[Opinions] IF you could improve/add/remove 1 thing to bitcoin what would it be?

[odolvlobo]

would probably change the fees so that even smaller amounts can be sent without large fees. If bitcoin gets more expensive, you could have to pay several dollars to send one dollar of bitcoin.

Fees are optional.

[1714078377]

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[1714078377]

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[raveldoni]

I would remove the ability to complain about transaction times.


Bank transfer - > 3-4 days
Paypal - > 4-5 days
Western Union - > 30 minutes to drive and send $14 later also.
Western Union - > 20 minutes to go pick up.
Personal/Business check - > 3 days
Creidt Card Processor - > 1-5 days
Bitcoin - > 0-20 minutes

....

I agree. It is even less than 20 minutes usually and they are still working to keep improving.

[itsAj]

I would decrease the time for difficulty adjustments.  I don't have a specific duration in mind, but maybe something like every 1-3 days.

My reasoning for this is that I think it could have interesting effects on price stability due to reduced effects of difficulty manipulation and speculation by miners.  I think there's a likelihood that it could help stabilize the rate at which miners sell BTC to recoup investment costs.

For the record, I kind of have no idea what I'm talking about here.

I don't think that the price is affected by the difficulty of mining but rather the opposite that the difficulty is affected by the price of bitcoin. If difficulty decreases or increases then the same amount of coins will still be mined on average. However if the price changes then the amount of funds that can be gained from using resources for mining would be changed in the same direction.

[BittBurger]

My improvement:

With a typical company, you *never* have the developers making *product* decisions.  There's a reason for that.  They have absolutely zero clue what the *market* needs.  With Bitcoin you've got a bunch of non product / sales / marketing people (also known as developers) making decisions on the direction of the software development.  

This is a huge problem.  These guys aren't economists.  Yet they're creating a potential new world economy.  These guys don't have the first clue what the market needs, aside from what they may have gleaned in conversations/articles/podcasts.  And its exactly why developers like Gavin seem to think its just fine to "add that feature later, when we need it" (faster transaction times).  

That's just one of many important enhancements that are on the "We'll get to it in 5 years" list.  The developers have reflected an inability to grasp the fact that the financial industry is evaluating bitcoin and what it can (can't) do *right now*, for products they would like to build "later".  If they see a limited protocol now, a huge opportunity is lost.  

This is one of the pitfalls of a project that is decentralized, and has zero product plan guiding its direction.  Product Development people shouldn't touch the code.  And Developers shouldn't be playing the role of Product Development.

-B-

[Onanula]

The most critical in my opinion: Address the 1 MB blocksize limit to allow Bitcoin to scale.

[NikkieBeraj]

In the majority of cases, waiting for confirmations is a waste of time. The difficulty in pulling off a double-spend is so convoluted and tricky, I don't think waiting for confirmations is worth it unless you're dealing with huge inter-bank or inter-business transfers. I've made purchases with Bitcoin about a dozen times now, and each time only took a few seconds. I think the longest transaction was about 7 seconds. Most were practically instantaneous.

[Ondago]

Better anonymity and privacy tools/ protocols (I think these will come, though, just not there yet)

[Orjaner]

I wish blocks were 1 minute apart, not 10.

[Jeramom]

How transaction hashes get calculated. I would move "scriptPubKey" in a third section (i.e. aside "outputs") to exclude it from hashed data.

[CoolBliss]

Compressing the blockchain would be nice, although I'm not sure how technically possible it would be.

[PalmerLaura]

I wish blocks were 1 minute apart, not 10.

This doesn't do anything useful you know.

[marcotheminer]

Bump

[odolvlobo]

Faster confirmation times do have benefits:

Many transactions are never confirmed for one reason or another. If I am selling something, I want to make sure that I will eventually get the bitcoins. If a transaction is confirmed once, then it is extremely likely to be confirmed many times, even if the first is orphaned. So one confirmation is fine for me even if confirmation times are short, and shorter confirmation times are more convenient.

Another benefit is a better distribution of block rewards. If there are more block rewards, then the chances of getting a block reward is higher. That reduces the need for mining pools.

[the joint]

I would decrease the time for difficulty adjustments.  I don't have a specific duration in mind, but maybe something like every 1-3 days.

My reasoning for this is that I think it could have interesting effects on price stability due to reduced effects of difficulty manipulation and speculation by miners.  I think there's a likelihood that it could help stabilize the rate at which miners sell BTC to recoup investment costs.

For the record, I kind of have no idea what I'm talking about here.

I don't think that the price is affected by the difficulty of mining but rather the opposite that the difficulty is affected by the price of bitcoin. If difficulty decreases or increases then the same amount of coins will still be mined on average. However if the price changes then the amount of funds that can be gained from using resources for mining would be changed in the same direction.

Actually, the one thing I'm confident in asserting is that the relationship between price and difficulty is *NOT* a one-way function.  Price absolutely affects difficulty and vice-versa.   Anyone who tells you otherwise is completely ignoring psychological factors.

What I'm not confident about is exactly how this dynamic plays out, and specifically how miners (particularly the largest mining operations) are affected and influenced by varying difficult adjustment periods.

Also note that I'm not referring to how the actual difficulty level influences miners and the price, but rather I'm simply focusing on the time between difficulty adjustments.

[the joint]

Faster confirmation times do have benefits:

Many transactions are never confirmed for one reason or another. If I am selling something, I want to make sure that I will eventually get the bitcoins. If a transaction is confirmed once, then it is extremely likely to be confirmed many times, even if the first is orphaned. So one confirmation is fine for me even if confirmation times are short, and shorter confirmation times are more convenient.

Another benefit is a better distribution of block rewards. If there are more block rewards, then the chances of getting a block reward is higher. That reduces the need for mining pools.

Yes, the largest benefit to short confirmation times is that 1 confirmation is infinitely better than 0 confirmations.  As a result, very short confirmation times are hands-down better for convenience-store-like transactions (assuming that the time isn't so short that you end up with intolerably high rates of orphans, etc.).  Really, anything beyond 15-30 seconds becomes a legitimate issue for these transaction types.

[StevenS]

Once the transactions are confirmed in the blockchain, they are confirmed and no longer able to be double spent. Right?

No, this is incorrect. The block that contains the transaction could be orphaned. If block times are shorter, then it is more likely for a block to be orphaned, resulting in no difference in security.

[yayayo]

Untraceability of funds and cloaking of transacting parties.

I think Bitcoin is most useful when it has cash-like properties, because then money will always flow smoothly. The current Bitcoin is at risk of being morphed into a surveillance nightmare which could also destroy its fungibility when things like blacklisting would be introduced.

ya.ya.yo!

[Cryddit]

The fee structure is inaccurate and needs to be fixed. 

It's not acute yet, as the primary cost of securing the network is borne by miners in exchange for block subsidies, but in the future we will need to pay miners for securing the network, and the current fee schedule is flatly wrong.  It is not charging for security in proportion to that which needs secured, and it will not pay miners to provide extra margins of security when those extra margins are needed. 

Right now we're charging fees based on transaction size.  Transaction size isn't what we're trying to secure, although under the 1MB block limit I suppose it is a resource we need to protect.  But what we're trying to secure is the value that the blockchain represents, and with tx fees not in any way based on the value to be protected we're leaving large transactions open to attack. 

Miners who don't get paid any more money to secure a block where a million-BTC transaction goes through won't make any extra effort to secure that block.  But attackers running a scam where they can temporarily rent mining power to compromise or undo that million-BTC transaction have an instant motivation directly in proportion to the value that is being secured. 

In fact when you consider the case of miners *as* potential attackers, this gets far worse.  Large transactions paying more to attackers but not defenders can switch the course of greatest profit from honest to dishonest use of the same resources. 

[itsAj]

Faster confirmation times do have benefits:

Many transactions are never confirmed for one reason or another. If I am selling something, I want to make sure that I will eventually get the bitcoins. If a transaction is confirmed once, then it is extremely likely to be confirmed many times, even if the first is orphaned. So one confirmation is fine for me even if confirmation times are short, and shorter confirmation times are more convenient.

Another benefit is a better distribution of block rewards. If there are more block rewards, then the chances of getting a block reward is higher. That reduces the need for mining pools.

Yes, the largest benefit to short confirmation times is that 1 confirmation is infinitely better than 0 confirmations.  As a result, very short confirmation times are hands-down better for convenience-store-like transactions (assuming that the time isn't so short that you end up with intolerably high rates of orphans, etc.).  Really, anything beyond 15-30 seconds becomes a legitimate issue for these transaction types.

One confirmation is not better then 0/unconfirmed necessarily. If the confirmation time is too short then it would be very easy to attack the network and people would have a false sense of security when they see that a TX has n confirmations. When the block confirmation time is longer you will know that it will take more resources to double spend the TX (assuming there is a sufficient TX fee and the TX is well propagated)

[barbarousrelic]

Once the transactions are confirmed in the blockchain, they are confirmed and no longer able to be double spent. Right?

No, this is incorrect. The block that contains the transaction could be orphaned. If block times are shorter, then it is more likely for a block to be orphaned, resulting in no difference in security.

Unintentional orphaned blocks would become more common, yes. But unintentionally orphaned blocks can't be used to double spend because you don't know when unintentionally orphaned blocks will occur, (and without resources you can't guarantee the new blocks contain your double spend transaction instead of the legitimate transaction).

But it would take resources to intentionally orphan the last block in order to double spend a transaction with 1 confirmation. It takes no resources to double spend a transaction with zero confirmations. So, there is some security improvement when you compare 0 confirmations and a longer block time, to 1 confirmation with a short block time.