Big Block support at 50%

[-ck]

and while we are on it when did BIP100 come out! it shows 2015! did they suddenly decide on signalling it after 2 years? and a TL;DR would be great.

BIP 100 came and went two years ago from core as an idea. For a while there it had over 75% pool support, but no code was ever written for it. It simply allowed pools to vote on what the block size was and core decided it was a bad idea to give 100% of the power to the miners to choose... turns out that probably wasn't such a bad thing to not support it.

[cryptoanarchist]

can someone fill me in on how this "support" is at 50% while statistics are only showing thirty something as before.

and while we are on it when did BIP100 come out! it shows 2015! did they suddenly decide on signalling it after 2 years? and a TL;DR would be great.

Last 1000 blocks has big blocks at 40.2%
Last 24 hours Big Blocks are at 50.7%

ok so with that logic miners have stopped signalling for big blocks now!
Last 1000 blocks has big blocks at 40.2% -> 39.8%
Last 24 hours Big Blocks are at 50.7% -> 47.9%

You're only counting BU. XT and Classic are also for big blocks.

[pooya87]

can someone fill me in on how this "support" is at 50% while statistics are only showing thirty something as before.

and while we are on it when did BIP100 come out! it shows 2015! did they suddenly decide on signalling it after 2 years? and a TL;DR would be great.

Last 1000 blocks has big blocks at 40.2%
Last 24 hours Big Blocks are at 50.7%

ok so with that logic miners have stopped signalling for big blocks now!
Last 1000 blocks has big blocks at 40.2% -> 39.8%
Last 24 hours Big Blocks are at 50.7% -> 47.9%

You're only counting BU. XT and Classic are also for big blocks.

ok, help my memory a little.
Bitcoin XT was the first thing that came out and was somewhat big, it died.
then bitcoin classic came out and it was somewhat big, it died again when Gavin Andresen once again gave up on it back in early 2016.
i don't see anything on coin.dance even talking about these two.
i also don't see anything in any of the strings included in the coinbase transactions saying anything about any of these two!!

only this site: http://xtnodes.com/ has a little text saying Bitcoin Classic blocks: 5  ( 0.5% ) but it doesn't have any color code for this percentage so that i can verify which blocks it is talking about.

p.s. thanks -ck for explaining BIP100

[cryptoanarchist]

Has anyone figured out how much transaction speed could increase (theoretically) with bigger blocks.

I still think its a bad idea to support any block size without knowing potential gains in terms of transaction speed.

One simple fact is bitcoin will never compete with credit cards or execute thousands of transactions per second no matter how much block size is increased.

Well, my transactions won't sit in the pool for an hour while blocks are added without it. That's been my problem. All transactions should be added to the next block but that can't happen with the current limit. So the gain is from an hour or more back to 10 minutes like it used to be.

By the time Bitcoin scales up to Visa, most Americans will have 500TB drives in their computer and downloading 4GB blocks won't be a big thing.

[-ck]

Jihan said "he will activate BU if it reaches 51%"
Is he really so desperate to achieve his centralized blockchain but if he activates it that would be bad for bitcoin and maybe it will turn all against him. If some miners change their minds again and those that is undecided chose Segwit instead, this is just complete chaos.

LOL..how does one "activate" BU??? They are already running the client if that's what you mean.

Bigger blocks can be mined at any moment, and big blockers could destroy the SegWit chain in hours, not days. So don't worry about a forked chain because BitFury isn't going to sit there trying to mine 1MB blocks at the same difficulty while over 50% of hashing power is carrying on as normal. Even if SegWitters end up with 40%, that means blocks would take over 20 mins on average. You'd have more than twice as many transactions for the same 1MB block. Unconfirmed TXs would spiral out of control and the price of "Core coins" would tank immediately. And that situation assumes that none of the majority miners don't attack the SegWit chain. You guys are in a lose-lose situation.

Understand that the ONLY reason big blocks aren't being mined yet is because they are giving users time to figure out what's going on and pick new clients to accept bigger blocks.

By the way, they are NOT running the client as I already said. They added BU flags into their coinbase signature but all the antpool mining bitcoin nodes are showing up as bitcoin core clients. It turns out they don't actually trust the BU code, they are just using it as a leverage. Lucky for them since one pool already fucked up one block by trusting the BU code.

And as for "activate" BU in whatever form that takes, it would be nice to see because with 5000+ core nodes out there, the core node users would be completely unaware that a BU chain had started, only the slow blocks you speak of would be noticed. After one diff retargetting things would be back to normal. You're grossly exaggerating what would happen IF a BU based forked chain began. There will be no "destroy the chain" unless there is a concerted effort from them to waste all their hashpower and generate useless blocks on the core chain - such a move would cost them tens of millions of dollars of lost power and revenue in a short time. As if the bitcoin space doesn't hate them enough, such a bastard move is nigh on criminal on a massive scale and THAT would make the value tank for all forks of bitcoin.

Understand that you are in a minority thought pattern here, defending their actions. Once 4 vocal trolls are removed from bitcointalk, it fairly closely represents what's happening out in the node space with 5700 identifiable nodes running core and 630 running BU - and that number is falling. Yes miners have a lot of power, but they cannot direct things as easily as you think to destroy bitcoin core.

[cryptoanarchist]

Jihan said "he will activate BU if it reaches 51%"
Is he really so desperate to achieve his centralized blockchain but if he activates it that would be bad for bitcoin and maybe it will turn all against him. If some miners change their minds again and those that is undecided chose Segwit instead, this is just complete chaos.

LOL..how does one "activate" BU??? They are already running the client if that's what you mean.

Bigger blocks can be mined at any moment, and big blockers could destroy the SegWit chain in hours, not days. So don't worry about a forked chain because BitFury isn't going to sit there trying to mine 1MB blocks at the same difficulty while over 50% of hashing power is carrying on as normal. Even if SegWitters end up with 40%, that means blocks would take over 20 mins on average. You'd have more than twice as many transactions for the same 1MB block. Unconfirmed TXs would spiral out of control and the price of "Core coins" would tank immediately. And that situation assumes that none of the majority miners don't attack the SegWit chain. You guys are in a lose-lose situation.

Understand that the ONLY reason big blocks aren't being mined yet is because they are giving users time to figure out what's going on and pick new clients to accept bigger blocks.

By the way, they are NOT running the client as I already said. They added BU flags into their coinbase signature but all the antpool mining bitcoin nodes are showing up as bitcoin core clients. It turns out they don't actually trust the BU code, they are just using it as a leverage. Lucky for them since one pool already fucked up one block by trusting the BU code.

And as for "activate" BU in whatever form that takes, it would be nice to see because with 5000+ core nodes out there, the core node users would be completely unaware that a BU chain had started, only the slow blocks you speak of would be noticed. After one diff retargetting things would be back to normal. You're grossly exaggerating what would happen IF a BU based forked chain began. There will be no "destroy the chain" unless there is a concerted effort from them to waste all their hashpower and generate useless blocks on the core chain - such a move would cost them tens of millions of dollars of lost power and revenue in a short time. As if the bitcoin space doesn't hate them enough, such a bastard move is nigh on criminal on a massive scale and THAT would make the value tank for all forks of bitcoin.

Understand that you are in a minority thought pattern here, defending their actions. Once 4 vocal trolls are removed from bitcointalk, it fairly closely represents what's happening out in the node space with 5700 identifiable nodes running core and 630 running BU - and that number is falling. Yes miners have a lot of power, but they cannot direct things as easily as you think to destroy bitcoin core.

Oh really? How would the minority SegWit chain even get to retargeting without another hardfork? Difficulty is adjusted after a certain amount of blocks, not after a specified time period. And the minority chain would take months to get to that change in difficulty even if miners never dropped out, which they definitely would after losing so much money.

[-ck]

Oh really? How would the minority SegWit chain even get to retargeting without another hardfork? Difficulty is adjusted after a certain amount of blocks, not after a specified time period. And the minority chain would take months to get to that change in difficulty even if miners never dropped out, which they definitely would after losing so much money.

Retarget at 1/4 the hashrate would take 4x longer. So? You think relatively slow blocks for a month longer would make a 20 billion dollar industry jump ship to something they have no confidence in?

[cryptoanarchist]

Oh really? How would the minority SegWit chain even get to retargeting without another hardfork? Difficulty is adjusted after a certain amount of blocks, not after a specified time period. And the minority chain would take months to get to that change in difficulty even if miners never dropped out, which they definitely would after losing so much money.

Retarget at 1/4 the hashrate would take 4x longer. So? You think relatively slow blocks for a month longer would make a 20 billion dollar industry jump ship to something they have no confidence in?

I guess we'll find out, but I think that when one chain takes forever to get a tx through, that will pretty much kill it. Especially when they can just switch clients and get back to normal.

[-ck]

I guess we'll find out, but I think that when one chain takes forever to get a tx through, that will pretty much kill it. Especially when they can just switch clients and get back to normal.

See I don't think we will find out. Because with so much uncertainty regarding what amounts to a hostile takeover, the ones mining the takeover attempt are putting their investments at massive risk when sticking with core is a safe way to maintain a stable economy, with or without segwit. The problem lies in not knowing what Roger Ver's actual motives are and why he's spending so much money trying to create a hostile takeover - the industry and the community has voted and is mostly against it. He's even running a mining pool at a loss to try and get community miners to add hashrate to BU (pool.bitcoin.com). I can speculate there but I prefer not to because I don't wish to fall into the trap of believing yet another conspiracy theory. The number of conspiracy theories out there at the moment is quite absurd. As a coder I can argue the technical side and I try to look at things objectively but as I've decided what I think is best, someone will instantly call me a shill or troll so I tend not to argue very strongly, especially against the 4 vocal trolls. People like yourself on the other hand have been trying to hold a civil meaningful discussion. I don't have the intestinal fortitude to fight with trolls so I just put them on ignore. I'm quite sure I don't even need to tell you who I'm ignoring; think about it yourself and what names come to mind... and why?

EDIT: I just saw your bitcoin core 0.14 post and changed my mind about you being civil. It's a software announce thread, not a debate thread.

[jonald_fyookball]

See I don't think we will find out. Because with so much uncertainty regarding what amounts to a hostile takeover, the ones mining the takeover attempt are putting their investments at massive risk when sticking with core is a safe way to maintain a stable economy, with or without segwit.

It may be safe technically to stick with core, but not economically, since they have failed in their leadership to scale Bitcoin and even seem to be anti on-chain scaling. 

This is the reason that miners are starting to move away from them.  Those miners see the economic risk as an even greater threat.

[Nagadota]

See I don't think we will find out. Because with so much uncertainty regarding what amounts to a hostile takeover, the ones mining the takeover attempt are putting their investments at massive risk when sticking with core is a safe way to maintain a stable economy, with or without segwit.

It may be safe technically to stick with core, but not economically, since they have failed in their leadership to scale Bitcoin and even seem to be anti on-chain scaling. 

This is the reason that miners are starting to move away from them.  Those miners see the economic risk as an even greater threat.

Their leadership is only about whether or not they offer a good solution for people to follow.  If miners then decide that they don't want to join that solution, it's not Core's fault, nor is it a problem.

Economically, all that matters is whether the majority of the money in the Bitcoin network would feel confident when a certain solution went through.  These miners that you claim are moving to BU will barely be over 50% if/when BU is actually activated because it's only rising very slowly, and therefore a hard fork would be extremely messy and economically a bad thing.

[jonald_fyookball]

See I don't think we will find out. Because with so much uncertainty regarding what amounts to a hostile takeover, the ones mining the takeover attempt are putting their investments at massive risk when sticking with core is a safe way to maintain a stable economy, with or without segwit.

It may be safe technically to stick with core, but not economically, since they have failed in their leadership to scale Bitcoin and even seem to be anti on-chain scaling. 

This is the reason that miners are starting to move away from them.  Those miners see the economic risk as an even greater threat.

Their leadership is only about whether or not they offer a good solution for people to follow.  If miners then decide that they don't want to join that solution, it's not Core's fault, nor is it a problem.

I meant for their own cause, they failed... but you're right.

Economically, all that matters is whether the majority of the money in the Bitcoin network would feel confident when a certain solution went through.  These miners that you claim are moving to BU will barely be over 50% if/when BU is actually activated because it's only rising very slowly, and therefore a hard fork would be extremely messy and economically a bad thing.

I think they will wait for more than 51%.  Its not just "BU" but anything big block compatible, soon we will have a >1mb block and it will be a great day for Bitcoin.

[mindrust]

Great, 1% more and then they can fork off and see where the fork's support takes them...

I think miners are waiting for some more nodes to upgrade to new clients rather than forcing them/throwing them into confusion.

Point is, the battle is already won. Blockstream/SegWit miners can't survive on the minority chain. Not even for a day.

I think battle is already lost for BUer coin fanboys. BUer miners won't survive not even for a day without the community support. I mean, why mine if nobody's buying your product right?

I hope they have their fork right away and destroy themselves in a week. Farewell.

[jonald_fyookball]

Great, 1% more and then they can fork off and see where the fork's support takes them...

I think miners are waiting for some more nodes to upgrade to new clients rather than forcing them/throwing them into confusion.

Point is, the battle is already won. Blockstream/SegWit miners can't survive on the minority chain. Not even for a day.

I think battle is already lost for BUer coin fanboys. BUer miners won't survive not even for a day without the community support. I mean, why mine if nobody's buying your product right?

I hope they have your fork right away and destroy themselves in a week. Farewell.

Believe that if you want to.  But people have been calling for bigger blocks for years. 

[stompix]

Has anyone figured out how much transaction speed could increase (theoretically) with bigger blocks.

I still think its a bad idea to support any block size without knowing potential gains in terms of transaction speed.

One simple fact is bitcoin will never compete with credit cards or execute thousands of transactions per second no matter how much block size is increased.

Well, my transactions won't sit in the pool for an hour while blocks are added without it. That's been my problem. All transactions should be added to the next block but that can't happen with the current limit. So the gain is from an hour or more back to 10 minutes like it used to be.

By the time Bitcoin scales up to Visa, most Americans will have 500TB drives in their computer and downloading 4GB blocks won't be a big thing.

I tried recently to download the blockchain in a new client.

The download was no problem, the storage of course not (140 or so???)  but the stress on block checking on my hdd was enormous.
It kept my hdd at 100% for 3 days.

I doubt that in 2 or 3 years there would still be people who will have still have full blockchain client / node.

[Kprawn]

Jihan said "he will activate BU if it reaches 51%"
Is he really so desperate to achieve his centralized blockchain but if he activates it that would be bad for bitcoin and maybe it will turn all against him. If some miners change their minds again and those that is undecided chose Segwit instead, this is just complete chaos.

With what is he going to attack? The hash power he is using to throw his weight around in LiteCoin or the new ASIC's that are supposed to go to

his customers? This whole BU vs SegWit thing is getting absurd now and people are losing focus on what is most important for Bitcoin. We want

a decentralized and secure Blockchain and not a BugCoin with dodgy code and Bitcoin mining monopolies making ALL the decisions. What is

next... a attack on the Coin Cap?

[Jet Cash]

I think Unlimited will go to the Moon, and Bitcoin will stay as a down-to-earth stable system. Don't forget that the Moon needs the Earth to maintain its position in the Solar system.

[franky1]

With what is he going to attack? The hash power he is using to throw his weight around in LiteCoin or the new ASIC's that are supposed to go to

his customers? This whole BU vs SegWit thing is getting absurd now and people are losing focus on what is most important for Bitcoin. We want

a decentralized and secure Blockchain and not a BugCoin with dodgy code and Bitcoin mining monopolies making ALL the decisions. What is

next... a attack on the Coin Cap?

kprawn your using the reddit script buzzwords "bugcoin".
seems you cannot get passed the BU vs segwit debate.

now ask yourself
if every line of code was the same.. what if hearne invented segwit. would your emotions change

are u defending the code or the devs

secondly taking BU  for instance because you mentioned it.. you do realise the "bug" was a core 0.12 bug. and patched in core 0.13
BU patched it in their version. but people in core that knew the consequences of anyone using the core0.12 and so advertised that some people are still using the core 0.12 variant under the title BU. and actually listed how to attack it.

its worth doing research and less time with the reddit buzzwords.

there are many implementations that have different ways of allowing real onchain extra tx capacity.
with segwit. because its reliant on the baseblock and reliant on people using new keypairs, to allow partial data outside base block.  maths ans stats shows that only IF 100% of people use segwit keys the network would get ... guess what.. 7tx/s.. emphasis only with 100% certain key utility..  much like the 2009-2017 expectation that never becam a reality.. so even with segwit nothing is really changing capacity wise

yep a one time gesture tx capacity POSSIBILITY with many ifs and maybes. and no guarantee's.. where you cant re segwit a segwit and you are then reliant on waiting another couple years debate to try getting anything else.

the last year and a half have been a waste of time yet those in blockstream, including now recently recruited samson mow want to keep pushing half baked segwit right upto 2019.

core need a plan B
a single merkle proper network upgrade where the blocksize parameter/preference limit can be altered at runtime. so that users and pools are not waiting to be spoonfed by corporate devs.

[cryptoanarchist]

See I don't think we will find out. Because with so much uncertainty regarding what amounts to a hostile takeover, the ones mining the takeover attempt are putting their investments at massive risk when sticking with core is a safe way to maintain a stable economy, with or without segwit.

It may be safe technically to stick with core, but not economically, since they have failed in their leadership to scale Bitcoin and even seem to be anti on-chain scaling. 

This is the reason that miners are starting to move away from them.  Those miners see the economic risk as an even greater threat.

Their leadership is only about whether or not they offer a good solution for people to follow.  If miners then decide that they don't want to join that solution, it's not Core's fault, nor is it a problem.

Economically, all that matters is whether the majority of the money in the Bitcoin network would feel confident when a certain solution went through.  These miners that you claim are moving to BU will barely be over 50% if/when BU is actually activated because it's only rising very slowly, and therefore a hard fork would be extremely messy and economically a bad thing.

Maybe, for a little bit. I think that is why big block miners are waiting - because they are only getting more support and they are waiting to make it a smoother transition. The trend is in favor of big blocks and that isn't going to change.

However, if we wanted to be messy we could start mining big blocks now and destroy SegWit, and it would be a costly endeavor, but it would pay off in the end.

[minimalB]

Maybe, for a little bit. I think that is why big block miners are waiting - because they are only getting more support and they are waiting to make it a smoother transition. The trend is in favor of big blocks and that isn't going to change.

It's happening... and bitcoin will be stronger because of that longterm. Win-Win.