Topic: Drivechain - scaling solution? (Read 1077 times)

I already mentioned that the main reason I expect  is smaller transaction fees. There could be others like enhanced smart contract capabilities (e.g. Rootstock), or faster block times, but that depends on the drivechain.

And no, if they "won't want to stick with Bitcoin" they would be using directly a non-pegged altcoin. Drivechain users would like to use the Bitcoin value token, but with better conditions than if there were only one ledger. 


Read my previous posts. The "crybabies" wouldn't have to use all drivechains, they would probably use less than a third of them. Using all drivechains would not make sense (only if they altruistically want to run an archival node for all drivechains).

And the reason why many Core supporters are so cautious with bigger blocks (at least those that are thinking a bit) is that they don't want to force people to use a big blockchain where every tip or Satoshi Dice gamble would be stored until the end of the world.

PS: It would be really cool to discuss the Drivechain concept in this thread and not only random advantages and disadvantages of random pegged sidechains. But I think I'm being delusional 

the thing you got to realise is those using the 'drivechain' would do so because of some reason they wont want to stick with bitcoin.
also the purpose of drive chain is to have a SEPARATE ledger so that it does not clog up peoples computers.(crybabies 2mb=gigabytes by midnight facepalming fud)

EG the drivechain and BS guys prefer to have many chains of EG 4 chains of 2mb rather than 1 chain of 8mb.

so all those cry babies that dont want dynamic blocks ('bigger blocks') and want to stick with 1-2mb blocks by using drivechains, are not going to be the guys that will be running 2 nodes. other wise their hard drives will still be filling up by MORE than 2mb every ~10mins.. if they were to run all the chains.. thus dfeating the point in having the drive chain facility..

if those cry babies did run both.. then what is the friggen point in crying about bitcoins mainnet growing bigger than 2mb!! because the result would be more than 2mb of data per average block period, and all the bandwidth that goes along with it by running both.


you got to think about the psychology of it all and not just the hope/moral of protecting bitcoin many hope others have (but most usually dont)

I still don't think that much nodes would get lost. There is other effect that has to be taken into account: Even if it's true that a drivechain is a "pegged altcoin", people that use it would like to run "Bitcoin" and not an "Europecoin" for example. So they would look for a Bitcoin client. And Bitcoin.org probably would offer to download clients with the main chain and the main drivechains (as opt-in).


That would change if the drivechains would made Bitcoin more attractive for merchants because of the lower transaction fees. (I would like to see a serious estimation, though )

All that makes me believe that there could be a small drop of full nodes initially, but they would soon be outnumbered by the new nodes due to new merchants.


But I estimate that would be worse if we switch to significantly larger blocks (8MB+). Then the cost to run a full archival node would be much higher. In the drivechain scenario, a typical full node would archive the main blockchain and the preferred drivechain. As the main blockchain archive is the most important one, this would lead to higher redundancy of the most important transaction data.

I consider this point not that important, though - as the main "sense" of full nodes for the security of the ecosystem is the assumption that they are a economic counter-power to miners, but nodes with small holdings wouldn't add much security here. So the couple of hundreds or thousands 24/7 online business nodes would be, in fact, more important than the (larger) number of standard full nodes.

Drivechains could even maybe be designed in a way that they expire after a certain date and a new drivechain is created, and so they would virtually not add any significant "storing/archival cost". In this case a full node including the main chain could be cheaper than today, with 10x or more capacity of the system.

once the pegged swap is done.. the transactions on another chain will only be held on that other chains ledger/database. so users wont care much for protecting a bitcoins chain, which they dont transact on any longer.

remember people mainly run a full node to see when their transactions arrive and fully validate the transactions they hold as the main selfish/personal concern..
the moral/ethics of 'protecting the network' is more of an afterthought.. not the priority.
this is why you see many full nodes not running for months on end. and only running for a few hours to resync and see their own new totals when they want to transact.. so thats why my mindset is that the psychology of full node users is predominantly about personal use and network protect is the after thought. not the other way round

also the amount of merchants/businesses is not 7000 nodes. but more like a couple hundred nodes. so like i said there will still be some that run 2 nodes.. but there would be a noticable drop of full node bitcoin count.. again not large 100% drop or 80% drop but a noticable drop.

im personally less concerned of the node count drop due to 'drivechain'. and more concerned with a nodecount drop due to the cesspit of all the stripped, prunned nodes leaching(torrent analogy) the network vs the amount of true seed(torrent analogy) full archival nodes

it all depends on what features/differences these altcoins offer.. yea ya i know you prefer to call them drive chains. but im more of a realist.. its a pegged altcoin concept

No. Because all drivechains are two-way-pegged to the Bitcoin main chain, without Bitcoin their tokens would be worth nothing (or at least, much less than with a working peg). Businesses and people that are aware of that relation will run a full Bitcoin main chain node to protect their whole investment.

I estimate that drivechains will lead to a growth of use cases (because of the lower fees) and thus a usage growth in Bitcoin, because de facto they are a capacity increase. So it's very unlikely the full node number will go down - it is possible that it will grow slower than before, but in my opinion it will not grow slower as in the scenario of a big-block Bitcoin because full nodes would be much less costly, as I outlined in my previous posts. 

i have no clue why you decided to go with an example of 7 continents... ask yourself why you used that example!!!

if you were asking more generally what are the advantages of drive chains at all... then yes Africacoin may have super low fee's compared to americacoin.
who knows what different features each altcoin (drivechain) will offer
1. if they are not transacting on the main CHAIN they they wont run the main chain.. EG
those that move from litecoin to bitcoin, dont bother running a litecoin node, because they are not using litecoin.
so if they start ONLY TRANSACTING on continent chain X, they will have less need to have 2 nodes running.

2. im not saying everyone will have this mindset. but SOME will.. which will dilute the full node count.. then with all the -nowitness -prunned options also dilute the full node count. making bitcoin weaker. again im not saying 100% drop nor 80% drop.. but enough of a drop to mak people realise the network has become less secure than before.

but as i mentioned above if some services only transact with (in YOUR!! scenario of continents) continent X. then they wont care/need to protect something they are not using and will only protect what they do use.. so again SOME may stop running bitcoin nodes if all their customer base was purely continent X transacting.. but as i said it wont be a 100% drop of bitcoin.. but a noticable impact

First: Why would they use the geographical drivechain? Because the transaction fees would be much lower.

Now: Why would they also use a Bitcoin node? I think if the main chain is small enough they won't have a problem running it as a (probably pruned) full node. Probably there would be people which only would run the Drivechain node. But these are also the people that tend to run light nodes anyway.

People and businesses concerned about the security of the system  and concious about the advantages of full nodes  - these that run Full Nodes presently - would very probably run also a Bitcoin node to be able to verify and strengthen the integrity of the system.

Apart from that, in the scenario I outlined the main chain would be the best choice for international transactions. People travel, there are migrants, businesses shipping/people buying things in different continents - these all would be benefit from running the Bitcoin mainchain node.

i see it more like .. using your 'continent'/country analogy and expanding it.
its like 7 altcoins once you convert from bitcoin to lets say the EU altcoin.. people in the EU will stick to only give a crap about the EU altcoin. and thus wont be going back and forth to bitcoin. they would just trade using the EU altcoin and thus wont be running a bitcoin node and only running a EU node

Not necessarily.

Imagine the following scenario:

- There is a main chain as settlement layer (Oh, I named the Antichrist ).
- 6 Drivechains, each for one of the major continents, to be used in brick and mortar stores and online stores that sell material goods and operate in a geographical area.

We have now 7 chains. Let's say we have a transaction count that would fill for 7 MB blocks and that every chain has 1 MB blocks. Average Joe normally would only have to use two of these chains (main chain + continental chain), so he would have to sync 2 MB every 10 minutes.

So he would have to do only less than a third of the syncronization work, than if he was using a competitor with 7 MB blocks and the same capacity. So he probably could afford a full node even with today's consumer hardware.

This scenario ("geographical sidechains") is only an example. There could be other kinds of "specializations" for Drivechains (e.g. a B2B chain, a smart contract chain like RSK, a remittances chain ...).


I don't see how Drivechains could affect them. They would run the main chain and a set of preferred drive chains and would also have lesser to store & validate, like in the first example.

I agree, totally unnecessary.

edit: oops. my bad, this place has no space for newbs like me.

Agree, Altcoins must rely Bitcoin and Bitcoin not need follow Altcoins.
You can see when you trade altcoins, all value are converted to Bitcoin => Bitcoin is King
But Bitcoin need make a solution for Blockchain because spend very more time for confirm a block than use altcoins for exchange

Yes, and they can. 

Where I have a problem is people saying the blocks need to be small so everyone can run full nodes, when that's totally unnecessary.

trying to make it sound like SPV is the future and everyone should SPV is just hiding the importance of full nodes.

average joe should use whatever the F they want. they should have the freedom to decide for themselves what level of involvement they want have

Average Joe should be using SPV.    Even Gavin uses SPV. 

those that want to hop between chains are not going to want to sync to the different chain.. so these people wont be full node runners anyway.
making the side chain weak

secondly those that used to run bitcoin nodes see the bitcoin chain utility diminish meaning all they are holding is a big bag of LTXO which will make them want to turn off their full node too..

all side chains do is make merchant tools start accepting SidechainX coins at retailers and bitcoin just ends up bing a pile of LockedTXO's
where by an LN hub manager(in the most simplified layman terms) owns all the contracts to unlock the LTXO

But they can be pegged to Bitcoin via the Drivechain mechanism - and then they are almost the same

You can use what you want, but then you must take the consequences - you have the choice between high fees or a terabyte-big blockchain which the average Joe can only use with a SPV or a centralized client.

Then use altcoins.  Altcoins aren't Bitcoin.

I'd rather stick with Bitcoin and on chain scaling.     

Nope. Drivechains are as decentralized as altcoins are, and most probably they would be more secure. Even LN isn't that centralized like Coinbase. Compare apples to apples, please.

drivechain = using the same soft fork exploit as other things meaning no proper consensus vote/veto. same old avoid user election, hand election to pools, then pitchfork the pools if they say nah thanks.. to then nuke th pools for having an opinion...
all while wasting another 2 years..

sidechains = altcoins

prominently, if people move coins to other altcoins (oops i mean sidechains) then those people end up protecting the sidechain by running a sidechain node not a bitcoin node.

if a side chain can do X. the obviously bitcoin could do X too.. so just friggin let bitcoin do X instead of dilute bitcoins userbase/utility by swaying people off chain/to new networks. (bitcoin node dilution)

seriously whats with devs trying to dismantle bitcoin by crippling it with removing fee controls, halting onchain growth, sliding in empty gestures using exploits that still only offers the same 7tx/s hope.

the 'timing is perfect' the link suggests.
to distract devs from scaling bitcoin with a new roadmap of wasting time on altcoins (oops sidechains) as the next route/level.. again diminishing any promise of time scales of when bitcoin will get its REAL block increase that dynamically moves at a heathy rate (real scaling).

if anyone wants to use sidchains.. just friggen sell your bitcoins and buy an altcoin... dont be fooled into locking bitcoins out of circulation until its a cesspit of only a couple nodes left and merchants not running nodes holding a blockchain of 'locked tx's' LTXO's

Looks like FIAT dosh to me. 21m to 42m.