[2017-05-01]Maybe We Can All Get Along After All – Even in Bitcoin

[cmiaomiaoy]

Over the past year, the Bitcoin scaling debate has escalated to new levels. It seems no one can come to an agreement on the best path forward and people have resorted to attacks, slander, and rancorous disputes. Throughout the most recent hostility, a refreshing post on the subreddit r/bitcoin concerning a discussion on the r/btc forum suggests it is still possible we could all get along someday soon. 
The Block Size Debate in the Beginning

Maybe We Can All Get Along After All – Even in BitcoinMost people don’t realize the block size debate has been taking place since the year it was created. For years now, one small commit to the code in 2010 has caused significant hostility throughout the entire Bitcoin community.

“(nBlockSize + nTxSize >= MAX_BLOCK_SIZE – 10000)” was written into the bitcoin protocol by Satoshi Nakamoto in July of 2010. Some believe it was conceived to stop massive spam attacks throughout the network, while others think there is no need for the hard coded 1mb limitation. 

A few months after the 1mb commit, on October 3, 2010, Jeff Garzik revealed an idea for a patch to increase the block size limit. Garzik stated at the time, “we should be able to at least match Paypal’s average transaction rate.” The particular discussion that day was the first of many conversations concerning removing the 1mb limitation. Just three months after the block size limit was implemented the heated debate began.

The Dispute Rages On

Maybe We Can All Get Along After All – Even in BitcoinFast forward to today where scaling discussions seem more bitter, venomous, and literally, never ending. The dispute has been raging on for so long people have grown weary, jaded, and downright tired of the fighting. The infighting has gotten so bad that people have resorted to tactics of attacking members of the bitcoin industry and the censorship of people’s opinions.

Then there have been meetings between developers, businesses, and miners many times over the years resulting in broken promises. Egos have taken over, and the scaling conversation has spread into multiple discussions about subjects that have nothing to do with the matter. Furthermore, many bitcoin newcomers are seeing a hostile community and are probably dismayed by the nasty energy.

One Reddit Post Gives a Glimmer of Hope

Nevertheless, a Reddit thread on April 28 with hundreds of upvotes showed a discussion between two bitcoiners choosing to converse amicably even though they disagreed. Many people thought the post was important because it conveyed the message that ALL Bitcoin proponents can still move forward demonstrating better behavior. One comment from the thread explains the current infighting situation in a unique way;   

It’s funny how when you have a passionate belief in a fringe technology that almost no one in the general public shares with you and the people you hate most are the .00001% of the population that agrees with almost everything you believe in.
Better Ways to Approach the Scaling Discussion Because We All Want Bitcoin to Succeed

The best way Bitcoin proponents can move forward is with healthy discussions using logic and reason as opposed to irrational emotions. We should pay attention to other people’s opinions and respect that many people will have different ideas about scaling Bitcoin. Maybe some of us discussing the issue in an emotional manner need to take a step back, pause and get more grounded. There are many things all of us within the Bitcoin ‘community’ can do to better approach the discussion because we all want the same thing for Bitcoin.

We all want Bitcoin to be the most successful cryptocurrency on the face of the earth, but some have lost sight of the goal with all the drama. We bitcoiners have created a $21.7 billion dollar market and $1300 bitcoins because we all fought long and hard for the digital currency to succeed.

The bottom line is we all want the same thing, and some of us disagree on the best path for bitcoin. However, most Bitcoin proponents would agree, now more than ever, we should be civilized and move forward by using better communication skills and demonstrating debate without emotions.
https://news.bitcoin.com/maybe-we-can-all-get-along-after-all-even-in-bitcoin/

[Carlton Banks]

An emotionally charged appeal to stop using emotional arguments? Riiiiiiight


It's very simple, technically.

Even the current blockchain is pretty large as a database, 120 GB and growing at nearly 5 GB per month. It takes a long time to download (24 - 48 hours), and a longer time for a typical computer to validate ready for use.

Even changing the blocksize by x2 would seriously impact the widespread ability to download it new. Saying "you only have to download it once" doesn't observe reality properly, I've been using Bitcoin a long time now, and I've re-downloaded the whole 120 GB once recently, it was pretty inconvenient as I wanted to trade on exchanges at the exact time that my copy of the blockchain became corrupted, that's the real world.  



There are far better ways to improve Bitcoin's capacity, that are actual real scaling solutions (increasing the blocksize simply does not change the scale of the Bitcoin network, those that repeat this falsehood need a serious reality check)

• 2nd layers
• Improving transaction encoding efficiency

The latter can improve on-chain transaction capacity to somewhere between 350,000 and 425,000 transactions per day, still only using 1MB blocks. More could possibly be done to improve onchain efficiency, it just takes some more engineering innovation. And bear in mind that (when combined with Segwit's 4MB plain, non-scaling, blocksize increase), this equates to between 1,500,000 and 1,700,000 transactions per day, very high numbers by today's standards.

And the 2nd layer solutions change the dynamics completely, e.g. Lightning can allow for +100 million transactions per day, using the blockchain to validate transactions while only having to write the bare minimum of data to the blockchain (and simultaneously freeing up on-chain capacity enormously). And Lightning is not the only idea for 2nd layers on top of Bitcoin.


Smart solutions, where we use the blocksize we have much, much more efficiently, are the literal definition of what the word "scaling" actually means. The world will be able to handle bigger blocks, eventually. But now, or any time soon, is the wrong time to do it, Bitcoin needs a healthily increasing number of full-nodes to thrive and remain decentralised, this is vital to keeping the balance of power in Bitcoin as well rounded as possible. If we allow one contingent of control within Bitcoin to become too powerful, that faction could exert their control (to wit, the recent behaviour of the Bitmain mining corporation) and the experiment would be in danger of failing, that means no more price rises, and a leaner smarter competitor cryptocurrency outcompeting Bitcoin.

[Iranus]

The post is meaningless anyway.  Regardless of whether the discussions are "healthy discussion using logic" or "irrational emotions" (two things that are very hard to distinguish in reality) they're still not going to get anywhere.  Random people on there don't represent the hashrate, they're never going to change their opinions and mining pool leaders are even less likely to change their opinion.

[Carlton Banks]

Random people on there don't represent the hashrate, they're never going to change their opinions and mining pool leaders are even less likely to change their opinion.

Random people (or their total aggregation) do represent the Bitcoin economy. If the people participating in Bitcoin vouch for one direction or another, the miners have little choice but to follow the economic majority. And the ecomomic majority gets stronger in favour of Segwit and Bitcoin Core all the time, and has been the majority for months now. Currently 65% and rising support Segwit on the Bitcoin network, +80% supports Bitcoin Core.

[Iranus]

Random people on there don't represent the hashrate, they're never going to change their opinions and mining pool leaders are even less likely to change their opinion.

Random people (or their total aggregation) do represent the Bitcoin economy. If the people participating in Bitcoin vouch for one direction or another, the miners have little choice but to follow the economic majority. And the ecomomic majority gets stronger in favour of Segwit and Bitcoin Core all the time, and has been the majority for months now. Currently 65% and rising support Segwit on the Bitcoin network, +80% supports Bitcoin Core.

I get your point, but I suppose my phrasing was just poor rather than my point being wrong.

People on there arguing viciously are very, very rarely changing their opinions, so the chance of their discussions actually resulting in a change of sentiment for the economic majority is unlikely (except for newbies who contribute to a side).  Furthermore, the amount of actually money being behind the people talking on there isn't going to be even close to the majority and a lot of whales won't be on there.

People have broadly been in favour of Core (and to a lesser extent SegWit) for a while but it hasn't influenced the miners yet.  It's alright though, if they fork then the split coin will just fail.

[freebutcaged]

Decentralized when it is chaos will emerge, I don't know if anyone ever thought about the reason for governments and central authorities to be established in the first place? you don't need people running full nodes, who cares let miners download 1TB of data every month, they could either share their revenues with those people accepting to run full nodes or they can do it themselves, you guys want to have a complete decentralized multi-national banking system and yet want the average users to operate such huge central bank like in their home computers?

Can't we have only a part of the whole blockchain data in our nodes and by using code then 1000 nodes together combined make up a full blockchain node?

Like; 10 nodes contain the first 1GB data in blockchain, though 10 nodes have that same 1GB of data and the next 10 nodes have the next 1GB of data and so on, then all other nodes just download the last 1GB every time a new node joins the network and the distribution of data to nodes should either be random or enforced by the code. that way you'll be having 10k nodes acting practically as a full node and the rest of the world looks up to this giant full node and sees they have the entire blockchain and accepts their data.

Of course we'll never reach that goal of every person should be able to run a full node and validates every thing for himself, wtf every person can't handle the data base of a huge central bank(blockchain).

[Carlton Banks]

You're wrong freebutcaged, everyone can run their own node, if you design the software as smart as can be.


And it's the best way: a not-central bank (where are you getting the idea that everyone running their own node is just 1 big central bank )


Doing what you're suggesting (miners are the only full nodes) gives too much power to the miners to change the Bitcoin software to whatever they like, that's a part of what all this Bitmain controversy is all about. And re: downloading only part of the blockchain, that's been in Bitcoin Core since version 11, since over 18 months ago

[Gilf]

You're wrong freebutcaged, everyone can run their own node, if you design the software as smart as can be.


And it's the best way: a not-central bank (where are you getting the idea that everyone running their own node is just 1 big central bank )


Doing what you're suggesting (miners are the only full nodes) gives too much power to the miners to change the Bitcoin software to whatever they like, that's a part of what all this Bitmain controversy is all about. And re: downloading only part of the blockchain, that's been in Bitcoin Core since version 11, since over 18 months ago

Why then on many Bitcoin forms some users agitate others in order to create Bitcoin Bank. Really it will be Another scam in the field of crypto currency, although I apologize maybe I did not fully understand what is being said.

[Carlton Banks]

I don't even understand what you're saying, it's not a popular topic on this forum

[classicsucks]

Stahp with the blockchain size FUDing Carlton.

Pruning has been available for nodes for quite some time now. You may need to download the whole chain once, but you only need to store as little as 6GB, including daemon executables.

Besides, Segwit only increases the storage requirements for nodes. The total of the witness and block data becomes larger.

And, has anyone solved the "Anyone can spend" issue of Segwit transactions?

Litecoin is stagnating and waiting to dump after Segwit adopts on it.

[Carlton Banks]

Pruning has been available for nodes for quite some time now. You may need to download the whole chain once, but you only need to store as little as 6GB, including daemon executables.

Yep, and if your disk gets corrupted or damaged or whatever, you still need to download the whole thing again to get back to as little as 6 GB (it's less than that actually, but whatever). You're backing the irresponsible idea that the 125 GB needed, even for a pruned node, should start growing at 8 or 16 times the current rate. We could have a 1 terabyte blockchain  by the end of the year, and that would seriously hurt the number of people willing to download such a huge database, despite the benefits it brings. But the miners can just run Bitcoin all on their own, right?

Besides, Segwit only increases the storage requirements for nodes. The total of the witness and block data becomes larger.

Yep, and I'm on record saying I'd prefer less than 4MB blocks with Segwit, but hey, here we are, accepting the compromise between Big Blocks and actual scaling paradigms. Oh no, wait, you just keep saying over and over again that miners should be given the right to force whatever blocksize they like on people, huh? My bad

And, has anyone solved the "Anyone can spend" issue of Segwit transactions?

Litecoin is stagnating and waiting to dump after Segwit adopts on it.

Has anyone solved the "anyone can spend" issue for the 10 or so other soft forks that are already activated on the Bitcoin network since months and months ago?

"anyone can spend" _is_ the soft forking mechanism, trying to twist things so that it's some kind of problem only demonstrates how desperate you all are, you know full well that nodes will reject someone trying to spend BTC that's not theirs, as ANYONE_CAN_SPEND is just the backwards compatibility logic that allows pre-Segwit nodes to "understand" Segwit transactions without actually needing to understand them at all.

Your FUD is pure comedy, big dicks blocks propagandist in chief Gavin Andersen couldn't even try that one with a straight face

[classicsucks]

Pruning has been available for nodes for quite some time now. You may need to download the whole chain once, but you only need to store as little as 6GB, including daemon executables.

Yep, and if your disk gets corrupted or damaged or whatever, you still need to download the whole thing again to get back to as little as 6 GB (it's less than that actually, but whatever). You're backing the irresponsible idea that the 125 GB needed, even for a pruned node, should start growing at 8 or 16 times the current rate. We could have a 1 terabyte blockchain  by the end of the year, and that would seriously hurt the number of people willing to download such a huge database, despite the benefits it brings. But the miners can just run Bitcoin all on their own, right?

You're looking for problems to solve with Segfart. And FUDing a few people with this disk size issue. If anything, the network is constrained by bandwidth and throughput (and did I mention ARTIFICIAL BLOCKSIZE CAPS), storage is the easiest problem to solve, if/when it happens.

Who said anything about increasing the blocksize 8 to 16 times? I guess you mean Unlimited. I support 2MB hard fork or nothing. I only run Unlimited to show my disdain for Segwit. It's such a hacked up bit of code.

And say you did have to download 1 TB every once in awhile, Even the cheapest VPS will give you 1-5TB of data transfer per month.

[Carlton Banks]

VPS is hardly running your own node, that's someone else's hardware running it for you


Explain "hacked up code". It's a bit of a vague criticism, I notice the developers (who evidently understand coding) don't share your claim

[Sierra82fit]

Pruning has been available for nodes for quite some time now. You may need to download the whole chain once, but you only need to store as little as 6GB, including daemon executables.

Yep, and if your disk gets corrupted or damaged or whatever, you still need to download the whole thing again to get back to as little as 6 GB (it's less than that actually, but whatever). You're backing the irresponsible idea that the 125 GB needed, even for a pruned node, should start growing at 8 or 16 times the current rate. We could have a 1 terabyte blockchain  by the end of the year, and that would seriously hurt the number of people willing to download such a huge database, despite the benefits it brings. But the miners can just run Bitcoin all on their own, right?

You're looking for problems to solve with Segfart. And FUDing a few people with this disk size issue. If anything, the network is constrained by bandwidth and throughput (and did I mention ARTIFICIAL BLOCKSIZE CAPS), storage is the easiest problem to solve, if/when it happens.

Who said anything about increasing the blocksize 8 to 16 times? I guess you mean Unlimited. I support 2MB hard fork or nothing. I only run Unlimited to show my disdain for Segwit. It's such a hacked up bit of code.

And say you did have to download 1 TB every once in awhile, Even the cheapest VPS will give you 1-5TB of data transfer per month.

Already somewhere there was information that the Chinese are working on increasing the block more than 2 megabytes. You want, in the opinion of experts, this will not be a rational approach to solving the problem.

[classicsucks]

Pruning has been available for nodes for quite some time now. You may need to download the whole chain once, but you only need to store as little as 6GB, including daemon executables.

Yep, and if your disk gets corrupted or damaged or whatever, you still need to download the whole thing again to get back to as little as 6 GB (it's less than that actually, but whatever). You're backing the irresponsible idea that the 125 GB needed, even for a pruned node, should start growing at 8 or 16 times the current rate. We could have a 1 terabyte blockchain  by the end of the year, and that would seriously hurt the number of people willing to download such a huge database, despite the benefits it brings. But the miners can just run Bitcoin all on their own, right?

You're looking for problems to solve with Segfart. And FUDing a few people with this disk size issue. If anything, the network is constrained by bandwidth and throughput (and did I mention ARTIFICIAL BLOCKSIZE CAPS), storage is the easiest problem to solve, if/when it happens.

Who said anything about increasing the blocksize 8 to 16 times? I guess you mean Unlimited. I support 2MB hard fork or nothing. I only run Unlimited to show my disdain for Segwit. It's such a hacked up bit of code.

And say you did have to download 1 TB every once in awhile, Even the cheapest VPS will give you 1-5TB of data transfer per month.

Already somewhere there was information that the Chinese are working on increasing the block more than 2 megabytes. You want, in the opinion of experts, this will not be a rational approach to solving the problem.

So you're saying that doing nothing for 3 years and then trying to extort people onto a second-layer solution WAS a "rational approach"?

And you're tacitly assuming that imposing the blocksize limit was also a rational approach?

It might be time for you to do some reading, rather than just posting talking points from the Core FAQs...

[Carlton Banks]

classicsucks, why can't you tell us something, instead of just sending all this scatter-gun of whining all over the place like an incontinent baby after a chicken vindaloo?

It's because that's all you've got, isn't it

[classicsucks]

classicsucks, why can't you tell us something, instead of just sending all this scatter-gun of whining all over the place like an incontinent baby after a chicken vindaloo?

It's because that's all you've got, isn't it

LOL SIgh. Yes, Carlton, all I've got is a "scatter-gun of whining all over the place like an incontinent baby after a chicken vindaloo". Now drink your milk and go to bed, the adults talking shouldn't keep you from going right to sleep and having some nice dreams. If your tummy hurts in the middle of the night, just repeat those things you always say to yourself every night over and over, "Core is gospel, core is gospel."

[Bit_Happy]

Maybe?
Maybe We Can All Get Along After All



Welcome Unicoin!
No delays, no large downloads, just a lot of fun and money for everyone. 

[PowerWalletDotCom]

classicsucks, why can't you tell us something, instead of just sending all this scatter-gun of whining all over the place like an incontinent baby after a chicken vindaloo?

It's because that's all you've got, isn't it

LOL SIgh. Yes, Carlton, all I've got is a "scatter-gun of whining all over the place like an incontinent baby after a chicken vindaloo". Now drink your milk and go to bed, the adults talking shouldn't keep you from going right to sleep and having some nice dreams. If your tummy hurts in the middle of the night, just repeat those things you always say to yourself every night over and over, "Core is gospel, core is gospel."

Well you people when there is something to think up to solve all the problems. "And do you think that this will help?