Accordingly, I still have troubles understanding when the blocksize and/or scaling issues are presented as "an emergency."
Do you understand the principle of non-parallel lines in a two-dimensional cartesian coordinate system?
No. I don't understand: "non-parallel lines in a two-dimensional cartesian coordinate system."
Do I need to understand "non-parallel lines in a two-dimensional cartesian coordinate system" ...
In order to have an informed position of the severity of the problem, yes.
But first, let me step back. I may have befuddled you with jargon, and jargon may differ from time to time and from place to place. But the concept is pretty simple, and I imagine you grasp it intuitively, if not intellectually by the jargon I employed.
After reading through the explanation of your post, I surely do seem to understand the concept of these two line trajectories coming together.
One line is an upward trajectory of the level of fill of the blocks and the other line is a maximum limit of the blocks (which is described as historically being flat).
So, yep, I already understood the concepts and they dynamics of the various arguments for quite a while there has been a considerable amount of discussion on the topic, and I understand the basic aspects of the claims being set forth, otherwise I would not chime in here at all, if i did not understand the basics.
In a two-dimensional plane, two lines that are not parallel will eventually intersect. This is a geometric mathematical law. Let us illustrate the concept with an example:
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions
What we are looking at is a chart of the number of Bitcoin blockchain transactions per day, plotted against the time axis of the last year. While it is very noisy, we can see that the trend over this year interval is that the number of transactions is clearly rising.
If we wanted to, we could engage in a process called 'curve fitting', where we kind of average out the high-frequency highs and lows, to show more of the trend, and less of the day-to-day variation. Even a moving 7-day average filters out a lot of spikiness:
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions?showDataPoints=false×pan=&show_header=true&daysAverageString=7&scale=0&address=
As we filter out the day-to-day noise, we get a curve that we can use to extrapolate into the future, to make educated assumptions about what is likely to happen to that quantity as time passes.
Yes, I more or less agree with you regarding the fact that when we make a projection of the future, we make a variety of educated assumptions.
We make educated assumptions about the future trajectory based on the past and present conditions and the expected future conditions. The degree to which those assumptions are correct depend upon a variety of factors including whether we take into account all of the factors and if we are very good at understanding the whole situation including whether behaviors are going to change based on the trajectories.
We also may incorporate too many conclusions about various anticipated trajectories, if we inadequately explain the reasons for various past or present performance (for example, if there have been some purposeful spamming of the bitcoin network in order to make the blocks appear larger, then that could falsely make the blocks appear to be more full than they actually are, on average).
Let us now perform a curve fitting to a straight line - while this may not have great fidelity to the past, in the absence of additional info, it is about the best we can hope for as a prediction tool. Eyeballing the graph, we see that we have gone from 'about 90,000' transactions a day one year ago to 'about 180,000' transactions today now. Or roughly doubled in a year.
So let us mark a point today at 180,000, and another point one year ago at 90,000, and draw a straight line through these points.
So there is one of our non-parallel lines. For the other, we need a representation of the max transactions per day that can be processed, based upon the max block size. Today, that number is 'about 350,000'. A year ago, and in all the intervening time, that number is 'about 350,000'. Before that, dating back to the time the 1MB limit was put in place as a temporary DoS avoidance scheme (back when bitcoins were cheap as pennies, BTW), that number was 'about 350,000'.
To represent this on our graph, let us draw a mental line straight across from left to right at the level above the current graph, where 350,000 would be if we preserved the Y axis scale. This is our other non-parallel line.
So with the max block size fixed at 1MB, yielding a hard limit of 'about 350,000' transactions a day, we can project the slope of our actual transactions per day line into the future. We find that they intersect at a point somewhat less than a year away.
I appreciate your detailed and well presented explanation. I am pretty sure that I had already understood the various arguments regarding the factual claims, yet there is no harm done when you present various details in order that we all understand that we are talking about the same thing, more or less.. or at least we have various reference points to determine the extent to which we may disagree regarding some of the underlying facts.
At this point, I believe that the "emergency" is much exaggerated, and not as bit of a deal as it is being made out to be. That does not mean that NO action need be taken now, but it likely means that we do not need to rush into a solution that is imposed without considering various alternatives.
Look - I get that you're relatively new here. But rest assured we have been discussing this very issue for several years. Without that perspective in the rear view mirror, you may feel that the urgency is exaggerated. But to those of us who have been tracking this incipient problem for years, the situation does indeed appear dire.
I find it a bit curious that you want to suggest that I have arrived at my conclusion because I am "relatively new here."
Yes, surely forum members have varying levels of experience and participation in bitcoin, and also people who participate in forums have a variety of life experiences. You have no real information regarding the level of my experiences that may well inform my conclusions and opinions in different ways from you.
Furthermore, in bitcoin years, I am NOT exactly a newbie, even though from time to time, I may ask some basic question or present some naive ideas...
In any event, I am not claiming to be any kind of expert in the scaling debate, but I also know enough about the matter in order to express my current opinions.
I remain of the conclusion, based on the evidence that I have to date, that there is quite a bit of hype and exaggerations in the claims of an emergency... Surely, Mike Hearn is one of the representative examples of exaggeration, hype, temper tantrums and unnecessary hype and whining, and there are some others who have also suggested that they want to engage in various kinds of sabotaging and denigrating efforts of bitcoin in order to make their points that scaling needs to take place in an expedited way and also to attempt to get the attention of core developers... blah blah blah...
I'm not really taking sides, even though some people would assert that I am because I am not currently seeing an emergency need for some immediate increase in the block size limits, but I still believe, all in due time, and various efforts are being made to address some of these block size issues.. and even if some worse case scenarios (of continuously full blocks) were to take place, then at that point various emergency measures could be taken (whether temporary or permanent).
So, anyhow, some of the spamming of the block activities and other denigrations of bitcoin seem to be quite premature and seem merely attempts to drive bitcoin prices lower for selfish or anti-bitcoin reasons, rather than reflective of any impending emergency in bitcoin or any kind of meaningful defect in bitcoin.
Bitcoin is an amazing and powerful phenomenon in spite of some of the weaknesses of decentralized decision making.
So, whether we have been tracking the problem for a long period of time (such as 5 years) or for less of a time (a few months), we are able to have opinions and to express our opinions and the bases for our opinions, and even to adapt the opinions to the extent that the circumstances change (or if we need to adapt our opinions because of otherwise unknown facts or logical conclusions that we have subsequently learned).
The issue is that, once the lines intersect, growth is limited at the 'about 350,000' transactions a day level. The upward trending line of transactions a day flatlines - limited at the intersect to the system capacity. She can' take any more, cap'n'
Yes. I mostly agree with the concept that you are describing to be one of apparent increasing block sizes and limited capacity; however, your trajectory assumes that nothing is being done or that there is no implementation before or during that time that can adequately address the situation.
We are certainly not at your tragic point yet, and from what I can tell, it seems that we are quite a distance, still from that point.. whether it is a year or some other time frame, but even if we have been crossing into that point of congestion during current times, I have not been hearing too many convincing stories regarding any current problems (besides some anecdotal claims and seeming exaggerations of problems that are not really attributable to currently full blocks). Too many ongoing exaggerations are being bandied about on an ongoing basis.
You may claim that nearly a year is enough time to work things out. And that is the ~50% probability (assuming the 2x per year is a good curve fit). But those who have been around this for a while know that this animal seems to get adopted in fits and starts. If we had a proportional spike like we did in Jul, or in Sep, or in Dec, the system could not handle the volume. Period. No capacity whatsoever. If it was a spike, the backlog would eventually clear out. But how would the newcomers feel about their money being in limbo for a month? And what if it would have been Bitcoin's eternal September - we would kill all prospects of an explosion in adoption like the Internet experienced in 1993.
It seems to me that when you describe more or less exacting timelines of a year or some impending soon time into the near future, that is an oversimplification to suggest that this is largely a math problem that a certain number of usages is going to bring us into this filled up capacity...
I really don't recognize the purported fullness of the bitcoin blocks as a pure math problem that exists in some kind of isolated social political vacuum, because we continue to have actions and reactions of a lot of individuals. There are bitcoin users deciding whether and how to use bitcoin, there are miners deciding whether and how to mine bitcoin, there are software developers deciding whether and how to write and attempt to implement code... there are investors and infrastructure developers and politicians and the list goes on and on regarding the variety of influences on bitcoin and its decentralized public ledger with a currency and a variety of adjustments along the way and likely continuing to be a lot of adjustments along the way with regards to the many players... oh and also price speculators... hahahahaha
Yes, some evolving situations (whether expected or not) are going to cause a bit more senses of urgency regarding blocks fullness, but in the end, I feel fairly optimistic that the bitcoin blockchain is strong enough to survive a variety of attacks from a variety of angles... to adjust to the the attacks and to the overclogging, and likely bitcoin participants will also, from time to time, suffer from some delays in processing their transactions, here and there, and it will not be the end of the world or the end of bitcoin.
In other words, the problem is not as black and white as many of the naysayers are making it out to be or the importance that they are giving to this scaling "problem."
The end of bitcoin and negativism seems to be moreso described by the various folks that assert that bitcoin "has to scale" or "bitcoin will die" or lose out to competition or somehow develop into an inferior product.
Bitcoin remains resilient and strong and there is going to be an ongoing influx and outflux of people into bitcoin, and surely, an overclogged network of blocks is not a bad problem to have. It's like going to a packed bar, and saying that the bar must not be successful because it is so full of people......
Yes, the bar of bitcoin will expand and yes, bitcoin is going to be able to serve more and more and more people and purposes.. without having to jump into any rash and ill thought out directions (even though some people may feel adamant that bitcoin needs to develop in the ill thought out direction of scaling immediately (without any further thought to the matter) ).
note: this is a napkin analysis. Quibbling on the actual numbers does not affect the outcome of 'we are indeed running out of time'.
yes, I understand that you are making a quickie analysis and presentation of the scaling issue and your perception of the urgency of such issue, and don't expect that I am going to get caught up upon the various technicalities of your assertions in order to engage in disingenuous arguments with you.
There is nothing wrong with people having different opinions on these topics, and we will certainly see how the scaling matter and all plays out in the coming months and years.
I do get a bit bothered, sometimes, when posters attempt to describe the problem in black and white terms in order that they can assert that they are on the right side of the debate, and TLDR:::: the problems of bitcoin scaling is not as black and white as it is made out to be.. and it is not as emergent as it is made out to be by the ones trying to rush implementation of some kind of immediate block size increase.
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