6 ms·

This doesn't even remotely address the scaling problem, such as it may be. I'm not keen on forced blocksize caps as I don't see how that kind of planned economy

This doesn't even remotely address the scaling problem, such as it may be. I'm not keen on forced blocksize caps as I don't see how that kind of planned economy model is compatible with the free-market money ideas behind Bitcoin, but even an unlimited blocksize would be unlikely to truly solve scaling. Bitcoin simply doesn't scale very well because of the way transaction history need sto be stored. As long as the rate of blockchain growth can't be significantly reduced, transaction rate can't grow very much. So small block proponents are likely to be right in that on-chain scaling is unrealistic, but if the market must be forced by developers to adhere to an artificial limit, I think that in itself implies Bitcoin is unlikely to be able to grow very far as the market is unable to self-regulate.

GBiT 9y ago
Bitcoin CAN scale globally right now if remove 1 MB cap. If someone doesn't want to hold every transaction of blockchain they can use pruning, and some us us use it already. For a simple user, it's not worth to keep all blockchain, because it does not matter. they can't change it or include transaction into a new block if they not mining.
sanxiyn 9y ago
Block size is protocol's security parameter. Cap on block size is not artificial. Thought experiment: if block size is unlimited, would it affect security? The answer is obviously yes, so it's not artificial.
- erpellan 9y ago
  Satoshi added the block size cap as a DOS-prevention mechanism (to stop blocks from being bloated with 'dust' txns and grinding the network to a halt). It was done without any real discussion and the value was probably whatever felt right to him at the time. If he'd made it 10Mb, we'd be having this discussion in a few years time rather than now.
  - sanxiyn 9y ago
    Yes, I agree it is very reasonable to debate whether limit should be 1 MB or 10 MB or whatever. I don't think it is reasonable to say it should be unlimited, or decided by market, or such.
  - nullc 9y ago
    > Satoshi added the block size cap as a DOS-prevention mechanism (to stop blocks from being bloated with 'dust' txns and grinding the network to a halt). Please spare us the pure unsubstantiated and uninformed conjecture.
    - rebuilder 9y ago
      There's something to be said for being civil, don't you think?
      - nullc 9y ago
        Hm?
- CyberDildonics 9y ago
  > Thought experiment: if block size is unlimited, would it affect security? The answer is obviously yes, so it's not artificial. Obviously yes? I think you will have to explain it anyway since the block size cap does not affect mining difficulty.
runeks 9y ago
> I'm not keen on forced blocksize caps as I don't see how that kind of planned economy model is compatible with the free-market money ideas behind Bitcoin, but even an unlimited blocksize would be unlikely to truly solve scaling. Bitcoin is not an economy, it's a protocol. Bitcoin does not consist of people, whereas an economy does. A planned economy is literally planning people's lives. An agreed-upon constant in a protocol is not related to this.
darawk 9y ago
The Lightning Network addresses the scaling problem. Segwit enables the lightning network. Ergo, segwit addresses the scaling problem.
- lawn 9y ago
  LN is still vaporware, stop pushing it as the solution for everything. It's not even certain if it will work.
  - um_ya 9y ago
    Jesus, not this bullshit again. It's not vaporware IF YOU CAN USE IT ALREADY. It's already available for you to use on Litecoin. Lightning works, it just needs the services to become user friendly now.
    - lawn 9y ago
      Did they solve the routing problem? No? Then it's not ready. Also, LN requires larger blocks if it wants to scale anything at all. You need to get your coins to and from it you know.
      - nkuttler 9y ago
        > You need to get your coins to and from it you know. Once LN works people will need to do this every few weeks, months, or even years.
        lawn 9y ago
        That alone makes LN a bad idea.
        darawk 9y ago
        How so? That's how bank accounts work now. You put your money into them, and then you spend it as needed. Why is that a problem?
mrb 9y ago
Bitcoin will never scale as well as a centralized system. But it's not necessarily a problem. Bitcoin only needs to scale well enough to succeed. For example, just looking at brute network statistics, a 1MB blocksize causes a well connected node to use approx 1 Mbps of bandwidth. Therefore with zero improvements in the way the blockhain is implemented, we could scale to a 100MB blocksize, allowing 350-700 tps, and the bandwidth would only cost $50-100/month (cost of a 100 Mbps unmetered colocated host in the US). Disk usage would grow 5TB per year without pruning, maybe 2-3 TB with pruning, that's $50-70 per year in HDD. I don't know about you but I feel pretty good that without any algorithmic optimizations, Bitcoin seems to have a 100x scaling potential, with a full node still remaining affordable to run by a "serious" Bitcoin individual (~$100 /month).
- z3t4 9y ago
  you want as many miners as possible or the whole network will be in danger when there are only a few miners having 50% of the mining power. it would be grate if smartphones could mine when they are charging or idle, and also run a full node and make transactions.
  - GBiT 9y ago
    Right now mining equipment cost thousands of dollars... so for real, they can spend a few bucks on hardware.
  - jmaa 9y ago
    I already have issues with my smartphone's drain-rate. Withstanding the issue of a huge ledger, you don't what to be mining on your smartphone.
- kalleboo 9y ago
  From what I've read, one of the issues is that it's very difficult to maintain that extra bandwidth through the Great Firewall of China, resulting in any miners on the other side of where the block was found being at a disadvantage as they will get the blocks too late to be competitive. This will result in mining finally being 100% concentrated in China.
knocte 9y ago
> So small block proponents are likely to be right in that on-chain scaling is unrealistic, but if the market must be forced by developers to adhere to an artificial limit, I think that in itself implies Bitcoin is unlikely to be able to grow very far as the market is unable to self-regulate. Apples and oranges. Blocksize trade-offs are related with how decentralized the network is/will be. Off-chain is a way to build layers on top of bitcoin to allow payments to start being only sent between off-chain payment hubs, which at the very long-term will convert on-chain(layer1) transactions into more of a settlement system (instead of payment system). This, doesn't have anything to do with developers or project governance. Even if the network is decentralized, you cannot decentralize knowledge. In opensource, meritocracy is king, and obviously it will always be like this (so long as know-how is required to solve technical problems).
- rebuilder 9y ago
  As long as economies of scale apply, mining will centralize, regardless of blocksize. Bigger miners can push out smaller ones. As far as full nodes go, incentives are a big problem IMO: there's no direct profit in running one, so whoever runs a full node is either a hobbyist/altruist, or needs one to run a business. I don't really see what kind of user needs a full node yet is unable to pay for one, if Bitcoin is more of a high-value settlement network than a high-throughput payment network. The point is, while blocksize has some effect on centralization I don't think it's all that big a factor in the end. I'm not sure what you mean with your last point - that the code that gets used is always made by the developers best equipped to set economic policy? Because that is what decisions on blocksize are.
  - PeterisP 9y ago
    What's the point of Bitcoin if that's just a high-value settlement network? From the perspective of end users, all the Bitcoin advantages materialize only if they use it directly as a payment network; otherwise they are de-facto using something else and it doesn't really matter how that something else is settled in the background, it matters how that something else works and if it works differently than Bitcoin, they're using that and not really Bitcoin. From the perspective of users (organizations) who need high-value settlement networks, the classic alternatives (e.g. Target2) are better than Bitcoin since the needs are quite different, and the advantages of cryptocurrencies aren't that useful for high-value settlement, they matter mostly for end users.

GBiT 9y ago

Bitcoin CAN scale globally right now if remove 1 MB cap. If someone doesn't want to hold every transaction of blockchain they can use pruning, and some us us use it already. For a simple user, it's not worth to keep all blockchain, because it does not matter. they can't change it or include transaction into a new block if they not mining.

sanxiyn 9y ago

Block size is protocol's security parameter. Cap on block size is not artificial. Thought experiment: if block size is unlimited, would it affect security? The answer is obviously yes, so it's not artificial.

erpellan 9y ago
Satoshi added the block size cap as a DOS-prevention mechanism (to stop blocks from being bloated with 'dust' txns and grinding the network to a halt). It was done without any real discussion and the value was probably whatever felt right to him at the time. If he'd made it 10Mb, we'd be having this discussion in a few years time rather than now.
- sanxiyn 9y ago
  Yes, I agree it is very reasonable to debate whether limit should be 1 MB or 10 MB or whatever. I don't think it is reasonable to say it should be unlimited, or decided by market, or such.
- nullc 9y ago
  > Satoshi added the block size cap as a DOS-prevention mechanism (to stop blocks from being bloated with 'dust' txns and grinding the network to a halt). Please spare us the pure unsubstantiated and uninformed conjecture.
  - rebuilder 9y ago
    There's something to be said for being civil, don't you think?
    - nullc 9y ago
      Hm?
CyberDildonics 9y ago
> Thought experiment: if block size is unlimited, would it affect security? The answer is obviously yes, so it's not artificial. Obviously yes? I think you will have to explain it anyway since the block size cap does not affect mining difficulty.

runeks 9y ago

> I'm not keen on forced blocksize caps as I don't see how that kind of planned economy model is compatible with the free-market money ideas behind Bitcoin, but even an unlimited blocksize would be unlikely to truly solve scaling. Bitcoin is not an economy, it's a protocol. Bitcoin does not consist of people, whereas an economy does. A planned economy is literally planning people's lives. An agreed-upon constant in a protocol is not related to this.

darawk 9y ago

The Lightning Network addresses the scaling problem. Segwit enables the lightning network. Ergo, segwit addresses the scaling problem.

lawn 9y ago
LN is still vaporware, stop pushing it as the solution for everything. It's not even certain if it will work.
- um_ya 9y ago
  Jesus, not this bullshit again. It's not vaporware IF YOU CAN USE IT ALREADY. It's already available for you to use on Litecoin. Lightning works, it just needs the services to become user friendly now.
  - lawn 9y ago
    Did they solve the routing problem? No? Then it's not ready. Also, LN requires larger blocks if it wants to scale anything at all. You need to get your coins to and from it you know.
    - nkuttler 9y ago
      > You need to get your coins to and from it you know. Once LN works people will need to do this every few weeks, months, or even years.
      - lawn 9y ago
        That alone makes LN a bad idea.
        darawk 9y ago
        How so? That's how bank accounts work now. You put your money into them, and then you spend it as needed. Why is that a problem?

mrb 9y ago

Bitcoin will never scale as well as a centralized system. But it's not necessarily a problem. Bitcoin only needs to scale well enough to succeed. For example, just looking at brute network statistics, a 1MB blocksize causes a well connected node to use approx 1 Mbps of bandwidth. Therefore with zero improvements in the way the blockhain is implemented, we could scale to a 100MB blocksize, allowing 350-700 tps, and the bandwidth would only cost $50-100/month (cost of a 100 Mbps unmetered colocated host in the US). Disk usage would grow 5TB per year without pruning, maybe 2-3 TB with pruning, that's $50-70 per year in HDD. I don't know about you but I feel pretty good that without any algorithmic optimizations, Bitcoin seems to have a 100x scaling potential, with a full node still remaining affordable to run by a "serious" Bitcoin individual (~$100 /month).

z3t4 9y ago
you want as many miners as possible or the whole network will be in danger when there are only a few miners having 50% of the mining power. it would be grate if smartphones could mine when they are charging or idle, and also run a full node and make transactions.
- GBiT 9y ago
  Right now mining equipment cost thousands of dollars... so for real, they can spend a few bucks on hardware.
- jmaa 9y ago
  I already have issues with my smartphone's drain-rate. Withstanding the issue of a huge ledger, you don't what to be mining on your smartphone.
kalleboo 9y ago
From what I've read, one of the issues is that it's very difficult to maintain that extra bandwidth through the Great Firewall of China, resulting in any miners on the other side of where the block was found being at a disadvantage as they will get the blocks too late to be competitive. This will result in mining finally being 100% concentrated in China.

knocte 9y ago

> So small block proponents are likely to be right in that on-chain scaling is unrealistic, but if the market must be forced by developers to adhere to an artificial limit, I think that in itself implies Bitcoin is unlikely to be able to grow very far as the market is unable to self-regulate. Apples and oranges. Blocksize trade-offs are related with how decentralized the network is/will be. Off-chain is a way to build layers on top of bitcoin to allow payments to start being only sent between off-chain payment hubs, which at the very long-term will convert on-chain(layer1) transactions into more of a settlement system (instead of payment system). This, doesn't have anything to do with developers or project governance. Even if the network is decentralized, you cannot decentralize knowledge. In opensource, meritocracy is king, and obviously it will always be like this (so long as know-how is required to solve technical problems).

rebuilder 9y ago
As long as economies of scale apply, mining will centralize, regardless of blocksize. Bigger miners can push out smaller ones. As far as full nodes go, incentives are a big problem IMO: there's no direct profit in running one, so whoever runs a full node is either a hobbyist/altruist, or needs one to run a business. I don't really see what kind of user needs a full node yet is unable to pay for one, if Bitcoin is more of a high-value settlement network than a high-throughput payment network. The point is, while blocksize has some effect on centralization I don't think it's all that big a factor in the end. I'm not sure what you mean with your last point - that the code that gets used is always made by the developers best equipped to set economic policy? Because that is what decisions on blocksize are.
- PeterisP 9y ago
  What's the point of Bitcoin if that's just a high-value settlement network? From the perspective of end users, all the Bitcoin advantages materialize only if they use it directly as a payment network; otherwise they are de-facto using something else and it doesn't really matter how that something else is settled in the background, it matters how that something else works and if it works differently than Bitcoin, they're using that and not really Bitcoin. From the perspective of users (organizations) who need high-value settlement networks, the classic alternatives (e.g. Target2) are better than Bitcoin since the needs are quite different, and the advantages of cryptocurrencies aren't that useful for high-value settlement, they matter mostly for end users.