Automated blocksize increases

[thecodebear]

I think any reasonable person understands that bitcoin needs blocksize increases, otherwise bitcoin's growth will become increasingly and extremely stifled, even if the LN becomes a big part of bitcoin. The question is how to reasonably increase the blocksize.

I think the two main things are to do it gradually, but ideally only make one hard fork to bitcoin to do it. That's where my idea of automated blocksize increases comes in. I don't know if this has been talked about, but I've never seen mention of it.

My idea is that a hard fork is made to bitcoin so that at every halving event not only does the mining reward change but also blocksize changes. Some initial blocksize (blockweight) size increase would be decided for the first halving after the hard fork, and from then on every following halving event would also halve the blocksize increase, percentage-wise. So the halving events could have the following blocksize increases: 800%, 400%, 200%, 100%, 50%, 25%, etc. Or 400%, 200%, 100%, 50%, 25%, 12.5%, etc. Or whatever is deemed the most likely to be optimal in the near and far future.

This would put the blocksize issue to bed by setting up an algorithmic way to keep bitcoin capacity growing into the future so there aren't constant debates about one-off increases and whether or not they should happen and what size they should be. It would also allow capacity to grow gradually, keeping bitcoin decentralized by allowing it to increase slowly as network speeds continue to get faster throughout the world, and easy to store on hard disk in the future. It would keep it to only one hard fork so that bitcoin remains a stable technology. It should also be enough near-term throughput to handle this next bitcoin boom, which I figure a 4x or 8x increase would be good for the 2020 halving event, as there is an immediate need to not stifle bitcoin's growth these next couple of years as the market goes through what could/should be another exponential growth period. Plus it would keep the blocksize capped by halving the increase, just how the supply is capped by halving the supply increase.

Bitcoin transaction capacity needs to grow significantly, but carefully, in order to facilitate growth of bitcoin worldwide, as well as growth of the LN in the years to come.
What do you think of this idea of rolling a blocksize increase halving into the current reward halving event?

[figmentofmyass]

This would put the blocksize issue to bed by setting up an algorithmic way to keep bitcoin capacity growing into the future so there aren't constant debates about one-off increases and whether or not they should happen and what size they should be.

there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem. there is also no way to automatically account for actual technological progress---we can't time when latency and bandwidth barriers will be crossed. screwing up the timing will necessitate emergency hard forks to fix this bad engineering. is that worth it?

anyway, maybe there should be constant debate.

[Nadziratel]

I think any reasonable person understands that bitcoin needs blocksize increases, otherwise bitcoin's growth will become increasingly and extremely stifled, even if the LN becomes a big part of bitcoin. The question is how to reasonably increase the blocksize.

I can understand if you're thinking Bitcoin won't be future's money. Let's increase blocksize today X2. What about then? What will happen 2 years later? 10 years? We are trying to handle electricity already. If we will increase the block size in every few years, we need big size computer disks also. It can be complicated you have thought.

I think the two main things are to do it gradually, but ideally only make one hard fork to bitcoin to do it. That's where my idea of automated blocksize increases comes in. I don't know if this has been talked about, but I've never seen mention of it.

Comeee onnnn! We shouldn't talk about any news forks. We are watching old ones which they are completely useless. Let go this fork shits also.


There is one big problem we should solve ASAP. It is energy consumption. It is not sustainable now. And I guess we need more developed mining device would be fine.

[Haunebu]

Comeee onnnn! We shouldn't talk about any news forks. We are watching old ones which they are completely useless. Let go this fork shits also.


There is one big problem we should solve ASAP. It is energy consumption. It is not sustainable now. And I guess we need more developed mining device would be fine.

I do agree with you here. I have honestly had enough of these forks which are basically splitting our crypto communities instead of uniting them thanks to different perspectives.

Also, Bitman just released new miners which is good progress and they focused on improving energy efficiency which is epic indeed.

[pushups44]

This issue has been debated ad nauseum, and those who support bigger block sizes already have their forks. So why bring this issue to a coin with a community that has decided to keep the block size limited? Actually, with Segwit the capacity has been made greater. Again, the issue in the community has been resolved, and those who want bigger blocks have their alternative coins. Bitcoin will focus on layer 2 solutions.

[davis196]

If you need bigger blocks just use Craig Wright/Roger Ver's altcoins that use the name "bitcoin" and don't bother.A bigger Blocksize is not the ultimate solution to all problems.Is there any problem with the current bitcoin core transaction speed or confirmation time?I don't see a problem.So STFU....

[pushups44]

Comeee onnnn! We shouldn't talk about any news forks. We are watching old ones which they are completely useless. Let go this fork shits also.


There is one big problem we should solve ASAP. It is energy consumption. It is not sustainable now. And I guess we need more developed mining device would be fine.

I do agree with you here. I have honestly had enough of these forks which are basically splitting our crypto communities instead of uniting them thanks to different perspectives.

Also, Bitman just released new miners which is good progress and they focused on improving energy efficiency which is epic indeed.

Yeah, another fork will just cause another market collapse as the public thinks this industry is a joke. Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Rabbit, Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Buttcheeks, etc., etc. There is already a flavor for everyone.

[thecodebear]

I think any reasonable person understands that bitcoin needs blocksize increases, otherwise bitcoin's growth will become increasingly and extremely stifled, even if the LN becomes a big part of bitcoin. The question is how to reasonably increase the blocksize.

I can understand if you're thinking Bitcoin won't be future's money. Let's increase blocksize today X2. What about then? What will happen 2 years later? 10 years? We are trying to handle electricity already. If we will increase the block size in every few years, we need big size computer disks also. It can be complicated you have thought.

I think the two main things are to do it gradually, but ideally only make one hard fork to bitcoin to do it. That's where my idea of automated blocksize increases comes in. I don't know if this has been talked about, but I've never seen mention of it.

Comeee onnnn! We shouldn't talk about any news forks. We are watching old ones which they are completely useless. Let go this fork shits also.


There is one big problem we should solve ASAP. It is energy consumption. It is not sustainable now. And I guess we need more developed mining device would be fine.

You seem to misunderstand me. I'm talking hard forks to bitcoin. Not creating altcoins. There haven't been any hard forks to bitcoin. The only way to increase blocksize is a hard fork, which is the whole reason there's a huge debate about it, because it requires a hard fork and not just a simple update, and I think the bitcoin dev team is very worried about doing any sort of hard fork, though if Bitcoin is to survive it needs at least one at some point to allow greater onchain transaction capacity, which is what I'm talking about.

And as to what will happen 2 years from now, 10 years from now. That's exactly why I'm saying to automate increases every halving event, so that bitcoin doesn't have to keep hard forking every few years to unclog the network and keep allowing it to grow around the world. There's two options to future proof it that I can think of, do as I say in this thread, or make a single hard fork with a huge blocksize increase ASAP, which gives it room to grow for decades, but I think that is a bad idea because the worry about that is it will hurt decentralization in the near-term which is why people are opposed to bigger blocksizes.

[thecodebear]

Comeee onnnn! We shouldn't talk about any news forks. We are watching old ones which they are completely useless. Let go this fork shits also.


There is one big problem we should solve ASAP. It is energy consumption. It is not sustainable now. And I guess we need more developed mining device would be fine.

I do agree with you here. I have honestly had enough of these forks which are basically splitting our crypto communities instead of uniting them thanks to different perspectives.

Also, Bitman just released new miners which is good progress and they focused on improving energy efficiency which is epic indeed.

Yeah, another fork will just cause another market collapse as the public thinks this industry is a joke. Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Rabbit, Bitcoin Diamond, Bitcoin Buttcheeks, etc., etc. There is already a flavor for everyone.

I'm not talking about creating an altcoin with a fork. I'm talking about upgrading bitcoin with a fork, as plenty of other coins do but bitcoin has yet to do, at least not since the very early days.

[thecodebear]

If you need bigger blocks just use Craig Wright/Roger Ver's altcoins that use the name "bitcoin" and don't bother.A bigger Blocksize is not the ultimate solution to all problems.Is there any problem with the current bitcoin core transaction speed or confirmation time?I don't see a problem.So STFU....

You clearly haven't paid any attention to Bitcoin if you think crap altcoins are the solution and bitcoin has no problems. You don't see a problem because you aren't paying attention.

[pushups44]

I think any reasonable person understands that bitcoin needs blocksize increases, otherwise bitcoin's growth will become increasingly and extremely stifled, even if the LN becomes a big part of bitcoin. The question is how to reasonably increase the blocksize.

I can understand if you're thinking Bitcoin won't be future's money. Let's increase blocksize today X2. What about then? What will happen 2 years later? 10 years? We are trying to handle electricity already. If we will increase the block size in every few years, we need big size computer disks also. It can be complicated you have thought.

I think the two main things are to do it gradually, but ideally only make one hard fork to bitcoin to do it. That's where my idea of automated blocksize increases comes in. I don't know if this has been talked about, but I've never seen mention of it.

Comeee onnnn! We shouldn't talk about any news forks. We are watching old ones which they are completely useless. Let go this fork shits also.


There is one big problem we should solve ASAP. It is energy consumption. It is not sustainable now. And I guess we need more developed mining device would be fine.

You seem to misunderstand me. I'm talking hard forks to bitcoin. Not creating altcoins. There haven't been any hard forks to bitcoin. The only way to increase blocksize is a hard fork, which is the whole reason there's a huge debate about it, because it requires a hard fork and not just a simple update, and I think the bitcoin dev team is very worried about doing any sort of hard fork, though if Bitcoin is to survive it needs at least one at some point to allow greater onchain transaction capacity, which is what I'm talking about.

And as to what will happen 2 years from now, 10 years from now. That's exactly why I'm saying to automate increases every halving event, so that bitcoin doesn't have to keep hard forking every few years to unclog the network and keep allowing it to grow around the world. There's two options to future proof it that I can think of, do as I say in this thread, or make a single hard fork with a huge blocksize increase ASAP, which gives it room to grow for decades, but I think that is a bad idea because the worry about that is it will hurt decentralization in the near-term which is why people are opposed to bigger blocksizes.

So there is bitcoin cash for you. This issue has been resolved, and a hard fork will create 2 coins. This will bring about inflation, causing another bear market. This is a very delicate situation because there is always the risk of destroying confidence in cryptocurrencies. You can fork till your eyes are beet-red, and in the meantime no one is using your new coin because everyone is just confused. Surely with the gazillion versions of bitcoin your preferred variety already exists.

[thecodebear]

This issue has been debated ad nauseum, and those who support bigger block sizes already have their forks. So why bring this issue to a coin with a community that has decided to keep the block size limited? Actually, with Segwit the capacity has been made greater. Again, the issue in the community has been resolved, and those who want bigger blocks have their alternative coins. Bitcoin will focus on layer 2 solutions.

I certainly hope the issue hasn't been resolved...you know, since it HASN'T BEEN RESOLVED! That would be very bad for bitcoin if it never grew to accomdate more transactions, even with the LN. Altcoins aren't the solution unless you want them to one day take over from bitcoin.

Bitcoin layer 2 solutions won't work without on-chain increases. Just do the math. With the current onchain blocksize it would take decades for even a small portion of the world's population to be onboarded onto the LN.

So again, the issue has not been resolved at all, it's just been pushed down the road without a resolution. Last bull run fees skyrocketed to $50/transaction at the peak, this bull run they'll go well into the hundreds for a fee without any blocksize increases, or the high fees will put an premature end to the bull run before it even gets that high. I don't know about you but I think the goal, even at mass adoption, should be to keep fees in the single digit dollar range, while pushing 99% of transactions to the LN. That is impossible without significantly increasing the blocksize.

Some of you guys seem to be mistaking hard forks to create altcoins with the very real need to solve bitcoin's scalability problems. That issue is no less relevant today than it was before segwit. And its gonna get a HELL of a lot more relevant once this bull market starts heating up and we see fees rise into the dollars, tens of dollars, and hundreds of dollars over the next couple of years. Will you all still be singing the same tun of "the issue has been resolved" when it costs $150 to make a transaction? It's great that Bitcoin got back down to like 10 cents during the slow period in the market, but we all know fees will rise exponentially and likely far higher than before when the market starts heating up again.

It really worries me that, judging from the responses so far, people have so quickly forgotten a major bottleneck with Bitcoin that really needs to be resolved in the near future! If you read my initial post you know I am fully aware of the sides of the debate and trying to think of a reasonable solution as opposed to the only partial solution that we have so far (segwit + LN).

[thecodebear]

I think any reasonable person understands that bitcoin needs blocksize increases, otherwise bitcoin's growth will become increasingly and extremely stifled, even if the LN becomes a big part of bitcoin. The question is how to reasonably increase the blocksize.

I can understand if you're thinking Bitcoin won't be future's money. Let's increase blocksize today X2. What about then? What will happen 2 years later? 10 years? We are trying to handle electricity already. If we will increase the block size in every few years, we need big size computer disks also. It can be complicated you have thought.

I think the two main things are to do it gradually, but ideally only make one hard fork to bitcoin to do it. That's where my idea of automated blocksize increases comes in. I don't know if this has been talked about, but I've never seen mention of it.

Comeee onnnn! We shouldn't talk about any news forks. We are watching old ones which they are completely useless. Let go this fork shits also.


There is one big problem we should solve ASAP. It is energy consumption. It is not sustainable now. And I guess we need more developed mining device would be fine.

You seem to misunderstand me. I'm talking hard forks to bitcoin. Not creating altcoins. There haven't been any hard forks to bitcoin. The only way to increase blocksize is a hard fork, which is the whole reason there's a huge debate about it, because it requires a hard fork and not just a simple update, and I think the bitcoin dev team is very worried about doing any sort of hard fork, though if Bitcoin is to survive it needs at least one at some point to allow greater onchain transaction capacity, which is what I'm talking about.

And as to what will happen 2 years from now, 10 years from now. That's exactly why I'm saying to automate increases every halving event, so that bitcoin doesn't have to keep hard forking every few years to unclog the network and keep allowing it to grow around the world. There's two options to future proof it that I can think of, do as I say in this thread, or make a single hard fork with a huge blocksize increase ASAP, which gives it room to grow for decades, but I think that is a bad idea because the worry about that is it will hurt decentralization in the near-term which is why people are opposed to bigger blocksizes.

So there is bitcoin cash for you. This issue has been resolved, and a hard fork will create 2 coins. This will bring about inflation, causing another bear market. This is a very delicate situation because there is always the risk of destroying confidence in cryptocurrencies. You can fork till your eyes are beet-red, and in the meantime no one is using your new coin because everyone is just confused. Surely with the gazillion versions of bitcoin your preferred variety already exists.

Did you not read my comment that you just quoted. You don't understand what a hard fork means. It doesn't mean creating a new coin. Are there like 10 different versions of BCH from all their hard forks? No. Are there several different versions of ETH from their hard forks? No. For the third time, I'm talking about updating bitcoin with a hard fork, like was being talked about all through 2017, not creating altcoins. Creating altcoins does nothing to solve bitcoins problems.

[thecodebear]

This would put the blocksize issue to bed by setting up an algorithmic way to keep bitcoin capacity growing into the future so there aren't constant debates about one-off increases and whether or not they should happen and what size they should be.

there is no one-size-fits-all solution to this problem. there is also no way to automatically account for actual technological progress---we can't time when latency and bandwidth barriers will be crossed. screwing up the timing will necessitate emergency hard forks to fix this bad engineering. is that worth it?

anyway, maybe there should be constant debate.

You're like the only one who has commented so far who seems to know what they are talking about haha.

I agree by doing an automated increase you don't necessarily get capacity increase right when you need it, but you still get it every four years, which would help. And we have seen so far, with the lack of any increase other than segwit, that there is much apprehension to doing a hard fork at all, so rather than having to do one every once in a while when the networks gets too clogged, it makes sense to only have to ever do one which continues to give more tx capacity on regular intervals. It won't be perfect, but the other option is the community viciously debating for years on end about updating capacity and it either never comes or takes years to get implemented as we have seen so far. So with that being the other option, yeah I think doing a regular halving upgrade to automatically alleviate the network (at least somewhat) for decades to come is totally worth it.

And judging by every other person's comments on this thread so far except for you, these people act like scalability was resolved with segwit haha, instead of that being the start of the conversation, which points out just how unlikely the community would be able to pull off repeated one-off hard forks every few years when the congestion slows bitcoin to a grind and prevents its growth. I certainly hope they are not representative of the bitcoin community. I hope that all the people who understand the need for on-chain scalability didn't leave bitcoin for forked away altcoins. If that's the case I would suddenly be very worried about the long term viability of bitcoin. The only thing that could allow some alt(shit)coin to surpass bitcoin is if the bitcoin community refuses to do anything about its major issues. Segwit and LN is a partial solution, but even LN will be hopelessly imperiled without onchain increases since you need people to actually be able to get onto the LN for them to use it.

And if the automated increase isn't enough, like if an increase happens and bitcoin is still super congested then there can always be constant debate about a one-off hard fork to increase capacity right then and there. It's not like you can't do one-off increases on top of an automated one if they are really needed in a time sensitive way.

[shield132]

I said and repeat again, bitcoin wasn't consideted for high demand, but it got it and with problems (regulations, huge tx fees last year and etc).
Currently it's not a problem, demand/supply and lighting network (or even without it) keeps fast transaction with low fees. If you want bitcoin analogue with increased blockchain size, you can move on Bitcoin Cash.
That's all, I think problem is solved.

[dothebeats]

I said and repeat again, bitcoin wasn't consideted for high demand, but it got it and with problems (regulations, huge tx fees last year and etc)

Satoshi always envisioned bitcoin to be used on a large scale, as was evidenced by the whitepaper itself and his forum posts here on bitcointalk. He predicted that, and now it's happening. The thing is, the algorithm he placed on the blockchain at the time is somewhat lacking to handle the demand, and therefore several forks have been constantly made to address this shortcoming. A permanent solution cannot be placed within the code as the environment and conditions are always changing, that's why the code is open-sourced in order to chime in any solution that they see fit for the current situation.

[Genemind]

There is one big problem we should solve ASAP. It is energy consumption. It is not sustainable now. And I guess we need more developed mining device would be fine.
[/quote]


I certainly agree with you. I really don't get the sense of talking about fork and debating about this issue over and over again when there is really better and more important stuff that we should focus on. There are still lots of changes that might happen so thinking of blocksize increase for the coming years is quite too early.

[ðºÞæ]

Blocksize increases, what for?
Average Block Size https://www.blockchain.com/charts/avg-block-size

This size is good enough for the next 100 years at least

[Ailmand]

We really have ideas and suggestions which are beyond the capacity of Bitcoin. Sometimes, it's exceeding beyond its real role. As for me the supply and demand has no problem and automated increase isn't really what we need but rather adoption, transaction development and the problem with energy regulatory.

[franky1]

That had nothing to do with the devs,

code has nothing to do with devs?
seriously?? you believe bitcoin is AI that self writes
seriously?? you believe those owning the DNS and Fibre had no involvement in forcing the august 2017 controversial split

as for the excuses for not increasing blocksizes
dev excuse 1: "2mb of data every 10 mins is bad..... months later 4mb is ok but only for LN gateway transactions"
dev excuse 2: "linear sigop a issue at 1mb...... months later propose to increase sigops by 4x (instead of decrease for safety)"
dev excuse 3: "transaction adoption is not high enough to need more throughput onchain.... (then LN is not neded either then)"
dev excuse 4: "increasing hard drive bloat leads to servers.. (2015 10k nodes acceptable, theres more nodes now)"
dev excuse 5: "increasing tx count takes income from mining pools.... (so does LN)"
dev excuse 6: "increasing tx count takes income from mining pools.... (if miners cared about fees, they would be more tx biased)"
dev excuse 7: "certain changes put more strain on full nodes.... (such as wishy washy features that cause extra work just for LN)"

anyway.
lets deal with the whole fee war debate for why not progressively growing the blocks
12.5btc @$5k=$62.5k.. ~3000 tx =$20/tx... who the hell would pay $20 just to match pool income
its better to have more transactions per block so each individual tx costs less

anyway lets deal with the decentralisation/distribution
a network of 7 billion users all fullnoding actually causes more propogation delays than a network of 10k or 100k nodes
not every user with a 5g cellphone limited bandwidth package needs to be a full node.
only businesses that handle multiple transactions a day will warrent the ned to investigate/double check multipl transactions
so is far better to hve 10k-100k economic(merchants) as full nodes internationally. than 1mill random users doing it purely because they 'think they are helping the network' but have no big personal need to be validation thousands of tx an hour

anyway lets deal with linear sigops
that was the original debate(excuse) years ago.. easy fix instead of the old 4k sigops limit per tx, reducing it to 500 per tx would have helped

anyway lets deal with the wishy washy code
adding thousands of lines of code to now 4x stuff is more computations a node has to do to treat different tx formats differently
having to get nodes to transmit differ block versions (stripped non segwit, pruned, bloomed, neutrino) adds more computations
new sigscripts add more bytes per tx which bloat up a block without adding more tx count.

to me non of this shows devs are 'conservative' .. to me it shows thy are only interested in making blockchains look bad so they can promote their commercial networks to give their VC funders a ROI