Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

my nodes having no trouble keeping up with memory and no signs of crashing.

increase load 20x and you will see what is chaos.

edit:
it is 1 MB block size limit what keeps your nodes happy. :-)

Yes, the test demonstrates, if anything, that hell does not break lose when transaction pressure exceeds the limit. So it is not critical that the increase happens at any specific point. What we still don't know, is what happens when real people really want transactions to go through, and when the pressure keeps up over weeks. I think there is time to do it calmly.

This test demonstrates that cypherdoc's resources are at 25-45% of its capacity. And if we increase block size 8x then he can process only 2-4 MB blocks and his nodes will collapse.

no, my higher memory usage is coming from higher than normal unconf tx's.  the UTXO set is relatively flat at around 7MiB.  with bigger blocks, the unconf tx's could be cleared out much faster in bigger chunks.

[Erdogan]

my nodes having no trouble keeping up with memory and no signs of crashing.

increase load 20x and you will see what is chaos.

edit:
it is 1 MB block size limit what keeps your nodes happy. :-)

Yes, the test demonstrates, if anything, that hell does not break lose when transaction pressure exceeds the limit. So it is not critical that the increase happens at any specific point. What we still don't know, is what happens when real people really want transactions to go through, and when the pressure keeps up over weeks. I think there is time to do it calmly.

This test demonstrates that cypherdoc's resources are at 25-45% of its capacity. And if we increase block size 8x then he can process only 2-4 MB blocks and his nodes will collapse.

So you think his hardware is suffering from muscular atrophy?

[cypherdoc]

what's interesting is that this attack is not slowing down block formation at_all.  we're just seeing continual full blocks.  based on Tradeblock's previous analysis, real customer tx's can probably get through if they pay a high enough fee.  unfortunately, the avg consumer won't know what that fee is given current wallet software capability and will get frustrated from delays.

edit:  altho unconf tx's aren't that bad at 4500

[Erdogan]

what's interesting is that this attack is not slowing down block formation at_all.  we're just seeing continual full blocks.  based on Tradeblock's previous analysis, real customer tx's can probably get through if they pay a high enough fee.  unfortunately, the avg consumer won't know what that fee is given current wallet software capability and will get frustrated from delays.

edit:  altho unconf tx's aren't that bad at 4500

My guess is when we approach the limit, 1) people will learn what is the necessary fee to get their transactions into the first block, 2) the blocks will normally not be full for those transactions, 3) some people will pay lower fees and they are happy to risk waiting a few blocks sometimes. 4) The fee will be just high enough to discourage the least necessary transactions.

Said otherwise, since people's preferences are diversified, most people will be happy with the situation. This does not mean I want an artificial cap; the lower prices and the larger number of happy customers, the better chance bitcoin has to be the global money system everybody prefer. Only the physical limits of the system, as defined by nature, should exist.

[cypherdoc]

dying off again:

[smooth]

This does not mean I want an artificial cap; the lower prices and the larger number of happy customers, the better chance bitcoin has to be the global money system everybody prefer. Only the physical limits of the system, as defined by nature, should exist.

There is no physical limit defined by nature, other than whatever the highest capacity node in the world can handle (which would be the only node able to keep up and therefore the network would consist of a single node).

In any other configuration the capacity is defined by the lowest capacity node on the network, which is not a limit defined by nature, but by intended or unintended consequences of the protocol design. If you want the lowest capacity node to be home computers, embedded devices, etc. then the protocol has to be designed differently than if you want that lowest capacity node to be a large or very large server in a data center. Nature allows either.

[cypherdoc]

i don't think any spam attacks can be sustained for a prolonged period of time.  it's too expensive as they pay normal tx fees.  while yes, at 1MB, they crowd out normal users, at 8MB or more, the spammers have to pay 8x more in fees.  while the anti Gavin crowd will say it's a drop in the bucket to perform such an attack even at 8x, what they i think they miss is that those tx fees will be tremendously beneficial for the miners raking up all those free fees and actually is expensive.  that will strengthen mining which is always a good thing for an industry that has been under stress for over the last year.  that would be the last thing they want to do.  can you also imagine a sustained 8x increase in the tx graph below?:



and what that would do to the price?  an 8x increase?  pt being, a spam attack is and will get more and more expensive and uneconomical and even strengthen mining.  it's be like your local candy store; owners ideally would like to sell to as many kids on the block as possible to keep them all happy but if one big kid keeps coming in week after week and buying out all your inventory, you aren't going to complain.  you might even prefer it as your turnover increases and you make more money.

all in all, this is just another form of manipulation of an open source, transparent system that won't work in the end and shouldn't be used as a reason for us not to adopt Gavin's plan.

edit:  yes, full nodes will be more expensive. but we already know they will become specialized.  and once pruning comes in, ordinary users can still run those.

[cypherdoc]

hey, i thought the network was only capable of 2-3 tx/s?  look at our peaks today.  not bad:

[cypherdoc]

all over.  and it would be the same at 8MB:

[molecular]

hey, i thought the network was only capable of 2-3 tx/s?  look at our peaks today.  not bad:

Those are tx merely being broadcast. "being capable of" means they can get into blocks at a sustained rate.

It would be cool to see that graph for transactions having 1 confirmation.

[Melbustus]

Subsidies are great if you want to get applicants who qualify, It should be called a subsidiary not a reward for good reason, the problem is there are developers who feel the economics are wrong and Bitcoin needs to be fixed, I may not be able to express why but to my understanding the mechanism seems well balanced and considered in my view, the onus is on the people who have a problem with how Bitcoin works to prove its broken, and build a better mousetrap not change this one.

My position is that it would be great if we could have started Bitcoin up without a block subsidy, but since the currency has to be issued via some method, and since the only way to produce a truly optimal initial distribution would require an entity that was both omnipotent and omniscient, issuing the currency via block subsidy spread out over time is the least terrible way to do it.

It's in my queue of articles that need to be written.

I like Satoshi's quote on this:

...
Coins have to get initially distributed somehow, and a constant rate seems like the best formula.
...

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg09979.html


The nonchalance, to me, indicates a nice trust in markets to do their job of optimizing allocation over time. But - if Bitcoin ever starts to become a serious global economic force, mainstream economists are going to flip out over the above quote, given the initial-distribution algo didn't go through some deep analysis, etc... 

I think it's interesting how the engineering decision of making a simple/transparent (easy to implement, thus more secure) distribution algorithm trumped any potential detailed economic complexity, presumably due to Satoshi's understanding that the market would eventually allocate the capital optimally anyways, given the transparency of the current and future supply.

[Carlton Banks]

all over.  and it would be the same at 8MB:

So you've abandoned 20 MB? And Bitcoin XT? What made you change your mind?

[da2ce7]

While I'm moderately against just increasing the block size. (I think that we should sort out the rest of the hard engineering infrastructure so we can actually support larger blocks first).

The main point is even on this forum we have nowhere near the 95%+ consensus that we need to do a hard-fork.

Gavin's latest proposal is just dangerous with only needing 75% of the miners to agree.

I would much prefer Bitcoin to continue to work with 1MB blocks, than be destroyed on the reckless quest for larger blocks.

[tvbcof]

I like Satoshi's quote on this:

...
Coins have to get initially distributed somehow, and a constant rate seems like the best formula.
...

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg09979.html

The nonchalance, to me, indicates a nice trust in markets to do their job of optimizing allocation over time. But - if Bitcoin ever starts to become a serious global economic force, mainstream economists are going to flip out over the above quote, given the initial-distribution algo didn't go through some deep analysis, etc... 

I think it's interesting how the engineering decision of making a simple/transparent (easy to implement, thus more secure) distribution algorithm trumped any potential detailed economic complexity, presumably due to Satoshi's understanding that the market would eventually allocate the capital optimally anyways, given the transparency of the current and future supply.

One of the nice things about having a 'benevolent dictator' is that it will be much easier to make decisions about these things going forward.

We already know that in the noble interest of getting a 'critical mass' in order to 'outrun regulation', it is critical  to subsidize transaction costs.  We also know with some reasonable certainty that one of the early attractions of Bitcoin was that people could 'make free money' with only a token effort.  People like free shit.  Always will.

In order to spread the wealth there are two choices.

 - make more wealth and give it away (e.g., screw the obsolete 21 million cap thingy.)

 - appropriate existing or lost money and hand it out.

Idea!  We can be pretty sure that if/when XT takes over, coin tainting is not far behind.  Why don't we use the otherwise wasted value to pass around to the masses.  Maybe like a dividend to be distributed to all existing addresses.  To be more fair and reduce gaming, however, it makes sense that people would need to appropriately register their true identities in order to receive the dividend though.

[tvbcof]

all over.  and it would be the same at 8MB:

So you've abandoned 20 MB? And Bitcoin XT? What made you change your mind?

cypherdoc changed his mind because Gavin did presumably.  Gavin did because it was easier to do this as quitely as possible than to try to change the laws of arithmetic.

Both of them know that it's the exponential growth that is the critical element here since it is pretty certain to sink Bitcoin eventually.  (Actually, cypherdoc may or may not know that or may or may not care much if he can make a buck in the interim.)

Like I've been saying about {n} MB increase _{(and exponential growth)} for the last while now: 'Watch the pea.'

Of course since I like the expression and it fits a few things here in bitcoinland,  so I've also been saying the same thing about UTXO size.

[Carlton Banks]

The main point is even on this forum we have nowhere near the 95%+ consensus that we need to do a hard-fork.

If there's 95% consensus, there's no need for a hard fork in the sense of campaigning to leave the 1 MB chain high and dry. There's a decent amount of time to decide though, I'm in favor of getting rid of 1MB, but it's still not totally obvious which of the many ideas is best.

Why is no-one proposing to build a series of test rigs to demonstrate the leading ideas for governing the block size? That would seem like the most thorough approach. Proposing a whole host of abstract ideas, and then saying "...and game theory tells us the users will respond to these extrema in these ways, the relay nodes will respond..."; that's not very convincing to me. Asking people to choose before they've observed some empirical reality isn't a very professional approach for such a fundamental design feature. For a system that is itself fundamental, it looks reckless.

[Zarathustra]

Nope, it is confirmed there is no global elite.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/archives/33771

Whether the society and its elite is national or international or both is irrelevant. Relevant is: Do you promote the society (collectivism/paternalism) or the community (anarchy, self-sufficiency).

[Erdogan]

This does not mean I want an artificial cap; the lower prices and the larger number of happy customers, the better chance bitcoin has to be the global money system everybody prefer. Only the physical limits of the system, as defined by nature, should exist.

There is no physical limit defined by nature, other than whatever the highest capacity node in the world can handle (which would be the only node able to keep up and therefore the network would consist of a single node).

In any other configuration the capacity is defined by the lowest capacity node on the network, which is not a limit defined by nature, but by intended or unintended consequences of the protocol design. If you want the lowest capacity node to be home computers, embedded devices, etc. then the protocol has to be designed differently than if you want that lowest capacity node to be a large or very large server in a data center. Nature allows either.

That limit yes, what the computer can handle. I don't care about home computers or embedded devices. There will not be only one, just like there is not only one gold miner in the world. The market will decide how many, it is impossible to compute the number needed. The least effective nodes will be those that barely give the owners the psychical advantage to cost. It is the market, we can trust it.

[Erdogan]

I like Satoshi's quote on this:

...
Coins have to get initially distributed somehow, and a constant rate seems like the best formula.
...

http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography%40metzdowd.com/msg09979.html

The nonchalance, to me, indicates a nice trust in markets to do their job of optimizing allocation over time. But - if Bitcoin ever starts to become a serious global economic force, mainstream economists are going to flip out over the above quote, given the initial-distribution algo didn't go through some deep analysis, etc... 

I think it's interesting how the engineering decision of making a simple/transparent (easy to implement, thus more secure) distribution algorithm trumped any potential detailed economic complexity, presumably due to Satoshi's understanding that the market would eventually allocate the capital optimally anyways, given the transparency of the current and future supply.

One of the nice things about having a 'benevolent dictator' is that it will be much easier to make decisions about these things going forward.

We already know that in the noble interest of getting a 'critical mass' in order to 'outrun regulation', it is critical  to subsidize transaction costs.  We also know with some reasonable certainty that one of the early attractions of Bitcoin was that people could 'make free money' with only a token effort.  People like free shit.  Always will.

In order to spread the wealth there are two choices.

 - make more wealth and give it away (e.g., screw the obsolete 21 million cap thingy.)

 - appropriate existing or lost money and hand it out.

Idea!  We can be pretty sure that if/when XT takes over, coin tainting is not far behind.  Why don't we use the otherwise wasted value to pass around to the masses.  Maybe like a dividend to be distributed to all existing addresses.  To be more fair and reduce gaming, however, it makes sense that people would need to appropriately register their true identities in order to receive the dividend though.

My god, cheezes christ, what a socialist pile of crap.

I can personally guarantee that bitcoin with the crucial coin limit will continue, even if I have to run my own miner and wait decennia before the difficulty adjusts. More likely though, I will be joined by at least a percentage of current miners, meaning the system will continue with the slight annoyance of having confirmation times of a day or so. Have your fork, the inflatacoin will go the way of the fiats.

[sickpig]

speaking of IBLT, rusty russel has just posted a prototype on btc dev mailing list:

     http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-June/009021.html

you could find the github repo here:

     https://github.com/rustyrussell/bitcoin-iblt

the work is based on the famous gavin's gist:

     https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/e20c3b5a1d4b97f79ac2