Bitcoin 20MB Fork

[solex]

If 2 MB is all that can be agreed on now, then it's better to schedule that hard fork ASAP rather than agree on something marginally higher in 6-12 months. I personally think that 10 MB would probably be fine, though I know that there are many people who would disagree with me.

True, and yes 10MB might be the optimum for a long time. It is notable that a lot of the "pro" group have an open mind as to how the limit should be raised. e.g.

I am also open to different proposals on exactly what to replace the current 1 MB restriction with, in order to make the right trade off between distribution of full nodes, and transaction throughput.

I also think that some "anti" people underestimate the public relations disaster that would result from the self-inflicted wound of actually maxing out the 1MB limit. The world's press would jump on it as evidence that a decentralized community cannot be trusted to manage a global currency. It would be "proof" that only blockchains with some centralized control (e.g. by major banks) are the way forward. Obviously, rubbish in the long run, but it would put doubt in the minds of many potential supporters of Bitcoin.

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[sed]

I read through the posts by Gavin and I couldn't see that he was pushing forward on this beyond merely describing one plan.  The response by the other guy calling his plan Gavincoin and whatnot seems quite over the top.  Did I miss something?  Has Gavin done something more here than brought this up and talked about potential ramifications?

[RoadStress]

Yes get rid of me and leave the Icetard clown to support scamming companies!

Not saying to anyone get rid of anyone here but this is very disingenuous, LaudaM is another blind pro-forker (since when the BTC community was this divided?) and had a big flashy GAW/Paycoin ad on the signature for months, the same argument could be used, and he had the balls to say he didn't knew what GAW was and was only whoring his signature, not really my problem but his posts are of shallow quality, in comparison with the logical arguments from iCEBREAKER people like you are fighting, I have to denounce these discrepancies.

Well I'm not aware of LaudaM history, but from the start you are comparing apples to oranges. Having a signature that advertises for something can't be compared to the direct endorsement and with all the lies and all the misinformation that Icetard put up in the HashFail thread. Even now after the company is bankrupt he is still defending HashFail stating that it was just a failed business when it was a plain scam all along.

"Money is only the first application" It's not the ONLY application! Why do you keep insisting on the money aspect?

We are trying to have an intelligent conversation with well read and mature persons.  Why do you continually drown us out?  And why do the mods put up with your name calling and incessant voice that lacks-REASON?

So because you only see in Bitcoin just only one application that is money we should all agree to that?

"TOR" is shorthand for low-bandwidth connections, whether privacy-enhanced darkweb internets-within-the-internet or plain old slow DSL.

You need to keep up.  This has already addressed here:

I view this as paranoia. While you and tvbcof are using lots of services outside of TOR you don't want to use Bitcoin outside of TOR. Why don't you try to impose TOR on all websites if we are at this subject? Only limit only to Bitcoin? Why should the network comply with your view and fears? Why don't you let the network decide this as it should happen?

I know this is hard for you, so try reading this quote s l o w l y .

Now you are just like one of those Protestants that is taking the bible ad-literam. Here is my view on what satoshi said: Sidechains! Part of the proof-of-work stuff will move to sidechains and kaboom! You will not have every proof-of-work quorum piled into one system.

The blockchain database could grow to 1000GB instead of 200GB per year.

A 1TB HDD is ~$50. That's your problem? Remember it's your problem, not the networks problem. The true network problem is a bottleneck which will be caused by the 1MB limit.

If the bitcoin decentralized database grows too big it will be more centralized, centralization is a very bad thing.

Pruning!

The blockchain security will be weaker, as the block reward for miners halves, and miners have to depend more and more on mining fees instead of the block reward, by having a 20MB block there will be little motivation to pay any transactions fees at all, causing lots of miners to quit weakening security.

Are you a miner to know how the miners will act and what are their needs? I am a miner and I find a block reward halfing to be more than enough reward for me to keep mining. At 12.5BTC/block I don't care about the fees.

In the very futuristic event that a block were to be generating more than 25 BTC in rewards based on fees, this would imply a large fee  to get the transaction though in the next block in such an event it could be considered to increase the block size only and only if the current block size would become a problem.

How did you got to the more than 25 BTC reward in fees for a 1MB limit? Would you show me the math behind it or it's just a number pulled out of your ass?

As of today for each block reward, 25 BTC are the block reward, and only on average 0.1 BTC are from fees, the amount of 0.1 BTC would go down to near 0, and that will be a problem for the security of the blockchain once the block reward is something like 3 BTC.

So going from 0.1BTC to 0BTC is the real problem for the security? What are you smoking?

Do you know when the block reward will be like 3 BTC? Serious question.

The 20MB block might be needed in the far future but not now.

How much is far? 5 years? 10 years?

Also a fork risks the price of bitcoin going down since some may stay on the other side of the fork.

The exchange rate doesn't matter. It's the technology that does!

It is better to concentrate on bitcoin gaining adoption instead of solving a problem that today does not exist.

You like using fancy words like "mass adoption" I see.

If we get mass adoption with an 1MB block limit then we will have this problem:

When someone advocates a permanent cap of 1MB what they are saying is I think Bitcoin will be great if it is never used by more than a couple million users making less than one transaction per month.

Do you really think that "mass adoption" will help with anything if the network will be limited to a couple million users making less than one transaction per month?

[tvbcof]

I read through the posts by Gavin and I couldn't see that he was pushing forward on this beyond merely describing one plan.  The response by the other guy calling his plan Gavincoin and whatnot seems quite over the top.  Did I miss something?  Has Gavin done something more here than brought this up and talked about potential ramifications?

As far as I can tell, Gavin has done considerably less than "brought this up and talked about the potential ramifications."  I'd like to see him say something like:

  "We are targeting the top {n}% of world population by gross income being able to perform {n} native Bitcoin transactions per year and pay {x}% of their transaction values to miners as fees.  Here is our roadmap."

With something like that it would be fairly easy to do some arithmetic and make some decent projections about what developments and trade-offs we will need to make.  Native Bitcoin in it's basic form is quite straightforward.  This simple 'increase transaction rate' means of scaling is very conducive to arithmetic to figure out when and where a plan ends up.

It seems to me a fairly reasonable request given that he is the guy who is pushing a hard-fork and it promises to be at least a damaging and possibly a terminal event for Bitcoin.  If Gavin won't say this, then at least he could say why he won't say it.  If he simply doesn't know than it is not does not instill much confidence in his other planing given the magnitude and risks of what he is trying to do.

[traincarswreck]

"Money is only the first application" It's not the ONLY application! Why do you keep insisting on the money aspect?

We are trying to have an intelligent conversation with well read and mature persons.  Why do you continually drown us out?  And why do the mods put up with your name calling and incessant voice that lacks-REASON?

So because you only see in Bitcoin just only one application that is money we should all agree to that?

Nobody seeS it that way and such is clear, and this is why you are standing out as someone not participating, which would be fine if we concentrated on fixing the problems with internet forum communication rather than a hypothetical future problem (ok its very likely a real problem we face though).  I come to explain the true issue we face is with our understanding of what should be communication protocol...

and I am told I am in the wrong subject?  I am not-"such" is the problem.

I come to present the missing literature that causes such mixed up perspectives on what bitcoin is and what it should be (and how it came about).  And the reason for this is crucial.  We need to understand the importance of Ideal Poker in respect to Ideal Money in respect to bitcoin.  Otherwise a logical argument cannot be presented as to exactly why it is poker that is going to be the catalyst for this "event" that is finally leaving the USD/Gold de facto standard.

I must be able to show the importance and relation of Ideal Money/Ideal Poker/Naj Coin/ and Mental Poker.  All of these clearly fit under Sergio Lerner's (spelling) concept of Quix coin, to create one of the most important next technologies that we will face, that we truly do not understand the importance of. We need this and the realization of the important of Ideal Money in relation to bitcoin is going to flip 50billion overnight into the crypto industry from poker because unbeknowst to the normal population poker players whoreship John Nash because he laid the fundamental theorems for the poker strategy we study.

I've read all the literature, in fact I've read it all many times.  I seem to be the only one functioning with a total view...

Poker will have its own "currency", I have already very extensively and clearly outlined the truth of this.  What I say just happens to support some others "ideals" here.  But what is frustrating, is those that are clearly not well read, LOUDLY DISAGREE.

NO COMMUNITY but the Poker players FIRST, will launch a strategically cooperative strategy that will show the true power and "intent" of the technology called "bitcoin", and if we are unemotional, and not prejudice about "games", "gambling", and "poker" we will be able to see the immediate and obvious truth of this.

[theskillzdatklls]

another noob Q - is this the biggest problem surrounding btc at the moment? is there another big pressing issue gavin or others are worrying about?

bottom line to me is that 1mb is super arbitrary. to those that don't want to increase, do you want to decrease the amount then? it can't just be that 1mb is absolutely perfect in every way possible, its a completely random amount. i say move it to 20mb, give the community a few-several years to figure out what to do from there and buy some time.

[benjamindees]

You don't come in a thread, and not read any literature and tell Nash or Satoshi how economics, cryptography, math, gold etc. works.

Quoted for future ironic value.

Look, my point was that ultimately the symbiosis is not between currencies in different geographic areas, or of different states, or between a fiat currency and an index like the CPI, or between a fiat currency and rationing coupons, or between a fiat currency and tax liabilities, even though it is clear that any of these schemes (each attempted at one point or another) is capable of *approximating* what Nash termed "ideal" money.

The real symbiosis is between current value and future value.

That is the reason gold failed.  Paper is a better currency than metals, so gold no longer has current value.  Even though it once was close, gold is no longer "ideal" money.

This is, then, the reason that Bitcoin was designed to have both current value and future value.  Bitcoin ultimately doesn't work when future value (the 21m coin limit) is hampered.  It equally doesn't work when current value (the ability to transact) is hampered.

All you have to do is rotate your argument, or John Nash's argument or whatever, around a little bit and see that it's the same thing -- it's just time instead of space.  And Bitcoin works better, in theory.

Now, the problem, in this debate, is that we are no longer really arguing about the properties of "ideal" money.  Bitcoin no longer exists in theory, in some academic journal.  It exists in the real world, where arguing about the properties of "ideal" money gets you labelled a crackpot.  Where promoting it gets you labelled a criminal.  Where actually implementing it gets you labelled a pedophile.  And, in most cases, in the case of Hal Finney and probably Satoshi as well, it eventually gets you hunted down and murdered by the people who would really rather not see anything close to "ideal" money ever emerge again.

So, you know, "welcome to Bitcoin" and all, "we're glad to have you," but we're a little beyond the point of arguing about "ideal" money here.  What we're arguing about, instead, is the difference between "slightly-less-than ideal" money with a "58,000 transaction per second" limit, and "far-less-than-ideal" money with a much lower transaction rate.

The only reason to choose "slightly-less-than-ideal" money is because "ideal" money doesn't seem to be technically feasible at the moment.  And the only reason to choose "far-less-than-ideal" money is because there's a good chance that even "slightly-less-than-ideal" money could end up not being politically feasible.

[traincarswreck]

Bitcoin is a SUBSET of the lecture ideal money called "asymptotically ideal money"  

The concept of what is "ideal money" is the product of the implementation of "asymptotically ideal money".

To me, and correct me if I am wrong, you haven't even read the lecture "ideal money", and don't seem to be clear one what it means and how to bring it about.  Now you suggest that I am light years behind in this, but before I address your points, I'd like to at least know you have actually sincerely read the lecture (let alone the different versions through the 20 or so year history of the lecture).

The reason I say this is nothing you are address shows that you are referring to the lecture "ideal money" and that lecture talks about the future, we haven't yet come to, which is a result of AFTER BITCOIN.

[CoinCidental]

I see a lot of problems with a 20MB block.
The blockchain database could grow to 1000GB instead of 200GB per year.
Blockchain spam could be a much worse problem.
If the bitcoin decentralized database grows too big it will be more centralized, centralization is a very bad thing.
The blockchain security will be weaker, as the block reward for miners halves, and miners have to depend more and more on mining fees instead of the block reward, by having a 20MB block there will be little motivation to pay any transactions fees at all, causing lots of miners to quit weakening security. With a 1MB block if you are buying something that represents a large amount of money like a car, house, computer, etc you will be motivated to pay a higher fee for a quicker transaction, and for a micro transactions representing something of very little value, it will not be a problem if you have to wait a longer time than usual for a confirmation to confirm the transaction, but on the other hand for a transaction with a tiny value for example a 1 mBTC  if you do not wait for confirmation the risk is little do to the amount.
In the very futuristic event that a block were to be generating more than 25 BTC in rewards based on fees, this would imply a large fee  to get the transaction though in the next block in such an event it could be considered to increase the block size only and only if the current block size would become a problem.

But as things stand now, 1 MB block limit is not a problem, and in the near future it will help secure the network by motivating the miners, only in a very far future it could be needed to be increased, but in such a case then a study would need to take place since in a far future the block reward could be 2 BTC and most of the miners reward could be based on fees as Satoshi had originally planed.

As of today for each block reward, 25 BTC are the block reward, and only on average 0.1 BTC are from fees, the amount of 0.1 BTC would go down to near 0, and that will be a problem for the security of the blockchain once the block reward is something like 3 BTC.

Another thing to consider, today people using modems and low bandwidth can be bitcoin nodes, with a 20MBblock they will need at least moderate bandwidth.

The 20MB block might be needed in the far future but not now.

Also a fork risks the price of bitcoin going down since some may stay on the other side of the fork.

It is better to concentrate on bitcoin gaining adoption instead of solving a problem that today does not exist.

7 TRANSACTIONS PER SECOND ...........SAYS IT ALL REALLY
Bitcoin is already deemed unsuitable for some projects (lighthouse etc ) because the blocks not capable

dont be tricked by any fools who argue monero or litecoin or some alt will have to be used.theyre only against removing this restriction because they already own the alts they would like to replace btc

[amincd]

another noob Q - is this the biggest problem surrounding btc at the moment? is there another big pressing issue gavin or others are worrying about?

I'm not a Bitcoin developer, but my impression is that it's the biggest issue facing BTC, and not for technical reasons. The problem is that changing a protocol is difficult from a political perspective. For a successful migration to occur from an old to new protocol, there needs to be a very strong consensus (e.g. over 80%) to change the protocol, otherwise there's a risk of the network splitting into two. Even if change would make the protocol much better, it's still hard to get consensus, because less knowledgeable users don't know who to believe.

I believe the market is extremely put off by this uncertainty, and this is harming Bitcoin's adoption and price.

• On the one hand, putting the hard fork off makes it less likely that it will ever happen, because getting consensus on changing a feature of a protocol gets more difficult as a community gets larger, and the longer a feature has been part of the protocol. If the hard fork never happens, there is very real chance that Bitcoin will not achieve mass adoption.
• On the other hand, doing the hard fork contains the risk of causing a split in the community, between the old and the new protocol, which would also significantly reduce Bitcoin's chances of ever achieving mass adoption.

While this remains unresolved, the market hesitates to fully embrace Bitcoin.

So I believe it's imperative that the community make a final decision on the 1 MB anti-spam restriction as soon as possible, to lift this cloud of uncertainty. We all know where Satoshi Nakamoto stood: he wanted the limit increased and for Bitcoin to scale up to handle thousands of transactions per second (rather than the current 3 per second). We know where Gavin Andresen, the lead developer, stands: he's proposed a hard fork to increase the limit, so that Bitcoin can scale up to handle thousands of transactions per second.

The arguments for and against the hard fork have been debated in depth. DeathAndTaxes made perhaps the most comprehensive argument for why we need a hard fork:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=946236.0

[CoinCidental]

it has to happen ,most of the anti crowd are pimping alt coins anyway that have no signifigant value
almost everything an alt can do ,btc can be programmed to also do ......

+ the benefits of being first and having all the mainstream retailers on board.........that shit takes years to get done

nobody wants 600-700 new altcoins to handle transactions deemed to be "small"

just fork the new software already and people will start downloading it and wont even notice the differnce

the network isnt going to jump from 33GB to 1000GB+ overnight ,that would take millions and millions  of transactions, this argument is just stupid .......


 

[traincarswreck]

We all know where Satoshi Nakamoto stood: he wanted the limit increased and for Bitcoin to scale up to handle thousands of transactions per second (rather than the current 3 per second).

Again this point is not in reality.  Bitcoin was not created by an anonymous Jesus overnight.

The solution is an extrapolation of an intensive study of the history of money.  Any insight or changes proposed should be the product of the same.

[amincd]

^ I strongly disagree with you. I think following your advice, and straying from practical matters, into highly theoretical musings, will simply paralyze the ability of the community to come to any sort of consensus. I also find your dismissal of Satoshi's role in inventing Bitcoin to be disingenuous.

[traincarswreck]

^ I strongly disagree with you. I think following your advice, and straying from practical matters, into highly theoretical musings, will simply paralyze the ability of the community to come to any sort of consensus. I also find your dismissal of Satoshi's role in inventing Bitcoin to be disingenuous.

I know but you are not well read on any of these related subjects and I am.  This is not an attack, it is the truth of the matter.  Nash's thesis of ideal money is that by extensively studying the history of money we can realize how to extrapolate a solution that will lead us into the next evolution of it.

Then he perfectly describes bitcoin.

And then of course an anonymous paper arises because that is how we implement experiments to theories right (peer review?)?

Satoshi isn't a real person.  I am sorry, your religioun is only that.  In order to understand the future of money you must understand the history of it, anyone that disagrees doesn't function on logic and reasoning.

Also btw Nash extensively reviews and explains the history of gold and in relation to the gold standards we created and left, and none of the real history correlates to the general posters attitudes and understandings towards it here.  How am I to address the OP of this thread, when we must review the extensive history of gold and what its relation has been to "money" and "economics"?

[amincd]

Nash's thesis of ideal money is that by extensively studying the history of money we can realize how to extrapolate a solution that will lead us into the next evolution of it.

Then he perfectly describes bitcoin.

And then of course an anonymous paper arises because that is how we implement experiments to theories right (peer review?)?

Satoshi isn't a real person.  I am sorry, your religious is only that.  

Satoshi Nakamoto is not John Nash. Nash is 86 years old. Please discuss your fringe theories in a different thread. This is really not the place to be pushing them. We're discussing something serious, and important for Bitcoin and the future of cryptocurrency, and you're trying to get everyone to listen to your weird theories about Satoshi's identity, and why this somehow means we shouldn't allow Bitcoin to scale.

7 TRANSACTIONS PER SECOND ...........SAYS IT ALL REALLY
Bitcoin is already deemed unsuitable for some projects (lighthouse etc ) because the blocks not capable

dont be tricked by any fools who argue monero or litecoin or some alt will have to be used.theyre only against removing this restriction because they already own the alts they would like to replace btc

Exactly. It's not exactly a coincidence that most of those vigorously arguing against the hard fork in this thread are involved in altcoins. They're not in favour of Bitcoin gaining more competitive advantages, and they've all but admitted it already.

And it's only 3 transactions per second, not 7.

[CoinCidental]

it has to happen ,most of the anti crowd are pimping alt coins anyway that have no signifigant value
almost everything an alt can do ,btc can be programmed to also do ......

it has to happen, that the people who doesnt want to destroy Bitcoin with a useless hardfork atm, are not blind by veils of greed and world domination and happen to enjoy true freedom of choice.

hope you like my sub-avatar text, its in homage of you paranoid schizos that think altcoins are out to get you.

get a grip, you people cant even quote who disagrees with you anymore.

your argument is already null and void when your pimping ripple in your sub-avatar text
You need to be a bit  more subtle and btw
GTFO ........... we dont need you 

[traincarswreck]

Satoshi Nakamoto is not John Nash. Nash is 86 years old. Please discuss your fringe theories in a different thread. This is really not the place to be pushing them. We're discussing something serious, and important for Bitcoin and the future of cryptocurrency, and you're trying to get everyone to listen to your weird theories about Satoshi's identity, and why this somehow means we shouldn't allow Bitcoin to scale.

Nope, I never said that.  No fringe theories.

John Nash has spent 20 years, the exact same amount as the existence of Szabo's blog, explaining the importance of the history of money in relation to a new currency technology that is going to have a stable monetary supply and will end the money printing era.

Like I said, and will continue to repeat, I am the most well read on these related subjects...and grow quite tired of those that are not read at all, telling us how these things work.  If you don't understand the relation of the history of money to bitcoin, you don't belong in a discussion about the future of it.

And by the way, the concept of "Ideal Money" is from 1960.

[CoinCidental]

it has to happen ,most of the anti crowd are pimping alt coins anyway that have no signifigant value
almost everything an alt can do ,btc can be programmed to also do ......

it has to happen, that the people who doesnt want to destroy Bitcoin with a useless hardfork atm, are not blind by veils of greed and world domination and happen to enjoy true freedom of choice.

hope you like my sub-avatar text, its in homage of you paranoid schizos that think altcoins are out to get you.

get a grip, you people cant even quote who disagrees with you anymore.

your argument is already null and void when your pimping ripple in your sub-avatar text
You need to be a bit  more subtle and btw
GTFO ........... we dont need you  

Its not ripple its monero... and I'm not going anywhere. Smiley

Actually you are going somewhere .welcome to my ignore list

[amincd]

You need to be a bit  more subtle and btw

Altcoin pumpers have seriously lowered the quality of the discussion surrounding the hard fork. Kazuki49 is one of the worst.

[iCEBREAKER]

"TOR" is shorthand for low-bandwidth connections, whether privacy-enhanced darkweb internets-within-the-internet or plain old slow DSL.

You need to keep up.  This has already addressed here:

I view this as paranoia. While you and tvbcof are using lots of services outside of TOR you don't want to use Bitcoin outside of TOR. Why don't you try to impose TOR on all websites if we are at this subject? Only limit only to Bitcoin? Why should the network comply with your view and fears? Why don't you let the network decide this as it should happen?

Concern for low-bandwidth DSL and hardened TOR-like connections wasn't limited to tvbcof and myself.

It was also voiced by TF and Theymos.  Why did you edit that part out?

Here it is again, with red bolding to help you learn.  Perhaps this time you'll be able to read, and maybe even respond, with on-point arguments rather than personal attacks like accusations of "paranoia."

Exactly what block size the network can support is very much debatable. I currently think that 10 MB would be fine and 50 MB would be too much, though these are mostly just feelings. There should be more rigorous study of the actual limits of the network. (Gavin's done some nice work on the software/hardware front, though I'm still worried about the capabilities of typical Internet connections, and especially how they'll increase over time.)

Exactly. 30 kBps upload is common in Australia, and you sure should be able to run a full node in a typical internet connection in Australia, or Brazil, or Philippines, or whatever. The block size needs to be useful for the (lowest reasonable) common denominator, not the median.

IMO 10 MB is too much, maybe 5 MB.