Topic: Why the Bitcoin rules can't change (reading time ~5min) - page 2. (Read 11946 times)

1mb full blocks where 100% of each block is full for the whole year =52.5gb a year bloat
2mb full blocks where 100% of each block is full for the whole year =105gb a year bloat
2mb+segwit where 100% of each block is full for the whole year =210gb a year bloat
2mb+segwit+confidential payment codes plus other feature flags where 100% of each block is full for the whole year =420gb a year bloat


standard basic UK cheap desktop computer at £350($500) has 3.5TB hard drive.
this allows for ATLEAST 8 years(3500/420) storage*.

average time scale a gamer upgrades their computer 6months-2years
average time an active computer user(office/computer hobbiest) upgrades their computer 2-4 years.

so storage is no issue. people will upgrade their computer before the hard drive fills.

*after all the 420gb is MAXIMUM potential. remember bitcoin was able to have true 1mb buffer allowance since 2013(unofficially 2009) yet bitcoin is not 7x52gb..
so even after 8 years harddrives will not be 420gb filled.

with all that said. having to download and validate a 1mb block in under 5 minutes is technically harder than downloading a 2mb block in 10 minutes.
also messing with the difficulty, and the blockreward to achieve a 5minute average while keeping the 21mill cap is harder to code without bugs then simply raising the limit to 2mb for 10minute average.

and if you look at monero. they have actually increased their blocktime due to bad orphan rates and other issues.

so if monero thinks that 2minutes is safe for 1mb monero, safe for 1mb litecoin etc.  but when bitcoin is also handling segit, confidential transactions and having to do things like pruning. this makes it 5x more unstable. so 10minutes is a safe processing time for all of bitcoins features compared to the processing time needed for 2009 version of bitcoin, compared to the processing time needed for 1mb of monero, compared to the processing time needed for 1mb litecoin.

in short
yes in 2009 bitcoin could have been reduced to 5 minute average without issue. but now bitcoin has grown with many more features and usability, there would be problems in multiple ways of making 5 minute blocks

are you sure its not 100TB?

yeah people keep going on about the drain on hard drive space, you would need to have a pretty old machine for this to be a problem as far as i am concerned, most modern desktops are coming with 3TB these days.

bump

That may well be, but what does that have to do with the network management policy that currently requires blocks be less than 1MB? I silently read the forums daily and only decided to post more recently when some vocal people decided that this network management policy should be set in stone when people started asking "should we increase the limit"? The network management policy is very unlike all the other "fixed" points that make Bitcoin. It only extends Bitcoin's capability while hopefully not exposing Bitcoin to the attacks retep identified. I'm normally happy to stay on the sidelines and watch what solutions people come up with. I like to hear some thought and pause about increasing the limit, I'm a bit disturbed that anyone seriously thinks it should be fixed and that aspect of Bitcoin is perfect just the way it is. The amount of thought that went into that limit was clearly crude and haphazard compared to all the other fixed points.

By all means the community needs to explore why it needs to change, what changes need to be made, how the changes will be implemented and when the network will accept the change. I feel that anyone that seriously explores those topics will see there will be a need for a change. Maybe they will conclude that we won't need to see that change in anyone's lifetime, but I would like to see some better evidence on why they think that.

Going back to your example for the moment, I don't think the goal is necessarily valid. Assuming it is though, even the cheapest computers today can handle being a full node indefinitely even with a block size increase. The only question is how high can it go if that is the goal. Bitcoin can always choose to make trade-offs between things like fast, cheap, and good. Even if we choose all three, there is still room to increase the limit. I would hope we would trade-off a little bit off the cheap side, and increase network requirements a bit more than others might like, but I can live with modest changes if the reasoning has legs. Regardless, I want the decision to be continuously re-evaluated like every other part of Bitcoin.

It is hard to understand how anyone can want Bitcoin to stay in the dark ages forever. Anyone that says it changes the social contract hasn't been paying enough attention to all the other changes that have been happening to the code base that makes the social contract. This change should be less controversial than P2SH or overflow bug. Software is meant to evolve and Bitcoin already has.

Open Transactions is fine, but please do not conflate what it does with the block size limit and why it is there. Anyone can use whatever version of Bitcoin they want. I hope you've never upgraded. I'm sure it will continue to work just fine like all the other alt chains, until the 32-bit time stamp issue runs its course. The Bitcoin you are using now will look like a quaint dinosaur in 50 years. The "real" Bitcoin will be whatever everyone agrees to use.

I would consider running two nodes...one for the slow Bitcoin with tiny block chain and one for world dominating megachain Bitcoin...there may be a use for each type of Bitcoin. 

Although I am deeply in the 'light footprint' camp, I find it equally valid that people who signed on to Bitcoin thinking that it could scale to become the world's economic system could be feeling slighted.

I honestly can say that I recognized the conflict within seconds of having a basic understanding of Bitcoin, but then I have a background in operating datacenters and dealing with fairly large amounts of data.  Even if Merkle pruning had progressed it really would not fully solve some of the more difficult scaling issues.

Neither the 'peer-2-peer' concept nor the 'replace the banks' concept were ever deprecated and I consider the Bitcoin project fairly disingenuous in this failing.  To blame individuals for their own particular differences in opinion is not really completely appropriate in my mind.

That expectation is insane, unless you expect Bitcoin to remain a tiny niche currency that a statistically insignificant fraction of a tiny minority of the population use, or you just want it to die on the vine.

There are a lot of optimizations which could be put in place that would allow regular users to process much higher transaction rates. Maybe we'd need to require users to have a computer purchased within the last 2 or 3 years with a broadband connection instead of a dial up modem, is that really too much to ask?

Instead of complaining about how higher transaction rates will make it harder to run a full node, why not support some of the people trying to implement optimizations to make that less of a problem?

Except it isn't just me, there are hundreds of users (and owners of bitcoin) like me, who signed on to a system that we thought would have LOWER relative costs to verify in the future.  That one day every, even the cheapest computer, could become a full-node.

The thing is that these people don't post on the forums about this change.  Because they are not arguing FOR a change. They are quite happy with bitcoin is atm.

They don't even need to be convinced about the change.  Their Bitcoin; the current Bitcoin; the real Bitcoin.  Will continue to work just fine.

He is also saying his fork will continue to exist regardless. That's fine, he can use his inconsequential fork as long as he has another node to connect to (even if it is his own). He can also use Open Transactions he is selling as a solution all he likes too.

I suspect most of us will not support a fork that doesn't scale to its potential. Zealotry is not a good reason to keep a crude network management rule that has served its purpose and was meant to be improved. Much of the protocol was meant to be upgraded and replaced as needed. The 1MB limit increase will likely be the second improvement of many. The first as I understand it is block V2, which is still phasing in. Others like the hashing and key algorithms appear to be fine for the foreseeable future and probably all our lifetimes, but they will change eventually if bitcoin doesn't die. The txn limit is actually much lower than 7 tps if bitcoin ever sees significant usage of any of it's coolest features, like smart contracts.

All you're saying is that to be successful the userbase just needs to grow by an order of magnitude, which is exactly what one would predict if the demand for transactions is exceeding what 1 MB blocks can provide.

That isn't the point either.  The fact is that my nodes will continue to run quite fine; rejecting your blocks.  I will be using bitcoin, and you will be using some alt-rule-chain that I don't consider to be bitcoin.

My coins will be spendable in both chains.  

The thing is that if 10% (or even 1%) of the Bitcoin USERS do not accept the change, the change will not happen: because the economic consequences will be too-large.


We are not working in a democracy here.  We are working with a "do what the you want, but I'm not going to change my code mkay."
For this change to be successful, the bar isn't 50%, or 90%, or 99%, but rather closer to 99.9%.

I'll not 'veto' an effort to have Bitcoin evolve to a high footprint system which natively competes head-on with mainstream solutions, but I expect that it will either fail outright or eventually be perverted to the point where it is worse than nothing.  All the same, I'll hope that I am wrong and wish it well.

I expect that there will be enough like-minded stakeholders to operate a light-weight solution which focuses on security.  If so, I'll be one.  As I said on one of my few OP threads, I feel that the resources needed to light-weight chain if security and credibility outweigh a profit motive are well within the reach of what a small number of enthusiasts can muster.  A chain maintained as an insurance policy against subversion of the 'real' Bitcoin does not necessarily need to spend it's gestational phase of life in highly profitable mode and a fairly small group of maintainers is something which has less potential to be subverted.

I've always specifically expected that all of my monetary input which acquired BTC would be a total loss.  A highly speculative adventure.  No matter what happens vis-a-vis the block size, I'll be re-claiming my initial investment one of these days.  Then the remaining BTC can sit for years.  So if the blockchain forks I'll have plenty of time to see how things progress.  I could have my hand forced if one chain forces a legacy spend of course, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

If they developers commit to scaling the network as far as the demand for transaction requires so that it can be the replacement for PayPal, and for Visa, and maybe even national currencies that we've all been promised, then I'll start up an extra full node to replace yours.

But, for such a change, even 1% can veto it... That is what makes Bitcoin so great!  The economic problems caused by 1% forking makes it not worth for the 99% to implement the change.

Phew, for a moment you had me worried, but with 90% following one side of a fork - then worries over.

da2ce7, please consider that nearly everyone on this forum has bitcoin's interests at heart. That it why thousands of posts debate the minutiae of any software change. Then consider how much progress there would be if 100% agreement was needed before any action took place...

I see the block size (and frequency) as much as economic rules as the total number of coin is.  I disagree with Satoshi that it is just something that we can 'change.'

I'm part of that sticky group of people that WILL NOT accept a larger block size.  I doesn't matter what other people say; or the reasons that they give.  Frankly, I would reject (with my full node, and SPV nodes) any non-bitcoin chain.  Any block breaking the 1mb/10min avg limit will not be a bitcoin for me.


However I am not worried.  I know that Bitcoin will be just fine with a 1mb block limit; as MarkM so eloquently put is, we need to get over having only one chain, but rarther think of having a ecosystem of hundreds of merge-mined chains that all fullfill different roles.


One of the reasons, (there are many), that I work on Open Transactions is that I believe that we need secure and cryptographically auditable off-chain transactions.  Making the need for more than 7tx/s on the Bitcoin block chain much (completely?) negated.

The best part is that I am in control of this problem.  Even if every other person moves to larger (or more frequent) blocks, I know my bitcoins are safe, and for-me bitcoin will keep-on working. (well other than the attack of a drastic lower hash-rate maybe)

So yes, I think that there is AT LEAST a key 10% of the Bitcoin user population (including me) that will veto any such changes.

Well, as a bitcoiner without programming background, I simply smelled something important. That is to run a full node, the Satoshi client and configure it to run at startup. It's something like my computer is a branch office of a bank that can perform full services to the community as much as headquarters do. 

Reading over the technical/economic arguments, I think the max block size should be whatever the p2p network (full nodes) can handle while allowing smallish miners to be competitive. The limit should be expanded to meet consumption as long as the p2p network can support it. If the change is done in one or more hard forks, pressure to develop better solutions shall and are emerging to make use of the available space more efficiently. We do not need a kitchen sink solution where everyone and their toaster can run a full node. What we do need is a Bitcoin where everyone that puts in a minimal amount of effort can run a full node, although running an archive node might not always be simple.

If someone wants to keep their sovereignty on a 56K modem, they can convince AOL to send out block chain coasters to everyone (using CDs) every week (tongue in cheek solution). If miners can't afford to include free transactions, they won't. Node relay rules don't determine what will be included in the block, the miners decide. I can't see inclusions for txns being much different than the market for domain registrars, if anything it is already a much freer market. Let the free market do its work in that regard. Bitcoin doesn't promise that anyone can validate the block chain in real time, for free, forever.

Like a few people in the other threads said, the market for including transactions is exactly like electricity prices. If marginal costs are not covered, miner won't do it any longer than they would if electricity prices are too high. People can use overlay networks as much as they want, the block chain should support whatever the network can handle. Arguing about max block size within the bounds of what is pragmatic is like arguing that txn relay fees should never change. I see any non-technical limit on transactions as anti-Bitcoin and not the Bitcoin I signed up for.

Which is why this type of proposal is being offered...

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1551072