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I think ETH is being pulled down by association with BTC, in the minds of investors. Bitcoin growth is being stifled by those who will do anything to prevent a

by jgord 9y ago

I think ETH is being pulled down by association with BTC, in the minds of investors. Bitcoin growth is being stifled by those who will do anything to prevent an increase of blocksize, up from 1MB. We could turn 4MB max blocksize on next week, but the core devs have delayed this simple change for 2.5 years. When you have 20MB of transactions in the mempool waiting for the next 1MB block, its like 2000 people waiting for a single train carriage .. fees go up and transactions take too long to process. This sets up a low usage equilibrium - people wont use the system as a currency when it takes 3$ to send $300, eventually they give up and go back to paypal, banks or try an altcoin [ Ethereum, Litecoin ] This change is not a deep complex engineering issue - you _could_ get 10x to 30x transaction volume and several years of rapid user growth on the same linear blockchain by increasing the blocksize on a fixed schedule, well before you hit real architectural scaling issues. After endless debate we now have all out chaos and civil war in the community, with SegWit/LightningNetwork/blockstream battling against 'BigBlockers', rather than a clear upgrade roadmap all parties can live with. Politics and greed - and the lack of a benevolent dictator in the core dev team who will make hard engineering decisions - seem to prevent us from having good things, just as Bitcoin is poised to go mainstream.

chii 9y ago
i keep hearing that the blocksize can be increased without difficulty. But why isn't it? What are the problems you're not saying about doing this?
- gravypod 9y ago
  Both versions of BitCoin would exist concurrently if this change was made. One network would be using 1 MB block sizes (the people who didn't take the update from the devs) and the other group using 4 MB block sizes (the people who updated their wallet/mining rigs). Unfortunately "most" users want larger block sizes to decrease wait times while "most" miners want block sizes to stay at 1 MB so difficulty is doesn't increase, all their ASICs still work, and so they get more money (IIRC people can pay for fast-lane processing). If the devs pushed the 4 MB change the miners wouldn't move and because of this no transactions on the 4 MB bitcoin would actually work. If the devs don't push 4 MB then all of the users leave to another coin and bitcoin drops in value. Talk about rock and a hard place.
  - jgord 9y ago
    I think miners acting in their self interest would realize that a much larger number of transactions with smaller fees would result in a larger total fees profit per block solve. Almost all of their resources would be the same - the vast majority of their electricity bill is spent solving the block hash compute problem, the resources to actually process the transactions and send them are small compared to that. The basic logic holds, that you cant make money if nobody uses Bitcoin.
    - Fej 9y ago
      But you can make money if nobody uses Bitcoin. Such is speculation.
      - jgord 9y ago
        for a while at least, yes : ]
- jgord 9y ago
  The max blocksize is a code constant, so it requires upgrading software on a lot of machines to a version with the fix, which is incompatible with older versions. Called a "hard fork", meaning a fork in the blockchain - because older software would see those new larger blocks as invalid. The blocksize has been increased in the past, without major upheaval. There is some risk, but staying with outdated software forever also has its own risk. We should make the single hardfork count - eg. an agreed schedule to increase blocksize over time to keep pace with moores law was proposed as a way to avoid future recurring hardforks. I think the issue is to manage the risk well - telegraph and explain the roadmap so there is certainty for all parties. Gain consensus, but understand perfect consensus is impossible.
- bfu 9y ago
  I think the fear is that if you can increase block size from 1MB to 4MB, why not 40MB, or 400 GB. At some point someone will ask: How big should we make the block so that only big banks with specialized hardware can afford to run the bitcoin network.

by jgord 9y ago

chii 9y ago

i keep hearing that the blocksize can be increased without difficulty. But why isn't it? What are the problems you're not saying about doing this?

gravypod 9y ago
Both versions of BitCoin would exist concurrently if this change was made. One network would be using 1 MB block sizes (the people who didn't take the update from the devs) and the other group using 4 MB block sizes (the people who updated their wallet/mining rigs). Unfortunately "most" users want larger block sizes to decrease wait times while "most" miners want block sizes to stay at 1 MB so difficulty is doesn't increase, all their ASICs still work, and so they get more money (IIRC people can pay for fast-lane processing). If the devs pushed the 4 MB change the miners wouldn't move and because of this no transactions on the 4 MB bitcoin would actually work. If the devs don't push 4 MB then all of the users leave to another coin and bitcoin drops in value. Talk about rock and a hard place.
- jgord 9y ago
  I think miners acting in their self interest would realize that a much larger number of transactions with smaller fees would result in a larger total fees profit per block solve. Almost all of their resources would be the same - the vast majority of their electricity bill is spent solving the block hash compute problem, the resources to actually process the transactions and send them are small compared to that. The basic logic holds, that you cant make money if nobody uses Bitcoin.
  - Fej 9y ago
    But you can make money if nobody uses Bitcoin. Such is speculation.
    - jgord 9y ago
      for a while at least, yes : ]
jgord 9y ago
The max blocksize is a code constant, so it requires upgrading software on a lot of machines to a version with the fix, which is incompatible with older versions. Called a "hard fork", meaning a fork in the blockchain - because older software would see those new larger blocks as invalid. The blocksize has been increased in the past, without major upheaval. There is some risk, but staying with outdated software forever also has its own risk. We should make the single hardfork count - eg. an agreed schedule to increase blocksize over time to keep pace with moores law was proposed as a way to avoid future recurring hardforks. I think the issue is to manage the risk well - telegraph and explain the roadmap so there is certainty for all parties. Gain consensus, but understand perfect consensus is impossible.
bfu 9y ago
I think the fear is that if you can increase block size from 1MB to 4MB, why not 40MB, or 400 GB. At some point someone will ask: How big should we make the block so that only big banks with specialized hardware can afford to run the bitcoin network.