Topic: Post your SegWit questions here - open discussion - big week for Bitcoin! - page 18. (Read 84845 times)

There is no central authority to ask questions like this. Every member of bitcoin
community can vote with his hash rate "pro" or "contra". And yes, the voting
could take infinite time while anyone votes.

I hate to say that but 95% is unlikely to happen in the next a few months, If we never succeed to reach that percentage , what's going to happen and until when this SegWit signalling process should remain active ? (whatever It takes) ? because It literally could take forever.

The way that the soft forks work is that it makes something previously valid invalid. This means that it is backwards compatible, old nodes won't reject stuff made with the new rules. However, that also means that something invalid under the new rules can still be valid under the old rules. If miners and nodes are still running nodes with the old rules, then they will accept those transactions and blocks as valid, but not the new nodes. This can cause a split in the network and potentially a blockchain fork, and just be a major pain to resolve.

The point of the 95% signalling is so that everyone knows that it is safe to use the new rules because the miners are promising that they will use the new rules when creating blocks. It ensures that nearly all miners will enforce the new rules which means that the likelihood for a chain split is much much lower.

What I don't understand is that if soft-forks are backward compatible why would other miners reject it? Doesn't backward compatibility mean that new blocks are seen as valid by old clients? And if you wait everyone to update what is the benefit for soft-fork? Is there a con of Hard-Fork if it has 95% support?

Because of the way the soft fork works, unless a consensus is reached, the other nodes will simply reject all those blocks as invalid until the 95% is reached, so if a miner mines segwit blocks they end up being seen as invalid by all the other nodes and all the mining work is wasted. Once another 2 blocks are mined elsewhere on the network, even the miner's node will switch to the non-segwit mined blocks.

Why wait 95% on a soft-fork? What happens if segwit miners starts mining segwit blocks right now?

My words do not say that.  You are rephrasing into a strawman argument that you can just beat down.. in other words, you are not in the business of clarification, instead you want to obfuscate matters in order to argue your various lame-ass points.

Let me see if I can attempt to summarize one more time.  I am saying that users as individuals can choose the extent to which they want to use bitcoin or if they want to use some other payment or value storage system.  If they perceive that bitcoin does not work for them in terms of various payment transactions that they want to make, then they can use something else.  Accordingly, usage will help to drive adoption of bitcoin and other competitors, and with the passage of time bitcoin will likely evolve more and more into a payment system rather than a value storage system.  

It would be stupid as hell to attempt to force design bitcoin into some kind of payment system that is similar to credit cards or something like that, when it would likely cause bitcoin to lose various competitive edge attributes that it has - such as being a secure and decentralized system.    



Are you nuts?   I am just giving my opinion and responses.  I could give a ratt's ass about which protocol prevails because I am going to gravitate towards whatever implementation seems most feasible for me in terms of present value and perceptions of future value, and if XT or Classic or BU become the dominant system and they become feasible, then I would likely begin to place some or all of my investment into them, which is in terms of my perception of present and/or future value.  

At this point, these nut job complaints about fees being too high or transactions taking too long or micropayments are not affordable are just unsubstantiated assertions that are trying to make bitcoin transform into something that it is not and to ascribe some pie in the sky characteristics to it that suggest that it should be competing right now and on an "emergency" basis with the value propositions of centralized credit cards or some other such similar nonsenses.  Yeah, maybe some day, bitcoin will develop various systems that compete directly with credit cards, but as I keep repeating (and you nut jobs should know too) bitcoin is a different beast and it offers other values beyond the kinds of centralize payment systems that you seem to be aspiring towards.



Yes.. I had one that took that long so far in the past year or so (actually just recently).  It showed up immediately and it had normal "high priority" fees, and we just gotta budget for those kinds of possibilities when the system is undergoing various spam attacks from time to time.  It still went through, but it was a whole hell-0f-a-lot more utility providing than going through traditional centralized systems.  I think that could be characterized as a kind of growing pain to be suffering from spam attacks, and hopefully technical folks are continuing to work on work arounds for these issues that come up from time to time.



We are in a transitional period, and there are all kinds of options.  The more options that you have the better, and bitcoin is providing more and more options to people who used to have fewer options.  This is like snowballing.  As bitcoin continues to grow, folks will continue to gravitate towards bitcoin and more and more bitcoin options are going to continue to be provided.  Actually in some places folks may not have those other financial options and bitcoin might be the "best" current option that they have (and also some people still do not really know about bitcoin as being a potential option for them).




There you go again... assuming problems and assuming that there is some feasible fix that could have already been done.  Again, you seem to be asserting that a blocksize limit increase is a quick, easy and non-controversial implementation.    Your ALL CAPS assertion is filled with assumptions and conclusions rather than facts and logic or even reality.

Your words speak for themselves. Bitcoin users are "stupid" "vocalizing idiots", there is no problem, people who think there is a problem should "use something else" or "get paid once a month instead of once a week". You're really not a good spokesperson for the status quo OR Core. Even one of your own transactions took 72 hours to confirm, yet you seem to be OK with that. And perhaps you don't realize that the people who are "using something else" are decreasing the security and value of Bitcoin?

HOW ABOUT FIXING THE PROBLEMS NOW, WHICH COULD HAVE BEEN DONE YEARS AGO?

Who is "we"?  Bitcoin is decentralized, helrow?  Does that need to be pounded into your head?  not that I am advocating violence.  I am talking figuratively.   

Yes, you must be desperate to have to twist what I am saying.  I am saying even if there is better competition for transactions under $100, bitcoin still has a lot of value in a lot of ways.  I know... I know.. you are selectively reading what you want to read from my comments.

In the past year, I have done about 100 bitcoin transactions, and about 75 of them went through in less than an hour.  about 15 went  through in 1 hour to 3 hours and about 5 of them went through in 3 to 12 hours  and about 5 went through in 12 hours to 36 hours.   1 transaction took nearly 72 hours. These kinds of delays can be planned around, and the longer ones are not frequent.. and they are likely due to spam attacks that may be addressed in the coming years.  We will see.

 


You know that exchanges are not bitcoin, so depending on location, users have a variety of options regarding which ones to use, and how much if any.



I see that you pointed out examples, but you did not respond except to characterize those examples as "arrogance"...   Seems a bit passive aggressive,no?

* "Welcome to your new financial payment network, we'd like to remind you it's not cost-effective for transactions under $100, and sometimes it will freeze your transaction for 24-78 hours". "Oh, and your funds will be held by an online exchange with no liability that reports to the IRS and could be hacked at any time".










The arrogance is sickening.

Yes.  i already assumed your underlying facts to be true, even though you are adding additional layers of complexity that don't really matter too much. People will decide which one of those to use and whether to use any of those various processors based on the level of complexity and cost.  And, then I also asserted that it could be correct that there a variety of more competitive payment processors for amounts under $100... and yes bitcoin may not be the best of those at the moment.. because bitcoin has other values... so I assumed all of that to be true, and my point is that bitcoin has other values besides the processor of payments that you are trying to make it out to be.




O.k.  again you are asserting that a narrow set of uses hinders bitcoin's adoption. ... but bitcoin has other uses too, and a lot of this will develop over time.  Why rush bitcoin into being something that other platforms can do better?  There is plenty for bitcoin to do without narrowing it into something for which it is not currently ready... and it is not a question of blocksize that is going to solve the development and adoption matters, it is a time issue and functionality issue and seg wit is one thing that will allow further development and the building of the kinds of tools that will facilitate more and more development and likely economies of scale through increasing and increasing adoption.



Who is talking about a million dollars?  We can talk about someone getting into bitcoin first by just merely accumulating it, and maybe later down the road attempting to use it.  I know a lot of people who just hold their bitcoins and they dont really spend them.. so why do we need to spend them, exactly?  at this time?  we can wait for later or we can just cash them out if they appreciate in value over time.  We can do whatever we want based on how much we want to hold of bitcoin and whether we want to hold them on an exchange or in a private wallet.  There are nearly 6 million wallets on coinbase and there are nearly 10 million wallets on blockchain.info.  People may or may not move their coins around very much, especially if they are just beginning to accumulate coins.


use something else then.  bitcoin does not necessarily need to serve such a purpose, especially if it is not economically feasible at the moment and if systems have not sufficiently been developed.


Yeah.. let's assume that people do not want to move less than $100 at any one time.  I am fine with that.  Then they are going to mostly hold and mostly just transfer the larger amounts when they feel that it is necessary, whether they hold the coins on an exchange or a bank or put them in a private wallet of their own.. but once they move them then they will be inclined to move them less often (due to fees).  I agree.  I usually don't move amounts smaller than a few hundred bucks at a time, except maybe smaller amounts when I am just consolidating addresses.


You could have some decent points here, but I don't think that it is as big of a deal as you make it out to be... maybe get paid once a week rather than once a day or get paid once a month rather than once a week... you can budget for those kinds of things.

Also, I think that the evidence of the past several years seems to show more decentralization in mining rather than centralization.. pools are not as dominant now as they were in early 2014.  They are smaller and there are more of them.


 


Who knows?  We have always had various centralized systems, but bitcoin has allowed the development of a large number of decentralized systems that have not really developed yet.  So yeah, the big experiment is the extent to which decentralized systems can develop and cause users to gravitate in that direction... a lot of them are still being developed.  Also, individuals can make choices regarding which services they chose to use.


Of course it is designed to be peer to peer, but rome was not built in a day.. such peer to peer is still being built and such peer to peer systems are still being developed... don't rush it with something dumb and ill thought out, such as big blocks and changes to bitcoin governance, otherwise you will screw it up.


I don't get your point.  Devs made some software, and it is up to miners to signal that they are ready to adopt it.  If they do not signal in sufficient quantity then the software does not get adopted.  Otherwise if it seems that the software change could be forced or some lower threshold then maybe that action would occur.  If it seems to controversial, then the status quo is maintained and nothing happens.. just keep running the old software.  

Decentralized means that a lot of folks could chime in and attempt to affect the behavior of others, too... but in the end, if miners start signalling seg wit then the software can be implemented... I am not sure what role the users play except maybe saying what they want and maybe attempting to influence the behavior of miners or the behavior of devs.


Maybe we largely agree on these points?  In the beginning it seemed as if all the technical folks were behind seg wit and it should be easy to implement, but currently, it seems that the signaling level is stagnating, so it might not get adopted.


I think we have a different reading on this.  I think that there are some whiners out there who push this theme about big blocks and attempt to mislead and exaggerate.



These are retarded statements to say what users want... yeah we got some vocalizing idiots on some forms suggesting that there is a problem that does not exist... otherwise known as exaggerating.  You are likely right that some businesses are on the fence.


I think that I already made my point, here.  Do what they want means use bitcoin or don't. If they are going to use bitcoin, then figure out what they want to use it for and how much and to invest accordingly.  If they think that there is some other better solution, then they can join in on those projects, such as ethereum or dash or monero or litecoin.

I think that bitcoin has plenty of uses and plenty of development and plenty of ongoing dynamics that it is continuing to grow and to provide value, even if there are higher fees and slower transaction times.  I personally think that there is a long way to go before fees and transaction times are unreasonable given what bitcoin already provides and that is secure immutable decentralized value storage and transfer.  Name anything in the world that provides what bitcoin does at any comparable level.  I am waiting.  

My assumptions were that a transaction would have two inputs and two outputs, and would pay a fee that actively outbid other transactions waiting for confirmation. It assumes that the merchant is not using a payment processor (like BitPay/Coinbase/ect., which would likely cause the tx fee to double (the transactions would likely require a second transaction), and the payment processor would generally want to take a 1% cut (what I can tell is the market rate for BTC payment processors).

This is going to hinder adoption. When someone who has no experience using any kind of cryptocurrency, they are not going to want to start with a million dollar transaction, they are going to want to start with an amount they can afford to lose, that makes sense to use economically (I would also point out that if it does not make economic sense to make spend $20 worth of bitcoin on Lunch, it is likely that not many restaurants will accept bitcoin as payment, so those considering to "test" bitcoin with small real world transactions would be unable to do so, even uneconomically).

I would also point out that high transaction fees create incentives to have additional mining centralization and for users to use various services (exchanges, pools, ect.) as banks.

Many users will combine their mining hashpower together at a mining pool; with pools it is not a huge deal if an individual pool were to get a large percentage of the network hashpower because if it were to start acting maliciously, miners would leave that pool in order to protect their future income. Generally speaking (at least based on what I have seen), mining pools will pay out mining earnings to individual miners once per day (I believe that some mining pools have the option to set minimum thresholds of payments, and otherwise hold payments back). It will cost a miner ~100x more money to spend $1 of their mining revenue who receives 0.01BTC per day, verses a miner whose equipment earn 1BTC per day -- this is important because miners generally will need to use a portion of their mining revenue to pay expenses. Mining is a very low margin industry that can be describes as a 'game of inches' and I believe that over time this will lead to further mining centralization based on ultimate control over the mining equipment.

I also believe that persistent high fees will cause users to gravitate towards services like exchanges (and other online services that have possession of users' coins) and use them as banks. This will cause the obvious problem that when these services eventually get hacked, customers' funds will be lost, and users will lose faith in bitcoin (and the net cost of using bitcoin will be high when taking into consideration the cost of having some of their coins stolen/lost). This will also cause further centralization in terms of bitcoin related businesses, as it will raise the barrier to entry.


This is exactly what Bitcoin was designed to be, a "peer-to-peer electronic cash system"

Ummm, the last time I checked, what the devs want does not matter when it comes to consensus. The devs are merely advisors, and users can choose to take the advice or not. No one has given the devs any kind of authority to make any kind of decisions on behalf of anyone.

I have seen a large number of services that are ready for SegWit if implemented, however I have not seen them give active support, and I would say that there are a decent number of users with decent economic weight that are against SegWit. If anything, I would consider SegWit to be a contentious fork (only that I find it unlikely that it will activate, as the miners tend to be amongst those who are against SegWIt).

The overall gist of this statement is that Bitcoin users seems to want scaling solutions, and they do not want SegWit; all this really leaves is an increase in the maximum block size. As stated above, most major Bitcoin related businesses are maintaining a neutral position on the subject, and users [in effect] want the max block size to be increased (via wanting lower fees, scaling, and not wanting segwit).

I think it is counterintuitive to say that users can do what they want to get around a problem that is being imposed by an artificial, arbitrary limit, that can be best described by unnecessary regulation by a central authority.

I will assume that your facts here are generally correct that currently bitcoin is not economically competitive for transactions of $20 or less as compared with credit cards or other similar payment competitor processes.  So fucking what?  Bitcoin has a lot of value, even if it is not competitive for smaller payment levels (even if bitcoin is currently not competitive for transactions under $100, bitcoin still brings a whole hell of a lot of value to the table).  

These matters are evolving, and individuals should find and balance their own uses to the extent feasible in order to find whatever system is the most competitive for whatever use that they are going to undertake.  Even assuming that bitcoin is not competitive for transactions under $100 for some folks does not mean that bitcoin should give up on its various advantages and developments and progress in order to try to become something that it is not... and yeah, maybe some day bitcoin will evolve into a "competitive" micropayments processor, but at this point, bitcoin has a whole hell-of-a lot of value outside of that particular narrow use case.



Generally the large majority of various technical experts in bitcoin believe that seg wit is a great, useful and empowering innovation.

And, who gives a ratt's ass about what users think, because the vast majority of users do not sufficiently understand what seg wit provides, and possibly they don't even care, as long as bitcoin functions for them in whatever way that they chose to attempt to get it to function.  So, in the end, it does not really matter too much what a bunch of misinformed and whiney users on various big block forums think, if they don't really understand the issues and they are just believing that big is better for the sake of it.


That assertion is pretty vague.  Ultimately people can chose what they want to use within bitcoin or not on an individual level in terms of fees, in terms of speed, or value or whatever, etc etc... So who cares?  Just let them chose what they would like based on what they perceive is being offered and then they can attempt to experience bitcoin or whatever for themselves and decide if they want to continue to use it or to diversify their investment or their useage into something else.

I would point out that a 2 input, 2 output transaction will cost about $0.56 to get confirmed in the next block with near certainty. If you assume that a merchant pays (and passes along the costs of) 3% for accepting a credit card payment, then the cost of using a credit card will be the same as using Bitcoin for a ~$18.70 transaction -- this means it is currently cheaper to use a credit card than Bitcoin for transactions under this economic size. I would certainly not call $20 (or $18.70) a "micro-transaction".

I have not seen enough active support for SegWit that would suggest that there is consensus that SegWit is desired by users.

I have however seen what I would consider to be a general consensus that scaling solutions for Bitcoin are desired and that lower fees for Bitcoin are desired. 

I will agree with any kind of denigration of anecdotal evidence; however, I have made this assertion several times and in several threads.  If someone is attempting to suggest that there is a problem, then they have both an evidentiary and logic burden to establish the extent of the problem and to show how that problem logically is causing whatever issues that they suggest that it is causing and/or they have additional burdens to show that whatever actions that they are suggesting will fix the identified "problem".  The burden is not on me to show that there is not a problem.


O.k.  first you assume that there is a problem of what?  fees?  transaction times?  And then you assume that mainstream adoption would be better if the "problems" did not exist.   These remain very difficult propositions to establish beyond merely saying them in a couple of sentences.

What is "an insane amount of time?"  and how do you know that an "insane amount of time" would develop?   sounds very speculative and without much of any factual or logical basis in such assertion.

I already described my waiting experiences to currently be between a few minutes and a few days with very low fees.  I find that quite amazing with the level of control and security and decentralization that exists in bitcoin.. I mean I control it and no third party is necessary, except to the extent that I choose those kinds of options instead of direct transactions.

Regarding companies turning down bitcoin:  They turn it down for all kinds of reasons.  So fucking what?  Adoption can take a long time and should not be rushed with some lame and ill-thought-out innovations.  We have already seen a lot of behind the scenes ways in which a lot of folks are getting into bitcoin (including companies with some of their bullshit blockchain discussions), and these kinds of ongoing adoptions by both consumers and companies are continuing to contribute to ongoing upwards price pressures.  In the coming years, we are likely going to continue to see a variety of continued adoptions by companies and individuals - some of that adoption, innovation and development will be upfront and public and other adoption, innovation and development will be behind the scenes.

And, yeah a lot of this would be better if seg wit were included in the mix, but even if seg wit is not included in the mix the ongoing adoption, innovation and development is going to continue to take place.. could be better, but we can also roll with the punches.. it is what it is... and if folks do not feel that bitcoin is ready for seg wit, then we continue in the current state of bitcoin until there is enough inspiration to include seg wit as another improvement to an already great and paradigm shifting phenomenon (namely bitcoin).



Again you are seeming to suggest that I have some kind of anecdotal experiences that do not matter.  Who are these supposed people that are anxious about scaling?   Are they reasonable people?  Are they expecting too much too quickly?  Are they considering matters beyond some superficial feelings?  If they are so anxious about the current state of bitcoin, then have them find a value storage and transfer system that is more comfortable for them and their situation and what they want to do or they can divest a bit of their investment in bitcoin into something else.    It is not really a big deal if bitcoin does not serve every single person and all situations. In many western countries, we have all kinds of micro-payment options, and those can be used to the extent that they provide value to folks.  Options are going to vary from place to place, and bitcoin's feasiblility is going to vary from place to place.

Sure, micropayments might not be as practical to bitcoin as compared with other systems, and so fucking what?  These areas are likely going to develop over time.  It seems that seg wit would likely assist with micropayments based on second layer solutions that can be added once seg wit is in place, but it seems very short sighted to either want bitcoin to currently serve as a micropayment system, when there is still a lot of applications and developments that need to evolve in the space - including the creations of additional user-friendly systems in bitcoin.  In other words, I don't really understand the desire to get all worked up about micropayments at this point in time, when bitcoin is offering all kinds of great stuff that includes secure immutable decentralized value storage and transfer.  There is no other coin or system that even comes close to bitcoin in that regard.  If you know of one, name it.

That you do not have a problem does not mean there is not a problem.

1. This hinders mainstream adoption. If many more people use Bitcoin, they will have to either wait for an insane amount of time, or pay insane fees (or, most likely, both). In fact, I read somewhere that companies have been turning down Bitcoin because of scaling.

2. It may not be too much for you, but it may be too much for some people, and it certainly rules out some applications (like micropayments).

Maybe I don't get it.... what is the BS fee trap?  

I have done a lot of transactions on the blockchain in recent months (even in the past 12 months), and there has not been any meaningful or significant change in fees.  Yeah, surely that may change in several years or even change in 100 years, but our current situation does not seem to be an emergency, is it?  How could it be when I am paying between $.10 and $.50 with some variation and flexibility to send varying amounts of transactions in the .5BTC to 20BTC range....   Sure, if I send more, then there is a better value, but I still don't understand whatever point that you are attempting to make, hv_ regarding a supposed "BS fee trap."

I may have chosen inexact words when I said "no solution", I was referring to the fact that even if bitcoin stays the same and there is no implementation of seg wit or anything else... my point was that even then, there is a lot of value in bitcoin.  Likely I don't need to elaborate anyhow because you are trying to suggest that there is some kind of emergency need to take emergency and ill-thought measures... so we are working on differing assumptions from the get go.

No politics, only dishonesty, enh?

There are a lot of numbers being thrown around regarding Core vs Unlimited percentage of miners. Could someone please tell me how much does BTC Core need to go through with SegWit?