4 ms·

> Having lived through that era, the number one culprit that I would blame as the root cause of this shift is the rise in transaction fees. Haha no, the number

> Having lived through that era, the number one culprit that I would blame as the root cause of this shift is the rise in transaction fees. Haha no, the number one culprit is that 99% of blockchain projects are either scams, bullshit, not actually decentralized, or simply fail despite pulling in vast amounts of funding (sometimes more than one of the above!). However, I do agree that most--if not all--problems in the cryptocurrency space arise from the "currency" aspect. Just not so directly as "transaction fees".

kylebenzle 3y ago
You are right but it is by design. From day one Satoshi had a road map to scale BTC to Visa-like levels while keeping TX fees around a penny. Just incrementally increase the block size over time. Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alone intended. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) stayed with the road map and has worked great with low fees for over a decade now. BTC twisted itself into a digital ponzi scheme for morons.
- AlexandrB 3y ago
  > Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alone intended. Doesn't this point to Bitcoin's decentralized nature being largely smoke and mirrors? You're claiming that just two individuals have had a significant negative impact on a project that was intended to be free from central control. That in itself seems like a failure of the project's goals.
  - dannyw 3y ago
    There was a big fight over the future of bitcoin. There are 6-7 core developers in that era, and multiple clients, but bitcoind was dominant. Blockstream was able to create the perception of an economic majority — thanks to forums like Bitcointalk and Reddit (moderated by one guy: Theymos / Michael Marquant). In reality, a lot of people didn’t support blockstream, but through censorship and permanent bans, a few people were able to create the perception of economic majority. More info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14240267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14240267
  - lawn 3y ago
    Yes and no. They didn't just control the repo, but they somehow managed to convince the miners to support them. Exchanges and users simply defaulted to "the longest chain is Bitcoin", ensuring their victory. So they weren't alone. But Bitcoin's truly decentralized nature allows for forks, where if you disagree with the development direction you can always go your own way. So the spirit of Bitcoin lives on in other projects (both via forks and via projects with no shared history with Bitcoin). > You're claiming that just two individuals have had a significant negative impact on a project that was intended to be free from central control. That in itself seems like a failure of the project's goals. Yes, it was (and is) still a major failure of the project's goals.
    - tw04 3y ago
      That’s like saying democracy allows voters in the US to elect anyone. Sure, on paper, but here in the real world that’s just not happening. With a few minor tweaks like ranked choice, it could, but the powers that be will never get onboard. Similarly bitcoin is decentralized in that “anyone can fork it” but reality is without backing from major players, that will never gain any traction at all. So no, functionally it is nothing approaching decentralized.
    - ETH_start 3y ago
      The miners didn't support them at all. The majority supported the hard fork, and initiatives like Gavin Andresen's BitcoinXT to implement it. But the main Bitcoin forum on Reddit started censoring any advocacy for a block size limit increase, which made a clean hard fork impossible.
      - lawn 3y ago
        Initially you're right. At the crucial point they did however convince the miners to support a Segwit + blocksize increase, which pulled away the support. Of course, it's obvious that it was just a bait-and-switch and the blocksize increase is nowhere to be seen, and will probably never happen.
        ETH_start 3y ago
  - beaned 3y ago
    Increasing block size decreases decentralization. (Or rather, increases centralization.) Satoshi's true vision was that decentralization was a prerequisite for everything else. Block size increases presuppose infinite scaling of bandwidth, processing speed, and storage, but we do not have that. Because those things are scarce, block size must be as well, if the goal is to maintain decentralization. Also in the end it doesn't matter what is in the Bitcoin Core github. It's a network and you can run any variant you want. Bitcoin Cash tried and failed, because in the end it is not what the users, the node operators, chose to adopt.
- thepasswordis 3y ago
  >Bitcoin Cash (BCH) stayed with the road map and has worked great with low fees for over a decade now. BTC twisted itself into a digital ponzi scheme for morons. I believe most people call this bcash.
  - lawn 3y ago
    Only those that want to throw dirt at the project in order to legitimize the development direction of BTC. And those who are clueless and just follow the hivemind.
    - beaned 3y ago
      Well what's BTC and what isn't? The bcash people still desperately cling to the r/btc handle for their subreddit.
      - lawn 3y ago
        If you know your history then you should know that r/btc predates the fork by multiple years, and that it existed as an uncensored subreddit and a refuge from r/bitcoin where you got banned simply for voicing an opinion. It still lives on as an uncensored subreddit where all forks of Bitcoin may be discussed.
        beaned 3y ago
        Yeah but they use it mostly to represent Bitcoin Cash. The history is irrelevant; bcash doesn't stand on its own legs and the misnomer is used to trick people. It's dishonest.
        lawn 3y ago
        It's so telling when you continue to use the slur "bcash" and accuse others of being dishonest. And focusing so much on a subreddit that's not tied to the project no more than r/bitcoin is to Bitcoin, while dismissing it's existential reason as "irrelevant", is tiring.
- hanniabu 3y ago
  Bitcoin is not Ethereum
antupis 3y ago
I think it is speculation if you invite large-scale speculation then you hit some unexpected consciences. Just look at housing or cryptocurrencies.
instagraham 3y ago
I don't see any possible usecase for crypto if a 100-200$ gas fee during high demand is considered acceptable. You can make anything in the world but if you have transaction fees that high every single time that project will be guaranteed to fail.
- yreg 3y ago
  Perhaps the “store of value” use case. Buying and selling physical gold bars adds significant overhead costs as well. But generally I agree with you, the fees are a big problem.
- velcrovan 3y ago
  Eh, ransomware payments would tolerate these fees
- AniseAbyss 3y ago
  [dead]
- AlchemistCamp 3y ago
  This is part of why Solana has been making such inroads the past couple of cycles. Shopify and others are now using SolanaPay to do USDC transactions and they settle in under a second for under a cent. It takes a very beefy server to run a Solana validator, though, so many worry that it’s insufficiently decentralized. I suspect that in the longer run, most of the value will be stored on Ethereum and compatible chains while most transactions will be done on Solana and newer chains.
  - jhobag 3y ago
    payments is a meme for every bagholder coping about their cheap blockspace chain. literally every cycle cheap l1's come up eth mainnet is lindy as the most secure settlement/data availability layer, other layers for execution settling back to mainnet or other da layers potentially solve settlement fee/l1 data writing rent issues
  - hanniabu 3y ago
jongjong 3y ago
The high transaction fees are intentional and a symptom of a sick system which allows people to profit from inefficiency. The higher the transaction fees, the more validators earn. There is no incentive to build tech which will lower transaction fees, even though it would enable practical use cases. Ethereum community is not interested in value creation because they know that value creation doesn't pay. They can earn more money just monopolizing media attention, attracting new investors and lobbying (aka corrupting) politicians. Having worked in the industry, I've witnessed how they literally suppress innovations which would result in more scalability and lower fees. They only embrace solutions that are flawed by design to create an illusion that they're trying. Billions of dollars are literally wasted just to maintain the illusion. I don't know where all that money is coming from. The crypto folks are clearly right about one thing; the monetary system is broken... But they seem to be making more money keeping it broken than fixing it.
- yokem55 3y ago
  > The higher the transaction fees, the more validators earn. Not really. 95% of the gas fees get burned and do not go to the validators at all. Only the 'tip' or 'priority fee' goes to the validators and even that is barely anything. Most of the transaction related income validators get is from MEV - basically bribes to order transactions in the block in a particular manner allowing arbitrageurs to extract additional value. These bribes are somewhat correlated to the level of the gas fees, but not always.
  - jongjong 3y ago
    Any Proof of Stake system, by its design will reward validators in accordance to supply and demand for compute. Transaction and compute fees underpin the entire security of PoS. The fees necessarily grow proportionally to demand for compute, because, in a fully replicated architecture such as Ethereum, supply of compute is limited by the slowest allowable node in the network. Since supply of compute is inelastic, it means that demand for compute fully determines fees + MEV. Any effort to scale the network would result in supply elasticity and would therefore cause fees + MEV to drop which would go against the interests of those who provide the validation service and earn the fees + MEV.

kylebenzle 3y ago

You are right but it is by design. From day one Satoshi had a road map to scale BTC to Visa-like levels while keeping TX fees around a penny. Just incrementally increase the block size over time. Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alone intended. Bitcoin Cash (BCH) stayed with the road map and has worked great with low fees for over a decade now. BTC twisted itself into a digital ponzi scheme for morons.

AlexandrB 3y ago
> Soon after Blockstream's Greg Maxwell and Adam Back hijacked the Bitcoin Core GitHub repo they locked down the block size to 1mb, something Satoshi and the original devs never imagined anyone being dumb enough to do let alone intended. Doesn't this point to Bitcoin's decentralized nature being largely smoke and mirrors? You're claiming that just two individuals have had a significant negative impact on a project that was intended to be free from central control. That in itself seems like a failure of the project's goals.
- dannyw 3y ago
  There was a big fight over the future of bitcoin. There are 6-7 core developers in that era, and multiple clients, but bitcoind was dominant. Blockstream was able to create the perception of an economic majority — thanks to forums like Bitcointalk and Reddit (moderated by one guy: Theymos / Michael Marquant). In reality, a lot of people didn’t support blockstream, but through censorship and permanent bans, a few people were able to create the perception of economic majority. More info: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14240267 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14240267
- lawn 3y ago
  Yes and no. They didn't just control the repo, but they somehow managed to convince the miners to support them. Exchanges and users simply defaulted to "the longest chain is Bitcoin", ensuring their victory. So they weren't alone. But Bitcoin's truly decentralized nature allows for forks, where if you disagree with the development direction you can always go your own way. So the spirit of Bitcoin lives on in other projects (both via forks and via projects with no shared history with Bitcoin). > You're claiming that just two individuals have had a significant negative impact on a project that was intended to be free from central control. That in itself seems like a failure of the project's goals. Yes, it was (and is) still a major failure of the project's goals.
  - tw04 3y ago
    That’s like saying democracy allows voters in the US to elect anyone. Sure, on paper, but here in the real world that’s just not happening. With a few minor tweaks like ranked choice, it could, but the powers that be will never get onboard. Similarly bitcoin is decentralized in that “anyone can fork it” but reality is without backing from major players, that will never gain any traction at all. So no, functionally it is nothing approaching decentralized.
  - ETH_start 3y ago
    The miners didn't support them at all. The majority supported the hard fork, and initiatives like Gavin Andresen's BitcoinXT to implement it. But the main Bitcoin forum on Reddit started censoring any advocacy for a block size limit increase, which made a clean hard fork impossible.
    - lawn 3y ago
      Initially you're right. At the crucial point they did however convince the miners to support a Segwit + blocksize increase, which pulled away the support. Of course, it's obvious that it was just a bait-and-switch and the blocksize increase is nowhere to be seen, and will probably never happen.
      - ETH_start 3y ago
- beaned 3y ago
  Increasing block size decreases decentralization. (Or rather, increases centralization.) Satoshi's true vision was that decentralization was a prerequisite for everything else. Block size increases presuppose infinite scaling of bandwidth, processing speed, and storage, but we do not have that. Because those things are scarce, block size must be as well, if the goal is to maintain decentralization. Also in the end it doesn't matter what is in the Bitcoin Core github. It's a network and you can run any variant you want. Bitcoin Cash tried and failed, because in the end it is not what the users, the node operators, chose to adopt.
thepasswordis 3y ago
>Bitcoin Cash (BCH) stayed with the road map and has worked great with low fees for over a decade now. BTC twisted itself into a digital ponzi scheme for morons. I believe most people call this bcash.
- lawn 3y ago
  Only those that want to throw dirt at the project in order to legitimize the development direction of BTC. And those who are clueless and just follow the hivemind.
  - beaned 3y ago
    Well what's BTC and what isn't? The bcash people still desperately cling to the r/btc handle for their subreddit.
    - lawn 3y ago
      If you know your history then you should know that r/btc predates the fork by multiple years, and that it existed as an uncensored subreddit and a refuge from r/bitcoin where you got banned simply for voicing an opinion. It still lives on as an uncensored subreddit where all forks of Bitcoin may be discussed.
      - beaned 3y ago
        Yeah but they use it mostly to represent Bitcoin Cash. The history is irrelevant; bcash doesn't stand on its own legs and the misnomer is used to trick people. It's dishonest.
        lawn 3y ago
        It's so telling when you continue to use the slur "bcash" and accuse others of being dishonest. And focusing so much on a subreddit that's not tied to the project no more than r/bitcoin is to Bitcoin, while dismissing it's existential reason as "irrelevant", is tiring.
hanniabu 3y ago
Bitcoin is not Ethereum

antupis 3y ago

I think it is speculation if you invite large-scale speculation then you hit some unexpected consciences. Just look at housing or cryptocurrencies.

instagraham 3y ago

I don't see any possible usecase for crypto if a 100-200$ gas fee during high demand is considered acceptable. You can make anything in the world but if you have transaction fees that high every single time that project will be guaranteed to fail.

yreg 3y ago
Perhaps the “store of value” use case. Buying and selling physical gold bars adds significant overhead costs as well. But generally I agree with you, the fees are a big problem.
velcrovan 3y ago
Eh, ransomware payments would tolerate these fees
AniseAbyss 3y ago
[dead]
AlchemistCamp 3y ago
This is part of why Solana has been making such inroads the past couple of cycles. Shopify and others are now using SolanaPay to do USDC transactions and they settle in under a second for under a cent. It takes a very beefy server to run a Solana validator, though, so many worry that it’s insufficiently decentralized. I suspect that in the longer run, most of the value will be stored on Ethereum and compatible chains while most transactions will be done on Solana and newer chains.
- jhobag 3y ago
  payments is a meme for every bagholder coping about their cheap blockspace chain. literally every cycle cheap l1's come up eth mainnet is lindy as the most secure settlement/data availability layer, other layers for execution settling back to mainnet or other da layers potentially solve settlement fee/l1 data writing rent issues
- hanniabu 3y ago

jongjong 3y ago

The high transaction fees are intentional and a symptom of a sick system which allows people to profit from inefficiency. The higher the transaction fees, the more validators earn. There is no incentive to build tech which will lower transaction fees, even though it would enable practical use cases. Ethereum community is not interested in value creation because they know that value creation doesn't pay. They can earn more money just monopolizing media attention, attracting new investors and lobbying (aka corrupting) politicians. Having worked in the industry, I've witnessed how they literally suppress innovations which would result in more scalability and lower fees. They only embrace solutions that are flawed by design to create an illusion that they're trying. Billions of dollars are literally wasted just to maintain the illusion. I don't know where all that money is coming from. The crypto folks are clearly right about one thing; the monetary system is broken... But they seem to be making more money keeping it broken than fixing it.

yokem55 3y ago
> The higher the transaction fees, the more validators earn. Not really. 95% of the gas fees get burned and do not go to the validators at all. Only the 'tip' or 'priority fee' goes to the validators and even that is barely anything. Most of the transaction related income validators get is from MEV - basically bribes to order transactions in the block in a particular manner allowing arbitrageurs to extract additional value. These bribes are somewhat correlated to the level of the gas fees, but not always.
- jongjong 3y ago
  Any Proof of Stake system, by its design will reward validators in accordance to supply and demand for compute. Transaction and compute fees underpin the entire security of PoS. The fees necessarily grow proportionally to demand for compute, because, in a fully replicated architecture such as Ethereum, supply of compute is limited by the slowest allowable node in the network. Since supply of compute is inelastic, it means that demand for compute fully determines fees + MEV. Any effort to scale the network would result in supply elasticity and would therefore cause fees + MEV to drop which would go against the interests of those who provide the validation service and earn the fees + MEV.