what is the solution to traffic congestion on the bitcoin network?

[Z-tight]

I don't understand much about codes but is that really possible? Segregate the possible spammers and prioritize the unique transactions? Example: I do everyday transactions and trying to get a cheaper deal by just using the 24sat/byte, the economic one. Will the code that you prefer will see that it is a unique transaction and should be on the priority list instead?

I don't know what the code that they talked about is, and how it would stop people from spamming the BTC blockchain, but what i do know is that segregation works in centralized systems, BTC is censorship resistant, so miners cannot censor or segregate transactions that they are going to mine or confirm. To the best of my knowledge transactions are prioritized based on the transaction fees the user pays, the congestion of the mempool and the MB space available in the block. By the way, the mempool has already cooled off, and i think the developers and maintainers allowed it to cool off organically because implemetations to solve it may have led to censoring or forks, which the network does not need right now.

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[kryptqnick]

Aside from off-chain solutions, I really think a reasonable solution is to simply wait. If a person needs to send a lot of money, the fees won't seem that high. If it's a smaller thing, there's a good chance it can wait for some time when the fees improve. I waited out the high fee period and made my first transaction a couple of days ago, paying aroung $5 worth of BTC. It's not ideal, but not very high either.
Also, many people use Bitcoin as an investment rather than a currency, which in that case doesn't need to be regularly moved from one address to another.

[floridaman86]

For now, Lightning Network helps tremendously. What needs to be done is that more people use SwgWit addresses and LN whenever possible. More people mining wouldn’t help. It just decreases block time for a while until the difficulty is readjusted. Bigger blocks? Ask BCH how that’s going for them. Bitcoin’s currently in the best form.

Can you explain to me how and why difficulty is adjusted? Who is the one adjusting it? Does the network automatically do this?
Why not just keep the difficulty easier? Wouldn't that keep the congestion down?

[Questat]

Recently fees skyrocketed on the bitcoin network. If we ever want to have bitcoin be more than a meme investment, and to be an actual currency, fees need to be low, and transaction times need to be faster.

What is the solution? More people need to mine? Bigger blocks? Blocks generated more often?

I feel your sentiment mate and I believe that most of us are also complaining a huge fees in the past few days which it takes 2-3 weeks before it drops. But I would say also that situation is not always happening in the market, it just happens due to some reason and gladly it was done already.
Those who are accepting and using Bitcoin as a payment option can really be disappointed and possibly not be using this one at that time. But now, business seems back to normal and transaction fee is low.

[Z-tight]

Can you explain to me how and why difficulty is adjusted? Who is the one adjusting it? Does the network automatically do this?
Why not just keep the difficulty easier? Wouldn't that keep the congestion down?

Adjusting the mining difficulty is an automated process, it is set in the BTC protocol. The mining difficulty is adjusted after 2,016 blocks for very good reasons, and if the difficulty is permanently decreased as you propose, it creates a security problem for the network and it will be easier for an attacker to gain control, so the mining difficulty is adjusted to keep the BTC network secure and to make sure blocks are found and added to the blockchain ~ 10 minutes on average, that's why difficulty increases when the BTC mining hasrate increases, and it decreases when the hashrate reduces.

Larger Block Sizes: Some argue that increasing the block size limit would allow more transactions to be included in each block, thereby reducing congestion.

Larger block size would allow more transactions in a block, but its disadvantage is more severe, it would lead to mining and node centralization, and BTC is a censorship resistant network, so we have to maintain that.

[BVeyron]

Recently fees skyrocketed on the bitcoin network. If we ever want to have bitcoin be more than a meme investment, and to be an actual currency, fees need to be low, and transaction times need to be faster.

What is the solution? More people need to mine? Bigger blocks? Blocks generated more often?

IMHO your assumption is right! I suppose it all depends on the speed of mining (miners are also transaction operators). The recent network failure happened due to Ordinals attack (high NFT-minting load). The harm inflicted by it could have been less severe if there had been more miners available at the time of network congestion...

[GreatArkansas]

For now, Lightning Network helps tremendously. What needs to be done is that more people use SwgWit addresses and LN whenever possible. More people mining wouldn’t help. It just decreases block time for a while until the difficulty is readjusted. Bigger blocks? Ask BCH how that’s going for them. Bitcoin’s currently in the best form.

Layer-2 Solutions in addition to the lightning network, other layer-2 solutions such as sidechains will help the Bitcoin network to scale.
The lightning network has already proven that it is what solution we have it is even proven to Ethereum layer 2 networks which a lot of people appreciated it. But on Bitcoin, what we need for sure is adoption, we want people to use it regularly and adapt it.

[SquirrelJulietGarden]

Layer-2 Solutions in addition to the lightning network, other layer-2 solutions such as sidechains will help the Bitcoin network to scale.
The lightning network has already proven that it is what solution we have it is even proven to Ethereum layer 2 networks which a lot of people appreciated it. But on Bitcoin, what we need for sure is adoption, we want people to use it regularly and adapt it

The adoption of Lightning network is good enough but people still have barriers in their thinking when spending on-chain transaction fees for opening and closing Lightning network channels.

If they are regular users of Lightning network, they would have no issues with such fees because they barely repeating those steps, opening and closing channels.

If they only want to use Lightning network when Bitcoin mempools are overloaded, congested and transaction fees are expensive, they will not want to pay on-chain fees for opening a channel. They are also fearful for fee to close a channel later.

Anyway, the State of Bitcoin Lightning Network is good.

[yhiaali3]

Things were fine before the latest update for Ordinals, BRC-20 tokens, but they are getting worse and the community is not in agreement about the proper solutions to this issue.

Bitcoin Lightning Network is one of the best solutions of course but it is not widely spread yet and there are many who do not like to use it.

Actually this problem is not easy especially since the adoption of Bitcoin has not reached the global level, at that time when we get global adoption this will be a big dilemma and we will need real quick solutions.

[adaseb]

This was discussed many times in the past and the solution is not bigger blocks but L2 solutions like Lightning network.

You can’t have big blocks because the resources to run a node would be bigger and there would be less nodes.

Lightning is not very popular compared to L2 solutions for ETH but if you look at the amount of volumes of Arbitrum you can see how people rely on L2 when they do active transactions.

[DooMAD]

It's not a binary choice between on-chain and off-chain.  There's more stuff to come.  Things like Cross-Input Signature Aggregation helps with both privacy and scaling.  'Graftroot' and 'Bulletproofs' also sound interesting.  Watch this space, basically.  There are many ways to further improve efficiency.

[pooya87]

The solution to any problem is to first find the reason for that problem (the root cause)!

In this case when people are suggesting bigger blocks or second layer or etc. they are ignoring the main reason for the problem. The congestion and the resulting fee spike was because of the Ordinals Attack, as some users pointed out. This means the solution to this particular problem is to find a "fix" to prevent the attack itself. Otherwise even if all transactions were to be moved to L2 for instance, the fees would still be high because the spam attack will continue.

[Helena Yu]

Actually this problem is not easy especially since the adoption of Bitcoin has not reached the global level, at that time when we get global adoption this will be a big dilemma and we will need real quick solutions.

Before Bitcoin reached the true global adoption, there's a progress behind that and many people will talk about the high fees in Bitcoin. There's will be a solution about that if there's no change or movement after few months. Previously BRC-20 tokens make the Bitcoin price high for around 1-2 weeks, it's still short.

The latest development on Bitcoin chain e.g. taproot seems not make any big change compared to segwit, sooner or later L2 chain would be the easiest solution.

[DooMAD]

The latest development on Bitcoin chain e.g. taproot seems not make any big change compared to segwit

Taproot, in essence, is more about laying the foundations to enable other things which assist with scaling.  On its own, it doesn't offer massive improvements.  All the stuff which really has potential to help is still in the pipeline, but relies upon Taproot being implemented in order to work.  It's all about incremental improvements.  Small, manageable steps towards greater things.

[franky1]

It's not a binary choice between on-chain and off-chain.  There's more stuff to come.  Things like Cross-Input Signature Aggregation helps with both privacy and scaling.  'Graftroot' and 'Bulletproofs' also sound interesting.  Watch this space, basically.  There are many ways to further improve efficiency.

those features are for when people agree to throw their funds into a group, it doesnt help individuals stay individual

The latest development on Bitcoin chain e.g. taproot seems not make any big change compared to segwit

Taproot, in essence, is more about laying the foundations to enable other things which assist with scaling.  On its own, it doesn't offer massive improvements.  All the stuff which really has potential to help is still in the pipeline, but relies upon Taproot being implemented in order to work.  It's all about incremental improvements.  Small, manageable steps towards greater things.

yet the promise of taproots 'one signature length' lean tx efficient hopes. resulted in their scripts allowing 4mb of bloated deadweight data totally unrelated to signing proofs.

[DooMAD]

It's not a binary choice between on-chain and off-chain.  There's more stuff to come.  Things like Cross-Input Signature Aggregation helps with both privacy and scaling.  'Graftroot' and 'Bulletproofs' also sound interesting.  Watch this space, basically.  There are many ways to further improve efficiency.

those features are for when people agree to throw their funds into a group, it doesnt help individuals stay individual

In case you were too busy taking pot-shots at devs to notice, hardly anyone using Bitcoin "stays individual" because so many of them rely on third parties.  It could conceivably encourage more efficient use of space when those services are batching transactions.

Taproot, in essence, is more about laying the foundations to enable other things which assist with scaling.  On its own, it doesn't offer massive improvements.  All the stuff which really has potential to help is still in the pipeline, but relies upon Taproot being implemented in order to work.  It's all about incremental improvements.  Small, manageable steps towards greater things.

yet the promise of taproots 'one signature length' lean tx efficient hopes. resulted in their scripts allowing 4mb of bloated deadweight data totally unrelated to signing proofs.

And your Mum's open legs allowed you into the world.  Sometimes undesirable shit happens.  Sadly we'll all just have to live with it.

[franky1]

In case you were too busy taking pot-shots at devs to notice, hardly anyone using Bitcoin "stays individual" because so many of them rely on third parties.  It could conceivably encourage more efficient use of space when those services are batching transactions.

we already know you like centralisation of the bitcoin network usage we also know you like middle men taking a cut of peoples payments on other networks you want people to use instead of bitcoin, but those are not solutions for the users. thats solutions for businesses to get rich

when the bitcoin network is about decentralisation. and you think that all the centralisation games are features needed.. you have missed the whole point of bitcoins purpose. and ignoring decentralised solutions

all you want to promote is centralised crap and want to staunch any discussion of solutions that can help people remain independent and decentralised

and yes i still laugh how you want independent people to not use bitcoins blockchain to buy coffee/pizza using a 300byte tx. but happy if a centralised scam group uses one tx of 3.9mb to spend 1 sat for a monkey meme. where you think the monkey meme should pay less sats per byte than a lean legacy <300byte normal bitcoin transaction
the real solution is simple
users having lean transactions where their script is not some bloated crap unrelated to signing proofs.
where its not filled with junk data.