The Blocksize Debate & Concerns

[yayayo]

I always enjoy reading your comments, jonald_fyookbool.  Please consider coming over to https://bitco.in/forum/ once and a while!

Why only once and a while? I have no objection with Jonald spending all of his time within the bigblock-altcoin development community.

Bitcoin Core developers made Hearn, Andresen, and Peter R. look like schoolboys by designing and implementing a truly innovative, secure, and decentralization preserving way to scale Bitcoin. The FUD-campaign led by XT/ClassicCoin shills has totally failed - it was proven wrong by reality. The fancy extrapolation graphics circulated as propaganda for the simpleminded were not effective in pressuring Bitcoin Core developers to implement a fast route to government control of transactions.

None of the guys involved in the XT/ClassicCoin schemes are being taken serious anymore, with Gavin Andresen giving a prime example of his outright dangerous incompetence by lending credibility to alleged serial scammer Craig Wright.

ya.ya.yo!

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[jonald_fyookball]

What if the blocksize limit were chosen by each node individually?
 

I believe that is what bitcoin unlimited attempts to do.  

I don't know the particulars but generally I like the idea
that the blocksize be decided dynamically by consensus not
by protocol rules.

[jonald_fyookball]

I always enjoy reading your comments, jonald_fyookbool.  Please consider coming over to https://bitco.in/forum/ once and a while!

Why only once and a while? I have no objection with Jonald spending all of his time within the bigblock-altcoin development community.

Bitcoin Core developers made Hearn, Andresen, and Peter R. look like schoolboys by designing and implementing a truly innovative, secure, and decentralization preserving way to scale Bitcoin. The FUD-campaign led by XT/ClassicCoin shills has totally failed - it was proven wrong by reality. The fancy extrapolation graphics circulated as propaganda for the simpleminded were not effective in pressuring Bitcoin Core developers to implement a fast route to government control of transactions.

None of the guys involved in the XT/ClassicCoin schemes are being taken serious anymore, with Gavin Andresen giving a prime example of his outright dangerous incompetence by lending credibility to alleged serial scammer Craig Wright.

ya.ya.yo!

AFAIK the only thing implemented so far is segwit... which only (temporarily) avoids a hardfork, and still increases bandwidth, which is the supposed boogieman of "government control".

[franky1]

What if the blocksize limit were chosen by each node individually?
 

I believe that is what bitcoin unlimited attempts to do.  

I don't know the particulars but generally I like the idea
that the blocksize be decided dynamically by consensus not
by protocol rules.

bitcoin unlimited does. but the guy "RealBitcoin" is suggesting people LOWER their own block limit below any community accepted consensus purely to alleviate that individuals personal internet speed issues. which would ofcourse render that individual not part of the network(amungst other issues).

however the internet speed issue can be resolved by not being stupid and setting your node to connect to 100 other nodes. but instead 1-6 nodes for instance, which even on a slow connection is adequate.

[hv_]

summary of mindsets

blockstream: "we need to get to a capacity that competes against Visa, they do thousands of transactions a second but they settle in days, bitcoin needs to do the same but in 10 minutes"
community: "so you want to invent LN which settles every.. umm...week, month, never? hmmmm"

blockstream: "we need to fix malleability so people can trust zero confirms"
community: "so you invent RBF to make zero confirm untrustable again"

blockstream: "hardforks are bad because everyone has to move over on day 0"
community: "some people already run implementations with higher limits. after all its a 0byte->Xmb rule change, not a exceed 1mb+ at all costs rule. so people can run, test, bugfix the higher limit implementations even now, giving plenty of time. also softforks require pools to upgrade too before it activates. so its literally the same boat.."

blockstream: "we dont want to dilute the node count with bigger blocks"
community: "segwit also increases the data for nodes. infact there is evidence of 2.8mb blocks.. not only that but segwit introduces pruned no witness mode which will definitely dilute the node count"

blockstream: "a hard fork wants to be 8gb blocks next year, run everyone the world will end if that is allowed"
community: "2mb is an acceptable amount of data and it took alot of 2015 for lots of people to drown out the doomsdays to find a number the majority were happy with. and it will grow NATURALLY as technology and ability grows(slowly). there is no end of days meteor incoming in the next year"

blockstream: "anything not blockstream is an altcoin"
community: "anything connecting to the network of the bitcoin genesis block and 7 years of bitcoin data is not an altcoin"

great post Franky.

Yes
Should be repeated every day now!

[Lauda]

I see, the pesky block format is the issue in my opinion. Because it's standardized. If the transactions were each put arbitrarly in blocks, it would be enough to just verify their hashes to see that they are original,and then there would be no need for the block format.
It would be a very big deviation from the protocol , but it would be interesting to see an altcoin try this.

Well, we can't really state that Bitcoin is very well designed. I'm certain that the developers who are working on it currently, would do a lot of things differently if they could. The only 'good' thing about altcoins is that they can be used to test out some 'difficult' ideas. I don't think that we are going to see such radical re-design (what are the limitations of a HF?), so there's not much 'point' in discussing it in, at least not in this thread. I do wonder if they can get RC1 released before the halving (even though Segwit still has no activation parameters). However, rushing is usually not the right thing to do.

AFAIK the only thing implemented so far is segwit... which only (temporarily) avoids a hardfork, and still increases bandwidth, which is the supposed boogieman of "government control".

Compact blocks aim to improve bandwidth requirements, i.e. lower them. Additionally, have we already forgotten all the excellent upgrades that they've delivered (e.g. libsecp256k1)?

[AliceGored]

Well, we can't really state that Bitcoin is very well designed. I'm certain that the developers who are working on it currently, would do a lot of things differently if they could.

Created sick, and commanded to be sound.

The only 'good' thing about altcoins is that they can be used to test out some 'difficult' ideas.

Segwit on Litecoin first: 2016!

I don't think that we are going to see such radical re-design (what are the limitations of a HF?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omphaloskepsis

so there's not much 'point' in discussing it in, at least not in this thread.

Agreed

I do wonder if they can get RC1 released before the halving (even though Segwit still has no activation parameters). However, rushing is usually not the right thing to do.

No, and yes, that is the storyline. The simple solution sits in the wheelhouse (or was it bikeshed?). While the complex one, is rushed along. 

[Lauda]

Segwit on Litecoin first: 2016!

It's both interesting and sad how nobody ('forkers') mentioned this before Segwit was actually delivered. You're the ones that want to postpone it now and are going to blame Core later for "delaying" a capacity increase. I'm sure of it.

No, and yes, that is the storyline. The simple solution sits in the wheelhouse (or was it bikeshed?). While the complex one, is rushed along. 

While the change in the block size limit might seem simple, a hard fork is definitely anything but simple. Additionally, you can see that 2 MB is unsafe without those additional (new) artificial limits added by Gavin. I also don't feel like Segwit is being rushed at all. It's been worked on since 2015 and tested for several months.

[RealBitcoin]

It's both interesting and sad how nobody ('forkers') mentioned this before Segwit was actually delivered. You're the ones that want to postpone it now and are going to blame Core later for "delaying" a capacity increase. I'm sure of it.

To tell you the truth i dont really like the Segwit and the "hacks" that bitcoin BIPS represent.

However I also dont want to turn bitcoin into a political scene, where you have each group representing their own interests and trying to impose their own hardforks on everyone else.

It is clear that bitcoin needs a separation of powers, and that is why the hardforks should be an unthinkable option. There mere fact that people just mention it, proves that humans have learned nothing from the politics of the past 5000 years.


You will have:

SocialistBTC
LiberalBTC
ConservativeBTC
MarxBTC

Folks do we really need that shit?

[franky1]

the question is not about 2 directions constantly running.. its about taking a certain route and everyone following.
because consensus is about making a choice and going for that single route
we wont have a point where there are 2,3,4 different chains all with the 7 year of bitcoin data and satoshis genesis block all working at the same time forever

again, if you think that 2 forks will survive then you have been fed too much of the blockstream rhetoric

the miners and merchants and users would eventually choose one. and the other would just disappear into orphans and eventually no one would build on that chain..

put it this way. if 95% of mining pools upgraded to segwit tomorrow. then within 2 weeks EVERYONE would/SHOULD upgrade too otherwise they are no longer full nodes..(yes users not upgrading is diluting the node count of FULL VALIDATING NODES which has its own risks)

so knowing everyone could/should upgrade to remain full validation nodes. it might aswell include the extra buffer in that same update too
and then at a later date miners can decide when its safe for them to include data above the old limit.

emphasis: releasing the code does not cause a fork. only miners making bigger blocks when the community are not ready is the risk of a fork..which wont happen due to orphans costing the miners money.
so the simple solution is release the code and there wont be a risk

again simply preventing the code even being publicly available to core fanboys is the cause of controversy. not miners, not merchants.. not users.. just devs causing controversy by limiting choice.
if the code was available. people could move across.. then there wont be any orphans or issues because miners would only push passed the old limits when they dont see it as a orphan risk. and that would only happen if the devs got their heads out of the sand

[franky1]

You're the ones that want to postpone it now and are going to blame Core later for "delaying" a capacity increase. I'm sure of it.

oh lauda.. your switching..
one day segwit is the ultimate and only capacity solution
next day segwit is not the capacity solution its designed to solve other features that are made pointless to solve (malleability vs RBF)
next day it has capacity increases as a side effect
next day segwit is not intended to be a capacity increase solution.

seriously.. stop overselling segwit to fit one rhetoric and then underselling it to pretend you have not dedicated your last 6 months of life to pushing for segwit as a ultimate capacity solution.

[groll]

Hello, I've been in bitcoin for 3+ years now and I would like to share my intellectual opinion about big blocks for bitcoin (2mb ,8mb ,etc) , the Bitcoin Hardfork, and about bitcoin in general and what are the concerns we need to watch out for.

Now there have been many shills, from both sides, so to just clear that out, so I want rational arguments pro/contra big blocks and hardforking bitcoin. I am personally anti-hardfork and therefore anti-big blocks, and I will demonstrate here why it is the best choice in my opinion. So stop shilling, and let's start debating this like civilized adults. I`ll present here my arguments and then you guys can respond to it. The thread will not be moderated so that I should not be accused as a shill. But I hope troll posts or low intellect posts (usually 1 liners) will be removed by forum moderators. Aso remember these are only my opinions from the knowledge I have so if I'm wrong, feel free to correct me, I`m open to criticism!



1) The sacred Bitcoin Protocol

The bitcoin protocol is like a constitution, once you start making changes in it, you will pretty much find yourself in financial tyranny, abuse of power and corruption pretty soon. Whenever things can be changed easily, they will. If there is no resistance to change, they will always happen. Therefore if the bitcoin protocol gets changed only by a small amount, some people will abuse that opportunity, and gradually add more changes, until bitcoin goes off it's original mission, and becomes centralized. Weather that be some sort of filter/blacklist/censoring system, or some sort of other oppressive patch installed into bitcoin. And then bitcoin will fail.

Of course like any constitution, changes have to happen eventually. You can't have the barbarian constitutions of the middle ages rule modern society, even if in the middle ages that was the sacred norm. Changes have to happen eventually, it is inevitable, but it has to be natural, well thought of, and based on real evidence and many many testing.

So in my opinion any change should be at least 1 generational. You don't want to change bitcoin too fast, when it's not even adopted yet by many people. Industry and tech changes too fast nowadays, but you have to slow down so that the clients can catch up. Hard fork is definitely not necessary right now (nor I think it will be in the foreseeable future), because I fear the community is still too young and prone to manipulation, therefore using this 'ring of power' is not an option.


2) Segwit

Segwit is good and necessary to fix fungibility and malleability. As a side-effect, it grows the block capacity as well. It is a temporary solution in terms of scaling the block capacity, because that is not it's goal. It's goal was only to fix malleability, which it probably will to some degree.


3) Sidechains + Lightning Network

This is the path of scaling the Core team choose. And I think it's a very elegant, decentralized approach to scaling. It is one way of doing it, and it's the most easy, immediate and fair way of doing it. Not to mention it's the most secure.

It's not a giant blob of code like ETH+ smart contracts, it's actually isolated from the bitcoin protocol. Security is only good if 1 sector is isolated from another. Think of it as a submarine, if the compartments are not isolated, then if it's breached, the water will sink the entire sub.

From transaction perspective, it can scale bitcoin really bigtime, while adding little or no centralization to the approach. Other 'classical' way would be to add an intermediary to issue IOU bitcoins that could be traded offchain. Well we know that is not an option for decentralization, so the LN is really cutting edge innovation, with little nor no centralization costs to the community.

The transactions will be instant, decentralized or semi-decentralized if you don't host the node, and would be the optimal choice given the current circumstances.

Therefore it is good to have this elegant, secure, and innovative approach to scaling. It also enables new features to bitcoin, that can be used to expand business, economy and other functions.

It is truly a piece of software art, truly crafted by the smartest people on the planet.


4) Urgent Hardfork

Well if the hardfork is really a 100% urgency like if ECDSA gets broken, then it's an urgency, and unfortunately it will have to be implemented. People will not like it, but it will be a true emergency so they will have no choice. However the probability of this is very low.

The more worrysome would be, once the devs have tasted the power of hardfork, then what? What classifies as an urgency? Can they just roll out hardfork every week when an 'urgency' becomes available? We go back to point 1), and how if things get too crazy, it can end bitcoin.

These have to be answered, and the community should always be skeptical.


5) Quantum Computers

I hear this argument many times, and it's mostly fearmongering. What if quantum computers become reality they can break bitcoin...?

Well I personally don't believe in large scale quantum computers, I think they won't ever exist, and there is plenty of evidence that supports this. Yes some laboratory theoretical computers might exist, but there are hard limits of thermodynamics that prevent the existence of large ones.

It's the same nonsense like the free energy advocates that think there is some hidden energy source, when 7th grade physics demonstrates you otherwise.

However classic computers might become one day powerful enough to find some exploit in the crypto algorithms (because brute forcing is obviously nearly-impossible).

And for that we shall react as in point 4). But not sooner than that. Bitcoin doesn't need 'what will happen if' type of patches. Bitcoin doesn't need insurance against alien invasion, we can deal with it, when the threat becomes sizeable.


6) Corruptible miners

What if the miners become untrustworthy? Low probability again, or it will be temporary. Game theory proves us that people working for incentives won't do things that will undermine the incentives. Or in other words people don't bit the hand that feeds them. If miners become shady then either they will run out of money before they can do too much evil, or they will become replaced by the honest ones, that would gain more money from mining honestly. Not to mention if they really piss off the community, everyone will just sell their coins and the mining business, as well as bitcoin will be over. If they implement capital controls to slow down the dumping, then the price will crash to 0 because nobody can buy, just as nobody can sell. Etc.. with many more theoretical attacks, but all end in disaster for the attacker.  So a miner betrayal would only be temporary at best.


7) Corruptible devs

So far we have had very honest reputable developers. What if that changes and we get replaced by corrupt ones?

Well it's like the saying goes, what you reap is what you sow. If the bitcoin community is comprised of programmers , IT experts and PC experts, then you will always find the best ones amongst them that can work on the code. If the bitcoin community will be comprised of morons, then bitcoin will end long before that.

So it's more important to keep the community healthy, because the community will supply the developers and bitcoin experts.

Also the bitcoin developers are decentralized, even if the Core team has control over the github depository, everyone can host bitcoin's source code on his server and work on the code.

The enforcing mechanism in bitcoin is the miners ,and I've explained in point 6) why miners are not prone to betrayal. So the devs incentive is to show his talent, get fame, get donations, and get careers. The miners enforce the rules, while the community decides weather they like it or not.

So if a dev becomes corrupt, he will achieve little, but will lose everything , especially his reputation.


8﴿ Corruptible community

Devs might be corrupt, miners might be, but all of them would be temporary issues. What if the community becomes corrupt?

Yes this is one of the most concerning factors, if the old guard leaves or gets bored of bitcoin, and we get replaced by 80 IQ morons , illiterate people, or just simply opportunists that dont care about bitcoin only want quick profit, then what?

Well this is one of the biggest and most realistic threats to bitcoin. If the community is dumb, it can be manipulated, and divided to be controlled. Everyone will just control the community by their own incentives and whoever can fool the most people will have control over bitcoin. It is a scary possibility.

My opinion would be a moderate adoption, with many tutorials for newbies, as teaching newbies about bitcoin and it's values. People need to feel home in bitcoin and appreciate it's qualities.

Also the old guard should never leave, if they do they are pussies, and whatever happens to bitcoin will be partially their fault. So people should educate newbies and teach them why bitcoin is the way to go.

9) Hardfork not fair for long term savers

Most bitcoin old guard, as well as new investors, want to save bitcoin for long term, usually in a secure wallet. If you roll out hard fork every year, then they will always have to uppgrade their wallets and work with sensitive information, that would expose them to unnecessary risk.

If they don't they can lose their money. What if they are not announced? What if they don't keep up with bitcoin news? You can't just push changes so fast because people will lose confidence in bitcoin's long term future.

If a person wants to put away for his kid's 18th birthday, and forget about that wallet for many years (but keep the private keys backed up and secure), he doesn't want to always be updated with all fixes and patches.

Even other softwares usually have support for 1 version of their software for many years, so why can't bitcoin be the same? It is, and that is how should it be!

So the SET & FORGET approach that most people feel comfortable with, will be violated, and it will upset many bitcoin whales.

10) Hardfork risks the entire network

Currently only 37% of the network runs the latest software, which is good, because if a bug gets discovered the other 67% will act as a backbone.

If you want to force a hardfork then everyone has to uppgrade before the grace period runs out, therefore all the network will have the same version. If a bug or malware gets discovered in the hardforked client, then the entire bitcoin network will be destroyed.

Therefore hardforks are ultra vulnerable to 0 day bugs (or undiscovered bugs). Decentralization should mean that you cannot be 100% confident of the developers, because we are all humans and we make mistakes, so even if the devs have checked the code many many times, you can still not risk the network, because  0 day bugs are very frequent, even in huge projects ( *cought* Ethereum *cought*)

I am not really familiar with your post and the topics but there is one thing that I have alittle knowledge and I want to share it, its about quantum computers. Quantum computers are to build by NSA, this type of computers can crack into most types of encryption. A quantum computer could (in theory) perform millions of calculations all at once. If tis being used for the benefit of bitcoins then it will give blockchain more power for faster transfer and transactions. Hope it has positive impact on bitcoins since we do not know what is the reason behind why NSA are trying to build such computer.

[hv_]

Look at this. i d support that one

https://medium.com/@solex1/time-for-bitcoin-1-x-17b54eed2c4a#.q7x1x44r0

[DooMAD]

Maintaining security and Bitcoin’s long-term store of value is achieved by ensuring that miners receive available transaction fees for the confirmations they make, as opposed to off-chain solutions where miners will see a vast slice of their fee revenue siphoned away to 3rd-party service providers.

Yep, this argument has been frequently put forward before, but it never seems to sink in.  I can't seem to quote two of them normally as the thread is now locked, but:

It (lightning) will certainly help with scaling in the short term, but over longer periods, the real question becomes what percentage of transaction fees are skimmed off the top and don't end up going to the miners securing the main chain?  It could potentially hit miners hard later down the line if we don't strike the balance right.  Too much traffic on the main chain is bad, but too much off-chain could be equally precarious.

So yeah, you're right in that it (liquid) helps increase liquidity, but at the same time, it's allowing exchanges to move large volumes of funds around while minimising contact with the main chain.  Your vision of the future is that traditional financial institutions and big business will settle on the main chain and pay big fees to miners, but if they see exchanges doing it off-chain and still maintaining a high level of security whilst paying less in the process, why wouldn't other industries follow suit in a similar manner?

Would be somewhat ironic if most big businesses jumped on sidechains and you had to start begging people to put their cups of coffee on the blockchain just so the miners get a bit of income. 

Future growth will happen on layer 2 services in exchanges and third party services who will charge fees. these service fees will bypass miners and as the Bitcoin security subsidy halves every 4 years we know miners will get less and less revenue.

Absolutely.  I've argued before that the smallblock militants suck at math and logic and I'm still yet to hear a counter argument from them that makes a shred of sense.  Either we get more users paying fees to the miners, or the fees have to rise.  Diverting fees to third parties makes it even worse.

We can't put all our eggs in the off-chain basket.  There will be consequences if miners don't see sufficient ROI.

[hv_]

Maintaining security and Bitcoin’s long-term store of value is achieved by ensuring that miners receive available transaction fees for the confirmations they make, as opposed to off-chain solutions where miners will see a vast slice of their fee revenue siphoned away to 3rd-party service providers.

Yep, this argument has been frequently put forward before, but it never seems to sink in.  I can't seem to quote two of them normally as the thread is now locked, but:

It (lightning) will certainly help with scaling in the short term, but over longer periods, the real question becomes what percentage of transaction fees are skimmed off the top and don't end up going to the miners securing the main chain?  It could potentially hit miners hard later down the line if we don't strike the balance right.  Too much traffic on the main chain is bad, but too much off-chain could be equally precarious.

So yeah, you're right in that it (liquid) helps increase liquidity, but at the same time, it's allowing exchanges to move large volumes of funds around while minimising contact with the main chain.  Your vision of the future is that traditional financial institutions and big business will settle on the main chain and pay big fees to miners, but if they see exchanges doing it off-chain and still maintaining a high level of security whilst paying less in the process, why wouldn't other industries follow suit in a similar manner?

Would be somewhat ironic if most big businesses jumped on sidechains and you had to start begging people to put their cups of coffee on the blockchain just so the miners get a bit of income.  

Future growth will happen on layer 2 services in exchanges and third party services who will charge fees. these service fees will bypass miners and as the Bitcoin security subsidy halves every 4 years we know miners will get less and less revenue.

Absolutely.  I've argued before that the smallblock militants suck at math and logic and I'm still yet to hear a counter argument from them that makes a shred of sense.  Either we get more users paying fees to the miners, or the fees have to rise.  Diverting fees to third parties makes it even worse.

We can't put all our eggs in the off-chain basket.  There will be consequences if miners don't see sufficient ROI.

In a really open system, where there is no limits - except the 21Mio - it would be all up to the game theory and on + off chain scaling projects and groups would deliver a very nice solution in a fair competition.
What we now have is still BSLaudations....
Once the Chinese will understand this soon, they could / should open up the system by own codings.

[Cuidler]

We can't put all our eggs in the off-chain basket.  There will be consequences if miners don't see sufficient ROI.

The quotes you used are correct, any fees taken away from miners going to have consequence in reduced Bitcoin security especially in future when fees become much more important and going to represent higher % of miners income than today.

Any fees paid in offline solutions are fees which miners wont get anymore. Thats why its very dangerous precedent to try limit the blocksize so no more fee paying transactions can be included even though current technology easily support slightly bigger blocks for more transaction fees to collect, and miners understand this.