Topic: Is Blockstream the reason why 4 core developer won´t increase the blocksize? - page 2. (Read 7087 times)

Bitcoin-XT is running, right now.  It's the same blockchain.  It doesn't create "XT coins".  The proposed code change would only take effect when 90% of blocks were compliant with the XT changes.  This is not the first time we've branched.  IMO, this is much ado about nothing.

This is what I've been talking about. Why would we deal with the problems when we can prevent them. Increasing the block size to 4 or 8MB would give the network more time before other solutions are ready.
I don't see a problem with this.

I've noticed that as well. He had already made 2 or 3 threads before, but it looks like he couldn't stand the opposing arguments. I didn't want to waste my time replying on that thread as it would probably get deleted anyways.
As for who he is:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/who-is-mircea-popescu-942404
http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~stolfi/realwork/EXPORT/projects/bitcoin/wikipedia/Mircea%20Popescu%20-%20Wikipedia,%20the%20free%20encyclopedia.html

He actually threatened (over twitter) that he would kill Andreas Antonopoulos.

I'm very hopeful about the long term value of sidechains.... but also unconvinced they are going to work. I wish there was better information for the rest of us on sidechains, because I've been doing my own thinking about how I think a sidechain (or multiple chains bearing the same crypto) would work, and I'm having real trouble with it.

I think that until someone actually makes a crypto with sidechains, and it survives in the wild for a good while resisting hackers and real-world stresses, it's gong to be impossible to say for certain that it is ready for prime time. Especially not by a given drop-dead date. So for now Bitcoin needs to move forward without them.

It is always better to prevent a problem rather than fix it after the fact.  Unfortunately people tend to ignore things until they become a problem, rather than preventing them.

Mircea started making self modded threads and deleting my posts.  I was trying to explain things as they are and not as he says, lol.  I also link to this thread when I can because I feel that it is very important for the community to know about this stuff before they make a decision.  Who is this Mircea guy anyway, and why is he spreading such obvious nonsense?  Maybe he just wants to drive the price down so he can accumulate at a lower rate?

Yeah, we agree on this. I guess different people (including the current developers) see the situation differently. Some don't expect us to hit the limit anytime soon, and some want to let the market solve the situation (wrong). However we should actually try to prevent it from happening rather than applying fixes once it happens.
Even if we only increase the limit to 4MB it would still give us much more time than we previously would have had. The worst part of all of this is that it is going to negatively impact Bitcoin itself. We have already seen a minor decline in the price and the media is exaggerating that Bitcoin is going to die. This happens because we let Mircea and his band start threads that contain FUD.

I for one certainly hope that you do not lose the value of your coins.  This whole things is a tempest in a teapot that is threatening to break free and become a full fledged storm.  My hope is that more people will bother to read up on what is actually happening, and then as a result will calm down.  I will admit that I was a bit panicked when I first heard about this.  But then I went through the trouble to read up on the details in stead of getting my information from a bunch of noobies posting on the forums.

You hit the nail on the head. That's really all I or probably most people care about. I'm afraid they are going to fuck with something and devalue the coins I'm holding. There are a lot of pretentious posers that come here to brag about how much they know about Bitcoin (as if that means a fucking thing in the real world). They study and research the issues but in the end they have no control whatsoever. I only know what I learned on this forum, reddit and a few others. My knowledge is limited but it's a hell of a lot more than you could ever expect a casual user of debit cards or credit cards to know about the way they work. What I do know is I'm afraid that they're going to fuck with Bitcoin so much that my coins will end up worthless before I can get my money out without a loss before I die.

Its not the same though.  This is more like Pete Rose betting against his team when he was coaching.  If I manage my portfolio, or come on here to post about an alt coin that I own, that is ok because it doesn't really matter.  In this case people are getting hurt financially because of this nonsense.  Look at the price drop in bitcoins recently.  I think it is because of fear of this mess.  And this mess wouldn't be a problem if the team didn't have a huge confict of interest.

it cannot, you know, because money are involved, everything where money is involved, always end up like this, where everyone just look at his portfolio

you can't really blame them we are doing the same, but they at least care for other portfolio, seeing how they are in charge for the development...

Well this is a tough one. I usually advise people not to make long term predictions as the chances of them being wrong are quite high (Andreas Antonopoulos mentioned this in some conference as far as I remember).
Honestly I can say that I do not know.
If I had to express my opinion on the matter right now I would say no. I'm expecting that we're going to start having full blocks sometime in 2016. Side chains are still in the concept stage and we're yet to see proper implementations. Even though they often a great potential, they are unexplored land. If it were up to me (at this point, 01/06/2015) I would increase the block size to either 4 or 8 MB (Gavin's proper calculations) which would give the network enough time before other solutions get developed such as side chains and the lightning network.


Unfortunately (coming back to my previous posts), there are hidden agendas and the money runs the show. My opinion to them is probably worthless.  

I am trying to post in FUD threads in the hope of calming everyone down.  I wish people would take the time to read up on the issue and realize that there really are two sides of the argument, and believe it or not both sides have merit.  Of course this conflict of interest makes it easy to choose sides.  Blockstream will generate income otherwise it would not be bankrolled with 21 mils.  Where will that money come from?  My guess is not thin air.

Indeed nice find, really depresing in a way. Bitcoin should be above personal interest.

I would be surprised by this were it not the same 'chief scientist' who was not paying attention to the UTXO size until it bit him in the ass...causing one more in a growing list of bizarre and incoherent blog posts.

What I'm trying to state here that you and the majority of people are fueled by their signatures, even though they aren't probably going to admit this. My story has changed since I left Bit-X. People participating in campaigns are posting without doing proper or any research/information gathering. You've already put me in the same bag as you and the rest stating that I'm only posting for the payout (mine is fixed by the way) and that I'm ignored by Danny. You would know better if you actually looked at his list prior to making your post; located here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/my-personal-ignore-list-973843 . You would know that I'm currently not in the list (I've been excluded for months).

Anyhow we should get back onto the topic itself; I'm hoping that you will understand/improve your habits.

You should not be posting about it if you don't properly understand it, aside from asking questions. You should definitely look at these links:
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/24549/how-is-a-side-chain-merging-back-to-bitcoin-chain-protected-against-double-spend
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/sidechains-bitcoin-2-0-revolution-highlights-reddit-ama/
http://insidebitcoins.com/news/gregory-maxwell-demo-sidechains-to-be-available-in-a-few-months/29531

As I've stated the technology is in the concept stage and we have yet to see in what way it will be implemented. Theoretically we can have a number of side chains however the main drawbacks (as previously stated) would be potential security flaws and added network complexity. I'm having a hard time finding a simple explanation of side chains that could be presented to the public as I lack the skills to make one myself.
The deal is that this would be like a secondary blockchain to Bitcoin. Basically what happens is that you transfer for example 1 BTC onto the side chain which would enable you to do transactions there. The side chain would create an equivalent number of bitcoins (in this case 1 BTC), which would be controlled by the user in the sidechain now while the original ones would be "immobilized" on the main blockchain. In order to bring them back to the main blockchain the user would have to create a special transaction where the coins (in this case 1 BTC) would disappear from the sidechain and become mobilized again on the blockchain.

I've already stated that this would add to the complexity which is also one of the main drawbacks. You can figure this out yourself if you read what I just wrote, however it might be possible to simplify it to some degree with the right software implementation. A side chain could be very beneficial as it can have all sorts of features that Bitcoin currently does not have. It could support fully anonymous and untraceable transactions, smart contracts and more.

Gavin made a mistake in his initial calculations by excluding upstream bandwidth (if I remember correctly). 8MB is actually what he is proposing so that should be somewhat acceptable to those that were complaining about potential bandwidth and storage issues.

OP brings up a good point - "Follow the money" is an important reminder when listening to the opinions of people in authority or deeply invested in something. If Blockstream has a vested interest in forcing transactions onto sidechains that they have a role in (and can profit from at our expense), it's hard to see how they could throw that away without a fight.

You know, having to correct people is getting tiring at times.
Why would you post such nonsense as claiming that side chains have no real benefits? How about actually doing proper research and backing up your words with technical analysis rather than just posting because of your signature campaign? I'm sorry for being so direct, but the number of people doing this is quite high. You are not ignored by DannyHamilton for no reason.

I'm going to disregard hidden agendas in this post, and I'm also going to shorten this as you should do your own research. What is the benefit of increasing the block size? The network will be able to process more transactions. What is the benefit of side chains? The network will be able to process more transactions. If we sum it up only to that point, disregarding the drawbacks of both, you can never state that side chains have no benefits unless you say the same for the block size increase.
It's quite obvious that both have drawbacks. 8MB blocks will definitely reduce the number of nodes if the blocks get filled more quickly that expected, even though storage and bandwidth are quite cheap today.
The drawback of side chains would be added complexity to the network, questionable security model that isn't clear yet in addition to potential issues that might occur with merged mining and all other risk associated with developing and running a new blockchain.



The conclusion that we draw here: Side chains are a very interesting technology that is in its concept stage. Many do not fully understand them or have a completely wrong understanding. This technology could potentially enable new things in Bitcoin. It will be possible to transfer assets from one chain to another and back (this is why it is called a two-way peg).

This might be a good place to start for people who aren't quite sure what the deal is with side chains:
http://gendal.me/2014/10/26/a-simple-explanation-of-bitcoin-sidechains/

Sadly I wouldn't be holding my breath for this if I where you.

I think some of the core devs involved in Blockstream must have interfered with the blocksize limit discussions. The inception of sidechains in Blockstream made the devs believe more strongly that sidechains are solutions to the blocksize limit.

I am sure those guys at Blockstream has worked out ways to solve the transactions limit problem and designed ways to add more features. While I would prefer bitcoin to be more loyal to the original design as much as possible.

We always welcome your insight Mircea Popescu!


Amen to that!

They want things to settle on their own when it comes to fees and 1MB blocks, but they wouldn't let things settle on their own with 8MB blocks. The only partially valid reason are increased bandwidth and storage costs. However this might be a problem of today if the blocks get filled instantly (which they won't), but in any case it won't be a problem of tomorrow.

Why wouldn't you be able to create 8MB blocks? Maybe the exact word for it shouldn't be creating. Also let's stop with the 20MB nonsense because this is false. Gavin made a mistake in his initial calculations. It has been correct to 8MB, so everyone please stop with the 20MB blocks.
You could fill up blocks with endless transactions although it is going to cost you (fees obviously). Although we hope that because a individual can't profit from wrecking Bitcoin (no economical sense), we can't rely on that. Some people are just evil within their core, and some will lose money if Bitcoin continues to grow. It is in their interest to try whatever they can to prevent Bitcoin from succeeding.


You should really stop wasting your time Mircea, as nobody cares about your consent. Protest all you want, your opinion does not and will not matter.