Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[iCEBREAKER]

I wish that Pierre Rochard would stop pretending to be a proponent of Austrian school of economics and would openly come out as a Keynsian/interventionist. It would be a lot more honest.

I wish you and Frap.doc would spend less time fretting about Rochard, and more time working on an objective definition of the term 'overcapacity' (in the context of Bitcoin and its various metrics).

We keep hearing 'ZOMG BTC is overcapacity, we need bigger blocks ASAP' but nobody has bothered to define what that means.

(And yes, I will go back and use everything you've said whining about the ambiguity/subjectivity of the term 'decentralized' to make the same demands of you and Frap.doc's ambiguous/subjective bugbear.  Just in case you aren't sure whether or not I'm mocking you, let me be clear: I am mocking you.   )

[cypherdoc]

Spam tx's are by definition economic transactions someone finds inappropriate, and individual judgments calls are not part of the protocol, that's bitcoin

Miners can choose what to include in the blocks they build.

anyway to say 6 years after bitcoin has grown that storing transactions and blocks for ever should change is not keeping with the idea that is Bitcoin.  

OK. I'm not sure anyone suggested otherwise.

Don't forget that with pruning you'll be able to trim your node if you want while turning the full validation over to specialized nodes.

[Adrian-x]

Spam tx's are by definition economic transactions someone finds inappropriate, and individual judgments calls are not part of the protocol, that's bitcoin

Miners can choose what to include in the blocks they build.

anyway to say 6 years after bitcoin has grown that storing transactions and blocks for ever should change is not keeping with the idea that is Bitcoin.  

OK. I'm not sure anyone suggested otherwise.

Maybe I misread the tone of your concern about storing spam forever.  

I agree miners can choose what to include, this is important and must not be manipulated by the protocol, the market for fees must be free of manipulation to be successful, it will always be free so long as new market participants are aloud to compete, and the number of transactions are not artificially limited.  

[iCEBREAKER]

Don't forget that with pruning you'll be able to trim your node if you want while turning the full validation over to specialized nodes.

Yes, let's all prune trustlessness, the raison d'etre of bitcoin, from our nodes for the sake of adoption at any cost.

/African kid fetish

[Odalv]

Why would the cost to a particular node depend on the number of nodes?

lol, do we have single centralized server ?

[sidhujag]

Spam tx's are by definition economic transactions someone finds inappropriate, and individual judgments calls are not part of the protocol, that's bitcoin

Miners can choose what to include in the blocks they build.

anyway to say 6 years after bitcoin has grown that storing transactions and blocks for ever should change is not keeping with the idea that is Bitcoin.  

OK. I'm not sure anyone suggested otherwise.

Don't forget that with pruning you'll be able to trim your node if you want while turning the full validation over to specialized nodes.

I think bandwidth is a bigger issue than storage costs. Pruning does nothing for bandwidth.

[Peter R]

Why would the cost to a particular node depend on the number of nodes?

lol, do we have single centralized server ?

OK, it sounds like you're looking at the costs to the network as a whole, rather than the cost to an individual node.  Indeed this cost will be higher (cost/node * number of nodes).  

However, the table I originally posted specifically addressed the cost per node. Here's a new one where I've estimated the cost to the network (blue column):



So...which is the important cost?  In my opinion, it's the cost per node.  As a node operator or as a miner, I only care how much it costs me.  If my actions can effectively charge the spammer $1200 while costing me a few pennies, I'll do it!  Whether a thousand or a million other nodes also contribute a few pennies to penalize the spammer makes no difference to me.  

How are you looking at the issue?

[iCEBREAKER]

I think bandwidth is a bigger issue than storage costs. Pruning does nothing for bandwidth.

Thanks to the end of the economic crisis, benevolent cash-flush corporations will Soon^TM begin rolling out fiber to every home so every pig farmer in Moldova/Greece/Florida/Ukraine/etc. can binge watch Marco Polo in 1080p on Netflix.  (According to Gavin; YMMV.)

Just as soon as their stocks start trading again....WAIT FOR IT...any second now...         

[cypherdoc]

Spam tx's are by definition economic transactions someone finds inappropriate, and individual judgments calls are not part of the protocol, that's bitcoin

Miners can choose what to include in the blocks they build.

anyway to say 6 years after bitcoin has grown that storing transactions and blocks for ever should change is not keeping with the idea that is Bitcoin.  

OK. I'm not sure anyone suggested otherwise.

Don't forget that with pruning you'll be able to trim your node if you want while turning the full validation over to specialized nodes.

I think bandwidth is a bigger issue than storage costs. Pruning does nothing for bandwidth.

Yes, but the ongoing spam shows clearly that all full nodes are handling the traffic just fine. We were told that they would crash and burn from overloaded memory. Not true.

The real shame is that they've been forced to do ask the validation and store it in mempool waiting for blocks that never come because of the 1MB cap. What a waste but it shows that the capacity of the network is far higher than we've been told.

If you look at the stream  of full blocks going by, to me I see miners begging to be able to process bigger blocks to clear their mempools. That would force the spammers losses and eventually kill him. 

[nby]

Why would the cost to a particular node depend on the number of nodes?

lol, do we have single centralized server ?

We don't.
But why should a single node owner pay for the storage used by every other node in the network, instead of bearing just its share ?
Because that's what it looks you're implying...

[Odalv]

Why would the cost to a particular node depend on the number of nodes?

lol, do we have single centralized server ?

OK, it sounds like you're looking at the costs to the network as a whole, rather than the cost to an individual node.  Indeed this cost will be higher (cost/node * number of nodes).  

However, the table I posted specifically addressed the cost per node.  So...which is the important cost?  In my opinion, it's the cost per node.  As a node operator or as a miner, I only care how much it costs me.  If my actions can effectively charge the spammer $1200 while costing me a few pennies, I'll do it!  Whether a thousand or a million other nodes also contribute a few pennies to penalize the spammer makes no difference to me.  

How are you looking at the issue?

Why do you think that there is only 1 spammer ? In reality there can be much more (100x ?) spammers than miners.  

[Odalv]

Why would the cost to a particular node depend on the number of nodes?

lol, do we have single centralized server ?

We don't.
But why should a single node owner pay for the storage used by every other node in the network, instead of bearing just its share ?
Because that's what it looks you're implying...

Whole network must upgrade. So spammer spend $1200 but bitcoin network 10x more on upgrade,

[Peter R]

Whole network must upgrade. So spammer spend $1200 but bitcoin network 10x more on upgrade,

You must have quoted my post before I updated it with the new table to estimate the cost to the network that you were referring.  I think "10x more" is an overstatement.  It still looks like it costs the spammer more than the network as a whole [blue column] if we write the spam to the blockchain, even though I think the relevant cost is the cost per node:

[nby]

Why would the cost to a particular node depend on the number of nodes?

lol, do we have single centralized server ?

We don't.
But why should a single node owner pay for the storage used by every other node in the network, instead of bearing just its share ?
Because that's what it looks you're implying...

Whole network must upgrade. So spammer spend $1200 but bitcoin network 10x more on upgrade,

On the other hand:
Spammer spends 0 (no fees) while whole network spends K for bandwidth

Edit: I agree in full with Peter R and what his table reports.

[cypherdoc]

A block cap doesn't discourage spam; it encourages it. That's because not only is it a target to cause congestion but the attacker knows he can congest nodes that process the spam immediately upon receipt and then store it in memory waiting for a block that never comes. Since unconfirmed TX's get deleted from mempool after 24 hours, the spam costs him nothing while at the same time disrupting user experience and growth.

What a deal. 

[Odalv]

Whole network must upgrade. So spammer spend $1200 but bitcoin network 10x more on upgrade,

You must have quoted my post before I updated it with the new table to estimate the cost to the network that you were referring.  I think "10x more" is an overstatement.  It still looks like it costs the spammer more than the network as a whole [blue column] if we write the spam to the blockchain, even though I think the relevant cost is the cost per node:

Spammer only spends money 1x during lifetime, but miner has to keep bigger disk-space forever (2 hard disc consume more electricity than single one)

[cypherdoc]

Why would the cost to a particular node depend on the number of nodes?

lol, do we have single centralized server ?

We don't.
But why should a single node owner pay for the storage used by every other node in the network, instead of bearing just its share ?
Because that's what it looks you're implying...

Whole network must upgrade. So spammer spend $1200 but bitcoin network 10x more on upgrade,

The network will upgrade as a result of new user growth that the spammer can no longer disrupt. Meanwhile, the spammer gets taken out to the wood shed and gets raped. She won't be coming back.

[brg444]

What network disruption are we talking about here?

[Peter R]

Spammer only spends money 1x during lifetime, but miner has to keep bigger disk-space forever (2 hard disc consume more electricity than single one)

OK.  Provide me with your estimates for the following (and explain how you arrived at your numbers) and I'll update my table using your numbers:

1.  The cost per node to store 1 GB of additional blockchain data for 5 years, assume the outputs are spent.
2.  The cost per node to store 1 GB of additional blockchain data for 5 years, assuming the outputs are unspent.

[cypherdoc]

Whole network must upgrade. So spammer spend $1200 but bitcoin network 10x more on upgrade,

You must have quoted my post before I updated it with the new table to estimate the cost to the network that you were referring.  I think "10x more" is an overstatement.  It still looks like it costs the spammer more than the network as a whole [blue column] if we write the spam to the blockchain, even though I think the relevant cost is the cost per node:

Spammer only spends money 1x during lifetime, but miner has to keep bigger disk-space forever (2 hard disc consume more electricity than single one)

So what, without a cap miner will get paid to do it. And profit and get stronger which is the last thing the spammer wants especially since he can no longer disrupt the user growth which will, in the meantime, lead to squaring of the networks value (price) according to Metcalfe Law.