Why block size debate, why is it not higher than 1mb?

[icanscript]

I been looking into the block size debate and cant wrap my head around it.

1) Storage is cheap, cheaper than it ever has been. 8tb hard drives out there now.
2) Most First/Second world countries have advanced beyond dialup.

So why is there even a debate. Why not fork for 2mb or 4mb and future proof it. Nodes can be run by people who have high connections and lots of storage which lets face it is most of us and datacenters of course.

People who cant download a full node, prob dont need to anyway and can use web based services or SPV wallets.

3) SPV wallet servers could be officially hosted by reputable companies, like bitcoin.org, bitmain, blocktrail, coinbase etc

Why was there such a debate over something that seems logical to do? or will eventually have to do in the future anyway.

[Decoded]

This requires a miner consensus. Currently, miners are actually profiting from this high traffic system, as people have to pay more to get into a block.

Expanding a block is not the future. It's not sustainable. We will soon need to upgrade to 3 mb, then 4mb, and so on. We need to find a way to fix this (e.g. like difficulty, the blocksize changes every 10 days). Bitcoin is meant to be decentralized. If we have to make a fork every couple of years, that could be annoying and strengthen the argument that bitcoin is centralised, as the devs are controlling everything.

Another thing is that something like this is not completely good. It can also be a security hazard for the blockchain if done incorrectly.

[icanscript]

This requires a miner consensus. Currently, miners are actually profiting from this high traffic system, as people have to pay more to get into a block.

Expanding a block is not the future. It's not sustainable. We will soon need to upgrade to 3 mb, then 4mb, and so on. We need to find a way to fix this (e.g. like difficulty, the blocksize changes every 10 days)

Another thing is that something like this is not completely good. It can also be a security hazard for the blockchain if done incorrectly.

That would make sense now. as for miner consensus I guess I should put this here for people who find this thread - https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ <--- Current optimal bitcoin tx fee per byte

why is this not like facebook, why cant I click like

Thanks for your answer.

[Decoded]

This requires a miner consensus. Currently, miners are actually profiting from this high traffic system, as people have to pay more to get into a block.

Expanding a block is not the future. It's not sustainable. We will soon need to upgrade to 3 mb, then 4mb, and so on. We need to find a way to fix this (e.g. like difficulty, the blocksize changes every 10 days)

Another thing is that something like this is not completely good. It can also be a security hazard for the blockchain if done incorrectly.

That would make sense now.

why is this not like facebook, why cant I click like

Thanks for your answer.

Saying that is all the recognition I need , no problem!

[pedrog]

Bosses say 1MB is enough than 1MB is enough.

You already have a bitcoin with larger blocks and faster confirmations, it's called litecoin, go get some!

[MyBTT]

Bosses say 1MB is enough than 1MB is enough.

You already have a bitcoin with larger blocks and faster confirmations, it's called litecoin, go get some!

But litecoin is a shitcoin, bitcoin is my one and only <3
Who are your bosses? The miners?

As Decoded said, this blocksize debate relies on the opinion of the miners, and it benefits them more to stick with a low block (and almost infeasible) limit.

[Goms]

Yeah, I will probably get some litecoins when it comes back from the land of the dead!

[pedrog]

Yeah, I will probably get some litecoins when it comes back from the land of the dead!

By then you'll be too late.

[countryfree]

You're very right, and BTC wasn't designed to stay forever with that stupid 1MB limit. The very existence of the problem proves there's a governance problem with BTC.

[MyBitcoinPorn]

Those that want a bigger block size than 1mb mistakenly think Bitcoin is going to be a consumer level replacement for credit cards.

It's much more akin to wire transfers. Large amounts but few transactions.

[icanscript]

You're very right, and BTC wasn't designed to stay forever with that stupid 1MB limit. The very existence of the problem proves there's a governance problem with BTC.

Bitcoin wasnt designed with a 1mb limit.

First Release 2009
Line 17 - main.h

Code:

static const unsigned int MAX_SIZE = 0x02000000;

32mb Limit.

Bosses say 1MB is enough than 1MB is enough.

You already have a bitcoin with larger blocks and faster confirmations, it's called litecoin, go get some!

I don't want Litecoin, I was just asking the question. I dont think Gavin wanted a 1mb limit, In the first place I think it was him that set it but I think he wanted it changing.

[jonald_fyookball]

Because the main developers in charge of the core repository refuse
to raise it. 

Some of the most senior members also work for a
corporation called Blockstream who wants to develop scaling
solutions off the main chain, so therefore many of us believe,
unfortunately, that there is a major conflict of interest at work here.

[icanscript]

Because the main developers in charge of the core repository refuse
to raise it. 

Some of the most senior members also work for a
corporation called Blockstream who wants to develop scaling
solutions off the main chain, so therefore many of us believe,
unfortunately, that there is a major conflict of interest at work here.

I remember the whole XT thing, But I was kinda away at the time so never had a true look at it. I am guessing this was made by the non-blockstream members?

I didnt know about blockstream actually, I recently realized how ignorant I am to a technology now that I use it for monetary value when before I had interest in the technology not money.

Has been interesting to learn this information though thank you.

[achow101]

The biggest reason against raising the block size limit is the risk of Denial of Service attacks. The idea of "just change one constant" comes from ignorant and naive people who do not understand how Bitcoin works on a technical level.

The issue is that of signature hashing for signature operations (sigops). Right now, sigops-to-verification-time is a quadratic relationship, meaning that as you increase the number of sigops in a transaction, the time to verify that transaction squares. For example, doubling the number of sigops in a transaction (as with a 2 Mb increase) will require quadruple the amount of time to verify the transaction. Bump up block size limit to 4 Mb (thus bumping the sigops limit to 4 times of what it is now) means that a transaction with the max sigops will require 16 times as long to verify as a transaction with max sigops now.

This sigops issue is one of the biggest problems when it comes to scaling as it becomes possible to cause nodes and miners to have to verify huge transactions and waste time, time in which another miner could find another block. Furthermore, to solve the issue becomes a major pain. There could be a maximum transaction size, but that isn't really ideal (although AFAIK that is what Classic decided to do). Alternatively the signature algorithm could be changed, but in a hard fork scenario, that is just a nightmare to deploy as any unconfirmed transactions at the time of deployment suddenly become invalid.


Edit: The 1 Mb limit was added because Satoshi was worried about spam attacks.

Because the main developers in charge of the core repository refuse
to raise it.  

Some of the most senior members also work for a
corporation called Blockstream who wants to develop scaling
solutions off the main chain, so therefore many of us believe,
unfortunately, that there is a major conflict of interest at work here.

While blockstream is developing sidechains as an alternative scaling solution, the idea that they are going to somehow force everyone to use their sidechains is false. The sidechains are completely open source licensed under the MIT License which means that literally anyone can take the code, use it, and start their own business with it. They are literally allowing anyone to make money off of something that they created. Secondly there is also the lightning project, which is not developed by blockstream and is also open source with a few implementations of it already existing.

Additionally, while there are several members of blockstream who are Core devs, they are also the ones who founded the company. Only one of those members even has commit access so it cannot be said that blockstream controls Bitcoin Core. Granted many of those members are senior Core developers who have been actively working on the project for several years, long before blockstream was even founded, and their opinions do carry significant weight.

Lastly, those developers are not actively trying to undermine Bitcoin as some would lead you to believe. They are all doing what they think is good for Bitcoin, as are the developers of XT, Classic, and Unlimited.


Also, increasing the block size limit ad infinitum is not a viable solution either and, at some point, we will need to use off chain scaling solutions.

[cr1776]

The biggest reason against raising the block size limit is the risk of Denial of Service attacks. The idea of "just change one constant" comes from ignorant and naive people who do not understand how Bitcoin works on a technical level.

The issue is that of signature hashing for signature operations (sigops). Right now, sigops-to-verification-time is a quadratic relationship, meaning that as you increase the number of sigops in a transaction, the time to verify that transaction squares. For example, doubling the number of sigops in a transaction (as with a 2 Mb increase) will require quadruple the amount of time to verify the transaction. Bump up block size limit to 4 Mb (thus bumping the sigops limit to 4 times of what it is now) means that a transaction with the max sigops will require 16 times as long to verify as a transaction with max sigops now.

This sigops issue is one of the biggest problems when it comes to scaling as it becomes possible to cause nodes and miners to have to verify huge transactions and waste time, time in which another miner could find another block. Furthermore, to solve the issue becomes a major pain. There could be a maximum transaction size, but that isn't really ideal (although AFAIK that is what Classic decided to do). Alternatively the signature algorithm could be changed, but in a hard fork scenario, that is just a nightmare to deploy as any unconfirmed transactions at the time of deployment suddenly become invalid.

There was a discussion about creating a transaction that could take up to 10 minutes to verify (on a current machine, not an 8080 or 6502).

As knightdk says, changing the block size itself is easy, it is dealing with the ramifications of those changes and ensuring that they are as well understood that is the complicated and time consuming part which needs to have a lot of testing.  If it were 2010 it would be much easier to change since there wasn't as much riding on it, but with a $10 billion market cap in 2016, it takes a much more judicious and contemplative approach.

The block size will increase, it is just a matter of time.

[Wind_FURY]

Why are some people in a hurry to have bigger blocks? Why do you want bitcoin to scale and be as close to visa like transactions? These people have their self interest at hand first and foremost. They do not care about bitcoin they just want to profit from it. I am not saying that it is bad to profit from it but accept the things you cannot change and learn to deal with the things that you can.

[gentlemand]

I remember the whole XT thing, But I was kinda away at the time so never had a true look at it. I am guessing this was made by the non-blockstream members?

Correct. It was proposed by Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn, both of whom have had a few wobbles since. I like a big block but look what's happening with Ethereum right now. It's madness.

Positions in Bitcoin are that much more entrenched and the people involved are that much more psychotic that a contentious hard fork would make ETH's problems look like a walk in the park. I'm pretty confident it would terminally fuck Bitcoin's position.

I blame Satoshi. He could've nominated 2 or 5 or 10mb when he rolled it back from 32mb and everything would've grown around it. Now it's too late. Even back in the days when it was less than nowhere, 200,000 or so transactions a day does not sound like a lot to me.

[BitHodler]

I remember the whole XT thing, But I was kinda away at the time so never had a true look at it. I am guessing this was made by the non-blockstream members?

Correct. It was proposed by Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn, both of whom have had a few wobbles since. I like a big block but look what's happening with Ethereum right now. It's madness.

Positions in Bitcoin are that much more entrenched and the people involved are that much more psychotic that a contentious hard fork would make ETH's problems look like a walk in the park. I'm pretty confident it would terminally fuck Bitcoin's position.

I blame Satoshi. He could've nominated 2 or 5 or 10mb when he rolled it back from 32mb and everything would've grown around it. Now it's too late. Even back in the days when it was less than nowhere, 200,000 or so transactions a day does not sound like a lot to me.

I am quite sure that if Satoshi would know that Bitcoin would perform the way it is doing now, that he surely would pick anything higher than the current 1MB size.

He had to make a choice that would be the best for the situation back then in order to downgrade the block size significantly. It is what it is.

We can just hope that the implementation of the update containing the larger block size will be a smooth transition. I am already happy they are not rushing things to please the community.

[gentlemand]

I am quite sure that if Satoshi would know that Bitcoin would perform the way it is doing now, that he surely would pick anything higher than the current 1MB size.

He had to make a choice that would be the best for the situation back then in order to downgrade the block size significantly. It is what it is.

Hey, I'm sure he's around ten trillion times more intelligent than I'll ever be but he did miss out on a few things such as the rise of mining pools. And 1mb is just as arbitrary a figure as 5mb. I would've gone larger but I'm always prone to pile in.