Topic: Permanently keeping the 1MB (anti-spam) restriction is a great idea ... - page 12. (Read 105082 times)

was it already argued that not raising the block size leads to fractional reserve banking? - this system then basically becomes the same shit as the banking industry.

They should implement a dynamic block size based on the transactions for the past two weeks similar to how the difficulty is handled. This still allows for smaller nodes to participate in the short-term but also allows the network to scale in the long-term. This also makes it so miners get rewards as long as the number of transactions is increasing since the block size will always be a little bit smaller than the number of transactions.

Stop saying 'the miners'.  3-4 people decide that.

"Occasionally" was bad word choice on my part. If "enough" (1 large or many small) miners are willing to fill 20 MB blocks of ~0 fee transactions, then some bitcoin users will send ~0 fee transactions, and some miners that mine for transaction fees will stop mining, which weakens the security of the bitcoin network.

While this has always been a vulnerability, it seems like increasing the block size limit makes this economic sabotage more potent.

There's no need for other miners to follow their example.


Increasing the block size limit reduces transaction fees. Eventually, miners are not mining for transaction fees, but mining as stakeholders to maintain the integrity of the blockchain. Only stakeholders mining doing PoW is like a really inefficient PoS.

Individual miners decide absolutely nothing, other than people operating their own P2Pool node, with a tiny chance of finding a block.

Mining pools are the ones who decide what transactions they will accept.  99+% of the miners could care less about this.

One miner accepts 0 fee transactions. Why would the other follow their example?


Bitcoin is not implementing POS. I don't know what gave you that impression.

...and we know this is true because transaction fees have already gone down to zero.

I mean, if we had objective empirical evidence that transaction fee revenue was positively correlated with transaction volume over a six year period that might be a different story...

Larger blocks and lower fees means less mining, but not longer confirmation times, since larger blocks will still be mined every 10 minutes.

All it takes for transaction fees to go down to ~zero is a benevolent or a malevolent miner occasionally accepting 0 fee transactions.

The question is, will stakeholders step up to mine "at a loss" to secure their funds?

Increasing the block size limit is a poor implementation of PoS...

I completely agree with DeathAndTaxes (love the handle, BTW!) Limiting the block size to 1 MB is just hard-capping the maximum amount of transactions possible in 10 minutes (approx.) This doesn't make sense!!! There are solutions against orphaned blocks, etc. ready to be implemented well before the problem of >1MB blocks actually arises!

1 TB cost 120 € retail, and would fill in 3 year and 9 months at least with 20 MB blocks (full).
With pruning, the full nodes could just keep the hashes and be able to verify any data they receive from a server.
But, anyway, many companies would prefer to keep their own copy of the blockchain just to speed up the processing & checking of transactions.
For example, a POS would ask for a transaction and relay it to the network after checking the transaction is correct. It would need an updated local copy of the blockchain.

There is no need to have a fully decentralized network with every node having a full copy of the blockchain. It is just needed the number of copies of the blockchain existing around the network are high enough and in enough different and competing hands. No one will be able to censor 1.000.000 copies around the world, at the same time. If the users are one billion and the copies are one million, it is not centralized.
Centralized is when there is just one copy or few copies under the control of a central authority able to affect them at will.

In the end, if we want Bitcoin to revolutionize the payment systems and the monetary systems, we need a block size in the 1 GB range, at least.
Maybe not tomorrow, or the next year, but surely we want it in future.

All im saying is that whatever happens, try not to 'put the cart before the horse' gents.

Yes of course , bitcoin is for all the world but some people don't have neither the access on internet/smartphone (with 3G). So you are right, for the moment not all the people can use bitcoin but this fork is necessary at least for rise the limit of TX per second.

I hear such arguments, but it is the +1Billion users postulate that sounds kinda cultish to me.

"Bitcoin for 7billion people", "Bitcoin for Africa", "Bitcoin for unbanked"..
I ear this a lot but think that this is nothing close to reality.

Masses just really dont give a dam about finance, monetary policies or internet of things. They need jobs and food.

Check this :  Why would anyone host a 1 MB full node if they can only use the blockchain once per decade?  (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2vec37/why_would_anyone_host_a_1_mb_full_node_if_they/)

Where did the myth of 7tps limit while using 1 MB cap come from?

The part about showing the limitations based on average txn size of the last million transactions is quite interesting. I guess the idea of 7 tps limit did not take into account the variability of tx sizes. It is always good to over estimate (or under) to make sure your estimations are likely to be within the bounds of the claims being mentioned. Clearly the 7tps claim did not account for that.


BTW, @D&T, great post! 

Payment channels

Off chain transactions with Chase and HSBC (as the example) would require 3rd party audits of their internal ledgers. From past experience when information is not publicly available (private internal ledgers), shenanigans will occur.

I guess to begin with the fact that people would store their bit coin with a CHASE or an HSBC would require trust from the user level. Currently bit coin allows users to keep their coins in their possession. I suppose having multisig would apply to some extent here if the adoption rate of users exceeded some defining threshold that made it impractical for the average joe to use to transact.

D&T you bring up an interesting dilemma that may come some day concerning being priced out of being able to transact on the chain as a normal user and being forced to use an alternative method to transact. Instead of using a trusted 3rd party, why not use another block chain that is not an SC to transact?

 Of course there are exchange fees to get this done. So perhaps the lesser cost of the two may be the solution. In that case order book depth needs to be taken into account as well and any exchange transaction fees, withdraw fees and network fees. This is very interesting to explore as the ability to transact with less cost may change from time to time. Of course no one knows the future but it is a plausible thought to consider when discussing the topic.

At some point 1 MB cap is going to restrict user access to the block chain, yes. It is the same as saying that you can't have a growing economy with limited resources to support that economy.


Smaller transaction amounts are not more important than larger transactions. The block chain does not have this bias currently today nor do I think it ever will be. So the notion that a cup of coffee should be done off chain says one transaction is more important than another. That is something I do not believe Bitcoin was intended to imply, ever.

I wouldn't necessarily say that side chains are a trust free alternative as the security of side chains will vary (from chain to chain) as SCs pop up to offer alternatives. SCs as an "trust free" alternative can be a misspeak. If an SC is less secure, then although they offer some transaction capacity on the primary chain at a certain point in time does not mean it will always be that way. There is a lot of risk in transferring coins from main chain to an SC.

Agreed the 1 MB limit is insufficient concerning moving transactions off the primary chain and onto an SC.

Keeping the idea of having intermediary parties to transact on the block chain at bay will keep Bitcoin's utility as it was created for in tact. Removing that to put in centralized parties (trusted 3rd parties) is a huge mistake. Decentralization to Centralization…pointless.

Using 3rd parties which are not trust less prior to using an alternative crypto currency to transact would be a mistake in my opinion. If the main chain got to a point that the ability to have access to the block chain was limited by the adoption rate of users of the main chain I would see no reason people would not want to use an alternative chain to transact that is not an SC.

Wow! Great article and I think the system you describe seems like the ideal way to price the various services required to keep the bitcoin network running, and could put an end to the block limit debate once and for all. A miner creating a large block could have to pay a premium to the nodes for promptly propagating the block. Users sending transactions may also have to pay for their transaction to be propagated. Both of these would have the effect of disincentivizing spammy transactions that may overburden the network. Did I get that right more or less? This is the first I've heard of such an idea for bitcoin.

I had never heard of micropayment channels, and that's still the piece that I'm having the hardest time grasping. I clicked on the link to read about micropayment channels some more, but it's still hazy to me. I might just need to spend more time reading about it.

I'm not sure it will be that chaotic.  The last hard fork wasn't that bad.