Topic: How does block size harm decentralization? - page 3. (Read 749 times)

the main irritation about the initial block sync is not actually "cost".. but the time.
and when actually poking deeper at the irritations the main rebuttal i hear again is not cost. but the fact that people cannot see their 'final balance' until the syncing is complete. which means they cant really easily see if imported their wallet correctly or even make a transaction until the syncing is complete.

this can easily be remedied.
imagine getting to see a 'unverified' balance within seconds of opening your node for the first time. via SPV methods(grab a rlatively fresh UTXO set from peers). and thus using a fresh UTXO set, then able to know you have imported the correct wallet by seeing aatleast a unverified balance and also then able to make transactions.. then the whole blockchain syncing becomes a background issue rather than a stare at the screen waiting issue

its like online gaming/phone apps these days. get to play with a small single level demo of a game whilst the whole game downloads in the background. people can the be instantly entertained and not be as concerned about waiting for the game to download, as that main download is treated as a background issue.

lastly the fee being more than a few hours of minimum wage labour for MILLIONS of people in third world countries deters more people than the cost of a hard drive or internet access

This kind problems are predictable and can be solved by technological developments. e can give many examples for this situation: just before a few years ago, we were wating so much to download even for "one minute video" but now we watch movies online.  Don't worry about it because there are many people who works on blockchain technology in order to make it faster and safer.

I haven't really seen any tx's with a large amount of sigops, here's a tx with lots of outputs yet relatively few sigops. Could you reference some transactions where the # of sigops is very large? I can't really imagine what types of transactions could come remotely close to MAX_SIGOPS (except for attempts to flood the network/overwork transaction verifying nodes).

propagation is currently SECONDS.. so SCALING block sizes to atleast get passed the implied 600k transactions a day limit is not going to cause issues.

secondly nodes dont even need to receive the full block data in one lump. they can get blockheaders. and thn attach the transactions in their own nodes mempools to fill in the blanks and only request the few missing transactions that didnt get relayed to them. so again if nodes are only receiving block headers. the propagation is still low as the transactions element of a full block is not being sent with it.
a blockheader(~80bytes) of 2000tx includes TXIDs of 6bytes(compact/shortIDs) per tx =12kb
so instead of sending 1mb of a full block data blockheaders can be a little over 12kb
meaning a block of 4000tx =24kb (compared to 2mb)
meaning a block of 8000tx =48kb (compared to 4mb)

thirdly. "miners" dont care about blocksizes. get a screw driver and look inside an ASIC.. you will find no hard drive. asics do not store blockdata. they are just given a small piece of data and their job is to send back a hash. that is all

fourthly
bitcoin core has already dropped compatibility for xp/vista and so should drop minimum hardware specs of such outdated levels. we are not in the 1990's and should not be trying to keep bitcoin relevant to PC specs of a decade+ ago
average joe upgrades their PC's every 2-6 years.
imagine online gaming industry.. how innovative would they be if they had to keep specs down below millenium/decade old tech/spec..
the whole need to keep bitcoin functional for a raspi spec is just empty excuses.. because even on a raspi bitcoin is capable of more than 600k transactions a day processing

fifthly
scaling is not just about pure blocksize increases.. it is most definetly not about jumping to "gigabytes by midnight"
scaling can be done by
actually avoiding adding features that cause a byte per tx bloat.(sgwit actually uses more bytes per tx, but then hides the real bytes with its pseudo math of vbytes and witness scale factor and other wishy washy code)
core also STUPIDLY allow a block to be treated as filled by having just 5 transactions, with lots of sigops.. so reduce the sigops means more transactions, and less concern over any legacy linear sigop processing delays(yep core instigated the linear sigop delay drama by even allowing a transaction to have thousands of sigops.. all so they can sway people into accepting the LN gateway tx format called segwit)

in a peer-to-peer cash  system. a peer does not need transactions of 16k sigops. in most cases they only need 2-5
thus going to that kind of transaction format of low sigops would actually speed up transaction validation where by more than 2000tx under low sigop counts can validate FASTER than 200tx under the current ratio

sixthly
fee's do not need to be pressured by a fe war over a limited space. it can be done be RE-introducing a fee priority mechanism.
a mechanism such as if a users funds are only 1confirm aged. they have to pay 144 times more than someone that only spends once a day(144confirm age). that way it actually means the whole community do not get pressured to pay the same high amount due to just a couple of spammers filling blocks.. but instead the spammers pay the price of spamming and its the spammers who want to spend every 10 minutes that would then see the incentive of using commercialised service networks like LN. while more modest ethical users get to remain happily using the bitcoin network still paying a more acceptable fee amount where because they dont spend often they wouldnt have benefitted from LN anyways.
simply trying to push EVERYONE, including the modest spenders into LN with the whole fe war pressure helps no one

pools dont need fee's for decades
so drop that mindset of them needing fees now

causing a transaction backlog and fee pressure NOW kills off the desire and utility of bitcoin.
people dont and wont want a system which costs them more than other networks and still get delays (yes im using LN's promotion).
the very point that people love and want LN is the very point that proves that people are already angry and disliking bitcoin.
so why is bitcoin hated and detested. because fee's are too high and mempool backlogs cause bitcoin to be too slow.

if fee's were low and no backlog, people would love bitcoin and not care for LN... LN would then be seen as just the commercial service for business hubs to make money from by offering a banking system(counterparty authorised tranasactions)

Decentralization is an ambiguous word. I'm afraid this problem is more "political" than technical. It's about what kind of device (money) that you are willing to invest or include in the bitcoin network. The bigger the block, the more infrastructure you need to be able to process the block.

Source: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6306

Above is Satoshi's opinion. Core team might have a different opinion about this matter, but I'm not interested in politics. "Big blocker" and "small blocker" could be correct at the same time. Let's see what will happen in the next few years.

What's the largest contributing factor to increased propagation delay? Is it transaction verification, a bandwidth issue, maybe something else? Verifying more transactions would slow down block creation, but I don't think it would by too much. As for bandwidth, miners don't send out blocks to every node, they send them to their peers who then propagate them further, so I'm not quite sure I understand how bandwidth is a problem since there are plenty of nodes transmitting and receiving data.

Agreed, but why would users want to pay massive fees to cover the miners expenses, especially if they can use other networks for far cheaper (I know I know "they get a secure decentralized network" but still, does this limit the types of transactions that will be capable on the bitcoin network? Is this where LN comes in?). Is it fair to assume that up til now (and maybe for a few more years) miners have been taking the hit in terms of fees with the belief that their accumulated BTC will be worth more in the future than their current mining operation has cost them (i.e a net positive in the future)?

I installed core and was downloading the blockchain a few months ago on my laptop to try to use JSON-RPC with a python/bitcoin library, I had no idea it was over 200GB and eventually while bitcoind was getting blocks and verifying transactions I got a message saying my laptop was out of space 

On top of that I didn't have an internet connection at my place so I was downloading it at Starbucks and stuff so it took a couple weeks to get that far, yet it only took a few seconds to delete nearly the whole blockchain  I felt so stupid when I realized I didn't check how much storage my SSD had...

Ironically here i am, weeks into syncing the blockchain and run a full node, but I'm barely halfway there (84g). I like bitcoin core solution, and the market likes bitcoin core as well regardless of what fork supporters say.

This is not "a war" though. It is about CHOICE. If you have a "better" idea, you are free to fork and see if others follow you. So far what others have proposed is clearly not good enough to take over the crown. Bitcoin as it is handled by the core team remains The King.

LN provides neat things like (true) decentralized exchange, you could theoretically directly exchange litecoin for bitcoin and back without using any web site (wallet to wallet). LN is optional, you may use it or not. Either way, providing this option is already offloading the on chain network enough for it to scale. Each shop could run its own LN node, and why not, a full Bitcoin node along it (and while you are at it an Electrum server pointed to your node).

Perhaps someone will sell some raspi pre-installed with everything so its plug and play and shops can have their solution ready, or same as there is a linux distro for "miners", a linux distro foe "nodes" (or the same distro could do both).

Anyway, enlarging blocks is dumb, I wish newbies stopped requesting that as a "solution" for a "problem" that is no more... Spend that energy pushing for faster wallet LN adoption...

Your opinion makes sense, even today mining still uses simple hardware. So that mining difficulties can still be overcome by cheap and many shops. I think why "segwit" in August 2017 changes the size of transactions from 1MB to weight units and separates between shipping transactions with signatures. If in the future the block size becomes larger, the possibility of mining hardware also does not use simple tools, consequently the full chain will only be owned by large companies.

I think you hit on the answer earlier in your post: bigger blocks = a bigger blockchain = less people running full nodes = more centralization.

Somewhat humorously, BCH blocks never come close to getting filled and are on average much smaller than BTC blocks. BSV block size limit is even bigger and has even fewer transactions.

I think both the on- and off-chain scaling solutions are a much better approach than increasing the block size limit, for the very reason that its a bad idea to let the blockchain become exponentially larger. Right now its growing at a linear rate and it should be kept that way.

Of course there are those who absolutely insist on "staying true to Satoshi's white paper," which itself is not perfect and merely an outline for the idea of what went on to become bitcoin. I see increasing block size as merely the twiddling of an ancient parameter and rather a stagnant approach to a technology still largely under development.

Right now, the cost per confirmed transaction (based on actual mining expenditure) is much higher than the fees users are paying. Miners are subsidizing that cost because their revenues are temporarily being subsidized by inflation. However next year, inflation will drop to 12.5% of the original reward and it quickly drops off after that. When should we expect fees to begin making up the difference? The design can't remain completely dependent on fiat speculation forever. At some point, users need to pay the actual cost of transactions if they expect miners to continue securing the chain. The sooner users get used to higher fees, the smoother the transition to a deflationary Bitcoin will be.

If we keep increasing block size, "more transactions" doesn't imply a requisite increase in fees. That all depends on how limited block space is. If we increase block size beyond demand because technology advancement allows it (Like Bitcoin Cash), fees will drop towards zero. We need full blocks and a constant transaction backlog, otherwise there is no fee pressure.

Now, what evidence do you have that "higher fees will kill Bitcoin?"

3 years after we hit the implied tx count limit and bitcoins network has not improved.. instead "use this other network and stop using bitcoin".... (facepalm) thats a 200 year old business model which we all know how it ended

gold is limited utility, lock it up and use these promissory notes, oh and by the way it will be expensive if you want your gold back so here have some silver and nickel if you dont wanna play with promissory notes

No franky1, I know you are 100% against the LN and I respect that, but you should also be able to see that Block size scaling is not the way to go, if we want Bitcoin to go mainstream. If the LN can only handle most of the micro payments, then we have already made significant progress.

Yes, every method has it's advantages and disadvantages, but stagnating on one method is not very innovative or creative at all. We have talented developers with lots of new ideas that might improve on Satoshi's original implementation. 

LN is NOT a bitcoin network. it is a thunderdome network for multiple coins.
for those that dont get the movie reference.. its a fortknox custodial banking system of not 100% control

which once you enter it. you wont want to leave and obtain BTC on exit. because it will become too impractical/expensive(fees) to close out and withdraw bitcoin from the locks

people will end up just atomic swapping to altcoin ious(12 decimal unconfirmed LN payments) within LN and exit using LTC or other coins that have been modified to have gateways to LN but have more transaction counts and cheaper fee's

oh by the way. those wanting to be full nodes for LN will end up actually harbouring multiple chains to allow channels to atomic swap. so if bitcoin for instance is too much to handle. imagine full node running multiple chains at once..
stick that scenario in your play book and run with it.. itll shock you in a hard way

LN's design is to take utility AWAY from bitcoin


^ blah blah blah social drama distraction.

im guessing your the kind of person that only has one plate, one knife and fork and one shelf in your kitchn because you only plan on minimal reserves.

smart people have extra wardrobe space in their bedroom. a full plate and cuttlery set in the kitchen so that they can cope with change and growth/expansion rather then race around at the last minut when theings happen

EG when you buy a computer do you buy a computer with the minimalist of features or do you try to buy a computer that has more than you need so that yor covered for future changes?

A gradual increase in the Block size was a old method to scale, since then new innovations like second layer applications was introduced to reduce the burden on the Blockchain to prevent a scenario where the Blockchain grows too fast for people to be able to affordably run nodes with big enough storage space.

People like Roger Ver and supporters of Block size scaling will learn the hard way, that it is not a good strategy for the long-term and definitely not if it goes mainstream.

what your not realising is that you cant have a network that is core demandd to stick with under 600k transactions a day as that then just makes the network only useful to under 600k people wanting to use/monitor/care about bitcoin daily.

people end up using other networks that are cheaper and able to process more than 600k transactions a day and bitcoin is left stranded as the coin no one wants to return to because the costs become too high..

LN thunderdome: btc and LTC iou's may enter, only LTC iou's may leave

secondly the REAL incentive to pools is not for the next few decade requiring fee's. the block reward is sufficient enough
(in short dont even bother bringing 'fee's for pools' into a scaling debate unless its a few decades in the future)

thirdly fee COST USERS funds, not incentivise users.
arguing that things need to be done for user benefit, then push that argument aside to then say fe's need to rise to benefit pools. is just playing games and empty excuses as to why scaling should be stalled/stagnant

again forcing utility to remain at 600k a day transactions helps no one, incentivises no one and actually makes peopl want to care less about bitcoin if they cant use it as and when they like.

so if it costs something just to monitor 600k peoples transactions as a user.. and then costs a user $1+ just to use it themselves. then its the fee's that will push people away far sooner.

the real goal would be to
allow more transactions
allow the combined (lower fees) to accumulate to be more as a total.

thus making bitcoins blockchain USEFUL for users. and also cheap to use for users.thus users continue to be full nodes

which after years of progressive growth would then become enough to cover costs for pools eventually(when pools actually need it)

in my opinion higher fees will kill bitcoin so if block size scarcity is enforced in the future*, remember that bitcoin was meant to be a decentralized currency not something people only trade or store value in so they don't care if they pay a high fee to transfer it. it may also nullify what you are saying since people would stop using bitcoin and consequently the price would drop and there wouldn't be any more profit for them miners anymore.
bigger capacity also means more transactions, and that means more transaction fees in total.

* note that i am saying in the future, as of today and in the close future we don't need block size increase or even fees to replace the block reward since it is quite high still and will remain high for many years.

There's still a larger problem here that most people don't discuss. Even if hardware advancement allows us to significantly increase block sizes over time, that doesn't address whether doing so is compatible with Bitcoin's hard cap on supply.

Without inflation, the system needs fee revenue to continue incentivizing miners. The block size limit is the only means we have to enforce scarcity of block space, which guarantees fee revenue. Otherwise, Bitcoin's Byzantine fault tolerance may be threatened as block rewards decline in value. You can't have a network worth many billions or trillions of USD where miners have no incentive to secure the network.

block size does not harm decentralization, how block size is increased can do that. for example if you increase it suddenly to a much bigger number now it will end up centralizing bitcoin but if it is increased slowly with the advancement of hardware and internet speed then it can't do much harm.

the most important thing to remember is that size of the blockchain is only one of the problems. the bigger problems is the hardware limitations. if we have 10 MB blocks for example you will have to verify 10 MB worth of transactions every 10 minutes on average and also be able to receive and send that much every 10 minutes. additionally miners will start facing problems, specially those with slower internet speeds who have to compete with those with high speed connections and that leads to miner centralization.
so the numbers you are reciting above (13.33kb/s, etc) are only when you assume people download 1 block per 10 minute but that doesn't make any sense. not for miners not for others. and it is not just downloading blocks, a node does a lot of other things that takes traffic including relaying transactions in its mempool

The chain can be pruned. Whether full nodes are storing the entire blockchain isn't the major issue. Storage space is a bottleneck and can stop people from running full nodes, but bandwidth and latency are more pressing issues.


Exchanges and basically any service who credits accounts based on the blockchain need to run full nodes.

I'd say that the more people that run full nodes, the better. Without full nodes enforcing the consensus rules, miners and economically important nodes can collude to change the protocol. If the chain will be hard forked, SPV nodes have zero say about it. Only full nodes are relevant in hard fork attempts.


Larger blocks cause propagation delays. This increases orphaning rates, which disproportionately hurts smaller miners and will eventually force them off the network via unprofitability. Miners can sidestep these problems by centralizing -- pooling hashpower, colocation. Less mining entities, each with larger market share = bigger threat of transaction censorship, government targeting of miners, 51%/selfish mining attacks, political hard fork attacks, etc.

Larger blocks also cause increased bandwidth requirements. Data upload limitations are the primary bottleneck here. People who don't have access to unlimited internet data will become increasingly likely to shut down their nodes as it begins to interfere with streaming, gaming, file sharing, etc. The less full nodes there are, the easier the consensus is to attack.