Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 111. (Read 2032248 times)

here's a subtle theory i have as a result of that 1MB tx block.

i think the only reason an attacker would even try that type of bloat block to try and choke the network is if and when all other miners are creating similar sized blocks; like the situation we have right now with full blocks.  that way, it runs less chances of being orphaned (which it wasn't) b/c it doesn't stand out in the crowd of other 1MB blocks.  but if we went to no cap tomorrow, trying to attack with a huge bloat block while everyone else is still at 1MB blocks would stand out. all other miners could then react defensively, if they so chose, by mining 0 tx blocks during the 25 sec validation period.  or, more likely, it would just get orphaned. thus, any attack would fail with no limit.  afaic, there weren't any defensive 0 tx blocks mined after that 1MB single tx block b/c none of the other miners were particularly threatened by it as they were also mining 1MB blocks.   then, it would be quite likely their hashers would abandon them for egregious activity perpetrated against the network good and destroy them like they did with ghash.

IOW, what i'm saying is that there will be a tremendous incentive for miners to stay together near the average block size across the network even w/o any cap at all.  if they all decide to create larger blocks, fine, they advance to bigger blocks together as most miners are honest.  that would be a good thing.  the majority of them don't want disruption.  spammers would even get wiped out in this situation if the miners in aggregate decide they can handle the spam.  which they would by assessing full node functioning across the network and examining their own internal capacities along with user fees and access.  spam would even help strengthen the mining industry unbeknownst to the spammer by feeding revenue to them while desperately trying to jack mempools and disrupt users.  and IF by chance spammers do start to jack the mempool, then miners can simply dial up their minfees to choke them off.

no limit is the easiest most straight forward way to short circuit the spammers ability to disrupt the user and jack mempools.

Please tell us how you see Bitcoin growing, and how you propose to prevent DOS by limiting block size, this seems like an oxymoron to me.


I'd also like to highlight a point that reflects ignorance on how the economics of Bitcoin incentives work, it is repeated by the "lets limit block size for now proponents", and that is that transaction costs are unrealistically low, or the cost of a transaction is not reflected in the TX fee or the market for TX fees is insufficient to sustain Bitcoin and this is a problem.

Bitcoin has been undergoing massive inflation, that inflation is subsidizing mining. Miners are being subsidized to grow the network infrastructure with a 25 BTC block subsidy every 10 minutes. This subsidy is an empirical part of Bitcoin and it is gradually removed in a disruptive but constructive manner essential to Bitcoin's growth, it has another benefit in that it reduces the cost of TX fees, and grows to protect the value stored in the network while it is small and vulnerable.

It is dishonest to claim transaction costs are low without pointing out that they are being subsidized and the subsidy is designed to reduce over time slowly enough to allow market driven prices to evolve.

It is also premature to centrally enforce protocol changes to manage or manipulate market driven transaction costs while those invested in Bitcoin are subsidizing the inflation and the actual cost transaction cost.

i mean the alarms are ringing, the bells are clanging, the red flags are flapping, the hands are waving; for 4 yrs now.

these mining charts are just fugly:

i am so sorry.  gold off the cliff:



but at least one thing is going up and breaking out.  note the red arrow entry:

What did i say back in 2011?  Central banks are terrible at investing.

Gold collapsing. Bitcoin up.

So it took 6 years, not one month, but...
That passes up Russia for the 5th largest hoard.
Actual billboard in Bangkok near airport:



Grats, China.

China Increases Gold Holdings By 57% "In One Month" In First Official Update Since 2009

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-07-17/china-increases-gold-holdings-57-one-month-first-official-update-2009

He also made a comment up thread that blocks aren't getting filled regularly. Don't know where he has been getting  that.

Translation:

I feel much less urgency going forward... unless something happens that happened regularly in the bitcoin environment.

Great perspectives.

AHA! Now I see your perspective, you don't actually understand that the 1MB is effectively a limit on the number of people who can use Bitcoin.

Consider these global information technology services:

Google internet search
Facebook social media
Twitter public messaging

At some stage all of these were small.
Google would not have supported more than 2000 users doing searches in a 10 minute period.
Facebook would not have supported more than 2000 users updating their profiles in a 10 minute period.
Twitter would not have supported more than 2000 users sending out tweets in a 10 minute period.

Before these user counts were reached in each case these services were OK for the small number of people who used them. However, and I think the question is very obvious "What would have happened in each case if they had not scaled their services to cope with 10x, 100x or even 1000x as many users?"

I am not going to bother answering that, but I will add that every situation is different, so the timescales involved in necessary scaling are different. The absolute in each case is that necessary scaling cannot be ignored - and wasn't.

Lately I am using tradeblock as their site is fast and informative. https://tradeblock.com/blockchain
For some reason the leadership at blockchain.info has become rudderless and their site is often not keeping up and development there seems static. My impression anyway.


Yes. The block which reduced the utxo set. That was the good part (though Greg posted on irc that it could have been constructed much more efficiently). Anyway, the bad part is that validation took 25 secs (because of all the inputs). Bitcoin full nodes have no way at present to look at a block and decide to orphan it in advance because it is a "bloat block" that will take too long to validate, they will all chug through the block first.You are probably right bloat blocks would not propagate fast enough and get orphaned.

oh my.  i hadn't looked at this one for a long time.  the ETF plumbing new yearly lows.  so sorry iCEBlow, tvbcof, & traderCJ:

when i say "you", i'm referring in general to the Cripplecoiners like you who have been pointing at Mycelium and saying "see, i told you so".

and yes, my pt still stands.

why do you keep insisting on lies and misconstructions?

today it was my "prime example" and three day's ago it was ICEBreaker's... this is the bullshit I am talking about when I say I cannot trust anything that you write or even take you seriously.

don't get me wrong you are often making valid points and bring interesting observations but your manic habit to twist and turn around everything your way, right or not, true or false makes you lose face every time. i don't even believe you have any kind of malicious agenda but you need to stop trying to deceive people to try and make a point.

it's a reflection of how badly we want out from under a core dev regime who has abandoned Satoshi's original vision for their own involving proprietary products which they stand to profit from.  yes, i'd much rather hard fork back to a decentralized core dev, or no core dev at all, to a sound money platform that exists solely for the public good and allows widespread dissemination of Bitcoin to all corners of the earth for maximum decentralization and security.

i've been saying just that as a perfect reason for why bigger blocks can be handled as evidenced by that continuous stream of full blocks occurring right on time. 

yeah, Mycelium was your prime example of a wallet trying to establish a fee mkt in response to user frustration from unconf tx's.  now that they blow up, you throw them under the bus forgetting they were a justification for your argument in the first place.

solex, where do you go to get your mempool size info?  there seems to be discrepancies btwn sources.

you're referring to the 1MB single tx block that f2pool constructed as a non std tx to help reduce the UTXO set?

why was that a bad thing?  it was a one off to help consolidate all that dust and required that a miner self construct this type of block and transmit it.  that wouldn't be a repeatable, viable attack to inflict on the network by a rogue miner looking to gain an advantage over other miners for the following reasons:

1.  constructing an 8MB bloat block while the rest of the network is making 1MB blocks runs the severe risk of orphaning
2.  if the pool consists mainly of hashers, they would react by redirecting their hash away from the attacking pool to preserve the network
3.  if it was coming out of China from a large miner, that miner runs even more risk of orphaning due to the GFC.
4.  other miners receiving such a bloat block could react defensively by switching to mining a 0 tx block during the validation process.
5.  game theory suggests a miner wouldn't even begin to do this attack for preservation of BTC value and his hardware investment.

why would you think a bloat block that large, so soon (while everyone else is mining 1MB), wouldn't get orphaned?  esp after seeing how the relay network appears to be having issues:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.11898189

My point is : is putting on the network the pressure of a hard fork to kick the can down the road just a bit is really worth it?

It seems a lot in this thread forget the danger of hard forks.

Increased demand has in fact been well answered by the network over the last few days. Strangely this is a rather encouraging fact that not too many people seem to mention or acknowledge.

To be clear I am not referring to shitty software and other amateurs node implementations. These got properly crushed because THEIR models and code were not able to handle the increased demand.

I feel much less urgency going forward... unless we hit a 5K$ bubble in the next coming months  

Then please explain how Bitcoin scales to handle increased demand by users?
Don't forget that Pieter Wuille has said that sidechains are not a scaling solution. However, feel free to rebut that in your response.