5 ms·
That is correct, there is a maximum number of transactions that can occur on the main Bitcoin chain (it was ~7/second at the beginning, and I think it still is)
by gibybo 7y ago
That is correct, there is a maximum number of transactions that can occur on the main Bitcoin chain (it was ~7/second at the beginning, and I think it still is) so there is effectively an auction to get on the chain.
As ignaloidas explained in another comment though, this doesn't include the Lightning Network which is where most everyday transactions would occur.
- akuji1993 7y agoAlright, so there's always a way to get my transaction through, nice. Would you have any resource that is worth checking out to learn more about blockchain? I don't care about market analysis, economy. I just want to understand the underlying technology to know what's happening there. Book would be fine too.
- gibybo 7y agoThe original 9 page paper by Satoshi is probably the best place to start for a technical introduction: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf The Bitcoin wiki has a lot more information, although it can be hard to navigate: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page For some more modernish innovations in Blockchain tech in general, I would also recommend the Ethereum white paper: https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/White-Paper. Ethereum re-imagines the Bitcoin protocol with a turing complete virtual machine that runs on the chain itself.
- akuji1993 7y agoThanks, I'll be sure to check those out.
- olalonde 7y agoI would start with the original Bitcoin white paper[0] followed by the blockchain guide on Bitcoin.org[1]. [0] https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf [1] https://bitcoin.org/en/blockchain-guide#introduction https://bitcoin.org/en/blockchain-guide#introduction
- wickoff 7y agohttps://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook This is probably the best in depth technical overview of how Bitcoin works.
- latchkey 7y agoThe way to get a transaction through is to pay a fee to have it validated. The higher the fee, the more incentive for miners to add your transaction to their blocks since they will earn that fee if they can validate the block the fastest. Right now, the fees are relatively low because miners are primarily living on the block rewards for validating transactions. As those block rewards decrease (halvenings), transaction fees will need to pick up the slack. Smaller miners may also leave the network as the competition picks up, which will lower the difficulty and increase the chances of validating the block the fastest (and thus getting paid the rewards/fees). Halvenings means less inflation, so the theory/practice is that the price will also go up over time... thus the transaction fees will go up, but not substantially because the price is also going up. This will also incentivize outside transactions like lightning network.
- remarkEon 7y ago>this doesn't include the Lightning Network which is where most everyday transactions would occur. This is something I've never fully understood. Is the Lightning Network essentially a separate ledger of transactions that are "floating", if you will, off chain until (eventually) they get verified at some later time in a "final" state? What is the timing mechanism for when they get verified?