Blockchain bloat is a desirable feature for Bitcoin because it means mining is centralized which is exactly what TPTB want, and so they will continue to endorse and push Bitcoin for as long as centralization isn't fixed.
The threat those controllers face is (as is their dilemma with the IPO for Ethereum) that centralization doesn't maximize network efforts (scaling), because as
Peter R showed, the price (or marketcap) is correlated to
N squared, where
N is some proxy for the number of users.
Yet they prefer to keep crypto-currency narrow in scope and adoption, so the world has to accept their digital fiat. There are many powerful vested interests such as the banks.
Simply, any coins are are Bitcoin forks, will fail. Anything noteworthy on an altcoin, like mini-blockchain, Bitcoin can/may incorporate in the future, leaving said altcoin in the dust.
Nothing will be incorporated into Bitcoin, unless and until there is a significant threat to market share. But if ever there is such a serious threat, it will be too late for Bitcoin to recover (due to the upstart having a much higher exponential rate of growth otherwise it wouldn't have happened). I did
some rough curve matching and posited that Bitcoin is growing log-logistically, not logistically.
The $trillion question is will such an altcoin emerge. Anything less in my view is "just playing". I believe the future of the world is at-stake. (Fuck I have bad health today, after some strong days!)
Stealth addresses from the genesis block on (an important privacy aspect) are one of the few things they can't do, not without a roll-over to a new genesis block with all outputs being reissued to stealth addresses computed from existing privkeys (read: practically impossible).
Where can I learn more about this? I am unfamiliar, at least how your described it.
For everything else, there's MasterCard Bitcoin.
Afair, MasterCard has insoluble technical issues around atomicity. I think we need a new block chain to do Turing-complete correctly.
Also, it would be politically impossible to change the maximum number of Bitcoins (and hence a change in the block reward schedule).
And thus you can never get 0 tx fees in Bitcoin.
To even host a full node in a few years will likely consume terabytes to petabytes of data in a month -- this goes for Bitcoin, let alone any of the alts. If you can provide this bandwidth, you can be a full node. As it stands, without running dedicated hosts on corporate connections, most people will never be able to run full nodes, regardless of even their storage space. The real issue restricting centralization is bandwidth, and I doubt this will ever be solved, because you need all the block and tx data that is shipped out across the network. Gavin's latest proposal is a way to optimize it to perhaps 20-50% less bandwidth usage (aside from making syncing much more rapid), but the bandwidth issue still exists and is severe.
Terabytes are available now on cheap VPS accounts. Bandwidth is scaling by Moore's law too.
Decentralization doesn't necessarily mean everyone runs a full node, rather than at least one or two pools don't control > 50% of the hashrate, as is the case with Bitcoin.
There are problems with both. Mining at least, has some incentive. There is currently zero incentive to run a node at all, and the number of nodes has been dropping even as usage has increased.
This is the elephant in room (currently insoluble) problem. The largest Bitcoin pool
doesn't charge fees because it is subsidized by the largest ASIC miner.
Something interesting that's happening is that alternative Bitcoin implementations are popping up, from Conformal's btcd to Bits of Proof's enterprise Bitcoin server and so on. If there is a compelling feature and enough demand for it, and the Bitcoin developers are too narrow-minded/resolute/whatever, one of those alternative implementations will offer it.
That is unless as I (and I believe smooth?) argued upthread, the large pools are really in control, given the consensus doesn't want to split Bitcoin into two or more competing forks.
Thus I believe Gavin is not in control and he can be spanked if he gets out-of-line. I bet he won't implement any feature without consulting with the pools and other of powers-that-be.
Even better - a lot of the seemingly "revolutionary" stuff being done in many altcoins can be implemented in an alternative client due to the flexibility of Bitcoin's pay-to-hash system, and existing mining pools can continue running the "regular" Bitcoin implementation and mine those transactions without even knowing about their cleverness.
Any examples?
XCN is sitting here waiting to kill Visa, we just have to ask...
The sober, factual quality of this thread declines.
It is hard to see any coin other than Monero in a credible position to replace LTC.
Anonymity != network effects
Anonymity is a feature a few people want right now. It is a not a feature that catapults you to compete with Bitcoin.
The capital that is going to try to hide from the coming G20 capital controls and wealth hunt will arguably not buy into an altcoin that is not reasonably mainstream.
Neither is XCN's MBC. Nor XCN's 0 confirmations feature which I argued is insecure in the MBC thread (unless it changed or I wasn't completely informed at the time I studied it).
