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For someone who isn't "in the know" when it comes to Bitcoin, what is Bitcoin Unlimited and what does it mean for the average user?

by ubercow 10y ago

pat2man 10y ago
It's a fork of the bitcoin block chain. Since there could be multiple competing chains any exchange or wallet needs to indicate which chain it is based on.
kristianp 10y ago
Here's a recent article and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13862361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13862361
rwx 10y ago
Internally, Bitcoin is undergoing growing pains with regard to scaling and how to manage higher volumes of transactions. The community is fragmented between the competing ideas of how to best achieve higher transaction throughput in the future. The two "leading" sides of the debate are engaged in a heavy propaganda war with each other and it seems that consensus is going to be tough to come by. These two factions seem to be essentially competing for "control" of the network. To make matters worse, the network has periods of huge transaction backlogs due to blocks being full. Bitcoin Unlimited is the incarnation of one of the methods to scale the network. Supposedly, there is a large amount of mining power, which is fairly centralized in China, supporting this method. I can't say much more than this with certainty, as there is a TON of propaganda to sift through. From what I can gather the argument boils down to the BU developers believe their method is an immediate fix to the current scaling problems. Core contends that BU has been spamming the network to create a false sense of urgency, and that the BU solution will allow miners too much control over "Bitcoin" (whatever fork it ends up being) in the future. WRT to immediate impact, expect huge volatility in the price. Some of the trusted BTC analysts are calling for further, significant shedding of value due to the uncertainty in the future. Additionally, keep your coins in your own wallet. If you're using a web-wallet, there's no telling what you'll end up with if the fork happens unless they've made specific statements regarding their plans. Held in your own wallet, if a fork occurs, you'll hold both BTC (in the classic sense) and the BU-BTC.
Animats 10y ago
The Bitcoin block size limits the transaction rate, because when a new block is generated by a mining operation, every 10 minutes or so, only a limited number of transactions will fit. Anyone generating a transaction can set the fee they will pay to have it processed, and higher fees are done first. Until recently, even zero-fee transactions tended to be processed eventually. But due to increased traffic, the queue to get into the blockchain is backing up. Right now, it's 6500 transactions behind. If you want to get your transaction through in less than an hour, you'll need to pay a fee of about $1.[1] Increasing the size of the blocks has been discussed for years. There are upsides and downsides to larger block sizes. If there was a strong consensus for a change, and everybody just updated their software with new blocks size limits, that would work out OK. The problem is that a substantial fraction, maybe 40%, of miners want a change, but the rest of the miners aren't willing to go along. There is thus the possibility of a "hard fork", as happened to Etherium. A hard fork of Bitcoin has considerable implications. Now there are two kinds of Bitcoins, probably called BTC and BTU. Unless there's a mechanism to avoid it, each current Bitcoin turns into two, one on each blockchain. This is a form of dilution, and the price should drop. The people with Bitcoin futures are very upset about this, and the exact language of futures contracts becomes very important. [1] https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ https://bitcoinfees.21.co/
- mirimir 10y ago
  Woah, I hadn't realized that. So once BTU was created, could I just create new wallets on it, and import the keys from BTC wallets?
  - CyberDildonics 10y ago
    Yes, although it is likely that there won't be a 'BTU', bitcoin unlimited's protocol changes will be the majority of the mining hashpower and so the miner will carry on with the normal bitcoin chain having a dynamic blocksize limit.
    - mirimir 10y ago
      OK, so BTC and BTL?
Frogolocalypse 10y ago
BU and the new variant of the chinese cabal of bitcoin miners BitcoinEC have a key consensus change implemented in them called 'Emergent Consensus' Emergent consensus lets miners decide, through force of hash, the block size. This provides for them an incentive such that, as they increase the block-size, it leads to the nodes not being able to be run except with massive connections to the other nodes and miners. The miners that are closer (in bandwidth) to the other nodes, will have more time to retrieve the transaction and block data. Nodes and miners on slower connections will further deplete, as they can't source the data fast enough. This will also mean that communication between miners will favor miners that are closer together. This means, by design, bitmain will be able to force ALL miners and ALL nodes off of the network, and every node and every miner will be housed in bitmain data-centers. It is a hostile take-over of the bitcoin environment by a chinese company that has all the markings of a state-sponsored action.
elastic_church 10y ago
It is just one of several software clients on the bitcoin network. All of the clients have their own features that activate once they are used by a majority of the networks miners and sometimes majority of other users. Bitcoin Unlimited's proposals are on track to being activated and this is the first time a client not released by the incumbent development party is gaining use.

For someone who isn't "in the know" when it comes to Bitcoin, what is Bitcoin Unlimited and what does it mean for the average user?

by ubercow 10y ago

For someone who isn't "in the know" when it comes to Bitcoin, what is Bitcoin Unlimited and what does it mean for the average user?

pat2man 10y ago

It's a fork of the bitcoin block chain. Since there could be multiple competing chains any exchange or wallet needs to indicate which chain it is based on.

kristianp 10y ago

Here's a recent article and discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13862361 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13862361

rwx 10y ago

Internally, Bitcoin is undergoing growing pains with regard to scaling and how to manage higher volumes of transactions. The community is fragmented between the competing ideas of how to best achieve higher transaction throughput in the future. The two "leading" sides of the debate are engaged in a heavy propaganda war with each other and it seems that consensus is going to be tough to come by. These two factions seem to be essentially competing for "control" of the network. To make matters worse, the network has periods of huge transaction backlogs due to blocks being full. Bitcoin Unlimited is the incarnation of one of the methods to scale the network. Supposedly, there is a large amount of mining power, which is fairly centralized in China, supporting this method. I can't say much more than this with certainty, as there is a TON of propaganda to sift through. From what I can gather the argument boils down to the BU developers believe their method is an immediate fix to the current scaling problems. Core contends that BU has been spamming the network to create a false sense of urgency, and that the BU solution will allow miners too much control over "Bitcoin" (whatever fork it ends up being) in the future. WRT to immediate impact, expect huge volatility in the price. Some of the trusted BTC analysts are calling for further, significant shedding of value due to the uncertainty in the future. Additionally, keep your coins in your own wallet. If you're using a web-wallet, there's no telling what you'll end up with if the fork happens unless they've made specific statements regarding their plans. Held in your own wallet, if a fork occurs, you'll hold both BTC (in the classic sense) and the BU-BTC.

Animats 10y ago

The Bitcoin block size limits the transaction rate, because when a new block is generated by a mining operation, every 10 minutes or so, only a limited number of transactions will fit. Anyone generating a transaction can set the fee they will pay to have it processed, and higher fees are done first. Until recently, even zero-fee transactions tended to be processed eventually. But due to increased traffic, the queue to get into the blockchain is backing up. Right now, it's 6500 transactions behind. If you want to get your transaction through in less than an hour, you'll need to pay a fee of about $1.[1] Increasing the size of the blocks has been discussed for years. There are upsides and downsides to larger block sizes. If there was a strong consensus for a change, and everybody just updated their software with new blocks size limits, that would work out OK. The problem is that a substantial fraction, maybe 40%, of miners want a change, but the rest of the miners aren't willing to go along. There is thus the possibility of a "hard fork", as happened to Etherium. A hard fork of Bitcoin has considerable implications. Now there are two kinds of Bitcoins, probably called BTC and BTU. Unless there's a mechanism to avoid it, each current Bitcoin turns into two, one on each blockchain. This is a form of dilution, and the price should drop. The people with Bitcoin futures are very upset about this, and the exact language of futures contracts becomes very important. [1] https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ https://bitcoinfees.21.co/

mirimir 10y ago
Woah, I hadn't realized that. So once BTU was created, could I just create new wallets on it, and import the keys from BTC wallets?
- CyberDildonics 10y ago
  Yes, although it is likely that there won't be a 'BTU', bitcoin unlimited's protocol changes will be the majority of the mining hashpower and so the miner will carry on with the normal bitcoin chain having a dynamic blocksize limit.
  - mirimir 10y ago
    OK, so BTC and BTL?

Frogolocalypse 10y ago

BU and the new variant of the chinese cabal of bitcoin miners BitcoinEC have a key consensus change implemented in them called 'Emergent Consensus' Emergent consensus lets miners decide, through force of hash, the block size. This provides for them an incentive such that, as they increase the block-size, it leads to the nodes not being able to be run except with massive connections to the other nodes and miners. The miners that are closer (in bandwidth) to the other nodes, will have more time to retrieve the transaction and block data. Nodes and miners on slower connections will further deplete, as they can't source the data fast enough. This will also mean that communication between miners will favor miners that are closer together. This means, by design, bitmain will be able to force ALL miners and ALL nodes off of the network, and every node and every miner will be housed in bitmain data-centers. It is a hostile take-over of the bitcoin environment by a chinese company that has all the markings of a state-sponsored action.

elastic_church 10y ago

It is just one of several software clients on the bitcoin network. All of the clients have their own features that activate once they are used by a majority of the networks miners and sometimes majority of other users. Bitcoin Unlimited's proposals are on track to being activated and this is the first time a client not released by the incumbent development party is gaining use.