The block limit will be raised. There are just no ifs or buts...

[adamstgBit]

why is this such a big deal?

blocks are still going to be mined at the same rate right?

even if the block limit is not increased the number of tx on the network will still be the same, so bandwidth required to run a full node will be pretty much the same...

no?

wouldn't miners like to mine a bigger block ( more tx pre block = more fees! )

wouldn't an end user like to have his tx included in the next block ( more tx pre block = for sure your tx will be in the next block )

[notme]

why is this such a big deal?

blocks are still going to be mined at the same rate right?

even if the block limit is not increased the number of tx on the network will still be the same, so bandwidth required to run a full node will be pretty much the same...

no?

wouldn't miners like to mine a bigger block ( more tx pre block = more fees! )

wouldn't an end user like to have his tx included in the next block ( more tx pre block = for sure your tx will be in the next block )

I could get on board with something tied to the number of transactions paying at least the minimum fee.

If the amount of fee paying transactions rises, the block size is increased on the next adjustment.  If the fee paying transactions drop, block size is reduced on the next adjustment.

Basically, we need a way to keep the segment allotted to free transactions to stay roughly the same size, but allow the size to grow and shrink with the paying transaction rate.  Free transactions could still take up extra space if there weren't paying transactions, but they wouldn't reserve the space past the adjustment.

[markm]

The max block size is a HARD LIMIT.

It is like going from 8 bit machines to 16 bit machines, or from 16 bit machines to 32 bit machines, or from 32 bit machines to 64 bit machines, or from 64 bit machines to 128 bit machines, or from 128 bit machines to 256 bit machines, etcetera: ONCE DONE WE DO NOT WANT TO GO BACK!

Only world wide catasrophe should force the world to all revert to 16 bit machines or even, really, now we are in the process of moving from 32 bit to 64 bit, ever shut down all the 64 bit machines and go back to 32 bit.

Stop thinking of the HARD MAXIMUM BLOCK SIZE as some kind of "soft" number miners come up with as their most profitable size at a given moment. It is more like can you even buy commodity 128 bit machines yet? How about commodity 256 bit? Ask walmart how many bits you can get as a mass market, best bang for the buck due to the absolutely massive number being sold, machine. Check whether your installed base of miners are using 128 bit machines yet. That kind of a hard limit.

-MarkM-

[adamstgBit]

why is this such a big deal?

blocks are still going to be mined at the same rate right?

even if the block limit is not increased the number of tx on the network will still be the same, so bandwidth required to run a full node will be pretty much the same...

no?

wouldn't miners like to mine a bigger block ( more tx pre block = more fees! )

wouldn't an end user like to have his tx included in the next block ( more tx pre block = for sure your tx will be in the next block )

I could get on board with something tied to the number of transactions paying at least the minimum fee.

If the amount of fee paying transactions rises, the block size is increased on the next adjustment.  If the fee paying transactions drop, block size is reduced on the next adjustment.

Basically, we need a way to keep the segment allotted to free transactions to stay roughly the same size, but allow the size to grow and shrink with the paying transaction rate.  Free transactions could still take up extra space if there weren't paying transactions, but they wouldn't reserve the space past the adjustment.

we do not have to care about the tx fees...
as it stands today, if miners dont want to process a tx because it has no fee they are free to do so.
keep it that way, its fine... its better then fine its perfect!

if the size of the block is so small that miner will only include tx with fees because he cant fit them all and would rather include the ones that pay a fee! the miner no longer has the choice to include a tx with no fee ( i guess he dose but he'd be crazy too do so -_-)

this is simply unacceptable, it will lead to high fees, and because of the high fees hashrate will go up for no reason at all...

make the max block size really really big so this never happens!

and let the miners decide for themselves if they want to include free-tx's, just because he has the space doesn't force him to add the free-tx....

this way miners of the future ( when the block reward is 0 ) will be mining for fees and he will choose his own cut off, maybe one minner will only include a tx with 0.00005BTC. The users will know if you pay 0.001BTC ALL miners will jump at the opportunity to add your tx, but if you only pay 0.000005BTC only 50% of the miners will add your tx ( which means it will take longer to confirm )

if the block size limit is to small, what will happen is the users will start compete for a spot on the block by paying higher and higher fees, NOT GOOD! this will for surely lead to super high fees!

[markm]

Hmm I thought that was sarcasm when I saw the bit about miners driving up hash rates for no reason, but reading more I'm no longer sure if the post is sarcasm or serious.

-MarkM-

[adamstgBit]

Hmm I thought that was sarcasm when I saw the bit about miners driving up hash rates for no reason, but reading more I'm no longer sure if the post is sarcasm or serious.

-MarkM-

I'm just posting my though, seriously;

let the miners choose to include free-tx or not, or wtv cut off they want.
and give them plenty of space to include as many as are available
and everything will balance out

[markm]

Well they have plenty of space, so that part is done. We'll see how the rest works out.

When the need more space signal (blocks getting full?) gets sent, that is when the markets are supposed to adapt, right?

Not order more inventory while you still haven't been able to get rid of the huge amount of inventory already on hand?

-MarkM-

[molecular]

Hmm I thought that was sarcasm when I saw the bit about miners driving up hash rates for no reason, but reading more I'm no longer sure if the post is sarcasm or serious.

-MarkM-

I'm just posting my though, seriously;

let the miners choose to include free-tx or not, or wtv cut off they want.
and give them plenty of space to include as many as are available
and everything will balance out

the criticism here is that miners with access to huge bandwidth will mine huge blocks and disadvantage the smaller miners because these can't dl the block fast enough to restart mining. You need the newest block in order to mine. The fear is that this would result in greater centralization.

[adamstgBit]

Hmm I thought that was sarcasm when I saw the bit about miners driving up hash rates for no reason, but reading more I'm no longer sure if the post is sarcasm or serious.

-MarkM-

I'm just posting my though, seriously;

let the miners choose to include free-tx or not, or wtv cut off they want.
and give them plenty of space to include as many as are available
and everything will balance out

the criticism here is that miners with access to huge bandwidth will mine huge blocks and disadvantage the smaller miners because these can't dl the block fast enough to restart mining. You need the newest block in order to mine. The fear is that this would result in greater centralization.

If you setup your mining rig on a shitty ass connection that's your fault.
min. requirements will keep going up as the network grows, theirs no stopping that.
if bitcoin really takes off, your going to required some really crazy hardware to run a full node.

... greater centralization is inevitable ...

it will still be "decentralized" because no ONE person can control it. but it wont be like the old day where ever single peer ran a full node.

network well being >  maximum decentralization

[adamstgBit]

Here's a hint for those who don't understand the implications:

Right now, all it takes is a small-ish miner who finds say 1 block per week, to fuck up the transaction fees for everyone else. How do they do it? By simply accepting as many zero-fee (and under-priced) transactions as they can, which have been queueing up.

LOL!

i will pay 0.0001 or wtv it cost so that ALL miners take my tx no matter what
i can't imagine why anyone would make a free tx if it would take days to confirm, when you can pay 1 cent and have it confirm much faster

[markm]

if bitcoin really takes off, your going to required some really crazy hardware to run a full node.

... greater centralization is inevitable ...

it will still be "decentralized" because no ONE person can control it. but it wont be like the old day where ever single peer ran a full node.

network well being >  maximum decentralization

Okay so the same decentralisation into two or even three major ATM card companies - per nation or region maybe? There must be more than three in the world, just because I don't see their logos around here doesn't mean that don't exist. The same decentralisation in a few brandnames of major banks, the same so huge that big brother can easily shutdown any darn thing he doesn't like real easy because its nothing like file sharing distributed networks whose nodes are small, agile, and, most importantly, ubiquitous, vast swarms of them everywhere?

So what we bought after all that is done is all the transactions of normal people are out in public view and by having put all ours in open view we might hope to have moral high ground in lobbying that all government transactions budgets etc should also be displayed that explicitly and irrefutably for all to see? But they won't be, of course.

I don't see that we gain anything here, oh wait, yeah, maybe some profit from rise in price of bitcoins if we got in way back now while they are dirt cheap. But we're basically investing in the government having even more invasion into our privacy, not into a grass roots unstoppable ubiquitous agile vast sea of nodes network like the person to person filesharing networks they seem to not be able to shut down?

We're shoving every node of our invisible grassroots network right out there in big brother's face, giving him the physical address of every vital piece of its infrastructure, and thats great, thats what "we" want?

-MarkM-

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

I don't see that we gain anything here, oh wait, yeah, maybe some profit from rise in price of bitcoins if we got in way back now while they are dirt cheap. BUt we're basically investing in the government having even more invasion into our privacy, not into a grass roots unstoppable ubiquitous agile vast sea of nodes network like the person to person filesharing networks they seem to not be able to shut down?

I (and many others) have frequently used the bittorrent comparison when introducing people to Bitcoin, to allay their fears about governments shutting it down (usually that's the first objection people raise).

I would really really really hate to see a future where I can no longer in good faith tell people that disrupting the network would be logistically difficult.

Current debate is a bit like having a goose that has started laying golden eggs, and extrapolating that forcing it to have sex and lay eggs 24/7 will maximize my wealth.  But of course, once I put that policy in place, the end result is that, much to my dismay, the goose drops dead rather quickly.

[tvbcof]

I don't see that we gain anything here, oh wait, yeah, maybe some profit from rise in price of bitcoins if we got in way back now while they are dirt cheap. BUt we're basically investing in the government having even more invasion into our privacy, not into a grass roots unstoppable ubiquitous agile vast sea of nodes network like the person to person filesharing networks they seem to not be able to shut down?

I (and many others) have frequently used the bittorrent comparison when introducing people to Bitcoin, to allay their fears about governments shutting it down (usually that's the first objection people raise).

I would really really really hate to see a future where I can no longer in good faith tell people that disrupting the network would be logistically difficult.

Current debate is a bit like having a goose that has started laying golden eggs, and extrapolating that forcing it to have sex and lay eggs 24/7 will maximize my wealth.  But of course, once I put that policy in place, the end result is that, much to my dismay, the goose drops dead rather quickly.

This is completely classic 'tragedy of the commons'.  It makes all the sense in the world for those who can obtain semi-exclusive access to the back end of the goose to run her dry.  They'll personally be better off in the end no matter how long the goose survives.

An interesting thing about most such tragedies (and there are many examples through history) is that almost every primary actor is capable of completely an honestly convincing themselves that not only are they not the problem, but that their participation is a huge positive if not necessary for the greater good.  Often enough, they can convince a lot of side actors of the same thing!

[Gabi]

I undrstand a limit only as anti-flood measure, except that, miners should decide what transactions include or not in a block and not be forced to not include some transactions due to a limit. Ok, if someone spam a million of transactions then the limit will save us from that, but, considering the normal transaction rate, the limit should allow the miners to include all the normal transaction (if on average there are for example 2000 transactions per block, we need a limit that allow us to include at least them)

This "scarcity" thing doesn't make sense, the limit artificially impose the scarcity to miners, they can't decide to include only transactions profitable for them, they would be forced to include only some and discard the others, even if the fee is ok. If millions of people start to use bitcoin, the limit should allow them all to make transactions.

Note that we will also need a blockchain pruning system, even without raising the limit, if we somehow hit the 1MB limit, the chain will grow at 55GB per year rate. So, modifying or not the limit, we need a pruning system.

[justusranvier]

the criticism here is that miners with access to huge bandwidth will mine huge blocks and disadvantage the smaller miners because these can't dl the block fast enough to restart mining. You need the newest block in order to mine. The fear is that this would result in greater centralization.

There is a very simple solution to that, and Gavin addressed it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140233.msg1503099#msg1503099 Nobody wants to talk about that, though.

The people who want to keep the transaction rate limited never acknowledge the straightforward solutions to the supposed problems that would result from increasing the limit. They talk about scalability as if there are not known solutions to the problem, and certainly don't offer to help implement those improvements. If the real issue here is home users being able to be equal participants in the network, then why is no one else offering to help crowd fund the development work needed to make that happen so that we can have both high transaction rates and decentralization?

Is it just a coincidence that some of opponents to transaction rate scalability are also involved with other cryptocurrencies or alternate transaction processing networks whose business case is less certain if Bitcoin is allowed to scale?

Why to people need to frame the necessary changes in pejorative terms like "hard fork", when they could just as easily use the neutral term, "mandatory upgrade". We've already had a few mandatory upgrades that only affected miners. This one is different because it also requires full nodes to upgrade as well, but that need was already anticipated. Blocks have a version number for a reason, and all bitcoind/bitcoin-qt clients have the capability to receive notifications from the developers for urgent messages such as a mandatory upgrade. Why is the debate about whether or not we should ever have version 3 blocks at all instead of which features should go in and how to best make the transition? Why are some developers on record participating in a conversation affirming how the block limit would be raised in the future, but today insist the limit was intentionally permanent from the beginning? If the arguments in favour of leaving the limit in place are so strong, why do they need to lie about the past?

[tvbcof]

the criticism here is that miners with access to huge bandwidth will mine huge blocks and disadvantage the smaller miners because these can't dl the block fast enough to restart mining. You need the newest block in order to mine. The fear is that this would result in greater centralization.

There is a very simple solution to that, and Gavin addressed it here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=140233.msg1503099#msg1503099 Nobody wants to talk about that, though.

The people who want to keep the transaction rate limited never acknowledge the straightforward solutions to the supposed problems that would result from increasing the limit. They talk about scalability as if there are not known solutions to the problem, and certainly don't offer to help implement those improvements. If the real issue here is home users being able to be equal participants in the network, then why is no one else offering to help crowd fund the development work needed to make that happen so that we can have both high transaction rates and decentralization?

To facilitate scaling, I prefer to let the free market develop usability methods on a second tier.  I think that this will be less risky, more robust, and will provide much better solutions faster for end-users.

My feeling is that some of the core developers are to prone to write off coordinated state level attacks as wacko conspiracy theories.  For my part, I don't find such attacks at all improbable.

I would only feel comfortable in a solution where the messaging load is capable of being cloaked using steganographic methods.  This means that even consumer grade bandwidth needs to be knocked down by a significant factor.

Is it just a coincidence that some of opponents to transaction rate scalability are also involved with other cryptocurrencies or alternate transaction processing networks whose business case is less certain if Bitcoin is allowed to scale?

Not coincidental at all.  This is a big fork in the road which will have a major impact on the end-point of the Bitcoin solution.

Why to people need to frame the necessary changes in pejorative terms like "hard fork", when they could just as easily use the neutral term, "mandatory upgrade". We've already had a few mandatory upgrades that only affected miners. This one is different because it also requires full nodes to upgrade as well, but that need was already anticipated. Blocks have a version number for a reason, and all bitcoind/bitcoin-qt clients have the capability to receive notifications from the developers for urgent messages such as a mandatory upgrade. Why is the debate about whether or not we should ever have version 3 blocks at all instead of which features should go in and how to best make the transition? Why are some developers on record participating in a conversation affirming how the block limit would be raised in the future, but today insist the limit was intentionally permanent from the beginning? If the arguments in favour of leaving the limit in place are so strong, why do they need to lie about the past?

I don't think that propaganda or careful choice of words is the key to success on anyone's part.

Most participants and probably not being deliberately dishonest.  There are legitimate concerns on all sides, and everyone is coming at things from a somewhat different perception based on their backgrounds and so on.

Edit: syntax.  Then spell check fix associated with the term 'steganography'.

[markm]

Well I am pretty sure Walmart and Joe Sixpack are not going to go with the steganographic option.

So maybe it is a fork in the road:

1) Sell out to Big Brother / Big Business a massively visible, massively scalable to massive backbones easily big enough to drive small business out of the business Big Bitcoin, Megacoin, Bytecoin, Mouthfullcoin, GoAheadAndPigOutcoin, whatever, profit massively on owning more coins initially than "they" do. That could help us finance...

2) Bitcoin? What bitcoin? I thought that got bought up by Big Brother? What is this bitcoin of which you speak? Silk road? Never heard of them. Tor? Of course I support our troops overseas, don't you? The navy developed that, you don't have anything against our navy do you? My house? What about my house? Oh, visible means of support. I have a website, look. Oops, haxor'd! Now I understand why you mention bitcoin! Damn hackers defacing sites, they should stay on the darknet serving our sailors by hacking enemy infrastructure. Who me? Getoutahere!

(Etc.)

-MarkM-

[tvbcof]

Well I am pretty sure Walmart and Joe Sixpack are not going go with the steganographic option.

...

Sure they would.  That is easy.  You just have to give them a button to push on a slick looking GUI.

[markm]

Well I am pretty sure Walmart and Joe Sixpack are not going go with the steganographic option.

...

Sure they would.  That is easy.  You just have to give them a button to push on a slick looking GUI.

Hahahahahahaha, genius! Yo da Man!

-MarkM-

[zimmah]

Whoever runs bitcoin.org runs bitcoin. Unfortunately bitcoin is not decentralized in this regard. At any moment, whoever runs that site can put up Bitcoin 0.9.0, call it an urgent release and dispose of the block limit. Chances are most of the network would upgrade to it with no questions ask. All the naysayers would be left in the dust and with a fork that wouldn't even be worth a nickel per coin.

I'm sorry. The war is lost. Unless one of you buys out bitcoin.org or defames it to the point that it drops off the front page of Google. There is too much lobbying pressure from Mt.Gox, SatoshiDice and others for the block limit to remain.

I take no sides on this issue.

I can't believe this was posted in early 2013.

and nothing has changed.