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The True Cost of Bitcoin Transactions

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Re: The True Cost of Bitcoin Transactions

#81

Post by pmorici »

checksauce wrote: post #62
pmorici wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is at least one prominent core dev that recently seriously proposed _decreasing_ the block size to 1/3rd of what it is currently. The problem is that the block size needed to be increased last year. Agreeing that it needs to be increased at some unspecified point in the future minus any specifics is just a stalling tactic.

Yes some devs believe there is centralization pressure of mining blocks caused by the propogation delay of 1MB blocks. Further increasing the size of blocks would thus increase centralization pressure. Changing any number of variables leads to emergent properties which change mining behaviors. Game theory needs to be considered before tweaking the consensus protocols of Bitcoin. The open source nature of Bitcoin allo…

The issue of propagation delays with bigger blocks was fixed with xthin blocks (aka: compact blocks) months ago. That is no longer a valid reason for limiting the block size.

Re: The True Cost of Bitcoin Transactions

#83

Post by nadaviv »

pmorici wrote: post #79
nadaviv wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Outsourcing the task to a centralized service also sounds bad. At that point you have to trust that service. You don't have to trust that service. He can't steal your money, you don't lose any privacy if the other party doesn't cheat, you don't pay anything to the service if there's no cheating attempt, and the 3rd-party service is financially incentivized to help you prevent cheating. So, no, you don't "trust" any…

Yes, you absolutely have to trust the service. If I have a channel open with Alice and she wants to cheat me but I've out sourced my monitoring to Bob Alice only needs to pay off Bob to go along with her cheating me. I have to trust Bob not to collude with Alice. In Bitcoin I don't have to trust anyone. Surely you can see that there is a difference in the two models.

You can have as many Bobs as you want, which can all function at a very low cost and compete for users with low fees and high service quality. I can easily imagine registering your transactions to tens of different service providers, making it quite impossible for Alice to pay them all of (or even know who they are).

Re: The True Cost of Bitcoin Transactions

#84

Post by nadaviv »

Laforet wrote: post #78
nadaviv wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment you linked to refers to blocks that were specifically made to be big using non-standard scripts that are larger than usual. For the current mix of transactions happening on the bitcoin network, SegWit will give us an effective block size of 2.1MB (or 2.1x transactions compared to today), and a bit more over time as people start using more advanced scripts.

According to the video below SegWit creates 4x effective transaction space in the same 1MB block. I assume that is a theoretical ceiling unlikely to be achievable in reality? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzBAG2Jp4bg

No, it creates 4x effective transaction space in blocks that can now be as large as 4MB. It does not compress data more efficiently or makes transactions smaller in any way, it is a block size increase in every sense of the word.

The only ones who see this as 1MB block are old nodes that didn't upgrade to a segwit-compatible client. But for nodes that do upgrade, the block is simply larger.

But you're right in that 4MB is the maximum theoretical ceiling. That 2.1MB number I mentioned is what we get according to kind of transactions that we have on the network today. It'll go a bit higher as bitcoin users start using more advanced scripts, but not by much.

Re: The True Cost of Bitcoin Transactions

#85

Post by nadaviv »

pmorici wrote: post #75
nadaviv wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your comment is a good example of the double speak and gas lighting I often see in /r/bitcoin It would be a lot easier if people responded to the actual arguments being made, instead of throwing general accusations at people who're trying to have a rational discussions.

I have responded to your actual arguments in other comments here. I just don't know where to start with this one. Your comment fundamentally misrepresents the position of what you term the "anti core crowd" and so it is hard to have a rational discussion when you can't even acknowledge the position of the other side of the argument. Miners want a hard fork block size increase. You claiming they don't is gas lighting.…

> Segwit is not a block size increase but it's supporters started branding it as one to better market it.

Segwit allows twice as many transactions (of the mix being used today) to fit in a block. It does so by enlarging to blocks to up to 4MB.

How is that not a block size increase?

https://segwit.org/is-segwit-a-block-size-increase-705df6a87...

https://www.weusecoins.com/eli-segwit/

> It isn't even guaranteed to increase transaction throughput which is the larger reason for wanting a block size increase.

It is guaranteed to increase transaction throughput as soon as miners activate it and wallets start producing segwit transactions.

There are currently over 20 wallets that pledged to adding segwit support, including all the most popular software ones and all 6 hardware wallet manufactures (Trezor, Ledger, KeepKey, OpenDime, BitLox and Digitalbitbox). About half of them already have their SegWit implementation ready (before segwit even activated!).

https://bitcoincore.org/en/segwit_adoption/

So, yes, its very certain that wallets will start producing segwit transactions as soon as its activated by the miners.

> It actually encourages some types of large transaction by discounting the witness data.

All transactions have witness data and they all enjoy the extra capacity and lower fees that segwit brings us.

Re: The True Cost of Bitcoin Transactions

#86

Post by xorcist »

pmorici wrote: post #10
knocte wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really baffling, I perceived quite the opposite.

Based on what? Can you name a single dev that expresses support for bigger blocks that hasn't been systematically ridiculed and excluded from Bitcoin Core development by the small block crowd? It isn't even possible to get an accurate perception of Bitcoin Unlimited support from reading the traditional Bitcoin discussion forums like /r/bitcoin because there is ZERO tolerance for discussion of bigger blocks unless it…

That's a false premise. There is a block size increase when segwit activates. The debate is mostly if we should have a hard fork as well as (or even instead of) a soft fork.

I think most developers are rightly scared of a hard fork, especially as we've seen what happened to Etherium lately. There was double spending as every node was not perfectly aligned with this. And then, contrary to expectations, the old chain survived. "Would you like to pay with Bitcoin Classic, Bitcoin Core or Bitcoin United?" That's not what anyone wants.

Re: The True Cost of Bitcoin Transactions

#87

Post by nadaviv »

pmorici wrote: post #76
nadaviv wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think HN has no moderation? Every online community has moderation to some degree. The manipulation, voting bots and endless stream of sockpuppet accounts made it impossible for people like me to discuss ideas and proposals, the signal-the-noise ratio was unbearable to the point of stopping productive discussions to an halt. Yes, moderation sucks. But no moderation sucks harder. I don't really see a better appr…

Again, people aren't taking issue with simple moderation. They are taking issue with the fact that certain view points are totally censored from the forum. I would be willing to bet 100% of the comments I've made in this thread would be deleted by moderators in /r/bitcoin simply for the fact that I'm expressing views counter to those they want to promote. I have high confidence they won't be moderated here though. Cl…

Comments are not being deleted on r/bitcoin for expressing views, discussing ideas or debating proposals.

Comments that promote the use of alternative clients that attempt to alter the bitcoin protocol rules prior to building consensus around the proposal, however, are. An hardfork protocol change that does not have significant support from the community is basically an altcoin that starts from the current UTXO set, and so is considered off-topic for r/bitcoin.

Would you say that the r/bitcoin moderators removing posts about ethereum as being off-topic also engage in "censorship"?

Re: The True Cost of Bitcoin Transactions

#88

Post by nadaviv »

pmorici wrote: post #56
notyourwork wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They also posit that any increase in the block size will make running a full node more difficult, meaning Bitcoin will become more and more centralized and consolidated around the big mining pools that have the hardware to handle bigger block sizes. With a bigger block size what hardware constraints begin to appear? > This is a big problem for miners who have poured lots of money into their rigs, because now the blo…

> With a bigger block size what hardware constraints begin to appear? Mostly it is an issue of disk space and network bandwidth. right now a 1 MB block is produced every 10 minutes. That has to be transferred over the network to every node and each so called "full node" has to store that block. The total size of the Bitcoin block chain for all time is currently ~100GB and grows 1 MB every 10 minutes under current con…

> This whole stink started because some guy who happened to have a ton of BTC was upset that people running full nodes didn't get a cut of any of the transaction fees.

What? Who?

> Today, the main company that is pushing the Segwit / small block agenda hopes to push everyone to their off chain lightening network where they can collect the fees instead of the miners.

Lightning is open-source and was invented by Lighting Labs, a company that has nothing to do with Blockstream. Blockstream are merely working on one out of 6 Lightning implementations that exists in the market.

Also, Lightning is designed for peer-to-peer routing (and not a hub-and-spoke topology) and it is expected that everyone with some spare bitcoins would run lightning nodes to collect fees, so there should be plenty competition.

Finally, Bitcoin Core is an open-source community composed of tens of developers from all over the world and from different associations, plus hundreds of testers, reviewers and other contributors. Nearly all of them support SegWit very strongly, not only the ones associated with Blockstream.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13627371

Re: The True Cost of Bitcoin Transactions

#89

Post by checksauce »

pmorici wrote: post #81
checksauce wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes some devs believe there is centralization pressure of mining blocks caused by the propogation delay of 1MB blocks. Further increasing the size of blocks would thus increase centralization pressure. Changing any number of variables leads to emergent properties which change mining behaviors. Game theory needs to be considered before tweaking the consensus protocols of Bitcoin. The open source nature of Bitcoin allo…

The issue of propagation delays with bigger blocks was fixed with xthin blocks (aka: compact blocks) months ago. That is no longer a valid reason for limiting the block size.

There is very limited technical documentation on xthin so it is hard for the community to accept and test it. If Bitcoin were to implement xthin (or an alternative proposal such as compact blocks) it would be much better to release outside of the block increase. again the main contention is the mechanism for change that the Bitcoin unlimited enthusiasts want to impose, a contentious hard fork

And to clarify, the software may have been released (in Bitcoin unlimited's release), but is not used by the Bitcoin network as a whole. Very few nodes are running this implementation. And to many is untested/unproven

Re: The True Cost of Bitcoin Transactions

#90

Post by lawn »

nadaviv wrote: post #87
pmorici wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, people aren't taking issue with simple moderation. They are taking issue with the fact that certain view points are totally censored from the forum. I would be willing to bet 100% of the comments I've made in this thread would be deleted by moderators in /r/bitcoin simply for the fact that I'm expressing views counter to those they want to promote. I have high confidence they won't be moderated here though. Cl…

Comments are not being deleted on r/bitcoin for expressing views, discussing ideas or debating proposals. Comments that promote the use of alternative clients that attempt to alter the bitcoin protocol rules prior to building consensus around the proposal, however, are. An hardfork protocol change that does not have significant support from the community is basically an altcoin that starts from the current UTXO set,…

Sigh.

> Comments are not being deleted on r/bitcoin for expressing views, discussing ideas or debating proposals.

Yes they are.

> Comments that promote the use of alternative clients that attempt to alter the bitcoin protocol rules prior to building consensus around the proposal, however, are.

Comments promoting non-core clients are. Segwit is a disruptive change to the protocol and yet is has been allowed since day one. And also: how are you supposed to building consensus if it's censored? The cognitive dissonance is amazing.

> An hardfork protocol change that does not have significant support from the community is basically an altcoin that starts from the current UTXO set, and so is considered off-topic for r/bitcoin.

A hardfork doesn't an altcoin make. "Significant support from the community" is a misnomer. Bitcoin is built around nakomoto consensus, not some flimsy community definition.

> Would you say that the r/bitcoin moderators removing posts about ethereum as being off-topic also engage in "censorship"?

When negative posts are allowed then yes it's obvious.

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