Topic: From all of us newbies: Can you PLEASE dumb down this whole block size debate? - page 3. (Read 1616 times)

I'm hoping to just make a post with no bias, only information. I see lots of passion from people but I'm not sure what the fuss is about as of yet.


Haha good. Here we go

The current network consensus is to have a maximum block size of 1 Mb. This means that 1 Mb of transactions can be stored in one block. Transactions have a data size, usually between 200 and 500 bytes and this is what takes up space in a block.

The issue that some people have with 1 Mb blocks is that at some point, there will be so many transactions that all blocks will be reaching the maximum number of transactions that they can contain. The idea is that increasing the maximum block size will allow for more transactions to be included in a block. This would then allow more transactions to confirm in one block and, in theory, keep fees low as long as there is space in blocks for transactions.

Additionally, when blocks become full, there is an idea that this will create a fee market. This essentially means that fees will increase as people have "bidding wars" with their fees to have their transactions included in a block since there would not be enough block space for all of the unconfirmed transactions. This would drive up fees and thus earn more income for miners but could potentially drive away users as the fees become too high.

Larger blocks have their drawbacks, as do smaller blocks. Larger blocks require more data to be transferred, and as blocks grow larger, the bandwidth requirement increases. There is also a verification slowdown that is caused by large blocks. The time required to verify a block grows exponentially in relation to the block size. These factors can lead to slowdowns in the propagation of blocks and therefore increase the orphan rate of miners. This additional bandwidth requirement can also make it difficult for more full nodes and miners to come online.

Smaller blocks, on the other hand, can restrict the network capacity. They can prevent many transactions from being confirmed if there are too many transactions in the pool of unconfirmed transactions. This can cause delays for transaction confirmation.

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Increasing the maximum block size is just one of the proposed solutions for increasing the number of transactions that the Bitcoin network can process. Alternatives include the lightning network, sidechains, and segregated witness among a variety of other proposals.

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Bitcoin Core, Bitcoin Classic, and Bitcoin XT are various clients that implement slightly different consensus rules when it comes to the block size limit, which is also why some people consider Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin XT as altcoins since Bitcoin Core is considered the reference implementation.

Bitcoin Core proposes to use segregated witness. Segregated witness is a solution to transaction malleability which has a side effect of decreasing the size of a transaction and thus increasing the number of transactions which can be put into a block. This also solves the exponential verification time problem and makes it linear.

Bitcoin Classic is a fork of Bitcoin Core which proposes to use a hard fork to increase the maximum block size to 2 Mb.

Bitcoin XT is a fork of Bitcoin Core which proposes to use a hard fork to increase the maximum block size to 8 Mb and to constantly increase at a rate which doubles the maximum every two years until a final size of 8 Gb is reached.

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Please note that this post is supposed to be neutral and informational. If there is anything wrong about the information, please let me know and I will fix it.

Edit: typos

Think it would be easier understand if the fud was turned down a notch. Kind of the issue with anything that may alter bitcoin. Vested interests usually bark the loudest. Almost worth hunting it down on your own.

Lately I've been seeing on Bitcointalk that blocks should be changed from 1mb to 2mb (or more) and people should be changing from some kind of node to another. It seems that some people have very strong opinions about one or another.

I'm not just arbitrarily choosing to post this now. I've been reading through websites and the forum work weeks now but it's mostly just people that know a hell of a lot more about bitcoin than I do! Someone needs to dumb it down for us newbies!

What's the difference between bitcoin core, bitcoin classic, bitcoin XT and what does it mean to have a block that is 1mb? What takes up the data, and why do they need to hold more data? Why would 1gb not be a logical choice? From what I understand, it would slow down transaction confirmations. Why/how? Explain the math behind it if you can.

I'm hoping to consolidate all of the information I learn into the first post so other newbies like me can have a one-stop-shop for finding out what this whole block size debate is about. Any insight is appreciated. Thank you!