Bitcoin 20MB Fork

[inBitweTrust]

Obviously I don't see a way of pleasing the 'opposition' in this case, unless we leave the network as it is, with the current limitations?
Bitcoin is growing and will grow, the network will reach its capabilities. What do technicians usually do once the current capabilities are fulfilled?

You are correct that they will never be satisfied , but the service the "opposition" does provide is they may focus us on addressing and testing other features like merkle tree pruning with greater tenacity. In reality we have similar goals and don't have some secret cabal that wants centralization and the removal of privacy and it may be a good thing to address those issues at the same time as upgrading the blocksize limit.

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[davout]

It's kinda weird hearing people speak about the space scarcity in blocks as a 'limitation'.
The same way 21m had been presented as one since "not everyone will ever be able to have one full coin".

Direct access to the blockchain for everyone is not necessary for bitcoin to achieve disruption.

[pawel7777]

It's kinda weird hearing people speak about the space scarcity in blocks as a 'limitation'.
The same way 21m had been presented as one since "not everyone will ever be able to have one full coin".

Direct access to the blockchain for everyone is not necessary for bitcoin to achieve disruption.

So what's the perfect scenario in your opinion? Are you in favour of leaving the block size as it is at 1mb, hoping that more transaction will fill up the blocks to the max and cause the tx fees to increase accordingly?

Or would you prefer to introduce sliding scale fee structure (higher tx amount - higher fee)?

[davout]

So what's the perfect scenario in your opinion? Are you in favour of leaving the block size as it is at 1mb, hoping that more transaction will fill up the blocks to the max and cause the tx fees to increase accordingly?

Yes, at the very least for now.

It should be seen as an advantage that the solutions built on top of this would end up being actually much more consumer-friendly than insisting on everyone using the blockchain directly. Bitcoin's potential to disrupt financial institutions lies in its ability to actually push the bankrupt ones into bankruptcy, and allow actual transparency. Not in letting Joe and Jane play the banker.

[CoinCidental]

It's kinda weird hearing people speak about the space scarcity in blocks as a 'limitation'.
The same way 21m had been presented as one since "not everyone will ever be able to have one full coin".

Direct access to the blockchain for everyone is not necessary for bitcoin to achieve disruption.

So what's the perfect scenario in your opinion? Are you in favour of leaving the block size as it is at 1mb, hoping that more transaction will fill up the blocks to the max and cause the tx fees to increase accordingly?

Or would you prefer to introduce sliding scale fee structure (higher tx amount - higher fee)?

one of the unique and beneficial attributes of btc is you can send someone a 50 cent tip or a million dollars for almost nothing in transaction fees
i think it would be a big mistake to put higher fees on higher tx amounts and i would vote against it ,raise the block size if necessary and prune the blockchain is a better idea imo

everyone doesnt need the last 6-7 years of history ,there must be some way to let new users download the most recent portion without the previous 6 years or just the headers instead of every entire block  etc

its already a 33GB download ,imagine that increasing exponentially ,nobodys going to download it all when it exceeds 100GB but i suppose we could all use "lite wallets " etc but that would also weaken the network if most people were using multibit etc

[DarkHyudrA]

It's kinda weird hearing people speak about the space scarcity in blocks as a 'limitation'.
The same way 21m had been presented as one since "not everyone will ever be able to have one full coin".

Direct access to the blockchain for everyone is not necessary for bitcoin to achieve disruption.

So what's the perfect scenario in your opinion? Are you in favour of leaving the block size as it is at 1mb, hoping that more transaction will fill up the blocks to the max and cause the tx fees to increase accordingly?

Or would you prefer to introduce sliding scale fee structure (higher tx amount - higher fee)?

one of the unique and beneficial attributes of btc is you can send someone a 50 cent tip or a million dollars for almost nothing in transaction fees
i think it would be a big mistake to put higher fees on higher tx amounts and i would vote against it ,raise the block size if necessary and prune the blockchain is a better idea imo

everyone doesnt need the last 6-7 years of history ,there must be some way to let new users download the most recent portion without the previous 6 years or just the headers instead of every entire block  etc

its already a 33GB download ,imagine that increasing exponentially ,nobodys going to download it all when it exceeds 100GB but i suppose we could all use "lite wallets " etc but that would also weaken the network if most people were using multibit etc

This is already in question, in the blog post of Gavin he said something about a database of the unspent transactions, and that's exactly the only thing that Bitcoin would need to keep working.

And about the 20MB per block, I hope that this get reals because 1MB will soon be too little to handle the "not so quick transaction" nature of Bitcoin.

[dancing altcoin shiva]

so do i understad right: Bitcoin is over - one way or another?

No matter which side wins the argument, bitcoin is done and will cease to exist?

[CoinCidental]

so do i understad right: Bitcoin is over - one way or another?

No matter which side wins the argument, bitcoin is done and will cease to exist?

another retard ,just what the doctor ordered..........

[dgmon]

My understanding was that the 1MB limit was only ever a temporary measure to limit spam when there wasn't much real transaction volume.  Pretty sad if this ends up holding Bitcoin back.  Guess altcoins will be the future then.

so do i understad right: Bitcoin is over - one way or another?

No matter which side wins the argument, bitcoin is done and will cease to exist?

Well you'd think people could just learn to use Electrum or similar, rather than downloading the whole blockchain.

[runpaint]

so do i understad right: Bitcoin is over - one way or another?

No matter which side wins the argument, bitcoin is done and will cease to exist?

Yes, it's all over.  

Just as you can never step into the same stream twice;  that water has gone somewhere else.  The Bitcoin of yesterday is gone, and only the Bitcoin of today remains.  Well, except for the entire existing blockchain that has remained the same for years, but then new blocks get added every day.  So it stays the same, except for the new parts which make it different.  Except that the previous blocks never change.  But other than that, it's all over.  And also it's just beginning.  Bitcoin is dead, long live Bitcoin.

[ujka]

this should be introduced at the same time as blockchain pruning if possible
nobody wants a blockchain thats growing by 1TB+ per year

Why not? Do you know hom many transactions will that be? And how 'mainstream' would bitcoin have to be for that?

Seriously now, block size won't grow because we set the new limit. For blocks to grow in size it requires transactions.

1k GB per year is a bigger problem than the 1MB vs 20MB thing imho or at the very least equivalent...

This is misinformation and you are confusing people.

That number isn't true as it assumes we will immediately be processing 84k transactions per block which isn't going to happen.
20GB is the future limit and not the size of most blocks in the future. We are only 600-700tpb at the moment
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-per-block which means we are typically 15-25% full blocks for 1MB blocks.... do you really expect this to shoot up to 100% full 20MB blocks overnight?.... it will take years to start getting close to those levels.

Additionally, you are completely ignoring the work that is being completed on merkle tree pruning.

This needs repeating again, and again, because many here are thinking that we will have 20MB blocks added to blockchain the very moment the block limit is raised. Calm down. Average block size is now 0.35MB, https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size

[Krona Rev]

BTW if one could make a step by step guide to prevent one's coin from getting into the forked 20MB blockchain, that'd be quite interesting.

All bitcoins you have on the block chain before the fork, you will have on both forks at the time of the fork. In essence, you will double your bitcoins (sort of). The best way to prevent this is to not have any bitcoins at the time of the fork. One easy way not to have any bitcoins at the time of the fork is to leave "your" bitcoins on an exchange so that the exchange has the bitcoins. That's how most people in the bitcoin space who don't want to have any bitcoins make sure they don't have any bitcoins.

[benjamindees]

Direct access to the blockchain for everyone is not necessary for bitcoin to achieve disruption.

No one has ever claimed that the purpose of Bitcoin is to "cause disruption".  This is just a product of you projecting your own goals onto others.

I would guess that most Bitcoin users just want to use it to make their own lives better.

The same way 21m had been presented as one since "not everyone will ever be able to have one full coin".

But that was a nonsense argument, since Bitcoins are divisible and the decimal place is arbitrary.  In fact, that's the reason I'm almost positive that no one actually made the argument you are claiming -- that the limit was anything but a psychological barrier to adoption.  Again, this seems to be a figment of your imagination.

the solutions built on top of this would end up being actually much more consumer-friendly than insisting on everyone using the blockchain directly.

MtGox?  Was MtGox more "consumer-friendly"?  Because, with a 1MB limit forever, literally everyone would be using services like MtGox, for everything.

So I'll just go ahead and add this to the list of instances in which you have failed to learn from history, right behind thinking that gold is anything but a manipulated, effervescent joke of a currency.

And if you think anyone is going to allow you to cripple Bitcoin in order to turn it into "gold with slightly lower transaction costs," you really have lost your mind.

[HarmonLi]

Pro. We need to make those changes now. If we can't do this now, we can just go ahead and bury Bitcoin. Forks have happened before (inadvertently) and everything worked out just fine. If we can't agree on making Bitcoin better while still using it, we can just give up now, I guess.

[pawel7777]

So what's the perfect scenario in your opinion? Are you in favour of leaving the block size as it is at 1mb, hoping that more transaction will fill up the blocks to the max and cause the tx fees to increase accordingly?

Yes, at the very least for now.

It should be seen as an advantage that the solutions built on top of this would end up being actually much more consumer-friendly than insisting on everyone using the blockchain directly. Bitcoin's potential to disrupt financial institutions lies in its ability to actually push the bankrupt ones into bankruptcy, and allow actual transparency. Not in letting Joe and Jane play the banker.

But for many, including myself, being able to be your own bank is very (if not most) important feature of bitcoin. Why would you want to take that away from anyone?

I do agree that bitcoin is not well design for buying coffee at starbucks and that there is uncertainty whether the future tx fees will be sufficient to secure the network.

But it makes way more sense to increase the block size (not necessarily as proposed by gavin), hoping that number of tx (and therefore fees) will be steadily growing. And if that's not the case, some other, progressive fee structure could be implemented (I'm not tech-savvy, but assume it's possible).

While leaving 1mb limit could be very destructive. What if there are no practical and trusted off-chain payment solutions when 1mb proves to be not enough? And what if such solutions are developed (ie trusted 3rd party, some "Bitcoin PayPal" system) and become too popular, to the extent that no one sends on blockchain unless they really have to? You still have issue of insufficient fees, maybe even worse than in the first case.

...
one of the unique and beneficial attributes of btc is you can send someone a 50 cent tip or a million dollars for almost nothing in transaction fees
i think it would be a big mistake to put higher fees on higher tx amounts and i would vote against it ,raise the block size if necessary and prune the blockchain is a better idea imo
...

Agree. It would be even better if instead of the standard 0.0001 fee there's 0.00001 fee etc. But the trick is to find the right balance in the bitcoin ecosystem. It must be cheap and convenient for the people to use it, but miners must also get incentive to keep the network secure. Right now the fees are not a significant part (due to block reward being quite high) but they will be crucial in the future.

Sliding scale fees may not sound that great from the 'propaganda' point, but the idea is not that bad and definitely worth considering.

+1000 on blockchain pruning, would love to see that even before the 20mb fork.

[benjamindees]

Why have you not responded to these allegations?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=372784.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=602754.msg6644863#msg6644863

Davout, before making another post here arguing your "vision" of the future of Bitcoin, I want you to make a short video in which you list your main points.

Show your face.  Those who know what you look like can verify that it's actually you, and not a sockpuppet trolling us all.

[tvbcof]

...
But eh my aim here is just to preserve and be cautious with my investment in bitcoin.  ...
...

I've got a rough idea, but no idea about the techniques. ...

I believe that the safest thing to do is to just sit on the sidelines and neither get rid of nor obtain Bitcoin if you are able to do this (e.g., you don't run a business which involves Bitcoin or whatever.) ...

Lots of this stuff is just theoretical and hand-waving on my part.  If/when a fork looks more eminent I'll be digging into it some more.

alright TY

how to effectively "sit on the sidelines" is my main concern tho.

be sure to let me know when you dig a little deeper this matter, i'll probably tip for this stuff (and not that you seem to need tipping, but thats just my bitcoin spirit emerging).

edit: dam this subject is a bottomless pit. readings all over the place.

I'm sure a war will provoke my interest in Bitcoin whether or not it happens to be in a natural trough.  And I have a tendency to be pretty open about my thoughts and activities.  Chances are you would run across my work.

Everyone no matter what there level of understanding is going to have an 'agenda' and wish to see things come out a certain way for a variety of reasons.  Keep that in mind when seeking to gain advice.  My advice right now is to learn at least enough of the technicals to where you can recognize total bullshit and reasonably quickly parse some of the technical descriptions.  You (hdbuck) are probably already at that point.

Think of Bitcoin as being like an airplane pilot. 99.9% is pretty easy and boring.  The handful of really nasty bad weather approaches one undertakes over the course of a career is where you earn your money.  You don't need to 'grease it on'...just get the thing safely on the ground.

[unsoindovo]

How big will the blockchain become with 20mb blocks?

hi noob!!!

20MB it is the max size transaction to prevent the day, when the max transaction / day will not be  more sufficient!

i think the same transaction will have the same weight with the new standard...
but we will be protected, if one day, the bitcoin transaction increment will be realy heavy

and the network will not be satured!!!

[tvbcof]

...
Of the active nodes in existence few if any of them would be effected by this hardfork(most users don't even know that they need to contact their ISP and unblock port 8333 which is blocked by default by almost every ISP) so the fears of centralization are exaggerated. ...

Huh?  None of the handful of consumer-land ISP's I've had since 2011 blocked incoming high ports by default.  Sounds to me like you are confused about the difference between 'contacting your ISP' and 'logging in to your router'.  Or you signed up for some kind of nanny-help-me add-on from your ISP.

It is worth note, however, that blocking a port is a triviality from a network engineering point of view.  I would guess that at this point even if there are any more mom-n-pop ISP's left they would have the equipment installed which could do this (among other things) and if they don't they would be required to give some rack space to the feds to install such a thing.  The calls for an 'internet kill switch' from the fasciests running the show here in the U.S. (e.g., Lieberman, Feinstein, Rogers, etc, etc) have pretty well gone away telling me that it is firmly in place.  It would not 'kill' the internet (which would cost the mega-corporation who own the politicians money) but it would change the internet significantly at the flick of a switch.

Now deep packet inspection and traffic shaping is a little bit more involved.  That said, 10 years ago Comcast was doing it with apparent ease on one of the busiest consumer networks in existence.  They were specifically shaping peer-2-peer traffic since it was costing them money.  They got in some minor trouble for it with the (now defunct) 'net neutrality', but I sense that they quite mostly for economic reasons when they got more fiber buried.

Beyond that is actual packet manipulations.  Like grabbing an http stream, opening it up and slipping in an http header element.  That is fun and useful.  Related is just recognizing and diverting a stream.  I know my ISP is set up to do it because I had an unusual 'outage' some months ago and when the got me 'fixed', all http and https traffic was being re-directed to a page telling me that my Dish networks account needed attention.  I don't and never did have anything to do with Dish networks so this was an amusing little slip-up to me.  --edit:  No, it was NOT a DNS redirect.

All that is to say, if Bitcoin's claim to value rests on the kindness and protection of the proverbial TPTB, and the perceived technical difficulty of having the global internet be anything but 'neutral', I'd consider the value proposition to be not all that high.  And THAT is why it is critical to me that the solution remain 'agile' whether it happens to need to be at this point or not.

[hashman]

What needs to happen:

1) a set flag needs to be agreed upon for when this becomes a critical issue.  Is it when more than half the blocks hit the limit for example?  

2) code needs to be in place so I can run a full node and mine (as solo or pool operator) without the entire chain on my machine.  UTXO list instead of full chain, or queries to other nodes which choose to have the whole chain for example.   Saying people will do this later, lets just move forward with bloat for now,  is not good software design.

3) once those things are met, timeline needs to be in place with expected outcomes before anybody switches code.  The new code needs to have a set block number so that it can be slowly rolled out before the new blocks are allowed.    

We are on track to do this, especially thanks to gavin's work.  Keep it up peeps!