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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, j

by 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.
- tlrobinson 9y ago
  This begs the question: couldn't the Chinese government intentionally delay even small (outgoing) blocks to give Chinese miners an advantage (with either benign or malicious motives)?
  - kalleboo 9y ago
    Or not even the government but the miners themselves... "Oh our connection is slow [stands strategically in front of router QoS settings]"
    - tlrobinson 9y ago
      That's basically what the "selfish mining" attack is, isn't it? I think the interesting thing about the government doing it is it doesn't require any coordination between miners within China. They wouldn't even necessarily know it was happening unless they looked for it.
h1d 9y ago
100mbps guaranteed is not the same as best effort. Besides it's an average which would max out on bandwidth from time to time unable to process data at full speed. And with that kind of cost, forget about individuals hosting. Also since each block is so huge, others miners will take something like 30+ seconds to validate a block leading to an unfair start on the next block. (5% of a 10 min sounds like some serious gain.)

by mrb 9y ago

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.

tlrobinson 9y ago
This begs the question: couldn't the Chinese government intentionally delay even small (outgoing) blocks to give Chinese miners an advantage (with either benign or malicious motives)?
- kalleboo 9y ago
  Or not even the government but the miners themselves... "Oh our connection is slow [stands strategically in front of router QoS settings]"
  - tlrobinson 9y ago
    That's basically what the "selfish mining" attack is, isn't it? I think the interesting thing about the government doing it is it doesn't require any coordination between miners within China. They wouldn't even necessarily know it was happening unless they looked for it.

h1d 9y ago

100mbps guaranteed is not the same as best effort. Besides it's an average which would max out on bandwidth from time to time unable to process data at full speed. And with that kind of cost, forget about individuals hosting. Also since each block is so huge, others miners will take something like 30+ seconds to validate a block leading to an unfair start on the next block. (5% of a 10 min sounds like some serious gain.)