... period. There simply isn't enough capacity in 1MB blocks to support adoption if people were buying their coffee with it every day, which I would do in a heartbeat, as it supports a decentralized system that isn't banks. Something as easy to use as touching your phone on a contactless reader after entering a PIN to decrypt the private key and your phone then signs a transaction within it. The phone only opens communication with the reader say, takes the transaction information, disconnects, you then sign the transaction, remove private key from memory, reopen communication with the reader, then release the signed transaction, similar to trezor. obviously there are security risks to this, but a system similar to contactless debit cards IF it later happened would be awesome. Or maybe bitcoin becomes something like gold, used as a wealth store only, where block size wouldn't be an extreme issue, but the way it is going, there seems to be more demand for it.

Something like litecoin, a SECOND blockchain, is a good idea. For your average day to day coffee spending etc, its faster block time among other things would have a benefit here, but still the block size issue could become a factor, but with 1MB capacity and 2.5 min average time, that is like 4MB in 10 minutes whereas bitcoin is confined to 1. Litecoin vs bitcoin almost is like the silver vs gold thing, litecoin is like silver, bitcoin like gold.

Requires adoption of both, but having two chains in this manner, is good and helps bear the load. Bitcoin currently is very centralized with a few mining pools calling the shots, the opposite of what satoshi would have originally intended I am sure. Antpool mining empty blocks despite other blocks being packed is wrong in my opinion.

There  are many shitcoins out there trying to fulfil the 'silver' aspect or just trying to replace it all together or a pump and dump, but litecoin I do feel has value here for this role, and its price seems in a way tied to bitcoin. I am taking a small risk by purchasing a scrypt rig to mine for litecoin, its difficulty is much more stable than that of bitcoins' for now, and it seems for  the home miner, bitcoin is out of reach unless you either solo mine AND get lucky, or go scrypt.

Obviously above is my opinion based on my research, others are entitled to their own opinions of course, but this is my two cents on this matter of cryptocurrency.


Jacob

[marky89]

Nobody owes you extremely cheap tx, certainly not miners and nodes that bear the real cost to relay them.

The "real" cost for miners is caused by the high block reward. When bitcoin was worth $1 or less, miners were fine. They got $50! The higher bitcoin price has only caused the difficulty to go up, and that is the real cost to miners. Not my small transaction, Satoshi himself could have included that on just one PC.
Miners get over $10000 per block. If that gets higher because of transaction fees, miners will not earn more, it will only lead to a higher difficulty as more mining rigs are added to the network.

Now add to your premise the notion that supply is limited, and block subsidy will be significantly reduced (halvings), and quickly. What then?

[sickpig]

Because Bitcoin has a 1mB limit and a hard fork would be needed to change it, along with all that this entail.

Did u even understand the meaning of this statement ?

Why are not you still mining with a client that supports 2mb blocks ?

Coz Classic includes SPV mining which is bad for bitcoin.

did they already merge Gavin's pull request?

while at it if you don't mind I would like to know your opinion about this Sergio's post:

https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2016/01/08/spv-mining-is-the-solution-not-the-problem/

since Gavin's proposal is implementing what is described by Sergio as SPV mining.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Even if blocks aren't currently full (and they are most of the time) you don't develop based on what is happening now you develop based on worst case scenario.  What would happen to Amazon if they didn't design their servers to handle holiday sales but instead set them based on average daily traffic?  Now if people are to use bitcoin it needs to be able to handle peek traffic during the busiest times in a reasonable amount of time.  Waiting multiple blocks to be able to spend money isn't viable.  I see the frustration almost every day.  Before you say people aren't paying high enough fees a lot of times they don't have the option to set the fees exchanges do that for them and when blocks get full and fees go up they are stuck waiting for hours and hours.  It's already a big problem and only going to get worse if something isn't done soon.

[exstasie]

Even if blocks aren't currently full (and they are most of the time) you don't develop based on what is happening now you develop based on worst case scenario.

Re worst case scenario--Correct. Stress tests, dust attacks have already proven that bitcoin works perfectly well under such load. The worst case scenario to keep in mind is "what happens to nodes and smaller miners as you increase throughput requirements (bandwidth, relay), and what can go wrong?"

[kano]

Because Bitcoin has a 1mB limit and a hard fork would be needed to change it, along with all that this entail.

Did u even understand the meaning of this statement ?

Why are not you still mining with a client that supports 2mb blocks ?

Coz Classic includes SPV mining which is bad for bitcoin.

did they already merge Gavin's pull request?

while at it if you don't mind I would like to know your opinion about this Sergio's post:

https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2016/01/08/spv-mining-is-the-solution-not-the-problem/

since Gavin's proposal is implementing what is described by Sergio as SPV mining.

Answered this in various posts a number of times already on the forum.

My pool averages around 300ms to process a block change and get new work - that whole double slow process that is the excuse for SPV.
-ck's solo pool is under 200ms.

As for block sizes.
Go to these 2 links (6months and 30days) and see where our average block sizes are vs all the SPV pools.
We're at the top, they're at the bottom.

http://data.bitcoinity.org/bitcoin/blocksize/6m?t=l
and
http://data.bitcoinity.org/bitcoin/blocksize/30d?t=l

A couple hundred more milliseconds per block vs MANY SPV empty blocks and a much lower average block size.

Also note the obvious, 300ms is 0.05% of 600s ...

Of course, our orphan rates are VERY low.

Case closed.

[sickpig]

Because Bitcoin has a 1mB limit and a hard fork would be needed to change it, along with all that this entail.

Did u even understand the meaning of this statement ?

Why are not you still mining with a client that supports 2mb blocks ?

Coz Classic includes SPV mining which is bad for bitcoin.

did they already merge Gavin's pull request?

while at it if you don't mind I would like to know your opinion about this Sergio's post:

https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2016/01/08/spv-mining-is-the-solution-not-the-problem/

since Gavin's proposal is implementing what is described by Sergio as SPV mining.

Answered this in various posts a number of times already on the forum.

My pool averages around 300ms to process a block change and get new work - that whole double slow process that is the excuse for SPV.
-ck's solo pool is under 200ms.

As for block sizes.
Go to these 2 links (6months and 30days) and see where our average block sizes are vs all the SPV pools.
We're at the top, they're at the bottom.

http://data.bitcoinity.org/bitcoin/blocksize/6m?t=l
and
http://data.bitcoinity.org/bitcoin/blocksize/30d?t=l

A couple hundred more milliseconds per block vs MANY SPV empty blocks and a much lower average block size.

Also note the obvious, 300ms is 0.05% of 600s ...

Of course, our orphan rates are VERY low.

Case closed.

thanks for the prompt reply.

Frankly I was more worried about blocks propagation time rather than validation time, but I guess that's what Corallo's RLN is made for.

[GermanGiant]

Because Bitcoin has a 1mB limit and a hard fork would be needed to change it, along with all that this entail.

Did u even understand the meaning of this statement ?

Why are not you still mining with a client that supports 2mb blocks ?

Yes. But do you?

Using a different client that support 2mB blocks won't actually allow it. A Fork need to happen first. For this to happen you need Antpool, BTCC, F2P and most of every one else to agree. Meanwhile in China, AntPool is indeed SPV mining empty blocks because they dont care.

You can't contact any of the big pools by posting here so you're wasting your time.

Now all you're doing is actually starting the 420th threat on the Bitcoin fork topic, which has been talked through and through several time and doing it in the wrong forum section.

U r using circular logic to back your opinion. Once classic is run by pool operators, that wont hard fork immediately. But, it will send signal that miners are preferring 2mb. This would in turn make sure that Core needs to seriously consider 2mb. Else fee will continue to rise, pushing newcomers towards Alt coins and we will remain stuck at 1mb always.