The stress test has created a new environment on the network, with new yet unseen technical challenges. We want to deal with these challenges properly before re-opening.
I don't quite get it. What is the purpose of that stress test, and who is doing it? Read a lot of FUD here on the forum not sure what to belive. I trust you guys more that random "experts". What is it all about?
Yes I would also like to know whyis this stress test being done.
The entity or entities behind it are not known. Everybody is left speculating.
The term "stress test" is maybe too gentle, some call it a clear DDoS attack on Bitcoin users.
Technically, there are a lot of transactions that remain a long time unconfirmed in memory pools (or would never confirm). Some miners took some measures to help fire fighting, but the results is that the propagation of transactions (not only their confirmation) has been affected, too. We intend to right a complete write-up of the issues that are affecting directly business like us, after we'll have open again.
And if block size is increased by devs what will be the benifit to spammers and will there be any negative effect to us users?
There will be no benefit to spammers. If the block size is increased X times, in order to spam as they are doing now, they'll have to spend X times the money they are spending now.
The effect on users of raising the block limit is controversial. At the moment, larger blocks would nullify the spamming consequences and the network would behave as it was before. (assuming the spam attack would be as it today, and not performed at a larger scale too). On a long term perspective, pretty much everybody agrees we will need larger blocks, but by how much, when and how, is a debate still happening that doesn't seem to come to a shared agreement.
