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Topic: rpietila Wall Observer - the Quality TA Thread ;) - page 132. (Read 907212 times)

donator
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1036
Many things are difficult, but that shouldn't be difficult at all: miners just include transactions that pay the most (if space is limited) or that pay minimum X bits, X being defined by the miner, (if the space is not limited). THAT'S IT!

That was implemented years ago and has nothing to do with a floating fee.  Miners today can set a min fee amount, a block size, and they order txns by fee and include the top x which will fit.

Ah, please tell me what is a floating fee then?
donator
Activity: 1218
Merit: 1079
Gerald Davis
Many things are difficult, but that shouldn't be difficult at all: miners just include transactions that pay the most (if space is limited) or that pay minimum X bits, X being defined by the miner, (if the space is not limited). THAT'S IT!

That was implemented years ago and has nothing to do with a floating fee.  Miners today can set a min fee amount, a block size, and they order txns by fee and include the top x which will fit.
legendary
Activity: 3892
Merit: 4331

Suppose Monero (or a different alt) were to gain enough traction for it to appear inevitable that it would eventually topple bitcoin. How feasible would it be to fork bitcoin to adopt some or all features of Monero? iow, a merger of the first mover advantage of bitcoin with the technical advantages of Monero. I suppose this question has two parts: 1) What would be the technical feasibility of doing this? and 2) Would the community go along?
 

The chances of such a merger are zero. From a technical perspective the coins are very different, and the economic interests strongly align against this. More importantly such a merger would violate the most basic economic fundamentals of both coins. This means that such a merger would break all trust in the coins and yes could make them both worthless. Both communities would reject such a merger and for very good reasons.

What is more likely to happen here is that Bitcoin would have to fork to deal with the 1 MB Limit. Both coins would live side by side, compete and hopefully learn from each other. First mover is not everything. A very good example is the credit card industry. The first movers were Diner's Club and then American Express. Then came the later entrants including Visa and MasterCard. The first movers are still around but with vastly reduced market share.

The challenge for the Bitcoin is to deal with the 1 MB blocksize limit before the above happens and not become the American Express or even Diner's Club of crypto-currency.

Edit: Bitcoin might even fork in the middle of a boom, like it did the last time. After all it is way easier to get consensus when everyone is getting wealthier.

You guys made me look at Monero (XMR), which trades pretty thinly and recently diving despite one 667 XMR order, which must be either Risto or someone else from around here  Smiley
I am thinking of diversifying a small % of my BTC to alts, such as XMR, etc. (NOT LTC)
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1001
Quote
block size limit is simply too small for Bitcoin to maintain reasonable growth, and it will hit a bottleneck just trying to process normal business.

If it's about 260,000 transactions per day, it is indeed too small. If it can be increased, I favor increasing. And also setting in stone the increasing schedule so that no further vote or community decision is needed ever concerning this matter.

Perhaps a block size limit that periodically self-adjusts based upon a function that takes as input the historical number of transactions per unit time?
donator
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1036
Many things are difficult, but that shouldn't be difficult at all: miners just include transactions that pay the most (if space is limited) or that pay minimum X bits, X being defined by the miner, (if the space is not limited). THAT'S IT!

You are assuming a functional fees market exists. This is not yet the case. Most miners are simply selling hashing power into pools. Basically, only a handful of pool owners can define X, and they don't want to constantly play with variables. They want to set up an optimized mining operation and let it run.

In that case, defining "X" is not needed at all. You just always take the best paying transactions, regardless of how much they pay. ("X" is for artificially restricting supply to extract more fees, and completely unnecessary.)

Quote
block size limit is simply too small for Bitcoin to maintain reasonable growth, and it will hit a bottleneck just trying to process normal business.

If it's about 260,000 transactions per day, it is indeed too small. If it can be increased, I favor increasing. And also setting in stone the increasing schedule so that no further vote or community decision is needed ever concerning this matter.
hero member
Activity: 763
Merit: 500
Why is the floating transaction fee not implemented already?

(iow: why centralization?)
it's already implemented, i've read the code and I'm also actually doing some statistics how it behaves. just because i'm really interested in monitoring it. it's just that implementing it in the dev version of bitcoin core doesn't automatically push it out to everyone. we have to wait for 0.10 first.
also, the bitcoin core code is entirely independent of what the miners are going to do. i.e. it doesn't impose arbitrary rules any more (which is true right now, e.g. hard coded default/minimum fee ...)

i don't know what you mean by the last part in brackets.
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1006
100 satoshis -> ISO code
Many things are difficult, but that shouldn't be difficult at all: miners just include transactions that pay the most (if space is limited) or that pay minimum X bits, X being defined by the miner, (if the space is not limited). THAT'S IT!

You are assuming a functional fees market exists. This is not yet the case. Most miners are simply selling hashing power into pools. Basically, only a handful of pool owners can define X, and they don't want to constantly play with variables. They want to set up an optimized mining operation and let it run.

Bitcoin as a store of value is currently it's main use case (in my eyes) and a takeoff for micro transactions would kill it. I really don't know why there are so many who were thinking that bitcoin has a future for micro-txs although there is a fixed blockchain. (If at all, transaction replacements are the future in that regard)

This isn't about micro-tx. The fee structure change a year ago already made micro-tx non-viable, and push it off-chain. This is good.
The problem is that the block size limit is simply too small for Bitcoin to maintain reasonable growth, and it will hit a bottleneck just trying to process normal business.
sr. member
Activity: 277
Merit: 257
Many things are difficult, but that shouldn't be difficult at all: miners just include transactions that pay the most (if space is limited) or that pay minimum X bits, X being defined by the miner, (if the space is not limited). THAT'S IT!

Create pull request then?  Smiley I don't know enough to know exactly how to implement and test it. I do know that in development often things seem deveptively simple and easy from the outside.
donator
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1036
Many things are difficult, but that shouldn't be difficult at all: miners just include transactions that pay the most (if space is limited) or that pay minimum X bits, X being defined by the miner, (if the space is not limited). THAT'S IT!
sr. member
Activity: 277
Merit: 257
Why is the floating transaction fee not implemented already?

(iow: why centralization?)

Somebody has to do it.   Wink

Not that many people truly understand the actual code. It takes a lot of time to understand it during which you dont get paid.

Once you do understand it there is a high demand for bitcoin developers from private ventures, not that many people can afford to work for free on bitcoin protocol and client.

(Thats being general, specifically I think floating prices should be implemented soon).
newbie
Activity: 13
Merit: 0
Suppose Monero (or a different alt) were to gain enough traction for it to appear inevitable that it would eventually topple bitcoin. How feasible would it be to fork bitcoin to adopt some or all features of Monero? iow, a merger of the first mover advantage of bitcoin with the technical advantages of Monero. I suppose this question has two parts: 1) What would be the technical feasibility of doing this? and 2) Would the community go along?

It is possible to clone any alt-coin and bootstrap it with a snapshot of the unspent outputs in the bitcoin blockchain using the spin-off method.  Using this technique, "Bitcoin the Ledger" could be preserved while "Bitcoin the Payment Network" could be replaced with new technology.  

When the spin-off is launched, bitcoin users will have coins in both systems.  The two coins will trade against each other on the open market.  If the community thinks the new technology is not worth the switch, they will sell these "free" spin-off coins, thereby killing the spin-off.  If the community feels the technology is a "must have," they will sell bitcoins in favour of the spin-off, thereby transfer the bulk of the wealth to the new network.

This is a beautiful idea. If it is technologically feasible, and I am sure it is, I see no way how an altcoin technologically superior to bitcoin would be able to hold its ground against an identical spin-off which includes the bitcoin ledger. Are there any convincing arguments against?
donator
Activity: 1722
Merit: 1036
Why is the floating transaction fee not implemented already?

(iow: why centralization?)
hero member
Activity: 763
Merit: 500
... there is a market-based soft block size limit that results due to the economic incentives that miners face due to block propagation races.

Yes this is a problem, but it can be solved by the market by increasing fees to cover the propagation risk to the miners.

I don't think so.

There are ways to speed up the block propagation by only sending out hashes for differences in the tree and so on -- and not the full block. This is something that needs to be designed well, implemented perfectly and accepted by the miners. This takes time. If the Bitcoin-devs solve this, they have once again a first mover advantage over all the other copy-coins.

I'm also firmly against increasing the block size just because it can be done. Let's wait and see for a few month how the tx-fees and acknowledgement times will develop once the floating fee algorithm is in effect.  Bitcoin as a store of value is currently it's main use case (in my eyes) and a takeoff for micro transactions would kill it. I really don't know why there are so many who were thinking that bitcoin has a future for micro-txs although there is a fixed blockchain. (If at all, transaction replacements are the future in that regard)
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1006
100 satoshis -> ISO code
What is more likely to happen here is that Bitcoin would have to fork to deal with the 1 MB Limit. Both coins would live side by side, compete and hopefully learn from each other. First mover is not everything. A very good example is the credit card industry. The first movers were Diner's Club and then American Express. Then came the later entrants including Visa and MasterCard. The first movers are still around but with vastly reduced market share.

The challenge for the Bitcoin is to deal with the 1 MB blocksize limit before the above happens and not become the American Express or even Diner's Club of crypto-currency.

Edit: Bitcoin might even fork in the middle of a boom, like it did the last time. After all it is way easier to get consensus when everyone is getting wealthier.

Looking back at the March 2013 temporary fork event, a long time afterwards, it occurred to me that it may have been a major driver in the $266 spike (the Cyprus situation being irrelevant). The reason is that for many non-technical people the fork "proved" that Bitcoin was truly a breakthrough in software - not a clever scam. The fact that it could have a technical glitch and people from all over the ecosystem rushed to fix it, publicly on IRC, also proved that it is an honest enterprise.

However, this is a one-off proof of legitimacy. Similar events will be very damaging. There are hundreds of alt-coins of many types waiting for Bitcoin to shoot itself in the foot. Bitcoin's value is reasonably steady now and very much buoyed from its first-mover status - and its technical stability when viewed by the public. This is not something which should be thrown away because of analysis paralysis over the 1MB.
legendary
Activity: 1162
Merit: 1007
Suppose Monero (or a different alt) were to gain enough traction for it to appear inevitable that it would eventually topple bitcoin. How feasible would it be to fork bitcoin to adopt some or all features of Monero? iow, a merger of the first mover advantage of bitcoin with the technical advantages of Monero. I suppose this question has two parts: 1) What would be the technical feasibility of doing this? and 2) Would the community go along?

It is possible to clone any alt-coin and bootstrap it with a snapshot of the unspent outputs in the bitcoin blockchain using the spin-off method.  Using this technique, "Bitcoin the Ledger" could be preserved while "Bitcoin the Payment Network" could be replaced with new technology.  

When the spin-off is launched, bitcoin users will have coins in both systems.  The two coins will trade against each other on the open market.  If the community thinks the new technology is not worth the switch, they will sell these "free" spin-off coins, thereby killing the spin-off.  If the community feels the technology is a "must have," they will sell bitcoins in favour of the spin-off, thereby transfer the bulk of the wealth to the new network.
hero member
Activity: 798
Merit: 1000
Who's there?
It's possible to test the "large actors buying OTC" theory. Have you or whales you know been recently contacted with a big OTC offer?
I have met buyers (2 hedge funds) who contract with industrial-scale miners for virgin blocks (and one of them also does altcoins).  I was not privy to contractual details.  I acted as an SME and quantitative analyst consulting for the funds.  I suspect one of the funds is sourcing a substantial quantity.  The fund that also does alts was probably not sourcing very much btc (and even less alts), in comparison.  This isn't enough data to form any strong conclusion, but it is leading.  I find it hard to imagine that my experiences were unique.  I can't identify them in any way without violating contracts.  They were not names familiar from crypto news (of which five spring to mind).

The number of desks doing btc is proliferating like commodity futures in the 80s, but very much on the down-low.  I can't imagine they can be accumulating much yet, or the dam would already have broken.
Thanks! That's more that could be expected, since such deals are very discrete, I imagine. As for "unique experience", it depends on how many of good QAs with substantial bitcoin knowledge are around. I suspect, not a lot.  Smiley
legendary
Activity: 2282
Merit: 1050
Monero Core Team

Suppose Monero (or a different alt) were to gain enough traction for it to appear inevitable that it would eventually topple bitcoin. How feasible would it be to fork bitcoin to adopt some or all features of Monero? iow, a merger of the first mover advantage of bitcoin with the technical advantages of Monero. I suppose this question has two parts: 1) What would be the technical feasibility of doing this? and 2) Would the community go along?
 

The chances of such a merger are zero. From a technical perspective the coins are very different, and the economic interests strongly align against this. More importantly such a merger would violate the most basic economic fundamentals of both coins. This means that such a merger would break all trust in the coins and yes could make them both worthless. Both communities would reject such a merger and for very good reasons.

What is more likely to happen here is that Bitcoin would have to fork to deal with the 1 MB Limit. Both coins would live side by side, compete and hopefully learn from each other. First mover is not everything. A very good example is the credit card industry. The first movers were Diner's Club and then American Express. Then came the later entrants including Visa and MasterCard. The first movers are still around but with vastly reduced market share.

The challenge for the Bitcoin is to deal with the 1 MB blocksize limit before the above happens and not become the American Express or even Diner's Club of crypto-currency.

Edit: Bitcoin might even fork in the middle of a boom, like it did the last time. After all it is way easier to get consensus when everyone is getting wealthier.
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1001
So this could be the end of the bitcoin bubbles, possibly. Will a competitor come and dethrone bitcoin? Or, are we just entering a new and much smaller growth period?

This may depend on how the question of the 1 MB max blocksize limit is handled. One thing is certain without an increase in this limit, and a hark fork is necessary for this, Bitcoin will be dethroned by a competitor. Once the limit is reached transaction fees will skyrocket as an ever growing number of transactions compete for the 1 MB space every 10 min. Fortunately Gavin Andresen understands the need for this. So do other Bitcoin developers. The real question in my mind is will they muster the necessary community consensus to make this hard fork happen?

I don't think there's any plausible scenario in which the death of Bitcoin is somehow an opportunity for some altcoin to take its place.  The death of Bitcoin would be the death of cryptocurrency.

I don't agree. BTC is currently caught in the middle of two somewhat conflicting pulls: 1) a means of commerce and 2) and a deeper evolution of modern politics: that is, the changing balance of power between the individual and the state. At this point there are alts mpving full speed ahead in both these two directions, while btc seems paralyzed in the middle. In first direction, alts like Via are moving forward with sidechain possibilities and faster transactions. In the other direction, anons like Cloak and BTCD are moving rapidly towards privacy evolutions that BTC has now forsaken.

Evolution, sythesis, antithesis - this is the nature of life. BTC and crypto in general does not stand apart  from this flow.

If Bitcoin can be replaced by a competitor, then it will almost certainly have failed to act as a store of value.  At that point, why would anyone have confidence in the replacement coin not to be itself replaced in time.  If this scenario were to play out, I think it would damage confidence in cryptocurrencies for the foreseeable future.

Suppose Monero (or a different alt) were to gain enough traction for it to appear inevitable that it would eventually topple bitcoin. How feasible would it be to fork bitcoin to adopt some or all features of Monero? iow, a merger of the first mover advantage of bitcoin with the technical advantages of Monero. I suppose this question has two parts: 1) What would be the technical feasibility of doing this? and 2) Would the community go along?
 
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 1001
private property as we knowing must basically dissapear. Things will be lended. Say you need whatever device to do whatever task, like record a movie or whatever, you ask for any free cameras and you get one sent, when you are done you send it back and some other person uses it.
Who sends you the camera? Who stores it? Who fixes it when it's broken? If two people want it at the same time, who decides who gets it? What happens to the person who "borrows" it and never sends it back?

Statistics could get extracted in terms of "how many cameras are used and for how much time are they used, and how many of them get broken" and then manufacture under these %'s. These cameras are built by automated robots, which manufacture given the data input that I mentioned earlier. The wasted stuff aka unrepairable will be decomposed and the prime materials used again. In 1000 years the human imput to keep this cycle going will be peanuts.
Who extracts these statistics? Who decides how much in terms of resources gets spent on digital cameras, smartphone cameras, video cameras, other types of cameras, and / or R&D on new types of cameras?

Of course some sort of centralized (as in central or "Main", not closed source) computer having realtime date of worldwide resources. I don't see any other solution. The core of what dictates if something can be manufactured or not is judging by the dictatorship that is nature (nature is only true dictatorship, we must align to it, to whatever resources are available) and also to the well being of everyone. If what you are requesting, whatever that is, compromises the basic needs of a person a continent away, then you deal with it and not get said thing until this equilibrum of resources and global well being + your specific not basic need demand not compromising any of the former is meet.

How do you plan to convince the world population to subjugate themselves to your centralized computer?
full member
Activity: 232
Merit: 100
is there a significant consequence to 2x, 4x, 10x -ing the block size as a temp fix?

Increasing the hard-coded blocksize limit as a temporary fix is trivial from the software perspective, but it is a hard fork.  In pseudo code:

   if (blocknumber > 350,000) blocksize_limit = 4 MB

   else blocksize_limit = 1 MB

I expect that we will implement a temporary fix like this ^^ when we get closer to the limit.  There will also be a strong commitment at this point that the next change will implement a floating blocksize limit.  The algorithm used to calculate this limit must be chosen very carefully and shouldn't be rushed.    

my question was more, is there a "sig consequence" to bigger blocks, not is it difficult to implement. i assume it's a trivial change. but is there a real impact to the blockchain (bloat etc...) or economy to have 10x size blocks? and how long would that solve the problem for etc...?

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