Topic: This GAME once clogged up Bitcoin and contributed to the emergence of Lightning! (Read 105 times)

Thanks OgNasty!

This post was inspired after the recent discovery of Nostr Dice, and by pure chance, I came across the story of Satoshi Dice and its role in the history of Bitcoin in the french book 'L'élégance de Bitcoin' by Ludovic Lars.

The synchronicity was surprising so I decided to write that fun story.

Satoshi Dice was a great way to use the properties of Bitcoin for a purpose and I think it also did a great job at bringing new people into the economy. You also did a good job stating the controversy. As Satoshi Dice played a big role in justifying the blocksize limit and may have helped lead to the artificial limiting of the blockchain that sparked the altcoin boom and set Bitcoin back in use cases quite a bit while forever changing the landscape of crypto.

the only linkage of satoshidice to scaling debate was about the changes done that affected the tx fee policy which was meant to mitigate the utxoset growth, which people got annoyed by the increasing fee's even when blocks were not full.. however the devs playing with fee policy then used fee annoyances for other agenda's whilst still not solving the underlying issues

it was not due to satoshidice bloating the blockchain, it was the fee policy changes(to mitigate the utxoset) that annoyed people, but you cant really even blame satoshidice for the scaling debate as it was actually sponsored dev agenda to just raise the fee as a pre-emptive strategy to promote people should use other networks as the direction to go. so it was more about the fee's not the satoshi dice number of transactions per block

but yea indirectly you could say satoshi dice caused A which caused B which caused C, thus vaguely link A to C...
..but B would have happened anyway even without satoshi dice

My take was that both Satoshi Dice and Voorhees contributed in increasing the activity on the network thus stimulating debates.. But thanks for your enlightenment, really interesting as I'm diving a little bit in Bitcoin's history

satoshi dice didnt trigger "blockspace" debates.. satoshidice was about utxoset debates of nodes hardware(RAM)
(separate dataset to the blockchain)
devs admitted even in 2013 that blocks of 1mb were not network heavy so no risk so even in 2013-2017 when blocks were only 0.4mb-0.99mb the debate was not about network heaviness where it would harm the network

satoshidice affected the utxoset and as a result "fee priority formula" were removed as a mitigation strategy of the utxo dust issues(causing fee' to climb even when blocks were not full). and then when people were paying fee's and paying higher fee's even when blocks were not constantly at capacity, debates about wanting more transactions so that each transaction didnt have to pay more.. yet the next propaganda about 'miner revenue' issues which then pretended higher fee's were needed, which are always brought up around reward halving periods that then drove the debate about blockspace

it was more so the fee's exceeding $0.10 while blocks were 0.75mb that triggered the blocksize debate out of fear of the future possible risk of congestion.
yet the direction devs went didnt help main net fees, nor mainnet transaction count, nor mainnet tx leanness.. so in 2024 we are still being told to wait for devs motivations to shift.. but in short no it was not satoshi dice that inspired devs decisions to do segwit/lightning strategies

Hello SquirrelJulietGarden, thank you for your response.

Indeed, I did not share the satoshi dice website because it was sold in 2013. I believe the site has changed hands several times and has ended up being a version of the game running on Bitcoin Cash, which I did not want to give exposure to.

The purpose of the OP was more to highlight how the game has accompanied the history and evolution of bitcoin and the debates around block space and scalability.

A clone of the game is now running on Nostr powered by Lightning, and I find it quite funny knowing that the original game as well as Voorhees have contributed on their scale to the adoption of Segwit and the advent of Lightning.

The circle of life, of innovation...

You are teaching us about Satoshi Dice but in OP, there is no link to that platform website.

Tyke has a book on The Bitcoin History Book 2008-2024' with information about Satoshi Dice too.

After years, Satoshi Dice turns to a Bitcoin Cash Dice website and no longer provides Bitcoin /Satoshi Dice game.
https://satoshidice.com/

It suggests a wallet from https://wallet.bitcoin.com/ that is from Bitcoin Cash and Roger Ver scam team.

In 2013, transactions related to the online gambling game Satoshi Dice accounted for up to 50% of the total volume of Bitcoin transactions. While the sheer number of transactions increased, the overall size of the blockchain did not explode in a problematic way.

However, some members of the Bitcoin community, including users and developers, complained about the impact of Satoshi Dice on the Bitcoin blockchain as early as 2012 on forums:
- Certain users labeled the transactions generated by Satoshi Dice as spam, believing the service flooded the network with unnecessary transactions. This led to discussions about how Satoshi Dice circumvented Bitcoin's built-in anti-DDoS mechanisms, which rely on transaction fees to limit spam.
- Community members, including developers, expressed concerns about the implications of the network being overloaded by Satoshi Dice. These discussions highlighted the need to improve Bitcoin's scalability to handle higher transaction volumes without compromising network performance.

See also: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Satoshi_Dice

but blocks didnt fill up in 2012 "clogging up bitcoin"
blocks were under 0.5mb <2013 and didnt really get to a 0.99mb average until 2017


the 'blocksize war' discussions began in 2015 not due to congestion of constant filled blocks, but due to people seeing blocks reach 0.75mb which lead to some of the 'priority fee formulae' provisions being removed whereby less people got free fee tx, and it getting closer to being filled regular so they wanted some tx count scaling done (multiple things like leaner transactions as well as a SCALING to the blocksize(not leaping propaganda))
which then lead to the poor judgement(bribery/coercion) of devs to think making bitcoin fee's expensive and tx's bloated to deter usage and promote bitcoin abandonment for other networks as "the solution" (facepalm)

lightning was not inspired by satoshi dice. it was inspired by devs being sponsored by corporations to create other networks so middlemen can make profit from fee's which they cant do on the mainnet

the main complaint of satoshi dice were the amount of small value utxo's creating a large database of utxo's which were then not spendable. thus not clogging up the blockchain, but instead causing the UTXOset to increase with no sign of it being able to be spent to bring the UTXOset size down again
(2012 utxoset: 0.5m utxo's, 2015 utxoset:35m utxo's)
the utxo explosion headache to nodes was not mitigated by segwit nor lightning, it was instead mitigated by no longer storing utxo set in RAM memory cache thus less burden on peoples nodes hardware

On April 24, 2012, Erik Voorhees changed everything about Bitcoin with the launch of Satoshi Dice:
a game that captivated users and intensified debates about Bitcoin's evolution and the network's ability to handle an increasing volume of transactions.

At that time, Satoshi Dice allowed thousands of players to bet on digital dice rolls, leading to a **MASSIVE** influx of transactions that filled the blocks of the blockchain.

Success of Satoshi Dice:
Satoshi Dice achieved phenomenal success, attracting millions of users with its simplicity.
Players flocked in, bets piled up, and blocks filled up.

Erik Voorhees effectively leveraged Bitcoin's microtransactions, quickly saturating the blocks with these. This was a testament to the game's popularity, but also a source of tension within the community.

Within months, Satoshi Dice became the most popular service on the Bitcoin network, boosting its usage and virality.

Players appreciated the "provable fairness" aspect of the game, where they could verify the transparency and fairness of each bet.

Criticism and Controversy:
However, this success was not without criticism.

Many Bitcoin enthusiasts viewed the massive influx of transactions generated by the game unfavorably.
For them, these sometimes trivial transactions "spammed" the blockchain, clogging the blocks and increasing transaction fees for all users. Does this sound familiar?

The network, designed to handle about seven transactions per second, quickly reached its maximum capacity, causing validation delays and "high" fees.

BlockSize Wars:
The BlockSize wars, which took place mainly between 2016 and 2017, were a technical and ideological conflict centered on block size and scalability solutions.

While Satoshi Dice was not the sole cause, the game significantly contributed to the emergence of this event by helping to popularize Bitcoin among new users and generating substantial transaction volume.

As Bitcoin adoption grew, the network faced intense pressure, leading to block saturation and rising transaction fees.
On one side, some advocated for increasing block size to allow more transactions, leading to the creation of Bitcoin Cash in August 2017. On the other, proponents of solutions like SegWit pushed for improvements without compromising decentralization.

Adoption of SegWit:
Erik Voorhees expressed his support for the SegWit2x proposal, which aimed to improve network scalability by combining the implementation of SegWit with an increase in block size.

Segregated Witness (SegWit) was adopted in August 2017, allowing transaction data to be separated from signatures. This reorganization not only increased transaction processing capacity but also paved the way for the development of the Lightning Network, a layer 2 solution enabling instant and low-cost transactions.

SegWit was a crucial response to the challenges posed by network congestion, which had been exacerbated by Bitcoin's growing adoption and the emergence of popular applications like Satoshi Dice.

SegWit and Lightning:
The adoption of SegWit helped resolve blockchain congestion issues, while the Lightning Network, a layer 2 solution, facilitated fast and low-cost transactions.

Together, these innovations not only addressed technical challenges but also renewed enthusiasm for games and other applications on Bitcoin, paving the way for a new wave of development.

Nostr Dice:
Today, as we reflect on the impact of Satoshi Dice, a new project emerges: @NostrDice / https://njump.me/npub1nstrdc6z4y9xadyj4z2zfecu6zt05uvlmd08ea0vchcvfrjvv7yq8lns84

This modern clone of the original game is built on Nostr, a decentralized communication protocol, and Lightning, paying homage to the past while offering an enhanced gaming experience that does not impact layer 1 congestion!

From a game that caused Bitcoin congestion to its rebirth on Lightning, which it helped to bring about, the circle is complete!