Topic: Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP. - page 139. (Read 2032266 times)

yes, they're actually quoting pieter and I from #bitcoin-dev (telling the miner in advance that the transaction he was creating would take a _LONG_ time to verify). They created a huge non-standard 1MB transaction and part of the verification time is quadratic (in the number of inputs).

It's actually possible to create a block that would take many minutes to verify, though not with standard transactions-- only something contrived.

On the topic of block verification times, people on Reddit are saying this block (filled with one huge TX) took up to 25 seconds to verify:

Let's call it "empty block mining" instead.  He's right that it's not strictly SPV mining if you've indeed verified the previous block, but I think people are interested in the behaviour of Miners in the time between when a miner could begin hashing on an empty block, and when the hashers are actually working on a new non-empty block.  

So then there's:

   (1) empty block mining (previous block verified but new transaction set not built).
   (2) empty block mining (previous block not verified).  

EDIT: it would be nice to make a diagram to visualize all the steps that take place in the mining process.

You should maybe serve your memory some fish, so that it could serve you better.

You've conflated several related concepts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_memory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expanded_memory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_mode

:really off topic but I so rarely can add to the discussions.

Actually in order to address memory out of the address range of the cpu bus a "page swap" method was used which had been used on mainframes for many years, this was called expanded memory and was in 16k chunks which was very slow. with the 286 line extended memory was introduced and the cpu had to go into extended mode in order to access it. That of course if my memory serves me.

If we talk about fluctuation in the prices of gold , that has always happened in the economy . What hasn't happened is the people who are comfortable with Gold investing their bucks , into equity or Bitcoin , for that matter. Gold is the safe secure return ,and supports the traditional mindset. It needs to be changed.

Cypherdoc, what are the latest updates regarding the block size debate ?

Gavin was insufficently precise. There is a reddit thread is full of people calling gavin a fool ( ) for saying "memory" when he should have been saying fast storage.  https://twitter.com/petertoddbtc/status/596710423094788097

Why do you think it's prudent to argue this with me?

Okay, lets take a bet. Since you're so confident; surely you'll grant me 1000:1 odds?-- I'll give my side away to a public cause.

The question is "Is the entire UTXO set kept in ram in Bitcoin Core ever released?"

I will bet 3 BTC and, with the 1000:1 odds, if you lose you'll pay 3000 BTC (which I will to the hashfast liquidators, to return it to the forum members that it was taken from; which will also save you some money in ongoing lawsuit against you).

Sounds good?  How will we adjudicate?  If not, what is your counter-offer for the terms?


Here I suspect you're suffering from an excess of empiracisism without adequately devling into the mechenism.   You can directly measure that time time from input to minable on an actual node under your control and will observe the time is hundreds of times faster than your estimate. Why?   Miners don't magically know when their pool has new work, they'll get work in the first milliseconds and then grind on it some time before submitting returning work.  Even if the pool long polls them, it takes time to replace work. So what I suspect you're actually measuring there is the latency of the mining process...  which is consistent with what we've expirenced with P2Pool (5-20 second latencies from ASIC miners are common).

I noted you posted a result of a classification, did you run the same data through a simple logistic regression with prior size as the treatment? The intercept in the model would be interesting.

But indeed, these conversations have been conflating several seperate issues (latency vs throughput, etc.). Tricky to avoid that since they're all relevant.

I have, they'd previously cranked it down, and were producing small blocks and were flamed in public.  They've since turned it back up.

As PeterR points out, they only need to wait for verification to actually verify (which they're not doing today), though they may have to wait longer to include transactions---- though I point out thats not fundimental e.g. no matter how big the backlog is you can produce a template sufficient to completely fill a block while doing no more work than handling a mempool of twice the maximum block size.  (by using a tiered mempool, though no one has bothered to implement this yet-- no one has even been complaining about how long createnewblock takes, due to the ability to produce empty blocks without skipping transactions).

Exactly this.  Intentionally or not, 1MB turned out to be a serendipitous choice.  Now it has ossified and is ready for the next layers to be built on its solid foundation.

I favor Adam Backamoto's extension block proposal.

The 1MB blocksize limit reminds me of the old 640k limit in DOS.

Rather than destroy Window's interoperability with the rich/valuable legacy of 8088 based software, that limit was extended via various hacks sublime software engineering.

Before resorting to the nuclear option of a contentious hard fork, we should attempt to achieve the desired result with soft forks.

there's a real battle going on at Bitstamp.  aren't they close to Greece?  i wouldn't be too pessimistic.

It may come down to how you defined SPV mining I guess he is saying they try to mine on top of valid blocks and not empty ones.but if you get lucky you may have empty blocks in a row?

Would that be SPV mining?

Here is his answer to: I've notice eligius mining multiple empty blocks in a row, is that because they are SPV mining too, and if you know and it's open, what is the SPV mining policy?




It may come down to how you defined SPV mining I guess he is saying they try to mine on top of valid blocks and not empty ones.but if you get lucky you may have empty blocks in a row?

Would that be SPV mining?

Why would a pool ever mine an empty block if they weren't SPV mining (at least for a short amount of time while they validate the previous block and before they re-assign the hashers a new non-empty block to work on)?

Personally, I find it difficult to communicate with Luke-Jr because he will often argue based on a technicality due to his own personal definitions of some word, rather than talking about the thing everyone is actually trying to talk about.  It looks like he does this in other sub-reddits too, for example, he claims that the Pope is not the Pope.

Eligius does not do any SPV mining. Empty blocks are generated only after the previous block has been fully verified, but before the next block's transaction set has been calculated.