I really hope your identity gets revealed. It is clear your intent is malicious, and you deserve the full weight of the internet coming down on you.
The fact that you are hiding makes you a coward.
CoinWallet.eu
What more identification you need?
Has anyone contacted coinwallet.eu to confirm they are behind this? No legit bitcoin exchange would tamper with the bitcoin network, especially over and over again.
Regardless whoever is doing this is trying to blow the negatives way out of proportion. There is little evidence that services were disrupted, yet in their report they say almost every service was crippled without any evidence to back it up. They even claim the market was effected which is super ignorant.
This is mostly being done to make people fearful, which is essentially terrorism.
Wow.
You sir, seem to be the epitome of the saying "better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, rather than opening your mouth and removing all doubt". As such, thankfully you will enter my Ignore list from here on.
However, before you go, although it will probably be akin to yelling at the wall, I offer this view.
Thankfully there exists a fork process to be able to make necessary changes, able to surpass individuals and gain majority consensus. I don't necessarily agree with the process that was used in the beginning to affect this change, it unfortunately detracted from a discussion of needed, proper changes, but it is what it is at this point.
Your idea that raising the block size will weaken Bitcoin I argue is quite foolish and misguided thinking. All one needs to do is see, or know, someone who is willing to drive 5 extra miles to find a gas station that is selling at one or two cents cheaper per gallon. They have fooled themselves into thinking they are "saving" 40 cents on a 20 gallon fillup, meanwhile they have just wasted $1 in gas to go that extra mileage.
Similarly,
not raising the block size has a greater chance of weakening or harming Bitcoin. I'll explain why (although reading the preview before hitting post it's rather circular and long-winded, but I had a lot to talk about... I hope y'all will stay with me).
Everyone seems to keep talking about the pools and the extra cost associated with a larger block size. I can fully understand that. I operate a full node hosted in a datacenter, which hosts miners on P2Pool. I see the daily effects of Bitcoin from an infrastructure point of view, I see how much computing resources are required to maintain it. I fully understand what it will require as the block size grows as with the latest proposals. This does not faze me in the least. Today's
desktop computers are fully capable of running a full node without breaking a sweat, and can still handle it well into the future. Bandwith is not a major concern to most civilized areas, as the general public now has access to 100Mbit fiber to the home. Today. They're already talking Gigabit to the majority of homes, hell Google has deployed and is selling it already -
https://fiber.google.com/cities/kansascity/plans/ . The server I have is nothing special, an older HP model with a good amount of RAM and a small RAID-array (only 300GB... only). I will not need to upgrade that server for at least 4-5 more years, even with the increase in storage the larger blocks may take up.
I cry zero tears for the pools in China who are complaining about bandwith for the increased block sizes. Change your government policies, or die off. Just like the rest of the Bitcoin network, pool placement will evolve and self-adjust to keep the ecosystem running. The miners won't care, they will re-point to another pool elsewhere and keep on going.
However, no one seems to be talking about it from the miners' angle.
In addition to hosting a full node, I also am a miner. As a miner, I am
salivating at the thought of increased block sizes.
As this test shows, the number of transactions was too great to get confirmations done quickly enough, and a backlog occurred. You say "eh, no biggie, I can wait". In general I'd probably agree with you, I'm personally generally in no hurry with my transactions, and can probably wait without much consequence.
But as a miner, I don't want to wait. I don't want to have to run my miner for 8 hours when I have the possibility of gaining the same income in only 1 hour with an 8MB blocksize instead of a 1MB blocksize.
Being I play both node operator and miner, I can tell you with certainty that mining is the harder of the two to do and be profitable at. The infrastructure costs for mining are magnitudes greater than running a node. This will not change, and will only get worse as the block halving happens. We need as much extra income as possible to help us offset the costs of running a miner.
I get the ideology of Bitcoin. I get the ideology of "well, just raise the fees and your transactions will get approved quicker". Hell, I even get the argument you and others have been preaching about "the 1MB limit is fine, I don't care if my transactions take longer, I'll just pay a fee if I want it quicker, let everyone else rot". I get it, however I obviously don't agree with it.
Getting out of ideology, and into the real world, the fact is that Bitcoin is being propped to grow. Big. By large efforts from individuals and companies alike. No matter the motivation, if Bitcoin survives and thrives as is being currently intended by the community at large, the number of transactions will increase, and it will be due to adoption by "normal folk". These normal folk are going to hear about the benefits of Bitcoin as a payment system, namely "Reliable, Fast, Cheap". It's funny that in the IT world (at least), the mantra is "Good, Fast, Cheap, pick two". Which, is pretty much the argument afforded by most here objecting to the changes. If it's Good and Cheap, it can't be fast, etc. Unfortunately, most understand that outside of the educated few, that mantra is ignored, and the majority will demand all three.
I'll go back to my gas station analogy now.
Unfortunately the people outlined in the analogy represent the majority, and I don't mean in just terms of getting gas. The psyche of us humans today is to minimize cost wherever possible, and maximize returns. Unfortunately most are incapable of looking inside and realizing logic contrary to quick, popular thought, as in the case of realizing they should just pay the higher price, instead of continuing to hunt (or wait, in our case) for bargains.
So, after all this long dissertation, where does this leave us, and why are we talking about gas stations instead of Bitcoin?
Because the masses will not want to wait for their transactions to take that long. They hear "Good, Fast, Cheap" and possible or not, they want all three. In order for Bitcoin to survive and thrive, it will need to do its best to match these qualities. In order to do so, the blocksize will need to adjust so attempt to compensate for the additional volume, while attempting to adhere to the mantra. They will want to put their transactions in for the default small fees, and they will want them processed just as quickly as everyone else's. Right or wrong, and I am on the "they're wrong and should just understand it and pay the fees" side, this is ideology vs. real world. Real world wins.
In my view it is far better to have thousands or tens of thousands of extra smaller transactions included in each block, to be able to reward the miners and keep them profitable, as I fully believe that will be more profitable than maintaining a smaller number of transactions with higher fees. Law of averages.
And, lest I forget part of the main argument - the weakening of the network.
I circle back to above where I mention the costs of mining compared to costs of running a node.
My argument is simple - if the miners are unable to sustain costs and at least break even, they will die off. Even the large farms will be unable to sustain, as they are not individuals doing this for a hobby, they are there to make a profit and pay back investors and workers' salaries, etc.
As miners die off, the diff will adjust lower. With all the excess hardware that's out there, it will be trivial for a large corporation or country to buy up mass equipment, and wait for the time to strike. Once low enough it would be possible for a 51% attack to be launched pretty easily, and then they garner control of the network. Game over, done.
The miners are in control, and need to be, they are the heart of the network. This change helps the miners going forward maintain the possibility of survival and profit. It has always been seen that transactions are supposed to assume the role of providing income to miners and be the incentive for them continuing to run. I just believe that more transactions, no matter how small, will be better to achieve that goal.
Finally, back on topic.
I appreciate the efforts of the folks running the tests. It is good to be able to show now where deficiencies may lie in the network, before greater, general adoption. You always try to stress things before you launch live, however there is nothing ever that will be able to properly simulate the real world usage of a fully live to-the-public application. Sometimes you need to break things in production to be able to fix them.
