Topic: Luke Jr's 300kb blocks (Read 908 times)

S-Curve why not?

Can I be cheeky and say - This problem has already been fixed. We just need to survive until the fix is implemented.

( I'm a programmer - not cryptographer. Slap me down on:error )

It's all to do with the new zk-STARKs. Like zk-SNARKS.. but faster smaller better hash based quantum secure version ?

They still take hours to process and compute and are still far too large, but that'll be 'fixed'. The pace of improvements is just going too fast at the moment

When it is - next 10/20 years - we'll be able to use a recursive fixed size zero-knowledge proof that proves the latest block is valid, it is linked to it's parent, a proof that the parent proof is valid, and a cumulative POW.. 

Some of this teck is already out there in various popow (Proof of Proof of Work) forms using the original SNARKs.

So - in 51 years - you'll have a zk-proof that the last 50 years of the blockchain is valid, with the cumulative Total POW, in about 10-20 MB and then the normal chain for the last year.

There are alot of other hardfork changes that are totally non-controversial, so you're exagerrating

Yes, I agree that we could afford doubling the blocksize right now and it would be far from the end of the world. However the main point being discussed here by those that consider all the game theory involved is: HOW do you make a blocksize increase without ending up in a clusterfuck of 2 competing "Bitcoins", with all the drama that always carries? (exchanges listing one or another, price crashing, miners speculating with hashrate, everyone claiming they own the real bitcoin....) Because of that, I don't see how hard forks are possible anymore at all, not mattering what the hardfork is about, there wouldn't be enough consensus, so you would end up with 2 competing coins.

   

Have you recently tried doing the 200Gb initial blockchain download? It is a pain. It might be easy with your bandwidth, but not all Bitcoin users will have the access to high bandwidth, or upgrade to higher bandwidth. I believe they would quit.

Would you agree that if usage is up, and HD space cost goes down, bandwith cost goes down, the we are effectively seeing the 1MB becoming smaller? for no reason?

I.E. we can afford lager block at least to the extent the bandwidth and HD space costs fall and cpu power per /$ goes up?

I don't think anything but linear is safe... you don't really know how hardware will progress across time, how much it will cost and so on. I don't see any solution to the so called "scaling on chain" that's why Bitcoin has become de-facto digital gold and not something that can be used realistically at scale (as in global usage) on-chain. This doesn't mean research on the field should stop, you never know... however what's clear is most of the effort in Bitcoin should be spent in review already-existing code rather than more exotic stuff. I mean Core had that inflation bug recently while other clients weren't affected. So Luke should be reviewing code instead of attempting stuff that probably will never have any consensus anyway.

I have asked this before, and not really had a straight answer, why should block size not be increased with a S-curve function? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function). If I recall you put me to rights on the demand side issue, and sort of said yeah maybe ... but my memory is sketchy and it was a long time ago.

I would like a square answer as to why not?

It could forever and a day end the whole blocksize issue with almost nil impact on the current core philosophy.

What is the negative technical argument?

or negative any argument to this?

I don't see his proposal would make people suddenly make the effort to run full nodes. The current growth of the blockchain is not that big of a deal within current settings. My folder is around 235 GB. A 4TB drive is pretty cheap these days, so should have you covered for years, and during these years I assume that disk sizes will keep growing as well.

How realistic is that it becomes impossible to host the blockchain on a single drive? I don't see it happening at the current linear growth.

Maybe it would be cool to have a way to host the blockchain on different HDDs. I don't see why this isn't possible, the client just must know where it left on the last file to keep downloading and validating on the next assorted HDD. The entire blockchain is hosted there so it counts as a full node.

Anyway my point was, his 300kb idea will not change the mind of people to do the effort to run a full node. It's a matter of mentality, not if we have 1MB or 300kb. The difference is not that big of a deal imo. People without the right mentality to run a full node will stay on Electrum or whatever.

What LJr really wants to do is be PeerCoin

ok if this is the case this identical to my argument of some sort of increase over time at some rate ax^n where n is 0.05? or some such, you could probably work n out as a function of blockspace, network load, usage, user base (estimates of course) and text improvement curves HD space and bandwidth.

Edit

Sorry I mean {\displaystyle f(x)={\frac {L}{1+e^{-k(x-x_{0})}}}} Logistical function (S-curve) for block size and have been saying that now for about 2 years???

I saw this as well.

Is, His argument "full nodes are dropping" does not want to centralise to keep network strong?

where can we get a figure on how many full nodes, I saw coin dance had nodes but could not see the full nodes

My final take on this thread:

Do something , anything, about fast sync, not in Luke's approach but with his spirit: No SPVs, more full nodes.

Since OP has started this thread I'm banging my head over and over again

Definitely agree with more competition resulting in lower fees, but it comes down to transactional volumes in the end. Many hops make a pretty penny (pretty enough to continue running a node) after a month or so. I strongly believe that Lightning is capable of that with enough adoption.

That's a valid concern. These physical nodes indeed have a shelf life which I seem to have ignored. Thanks for pointing out.

That's almost certainly not the case. The only time when fees could at all be high is when there aren't many people doing it.  What we've seen so far in lightning (and previously in joinmarket) is that fees rapidly race to pretty low values in competition.

At the moment, but eliminating any need to run a node is a major focus of development effort for lightning developers.

There is an inherent incentive: radically improved security and privacy.  But it's only enough to overcome a certain (low) level of cost... thus the concern about managing that cost.

As an aside, a lot of that "node hardware" being sold won't keep up for that long due to limited memory/storage/speed.

That makes sense, but still, even with that in consideration, the fact that we see how more and more individuals are running a lightning node at this stage for geeky purposes (hundreds of physical nodes have been sold, and there is plenty of demand for more, but little to no supply to meet it), and later to earn a pretty penny by scooping up routing fees, we'll see the ratio between 'fake' nodes and legit ones become completely different.

People need an incentive to run a node at home, and Lightning provides that incentive, especially in form of these plug-n-play physical nodes.

There isn't any _size_ limit in the protocol or implementation at all anymore, the weight limit completely replaced the blocksize limit. There isn't any "base size" in the protocol.  So a limit to 600k weight would result in blocks roughly 15% of current sizes given current usage patterns (though probably more since usage would change).

So Luke's new proposal is actually a way to soft-fork to 600k weight units, which is not at all the same as 300kB.

That's truly bizarre as an idea, apologies to Luke. That would mean keeping the base size at 1MB, and only being able to use 600kB within that base limit. The segwit discount would still reduce fees for segwit tx's, but the incentive to use segwit tx's as a way to boost capacity would disappear if the base size (1MB) was higher than the weigh limit (600kWU). Don't see the rationale for that at all.



It seems like Luke has a fascination for exploring possibilities without much reasoning as to why the ends are desirable. In the case of the actual BIP141 segwit soft fork, that approach was great, as Luke was motivated to figure out a way to implement segwit. Someone with an "it'll never work" attitude would never have done so.



50Mbit/s is high-end validation performance? Interesting.



Are you referring to the hybrid SPV concept? (SPV synchronisation finishes first, IBD continues in the background). Or new UTXO set tech?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

That said ... there are degrees.

I'm disappointed with the press circus Luke has contributed to here, -- it's not the first time he's set things up perfectly for his words to be taken out of context and then been so so surprised at what happened. But he does make useful contributions, and in the fullness of time drawing more attention to the initial sync problem may be one too, even though I disagree with the approach.

Careful with those assumptions,  if you filter out nodes from a couple popular VPS providers and nodes that have obvious behavioral tells that they're fake... the picture looks much less rosy.  A lot of "nodes" are sybils setup-- presumably-- to track transaction origins.

Blockstream has unpublished code that implements an alternative serialization that reduces tx sizes by around 25%.   I don't think it would actually improve IBD time except for very fast computers on fairly slow internet connections... initial sync is more utxo-update bound than bandwidth bound for most users. It might even slow it down, since the compact serialization is slower to decode. On a ludicrously fast machine (24 core 3GHz, nvme storage, syncing from local hosts over 10gbe) sync currently only proceeds at about 50mbit/sec.  I've been nagging them to publish it.  Their interest is in using it to increase capacity on the sat signal, but it's more generally useful.

I expect and hope that all the IBD activity will move into the background. After that happens, then the time it takes is less important than the resources-- and at that point a 25% bandwidth improvement would look pretty good.

Luke has eccentric ideas for sure, but he also has good ideas that get adopted.

Fluctuations are pretty normal, especially with how the bear market made lots of 'enthusiasts', startups and services quit, and thus they take down their nodes.

https://bitnodes.earn.com/dashboard/?days=730

As you can see, there is steady/healthy growth. The size of the chain has grown significantly, but the number of nodes increased regardless of that. So no, there is no problem.

What bothers me more is that he is basically betting on a measure that will force people to layer 2, and that's something you don't do. Stimulating free use of the network is what we have always had, and that's exactly why Segwit adoption isn't picking up. I don't like that certain entities aren't upgrading, but on the other hand, that's the freedom they have, and we should respect that. Bitcoin is freedom at the end of the day.

Not much to disagree with here, but hey, it all comes down to the freedom aspect. People can choose whatever they think offers the most usefulness to them.

Right. It works well enough in its current state is more fitting I guess.

That cracked me up, lol.

Sorry couldn't help it, can't. 

Actually the number of nodes has slightly decreased in 2018 while bitcoin continues to grow and becomes more popular, so yes, there is a problem.

Average user incentives are buy in low and sell higher. They use light weight clients, or they don't use a client at all, but leave their coins on an exchange.