Topic: Gavin Andresen Proposes Bitcoin Hard Fork to Address Network Scalability - page 5. (Read 18399 times)

Yo Dawg, I hear you like side chains so I put side chains inside your side chains. Now you have 7⁷TPS.

Accusing Satoshi of pulling a Bill Gates when he put in the 7 TPS cap is funny and all that, but it simply doesn't map to the concept of exponential growth very well.  It does, however, illustrate what I was talking about when I said that most human minds are simply not wired to register it adequately.

For the people who think exponential growth is NOT a good model for this, I'd like to point out something.... 

looks good to me, but it is more of just a cool little ratio.  I think Gavin made his by looking at Bitcoins past needs, drawing a line to what the future is, and then trying to meet those needs.  Probably more realistic that way even if it is more complicated. 

That said, either way is better than what is happening now. 

Are you suggesting that it makes more sense to fork bitcoin so that microtransactions can be processed and ultimately repatriated in a separate decentralized sidechain?  That seems like a much more complicated fork with little to no additional potential benefit.  Without such a fork, it seems to me that switching to a sidechain for everday transactions would only benefit arbitragers and scammers.

IOW, in order for your bitcoin to move based on activity on a sidechain, you would have to trade into whatever the sidechain has, which means at least temporarily giving control of your assets to a third party.  Speculators can make money trading the sidechain currency, but from a security standpoint, the activity required to switch to such a sidechain is a short term risk, see Mt.Gox et al.  If the sidechain you propose is something like Ripple, then it's not even decentralized, and users would have to give up control of their assets for as long as they wanted to take advantage of the "sidechain" extending the same scam risk.  Beyond that, why are we calling it a sidechain?  Even if it is decentralized and somehow references bitcoin blocks, it still sounds like an altcoin to me.  I believe the purpose of sidechains is to take advantage of the bitcoin blockchain for non-currency functions.

That having been said, I agree that growing exponentially indefinitely is a bad idea, but given the last of the halvings would be dealing in small fractions of bitcoins, it should be reasonable to do something like this:of course, I've not done any math to determine whether doubling is necessary for each step (vs increasing by 25% after 16MB or only increasing by a set MB amount after a certain MB target), my point is simply that the blocksize increases could stop with last halving, and that this isn't a bad point either:

Who said already that 32ko would be enough  ?

"If Bitcoin is to remain decentralized, it must have larger blocks."
Of course we need bigger blocks. Some people still think scrypt is a good idea in that bigger memory requirements improve decentralization. Bigger is better. Why can't this "scrypt mentality" work for block size too? If the blocks are bigger, then Bitcoin will be more decentralized. It's the same argument for Litecoin, except on a different scale. With Litecoin the notion was that the CPU would dominate mining because it would be unaffordable to develop ASICs to handle the memory requirements. With block size doubling it is believed it will be unaffordable for people to transmit and store the blockchain. This example uses contradictory notions about size to make the point that size doesn't matter. This is not a cryptology (or philosophy) problem, it is an engineering problem. "Scotty, get me Warp Nine!"

Ya, ya.  Get that exponential growth in there lickidy-spilt quick ASAP before sidechains make it obvious that it is pointless and counterproductive.  Nothing like an exponential function to ensure that something will eventually explode, and it would be a disaster for a lot of people if there was a chance that Bitcoin could be relied on on a sustained basis.  When a collapse can be predicted, even if it is decades out, it does wonders for future-value computations (if one wishes them to be damaged, that is.)

Sarcasm aside, it actually is a little bit questionable whether 7 TPS would be enough to comfortable support a thriving sidechains ecosystem.  Such a thing would be almost infinitely adaptable, however, so probably it would be OK.  It always seemed to me (years ago when I proposed 'bc0' for the primary blockchain and long before 'sidechains' were proposed as a word) that transfers between child chains and the main chain would be bundled.

I hope we can just make our decision and get it done soon instead of debating about it for another year. Based on reading these threads, the majority consensus is that block size needs to increase. Satoshi said it himself 1mb can be changed in the future.

If by 'advancing any further' you mean not becoming manageable enough to meet the spirit of the demands necessary to achieve what the U.S. government would like to have in a Bitcoin License, I would agree.  Certain of them are much more than 'nominally' involved though.

In terms of 'financial incentive', I've little doubt that prostrating Bitcoin to TPTB while the marketing propaganda has most people convinced it is otherwise and thus has a coolness factor would produce a sweet spot where possessors could make a killing if they got the timing right.  I'll certainly be shooting for that if I see the opportunity present itself.

Win/win for the hodler who still has some hope for the solution.  It either under-performs (in the mid term at least) and remains a worthwhile endeavor, or it goes to shit and makes the shrewd player some big buck.

who cares... what I like about this one, is that even I, can understand it... However, and to your disappointment I am firmly against the proposition of Gavin (even if I didn't read it) for the reason that it's too complex, and only a feat for the devs, not for the coin... if you see what I mean...

edit: if you want (for your dream of world domination) you could even square it, meaning at 6.25 BTC = 16 MB and so on...

A hard fork is a change that older versions will reject.  Older versions will certainly reject a 1.1MB block no matter what you call a change to allow it.  It's nice that you are starting to understand what is actually being proposed,  but this would not be the first or last fork of bitcoin regardless of your definition and/or acceptance of the same.

I wouldn't call that a fork, but an improvement. And it's quite elegant. I support it too...

Thanks for the references. I can see there that there is some sentiment there for M=1000, MM=1000000. However, none of these seems to rise to the level of an accredited international standards organization - such as the American National Standards Institute, British Institute of Standards, [International Standards Organization], or similar - each of which have standardized the use of SI prefixes. Further, your bankersonline reference seems to indicate that the traditional financial prefixes may be an anachronism on its way to disuse.

However, tradition is a strong force. I'll leave the bankers to their traditional units. I just worry the potential of magnitude errors as these two systems clash. Indeed the bankersonline link you provided already alludes to such a problem.

To those not interested, sorry for the sidebar. I'll drop this line of inquiry.

This is not far from what gavin had proposed.His proposal would involve a higher rate of block size increases due to more frequent compounding. Your suggestion would make it very easy to remember when the max block size will increase and would likely require much smaller changes to the code then what gavin is proposing

one sure thing, I need practice in trolling, you guys rocks, what 10 posts on k or m, when the issue is forking or not forking

Interesting.  I had no idea, and I've BEEN working with financial data. 

Pretty much everything I've seen has used SI prefixes here in the US.  On the (rare) occasions where I've seen 'M' used to mean thousands I've briefly wondered whether it was a typo or a deliberate misstatement, but since the truth was clear enough for other reasons in those particular documents, never pursued it.

Anyway, I'm sticking with SI prefixes in everything I write.  It's the nearly-universal standard now and the sooner everybody stops using everything else the less confusion we'll have.  But now that I know some people have learned an obsolete system that will cause them to misinterpret SI prefixes, I'll at least make a footnote that says so.

It seems like there are a lot of people around with financial incentives to keep Bitcoin from advancing any further, even people who are nominally part of the "Bitcoin community".

As a serious answer, I was giving a history lesson on what the correct notation is before it was bastardized by other organizations not too long ago. There isn't any room to argue on this as it is historically accurate.


http://www.accountingcoach.com/blog/what-does-m-and-mm-stand-for

http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/181917/mixing-use-of-k-for-thousands-and-mm-for-millions

http://www.bankersonline.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=94526

Gavin has made a *lot* of insinuations lately that he is somewhat alone in his views on what to do with the Protocol.

He constantly mentions that the "other core devs" don't agree with him on much.

Who are these brilliant scholars that are turning the Bitcoin Protocol into the US Congress?   Completely unable to make decisions, be agreeable, and move forward?

Gavin can propose anything he likes, and we can all love it, but if this mysterious *CENTRALIZED* group of core devs doesn't like it, they wont have a "CONCENSUS".

Concensus is supposed to be from the entire community.  Not a handful of programmers who have zero education or training in finance.

-B-