Topic: From all of us newbies: Can you PLEASE dumb down this whole block size debate? (Read 1616 times)

All right, let's do this. Mostly balanced response. Just a couple issues. First mistake:


The time required to verify a block does NOT grow exponentially in relation to the block size. The time required to verify a transaction does -- with current implementation -- grow exponentially in relation to the block size. One can indeed create a block consisting of a single transaction large enough to fill the block to max size, and this would be much worse in a double-sized block. But don't mistake a transaction size issue with a block size issue. There are also other ways of mitigating this problem.


No, segregated witness does nothing to decrease the size of a transaction. Instead, it actually increases transaction size by a few bytes. There is, however, accounting legerdemain involved that simply does not count part of the transaction as included in the transaction. But make no mistake - the entire transaction must still flow across the network, and the entire transaction's bytes are necessary for any validation of the transaction.

So is it feasible to make the empty blocks not proceed until enough transactions exist, or is this too compromising to the chain standard to average out the flow of data over 24 hrs.    Theres a variation in time beyond 10 minutes before it autocorrects difficulty anyway so isnt this fairly ok to go with as a fix instead of altering size limits

and blockstream are just as guilty

only solution. have code that does both 2mb AND segwit, then you are ready, covered and prepared for anything.
do not go blindly into that dark blockstream.
do not go blindly into that dark classic

have both code to give you buffer for any eventuality.
that way you are not being force fed by any corporation agenda

such a fake thread - just total bollocks

it's like groundhog day on this forum

only solution - stick with core, as gavin and co. are, seemingly daily now, revealed in an increasingly stark light


https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/btcc-s-sampson-mow-on-block-size-the-bitcoin-community-must-see-through-manipulation-keep-calm-and-write-code-1458061357

oh look, it's brian coinbase ...



and gavin... err, oh dear...

http://imgur.com/a/jQEZ6

I'm not sure about that, but since I don't feel like digging through historical code, I'll let this drop.

I understand how empty blocks work and how spv mining works. I advise that you take a look through this thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/empty-blocks-1085800 and this one: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/empty-transaction-blocks-1389977 more recently.

I have seen several blocks that are empty that are found on the normal ten minute interval. There have also been several blocks that were not empty that were found within the first two minutes.


And then the other core committers (and a lot of other people who follow Core development, me included) see that sipa committed some code that goes against what the Bitcoin Core plan for scaling is or it bypassed the standard procedures for committing a change. Then sipa loses his commit privilege and that commit is reverted.

Not the one's with commit access. Yes, there are developers who work on Bitcoin Core and contribute heavily to it that also work at blockstream. Those people are also the ones who founded the company. Their changes must go through the peer review process and and then must be committed by one of the other committers, which is usually Wladimir (mostly him) or Jonas Schnelli (for wallet and gui stuff sometimes) who does it and those two aren't paid by Blockstream (nor are the other committers, Cory Fields, Luke-Jr, Gavin Andresen, or Jeff Garzik). If one of the blockstream developers created a PR which hurt Bitcoin and only benefited blockstream and that somehow got committed (it was NACK'd or was not ACK'd or was not reviewed by others), then obviously something is up and with the nature of git, we know exactly who did what and can act accordingly.

Fun fact, Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik have commit access yet they support Bitcoin Classic. Also, the debate among the technical developer community is much much less toxic, more reasonable, and the consequences (both positive and negative) of the solutions are understood by the developers.

it was a bug actually. in relation to the way the database was programmed.

the "empty blocks" are not standard 10 minute average blocks, nor is it the intention to leave them empty. but luck gets in the way... let me explain..

instead what they are, are initial blocks yet to be filled because the pool is verifying a competitors solution. due to not knowing if a previous block is valid there is no point putting in data that might be in the previous block supposing its invalid. or to just put different txs in supposing its  valid..

so instead of wasting 1 minute validating a solution. they send out an empty block, and when the block is validated they start filling that empty block with new unconfirmed data. if the block fails validation they fill it with the old data

the only thing that stops then starting to fill the new block with appropriate data... is that occassionally in that 1-2 minute period of validating the previous block.. they luckily get a new solutionfor the current block(currently empty)
go check it out. look at the empty block and look at the time since the previous block. it wont be 8-12 minutes it will be 0-2 minutes..



lol so adam back puts in some code. and sipa allows it.. thats basically explaining rigged elections.
its kind of funny how you say blockstream has no control. yet blockstream have pushed away bitcoinJ, pushed away alot of other implementations and want everyone to follow the blockstream roadmap..
also to point out
you think that the $55million only goes to Sipa


ok now your counteracting yourself by saying that bitcoin-core devs are paid by blockstream, you also using plurals which means deep down you know there is more then one blockstreamer in bitcoin-core..

so have a nice day and thank you for correcting youself, it made my job easy

I disagree. The debate cannot be dumbed down. People are largely oversimplifying the issues to make it appear as if the answer should be obvious to everyone. It's very obvious from reading this forum and reddit that most people are ignoring the technical issues in favor of talking points. That's what happens when you "dumb down" the debate. If you want real answers, the mailing lists and IRC are a much better place to be. Sad as it is, leveling baseless insults at the other side and mischaracterizing everything they say is much more effective than engaging in honest debate here.

The answer to capacity vs. decentralization is never obvious. We basically need to use very limited data to make judgments that lack any causal proof re a system about which very little is known (no historical models). And we need to do so with regard to the system's stated principles -- i.e. to be a trustless p2p network for value exchange -- introducing all the more opaqueness as people bring their subjective philosophies to the table. The same data may mean very different things to people with wildly different opinions on the importance of decentralization.

It wasn't a bug. Rather there was a soft limit that many mining clients had from the beginning. Originally it was 250 Kb, then it was bumped to 500 Kb, then to 750 Kb, and then removed entirely. I believe this was an antispam measure that did not require forks to raise. It was just a choice of the miners to use that limit, it wasn't consensus enforced.

Although we may be seeing a little bottleneck today, it isn't as severe as some people make it seem (except when there are spam attacks happening) and there is in fact a fairly simple solution that solves that right now: get the pools who mine empty blocks (blocks that contain no transactions except the coinbase), especially antpool in particular, to stop mining empty blocks. Or at least leave those pools for ones that do not mine empty blocks. There was an analysis done during the last spam attack that found that if just antpool had mined blocks with 1500 transactions instead of empty blocks, the entirety of the backlog would have been cleared.

This is the kind of FUD that is trying to be avoided.

Blockstream does not control Bitcoin Core development. Of the people who have commit access to Bitcoin Core, only one of them works at blockstream, sipa (Pieter Wuille). 1 out of 7 people who can push commits to the project works at Blockstream, I wouldn't call that control, especially since the others with commit access can revoke sipa's if they find that he does something that hurts the project. Now many of the people who work on Bitcoin Core do work at blockstream but they can only create pull requests so their changes can only be merged if one of the 7 committers commit it. This is certainly not control of the project; they can't get their changes through unless someone else commits it for them, and those others do not work at blockstream.

Another thing you need to remember is that Bitcoin Core came before blockstream was founded. Developing Bitcoin Core doesn't pay the bills, it doesn't put food on the table. The people who founded blockstream are those who worked on Bitcoin Core and needed income so that they could still be alive. The people who founded blockstream are some of Bitcoin Core's primary code writers, and they don't have a boss since they are the founders. They are the bosses, so there is no one higher up saying that they must do something to Bitcoin Core.

I'm dummin it down. stay tuned

I think part of the problem is that 'they' don't want the debate dumbed down. Explaining what's what is somehow beneath them. The biggest issue is lack of communication.

That's interesting, good insight.  Didn't know that.  Last I heard it would slow down their ability to process blocks with an increase in blocksize, although that is what I read in a semi main stream media outlet so there is that to contend with.  Knowing the actual Technicals helps, which you seem to know so at least that is helpful information.  I do appreciate your input though and it is helpful at least.

All I will say at this point is people need to research more.  The inherent problem of course is finding a reputable source or sources to take your information from.  Although honestly that is a larger problem than just Bitcoin issues.  Too many media outlets and every one of them seem to think they know exactly what they are talking about.

wrong
the miners are not that worried. because all they need to do is SLOWLY take in transactions as they get relayed (not in one lump) through the great firewall (not a problem)
then inside their building the computer at the helm of the pool does the computing (handles it within the computer so doesnt care about the internet at this point)
then it sends out a short bit of code to the asics which, the asics then hash away at until they find a solution and the solution is a short bit of code too.

then the miner just needs to send out one block to the network.

secondly. although you may not realise this.. the main pool computer is not in china. just the ASICS.. so the amount of actual pools where the validation of txs are done before ASIC hashing.. is not really behind the great firewall.

so relax about that doomsday prophecy

Everyone has their own reason why they want it one way or another.  In China's case they want the blockchain to stay at 1MB due to being behind the Great Firewall as it is called.  The issue with them would be the fact that it would take longer for them to hit a block than it currently does because it would add more data to get through their Firewall.  Although that isn't such a bad thing, it would cause Mining Power to shift a bit and would probably in all honesty make the Mining Powers more diverse than it currently is.

Raising the blockchain limit to 2MB also causes another issue with Hard Drive space.  Some people tend to think that it would create an issue for people running Nodes currently because the blockchain size would increase too much causing people to have to shut down nodes.

Either way you go about it, this whole blocksize debate is somewhat negligible.  Typical growing pains of a technology getting a lot of recognition and adoption.  Same thing happened with the internet when it first started.  There would be times people wanted to get online but couldn't due to network congestion at peak times.  More or less the same thing that is happening to the blockchain.  People want to make a transaction and can't because there are a bunch of other transactions being processed so there is a delay.  Of course now we have the internet as we know it without having to use phone lines etc.  My basic point here is that it will eventually sort itself out in the end just as the internet did, just takes some time to get things sorted out.

the code is open source, but the most popular HUBS on the network will be controlled by corporations..

there should be no captain!!!

It doesn't They stand to earn money with Bitcoin suceeding as well. Additionally a lot of people that spread propaganda tend to say that LN is owned by Blockstream which is completely false. There are several independent groups developing it.

A lot of people have quickly forgotten about this. The very save people who were supporting a benevolent dictatorship in Bitcoin, are not supporting Classic with some additions. Let's not forget that Toomin said that changing the supply can/should be considered.

This fee maket has huge drawback, these bidding wars require replace by fee feature where people resubmit their transactions with higher fees. The huge drawback comes from more data to be transferred from re-relaying the transactions over node network and the bandwidth requirement increases. "This additional bandwidth requirement can also make it difficult for more full nodes and miners to come online." - the same sentence and reason you used for bigger blocks drawback here as well, so if you have choose between continued adoption (with bigger blocks) or crippled Bitcoin (small blocks and merchants/vendors removing Bitcoin payment option because there is no space for people transactions) with both having bandwidth requirement increase drawback thus reduced decentralization, which one would you pick?

Lightning Network is open source. How does this fit with your conspiracy theory of "they want to cripple the blockchain"?

Replaced by whom? The Gavin crowd, who until recently supported a benevolent dictatorship for Bitcoin under the XT banner? Then I would rather sail on a slower boat with a better captain. The real

debate is not the Block size, it is who will be the captain of the ship. The victor will determine the rest of the voyage for the rest of us, and I do not want a benevolent dictator behind the wheel. The

Core roadmap is clearly defined and shows the full route, where the Classic submission only shows the route to the next harbour. 

It is simple really.  Blockstream built a thing we don't need.  They want to charge you money to use this thing.  But you don't need it.  So, they want to cripple the blockchain - so that you do need it.  They got the core developers on salary.  Those guys won't listen to reason, they listen to their boss, who pays their salary.  

Get it?

The bottom line is clear: the core developers have a clear conflict of interest and they severely damaged the decision process.  As such, they should no longer be allowed to be custodians of the code.  They should be replaced.