Can/should Bitcoin software be reconfigured to limit the # of miners?

[Peter11kz]

Can/should Bitcoin software be reconfigured to limit the # of miners to reduce the transaction wait time and transaction fees or does it already do that?

In the news the carbon footprint of such high network usage is too high so the above would help reduce that?


Say limit it to 100,000 miners per wallet? Then the transaction time & fee & carbon footprint would have a limit?

[ranochigo]

Not possible. Miners are not regulated on a protocol level and anyone can relay a block if they can find a hash of the block header that satisfies the target.

Block interval is regulated by the difficulty, a higher network hashrate would result in a faster block interval given that the increase is after the difficulty retarget. High transaction fee is a result of the fee market consisting of the transactions that are sent by the user.

You cannot restrict the number of miners with the way Bitcoin protocol is designed.

[mocacinno]

euhm..... Nope....
If you reduce the number of miners (not that that's technically possible the way the network is currently designed), the only thing that would happen is that the network hashrate would drop.
This would make the time between two blocks longer untill the next retarget.

Longer time between 2 blocks => more unconfirmed tx in the mempool => higher fees

So, even if it was theoretically possible to limit the amount of miners, doing so would increase the fees, not lower them (at least, untill the next retarget, at that point you would have just made the network less secure with no impact on the fees)...

[BrewMaster]

Say limit it to 100,000 miners per wallet?

there already is a limit it is the relationship between adoption (what you say number of wallets), price rise, difficulty, profitability of mining and the number of miners.
if there is low adoption, the price will be low and difficulty remains low with the low number of miners.
when adoption increases, price goes up which make mining profitable so more miners join and difficulty goes up.

Then the transaction time & fee & carbon footprint would have a limit?

bitcoin has 0 carbon footprint because it is a network and bitcoin nodes, wallets, and bitcoin miners don't produce anything at all.

the electric companies on the other hand that are producing electricity have a terrible carbon footprint. so maybe you are asking the question in a wrong place!

[ranochigo]

bitcoin has 0 carbon footprint because it is a network and bitcoin nodes, wallets, and bitcoin miners don't produce anything at all.

the electric companies on the other hand that are producing electricity have a terrible carbon footprint. so maybe you are asking the question in a wrong place!

Electric companies produces electricity to satisfy the demand created by Bitcoin miners. The existence of Bitcoin incurs carbon footprint; nodes, wallets and miners all uses electricity. It's like blaming the airline companies for their horrendous carbon footprint but not the travelers who creates the demand for air travel.

I really don't think this is an issue with Bitcoin in the first place nor would limiting the miners help. It would just make Bitcoin less secure.

[Peter11kz]

Can/should Bitcoin software be reconfigured to limit the # of miners to reduce the transaction wait time and transaction fees or does it already do that?

1. Bitcoin protocol cannot enforce who can mine and how many can mine
2. Transaction wait time & fees depends on many things, such as total unconfirmed transaction and transaction fee of the transaction itself
3. Bitcoin full node software (such as Bitcoin Core) can be configured only to set minimum transaction fee (currently it's 1 sat/vbyte) which will be broadcasted

In the news the carbon footprint of such high network usage is too high so the above would help reduce that?

If your concern is carbon footprint, it's more efficient to ask government to do something about it.

1. Can the protocol be changed? What if changing the protocol solves the above 3 problems which are limiting bitcoin as a currency for regular transactions?

2. If you have a limited number of networks say 10,000 to process a transaction this should reduce transaction time? And/or how many miners does it usually take to process a transaction? Not every miner right?

[pooya87]

1. Can the protocol be changed? What if changing the protocol solves the above 3 problems which are limiting bitcoin as a currency for regular transactions?

2. If you have a limited number of networks say 10,000 to process a transaction this should reduce transaction time? And/or how many miners does it usually take to process a transaction? Not every miner right?

1. It can but only when the change actually solves something instead of breaking everything.

2. That is not how bitcoin works. Nodes verify transactions and enforce the consensus rules and prevent invalid transactions from existing. Miners only compute hashes on a block header that their node creates and gives them. The number of nodes or miners won't change the time between blocks, more nodes has 0 effects and more miners will have a temporary effect before the difficulty adjustment is reached and everything is balanced again (2016 blocks in 2 weeks target).

[NeuroticFish]

Can/should Bitcoin software be reconfigured to limit the # of miners to reduce the transaction wait time and transaction fees or does it already do that?

Most miners work in pools. The network only sees the pools. So if you impose limits you'll only kill the solo miners.

In the news the carbon footprint of such high network usage is too high so the above would help reduce that?

There are plenty of industries on this world that could reduce carbon footprint and they don't. As long as this kind of electricity is delivered, it'll get consumed. I think that more focus should be on developing cleaner energy sources than pointing towards who is using what. As long as the miners don't steal that electricity, it's all worthless bla-bla.

Say limit it to 100,000 miners per wallet?

And if there will be 100k proxies, what you solve?

Then the transaction time & fee & carbon footprint would have a limit?

The transaction time is based on rules that work the same for 10 miners or 10 billion miners. (The only problem is if the number of miners change hugely over rather short periods of times, but you don't care about that.)

1. Can the protocol be changed? What if changing the protocol solves the above 3 problems which are limiting bitcoin as a currency for regular transactions?

The code can be changed if necessary, but since backward compatibility is kept, some will use the old version.
Also, as I tried to point out, your proposals don't seem to fix anything.

2. If you have a limited number of networks say 10,000 to process a transaction this should reduce transaction time? And/or how many miners does it usually take to process a transaction? Not every miner right?

All the miners compete to find the next block by a pretty tough rule. This ensures Bitcoin's blockchain is basically unhackable.
And as I said, transaction time is decide by other rules. The transaction time is calculated in a way to stay as possible around 10 minutes no matter how many miners there are.

[mocacinno]

--snip--


1. Can the protocol be changed? What if changing the protocol solves the above 3 problems which are limiting bitcoin as a currency for regular transactions?

2. If you have a limited number of networks say 10,000 to process a transaction this should reduce transaction time? And/or how many miners does it usually take to process a transaction? Not every miner right?

@OP
Without digging into these questions (#2 was actually answered in my previous reply), i wanted to tell you that it's clear to me you've done some reading about bitcoin and it's protocol, but it's also pretty clear you're not there yet... There's a lot you've missed.

I'm treating this thread as a learning thread... You've read some things and drew some wrong conclusions. Now, based on these wrong conclusions you're asking stuff that actually makes little sense, but you're digging deeper and deeper into questions that make little technical sense and people keep answering them on a techical level without pointing out your initial assumptions are just based on the wrong conclusions...

This is the point were i'd urge you to go back to the drawing board... Read up on bitcoin and it's protocol, and then come back and read our answers... By the time you understand where you drew the wrong conclusions, you can actually tell yourself you've learned something new

Once again: bitcoin has a steep learning curve, especially if you want to know the nitty-gritty technical details. It's perfectly normal you don't understand everything at your first try. Asking questions is perfectly fine...

Good luck!

[DannyHamilton]

Average transaction time to get a confirmation are influenced by,
1. Block size
2. Block time
3. How many transaction is created by bitcoin user

Average transaction time to get a confirmation is influenced by:

1. Transaction fee per vByte in the transaction.
2. Total vBytes of pending transactions that have paid a higher fee per vByte
3. Total global hashpower
4. Current difficulty target
5. Luck

[DannyHamilton]

1. Can the protocol be changed?

Of course, and it has, many times since the Bitcoin code was first released in 2009.  However, any change to the consensus rules requires that an OVERWHELMING majority (more than 90%) of ALL users (miners, pools, nodes, merchants, consumers, HODLers, exchanges, etc.) agree to the change. Otherwise, all that happens is that the blockchain splits into two forks, one with the original rules still followed by those that want it the old way, and an altcoin with the new rules.  This is how things such as Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold and Bitcoin SV came about.

What if changing the protocol solves the above 3 problems which are limiting bitcoin as a currency for regular transactions?

Well, solving problems is great, provided:
1. It actually changes what it intends to change.
2. It doesn't introduce new worse problems.
3. The things you think are problems are actually a problem
4. You can get EVERYONE to agree that the presented solution is the best solution.

At the moment, your suggestions accomplish NONE of those things.
1. Your suggestions would have no effect on average time of confirmation, and would not put a stop to excessive electricity use.
2. Your suggestions would introduce new worse problems.
3. The things you are complaining about are either already addressed via some other method (Lightning) or are not a real problem (Electricity).
4. As you can see from this discussion alone, you do not have overwhelming support for your idea.

If those that know what they are talking about are telling you that you don't understand and that your solution is not a solution, you have 3 choices.
1. Ignore them and assume that you know more about Bitcoin than people that have been discussing it here on bitcointalk for nearly a decade.
2. Assume that they've misunderstood what you are suggesting and explain it more carefully with more detail about exactly which protocol rules or code sections would be affected and how, so as to clear up the confusion.
3. Accept that you may be missing some knowledge, and that your suggestion fails to take into consideration some details that you have misunderstood.

At the moment, it seems you've chosen option 1.  How's that working out for you?  You may want to think about one of the other options.

2. If you have a limited number of networks say 10,000 to process a transaction

What do you mean by "networks"?  This statement doesn't make any sense when I use any definition I'm familiar with.

this should reduce transaction time?

No.  It seems you don't understand how transaction confirmations happen. You've made some assumptions, and those assumptions appears to be wrong.

And/or how many miners does it usually take to process a transaction?

Assuming you are talking about confirming, it only takes one.  They all try, but only one ever succeeds.

Not every miner right?

Like I said, they all try, but only one ever succeeds.

[Peter11kz]

1. So when it takes 20 minutes to produce one transaction, this 20 minutes has nothing to do with the number of people trying to produce a transaction at the same time? Example: What if only one person vs 1 thousand people was trying to do a transaction at the same time?

[mocacinno]

1. So when it takes 20 minutes to produce one transaction, this 20 minutes has nothing to do with the number of people trying to produce a transaction at the same time? Example: What if only one person vs 1 thousand people was trying to do a transaction at the same time?

This ^^ is what i was talking about in my previous post... I don't mean to offend you, but you're talking about technical details based on wrong assumptions.
You really need to read the whitepaper, or at least a decent book or a series of blogposts by knowledgeable people before you continue on your quest for answers

It takes a very short time to produce a transaction. Transactions are created by your own wallet, and if your wallet would ever take 20 minutes to create a transaction, something must be wrong on your end. Creating a transaction and broadcasting it are two different things (eventough, some wallets make it look like it's just one procedure).

An unlimited amount of people can create and broadcast an unlimited amount of transactions (well, from a physical point of view, there are limitations to the hardware and network connectivity). This doesn't mean all these transactions can fit in the mempool of most of the nodes in the network, nor does it mean that all these transactions will end up in a block (blocksize is limited, the average time between 2 blocks is ~10 minutes which is regulated by the difficulty retargets)

But, i feel like answering these questions won't do you any good... you really need to brush up on the basics before you go any further... We're happy to answer your questions and applaud new people to enter our community, but we cannot give you private education on the basic principles, especially not in the very inefficient form of answering these questions... you need to do that by yourself, and if you have questions that aren't readily found in books, whitepapers and youtube video's: please ask them.

Good luck.

[NotATether]

1. So when it takes 20 minutes to produce one transaction, this 20 minutes has nothing to do with the number of people trying to produce a transaction at the same time? Example: What if only one person vs 1 thousand people was trying to do a transaction at the same time?

It takes a variable, unknown time to find a block. You cannot guess exactly when the next block will be mined in advance.

After every 2016 blocks, the network takes the time it took to mine the first block, and subtracts it from the time it took to mine the last block. This is its estimate of the average time it took to mine each of the 2016 blocks (collectively called an epoch). It then uses this average time as a scaling factor for the difficulty, multiplying the difficulty number (which defines how hard finding a block will be) by average_time/default_consensus_defined_average_time (<-- defined as 10 minutes for the main network). This changes the difficulty and "normalizes" the average time to find a block back to 10 minutes.

However, external factors outside the networks control, such as new miners coming or getting shut down, again changes the average time away from 10 minutes, and then the difficulty (and the average time along with it) has to get adjusted again after the next 2016 blocks.




You are correct in saying that the time to mine a block has nothing to do with the number of transactions made then*. All of the transactions that are broadcasted live in a special area of the node's memory called the mempool, and miners pull some of these transactions, as many as can fit in 1 megabyte, from their own nodes, and create a block out of them which they then submit, via their own nodes, to the network to other peers.

* The one exception is sometimes, miners find a block before they can process all the transactions into a merkle tree, and therefore they submit the block without a merkle tree of transactions. These are called empty blocks.

But, i feel like answering these questions won't do you any good... you really need to brush up on the basics before you go any further... We're happy to answer your questions and applaud new people to enter our community, but we cannot give you private education on the basic principles, especially not in the very inefficient form of answering these questions... you need to do that by yourself, and if you have questions that aren't readily found in books, whitepapers and youtube video's: please ask them.

I'm a firm believer that people will be better off if we answer their questions then and there, else they could lose interest in crypto for not understanding how it works.

[mocacinno]

--snip--

I'm a firm believer that people will be better off if we answer their questions then and there, else they could lose interest in crypto for not understanding how it works.

I agree with you, but only up untill a certain degree. In this case, the OP seems to be learning by understanding only a very little bit of the technical details, forming a conclusion based on nothing but assumptions, then making propositions that are based on his wrong assumtions and posting them in a public forum. Then other people (like us) have to take the time to debunk these propositions, and the OP might feel hurt because we seem to be doing nothing but disagreeing with him.

I just think this is a way of learning that's not efficient, not for him, not for us... So it would be better if he just read a good book, a whitepaper or watched one of those in-depth youtube videos... That way he could start with a better background understanding and ask questions that are more to the point. It would be less frustrating for him and a lot faster for everyone.

I think most people that know me, know that in general i'm not the worst guy around here (when it comes to newbie-friendlyness)... I usually try to give newbies a hand.. In this particular case i just think the OP has to change his strategy from "posting things he knows little about" to "reading before posting".
It's not only about this thread tough... OP has been here for exactly 8 posts, and already he has made numerous completely wrong assumptions AND even promoted using bank's custodial wallets to hold your funds as the ideal sollution: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5318971.msg56403261#msg56403261

It seems like every time he starts a thread, people jump in and contradict him at every turn because he lacks the basics... Can't be fun for him either..

Just my 2 satoshi's tough... You're welcome to keep on answering questions if you want to, obviously you're free to do so

[DannyHamilton]

we cannot give you private education on the basic principles, especially not in the very inefficient form of answering these questions

Sure we can.  That's my favorite thing to do here at BitcoinTalk, and it's been a while since I had a chance to respond to someone that actually wanted to understand and was failing at the basics.

[DannyHamilton]

Then other people (like us) have to take the time to debunk these propositions,

You don't HAVE TO.  You can choose to, if you want to, or you can choose not to and maybe someone else will.

and the OP might feel hurt because we seem to be doing nothing but disagreeing with him.

He might, but if we explain the details well enough, hopefully he'll feel appreciative.

I just think this is a way of learning that's not efficient, not for him, not for us...

It's not.  But I still enjoy it.  If people ONLY learned via the MOST EFFICIENT method, then all other methods wouldn't exist.  Besides, what is efficient for one may not be efficient for others.

So it would be better if he just read a good book, a whitepaper or watched one of those in-depth youtube videos...

Maybe he will, and you can certainly suggest that as an option, but as long as he's willing to type out his questions here, I'm willing to answer them and share details that he may misunderstand.

I think most people that know me, know that in general i'm not the worst guy around here (when it comes to newbie-friendlyness)...

Nope. You're definitely typically quite helpful, knowledgeable and friendly.  The only reason I'vee got you blocked its your sig ad.

In this particular case i just think the OP has to change his strategy from "posting things he knows little about" to "reading before posting".

He doesn't "have to".  He could. And maybe he should, so it's okay to suggest it. But if he chooses not to, then this is the best opportunity I have to help him.

It's not only about this thread tough... OP has been here for exactly 8 posts, and already he has made numerous completely wrong assumptions

And I've responded to a few of them.  He'll get there eventually (assuming he actually wants to).

AND even promoted using bank's custodial wallets to hold your funds as the ideal sollution: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5318971.msg56403261#msg56403261

Was that him?  When I saw that thread, I just bailed. I found it difficult to understand what the original post was even trying to imply.

It seems like every time he starts a thread, people jump in and contradict him at every turn because he lacks the basics... Can't be fun for him either..

It certainly would be better if people could give some details as to WHY his assumptions are wrong, and what actually happens, and how it ties into his misunderstanding.  That would help him get to a better understanding faster.

Just my 2 satoshi's tough... You're welcome to keep on answering questions if you want to, obviously you're free to do so

. I will.

[DannyHamilton]

1. So when it takes 20 minutes to produce one transaction, this 20 minutes has nothing to do with the number of people trying to produce a transaction at the same time? Example: What if only one person vs 1 thousand people was trying to do a transaction at the same time?

You really need to explain what you mean when you say "it takes 20 minutes to produce one transaction".

Did it take you 20 minutes to enter all the transaction information into your wallet?
Did your wallet take 20 minutes after you completed entering the information until it broadcast the transaction onto the network?
Did it take 20 minutes after you completed entering the information into your wallet until the transaction showed up in a block explorer?
Did it take 20 minutes after the transaction showed up in a block explorer until the recipient saw the UNCONFIMRED transaction in their wallet?
Did it take 20 minutes after the transaction showed up in a block explorer until the next block was broadcast?
Did it take 20 minutes after the transaction showed up in a block explorer until the transaction was included in a broadcast block (the transaction got its first confirmation)?
Did it take 20 minutes after the UNCONFIRMED transaction showed up in the recipient's wallet until the recipient saw 1 confirmation?
Did it take 20 minutes after the UNCONFIRMED transaction showed up in the recipient's wallet until the recipient's wallet allowed them to spend it?
Did it take 20 minutes after the UNCONFIRMED transaction showed up in the recipient's wallet until the recipient's wallet indicated multiple confirmations?

If 1 person sends a transaction, that transaction will be relayed across the network until all nodes have received it.
Then the miners would likely (assuming the transaction paid any fee at all) include that transaction in the block they were working on.
Eventually (10 minutes later on average) a miner would solve a block and broadcast that block on the network.
Assuming the transaction included any fee at all, wallets would show the transaction as having 1 confirmation.

If 1000 people all send a transaction nearly simultaneously, those transactions will be relayed across the network until all nodes have received them.
Then the miners would likely (assuming the transactions paid any fee at all) include those transactions in the block they were working on.
Eventually (10 minutes later on average) a miner would solve a block and broadcast that block on the network.
Wallets would show the transactions that were included in the block as all having 1 confirmation.

If 5000 people all send a transaction nearly simultaneously (and there were no additional transactions broadcast for a few blocks), those transactions will be relayed across the network until all nodes have received them.
Then the miners would likely include approximately 2000 or so of those transactions in the block they were working on (since that's the most they can fit).
To maximize their profit, the miners will likely choose the transactions that paid the highest fee per byte.
The remaining 3000 or so transactions will need to wait for a future block.
Eventually (10 minutes later on average) a miner would solve a block and broadcast that block on the network.
Wallets would show those transactions in that block (likely the ones that paid the highest fee per byte) as all having 1 confirmation.
The remaining 3000 to so transactions would still be displayed as having 0 confirmations.
Then the miners would likely include approximately 2000 or so of those unconfirmed transactions in the block they were working on.
To maximize their profit, the miners will choose the remaining unconfirmed transactions that paid the highest fee per byte.
The remaining 1000 or so unconfirmed transactions will need to wait for a future block.
Eventually (10 minutes later on average) a miner would solve a block and broadcast that block on the network.
Wallets would show those transactions that were included in the previous block as all now having 2 confirmations.
Wallets would show those transactions that are included in this new block as all having 1 confirmation.
The remaining 1000 to so transactions would still be displayed as having 0 confirmations.
Then the miners would likely (assuming the transactions paid any fee at all) include those remaining 1000 unconfirmed transactions in the block they were working on.
Eventually (10 minutes later on average) a miner would solve a block and broadcast that block on the network.
Wallets would show those transactions that were included in the initial block as all now having 3 confirmations.
Wallets would show those transactions that were included in the previous block as all now having 2 confirmations.
Wallets would show these last 1000 to so transactions as now having 1 confirmation.