If anything I'd say right now most development effort, at least from "core" developers, is going into scalability.
This is very awesome and confidence inspiring to hear, keep it up!
Topic: [POLL] Multi-sig or scalability--which is more pressing? - page 2. (Read 3750 times)
This is very awesome and confidence inspiring to hear, keep it up!
Multisig support was already (re)enabled in the protocol with the last release.
Scalability is not on the backburner at all. Right now there's a ton of work going into it:
If anything I'd say right now most development effort, at least from "core" developers, is going into scalability.
Scalability is not on the backburner at all. Right now there's a ton of work going into it:
- Myself and Stefan are upgrading the Satoshi client to use LevelDB, which eliminates IO as a bottleneck on hard disk based nodes. This should make blocks and transactions propagate a lot faster across the network, which in turn should mean mining pools find it profitable to include SatoshiDice transactions again.
- sipa and Matt have been experimenting with different ways of doing pruning, which means you can have a full node that doesn't store the entire block chain. Sipa also has refactored some of the core TX verification code in a way that'll make it easier to multi-thread in future.
- Jeff has been doing some initial work and design proposals for connection filtering, which is needed to make bandwidth usage for lightweight clients linear in wallet activity rather than system activity
- Just generally a bunch of us are working on bitcoinj, which is a lightweight (SPV) implementation of Bitcoin which scales with wallet activity rather than system activity. Eventually nearly all users will be using SPV clients, meaning they won't have to download or process the whole block chain. We can already run Bitcoin on mobile phones, which is a big achievement, but there's still plenty of work left to do.
- Gavin has been finding ways to make hard-forking changes much smoother and easier in future, which will be important when we reach the 1MB limit.
If anything I'd say right now most development effort, at least from "core" developers, is going into scalability.
Bitcoin can still absorb massive growth even with the current block size limit. Normal users who do a few transactions a week would simply crowd out low priority transactions such as SatoshiDice.
Say that an average "normal user" does about one transaction per day. The current "throttled" protocol could handle approx. 500,000 such users.
Transaction fees needed for inclusion could rise, but higher transaction fees are less damaging to bitcoin's reputation than heist after heist being reported in the media.
That's why multisig is more pressing in my opinion.
Say that an average "normal user" does about one transaction per day. The current "throttled" protocol could handle approx. 500,000 such users.
Transaction fees needed for inclusion could rise, but higher transaction fees are less damaging to bitcoin's reputation than heist after heist being reported in the media.
That's why multisig is more pressing in my opinion.
many users + poor scalability = bullish
many users + no multi-sig = bearish
(imo)
many users + no multi-sig = bearish
(imo)
You are saying you think scalability the less important?
I think it's more important when I consider worst case scenarios, but mostly I think we have plenty of time until it becomes a real problem and a nice GUI for multi-sig would be awesome.
many users + poor scalability = bullish
many users + no multi-sig = bearish
(imo)
many users + no multi-sig = bearish
(imo)
Scalability definitely. Mostly because multi-sig should wait, for strategic reasons.
Tell us more.
Scalability definitely. Mostly because multi-sig should wait, for strategic reasons.
I know these aren't entirely mutually exclusive.
I am specifically talking about blockchain size/transactions-per-second vs. multi-sig enabled transactions.
My opinion: If bitcoin suddenly absorbs rapid growth and becomes badly bottlenecked, its image will suffer greatly. Multi-sig seems to be more of a luxury feature, even though it does open up a lot of possibilities for the use of bitcoins.
But it seems that scalability is very much on the backburner for now.
Edit: Mods, this may be more suited for dev/technical discussion board.
I am specifically talking about blockchain size/transactions-per-second vs. multi-sig enabled transactions.
My opinion: If bitcoin suddenly absorbs rapid growth and becomes badly bottlenecked, its image will suffer greatly. Multi-sig seems to be more of a luxury feature, even though it does open up a lot of possibilities for the use of bitcoins.
Edit: Mods, this may be more suited for dev/technical discussion board.
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