Great post obviously.

As for what to replace the 1 MB anti-spam restriction with, I think Gavin's proposal is very good:

http://gavintech.blogspot.ca/2015/01/twenty-megabytes-testing-results.html


Instead of sudden and massive block size limit increases every two or four years, it would increase a little every block.

my point is: the chain is already pretty big. If it becomes 20 fold as big i will be forced to stop using bitcoin because i don't want a lite-client or rely on 3rd parties with my coins but on the other hand can't afford upgrading harddrive all the time (especially not with these bad btc prices).

If you raise blocklimit 20-fold it will become unaffordable for normal people to store the blockchain on their computers and because of that people loose access.


On a sidenote:
I am not the only one totally annoyed by how bitcoin behaves in an effort to keep the dominant position and be the 'one coin for all' and with this hurts the alt-industry. I think at this point it becomes inevitable to start using more than one chain and stop looking at btc as the only coin worth bothering with.
All the problems dissolve at exactly the moment we accept a multi-coin/chain solution.

according to OP, if i understand right: if we don't raise limit little people loose access (i doubt it)
BUT raising the blocklimit will also ensure little people to loose access.
Conclusion: one blockchain for everyone is no viable idea

With raising the blocklimit and creating a chain as big as 200gb and more as soon as 1 or 2 years down the road bitcoin won't be able to reach the enduser.

D&T, a very informative OP.

Empirically, ~1MB blocks support 2.7 tps.

https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/941331.msg10360199#msg10360199

"Conclusion

The blockchain permanently restricted to 1MB is great if you are a major bank looking to co-opt the network for a next generation limited trust settlement network between major banks, financial service providers, and payment processors.   It is a horrible idea if you even want to keep open the possibility that individuals will be able to participate in that network without using a trusted third party as an intermediary."


great post.

^ I would say this guy doesn't want Bitcoin to succeed


Anyway, it deserves to be said again: great post by D&T. This is basically the definitive counter to arguments from supporters of a permanent 1 MB restriction.

It's spelled lose.

and you rather wait for 30 years before your transaction gets through? Because that's what will happen when you keep the filesize at 1 MB


Allowing altcoins is opening a can of shit, if we just keep inventing and embracing new altcoins all the time, everyone would just print their own coin and how exactly would that be different from every nation issuing their own fiat currency?

Bitcoin is valuable because it's limited, deal with it. No other coins need to replace bitcoin, and if bitcoin is not suitable, we update it. And that's exactly what will happen, bitcoin will get an update, and it will be updated again and again until it is perfected. Just like every other piece of technology, including the internet.

Technology adapts, technology evolves, technology changes, get used to it. The only constant in the universe is change, you either change with it and adapt, or you get left behind.


little people will lose access to the blockchain if we KEEP the limit at 1 MB because the 4 tps or something will never be enough to cover even a fraction of the transactions. You'd need insane amounts of fees to get included in the blockchain, more than any individual could ever afford.

We are currently siting at an average size of about 0.4 MB (so we are not at our limit yet) and it's not being spammed to be full, which is good. But there's not a lot of room left for growth.

40% may not seem like much, but under exponential growth, it's getting dangerously close. And with things like this you really don't want to wait til the last moment.

Also, it's just the LIMIT that increases, it doesn't suddenly increase the ACTUAL size 20 fold, it just increases the MAXIMUM POSSIBLE size 20 fold. So it gives us a little more breathing room, nothing to be scared of.

and lastly, harddisks are very cheap nowadays, and will only become cheaper.

what does it matter if the blockchain is 30 gb or 500 gb? It's not like 2TB harddisks are expensive or anything. Still cheaper than a safe.

Or do you really trust the banks with all your money? See if they don't run off in the event of the next economic collapse? Think the government will bail them out again? With what money? They can't really raise the taxes any higher you know? Not without civil unrest anyway.


I bet you're one of those guys that keep complaining about phone batteries getting smaller, while in reality they get bigger (capacity-wise anyway), but it's all those extra functions that drain the batteries faster than they can create more powerful batteries.


You had time to post this, but you couldn't just quote yourself here?

I bet you're afraid that we will come up with counter-arguments to it, because you probably realize you are wrong but you're not man enough to admit it.

I guess you were referring to this one.

even though we never reached over 50% of the maximum blocksize yet, the block sizes vary wildly per block, and grow pretty much exponentially.

Also, we are at about 30% consistently right now.

If it keeps growing at the same rate as it has now, it may very well take a little over a year before we really need the upgrade, but what if it doesn't? What if we get another rally next month, or in two months? Another rally will surely come with an increase in transactions, a massive increase, as can be seen from the charts. And since we are already using about 30% another rally will likely need more than 1MB.

It will not need 20MB, but while we are at it we may as well give ourselves some room.

If we keep the 1MB limit, the next rally will kill bitcoin, because the transactions will be too limited, the network will clog, and people will blame the blockchain technology for it.

And we may very well never get a second chance to do it right.

and all those other blockchains are so small because NO ONE USES THEM

growth is a GOOD thing, more size means more transactions means more users means more value.

You must be able to broadcast that huge block to most of the nodes in 10 minutes. I don't see the latest research regarding this area, but there is a paper from 2013


http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/49318d3f56c1d525aabf7fda78b23fc0/P2P2013_041.pdf

Based on this research, it took 0.25 seconds for each KB transaction to reach 90% of network. In another word, a 1MB block will take 256 seconds to broadcast to majority of nodes and that is 4 minutes

When block size reach 10MB, you will have a broadcast time of 40 minutes, means before your block reach the far end of the network, those nodes have already digged out 3 extra blocks thus your block is always orphaned by them. And the whole network will have disagreement about which segment have the longest chain, thus fork into different chains

Gavin's proposal is to let mining pools and farms connect to high speed nodes on internet backbone. That is reasonable, since the propagation time is only meaningful for miners, your transaction will be picked up by the mining nodes closest to you and if those mining nodes have enough bandwidth, they can keep up with the speed. But anyway, how much bandwidth is really needed to broadcast 10MB message in a couple of minutes between hundreds of high speed nodes need to be tested. And this is the risk that someone worried about the centralization of mining nodes: Only those who have ultra high speed internet connection can act as nodes (I'm afraid that chinese farms will be dropped out since their connection to the outside world is extremely slow, they will just fork to their own chain inside mainland china)

You assume that miner can effectively control supply. This in absence of a block size limit is only the case if they are building cartels, that artificially limit the supply.

Is that you really prefer instead of an algorithmic decision?
Remember Bitcoin's promise is to operate without the need of cartels and authorities.

To clarify... Suppose there are 5 transactions:

#	Fee	Size	Fee per 256 KB
1	0.1	512KB	0.05
2	0.1	512KB	0.05
3	0.05	256KB	0.05
4	0.05	256KB	0.05
5	0.01	256KB	0.01

Now with the 1 MB limit the miner can, at most, earn BTC0.2.
With a 20MB limit the miner can earn BTC0.31. More than 1.5x as much as with the 1MB limit! Did their cost increase 1.5x? I don't see that. I wonder which fork miners would pick...