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Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

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Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#261

Post by joshuamorton »

simias wrote: post #230
Taek wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Users don't need to worry about routing when they connect to the internet, though in fact the computer is making 10+ hops for any given connection. Lightning will work the same way. Nobody needs to worry about graph theory, they can just generally assume that the graph is fully connected, and that their software will be able to find a path from A to B.

The internet is not decentralized the way Bitcoin is. Actually I'd argue that the internet is more like the modern banking system: you have big corporations (ISPs, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon...) interconnecting to provide a service to users in exchange for money. They have a vested interest in making sure the network actually works, at least for them. If you want to use the Visa payment system you need a bank…

>Bitcoin has nothing like that.

I don't see a reason that exchanges couldn't take on the role of ISP/bank in this situation. Essentially you have an account with 1500 BTC at an exchange, and you say that you want to put 500BTC into a lightning network. Then the bank centralizes itself in the lightning network graph by making connections with other large banks and some major companies.

Of course what we've just done is recreated the modern centralized payment processing scheme on top of the bitcoin network (ie. a mom and pop shop connects to square connects to BoA has my money which doesn't actually exist anywhere, and they make ledger changes and top up later).

You might even be able to make such a system work with no additional transaction fees. But I'm not sure of that.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#262

Post by exit »

davidgerard wrote: post #185
ftlio wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That "Bitcoin is currently suffering from significant scaling problems" is the topic of debate. SegWit was not created toward the end of increasing the blocksize, it was created to fix transaction malleability along with various other improvements. That it arranges the partitioning of witness data from transaction data to sort-of not count against the block size was a bonus, especially since a lot of dubious attempts…

> That "Bitcoin is currently suffering from significant scaling problems" is the topic of debate. I find it hard to see how anyone could reasonably dispute it. Transactions were fast and cheap-to-free until mid-2015, when the blocks filled. Since then transactions have been slow and expensive.

this is no longer true. blocks are not filling and mempool is clearing:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6hzw6c/010_satoshi...

it looks like some faction was spamming the network with transactions to create a false sense of urgency about the need to scale.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#263

Post by cableshaft »

> "Be wary of storing your bitcoins on an exchange or any service that doesn’t allow you to make a local backup copy of your private keys."

I know a couple people who have some bitcoin on Coinbase and aren't too comfortable moving it to a local wallet (Coinbase is just easier for them, they don't have to worry about the security of their personal computer).

Does Coinbase allow making a local backup of private keys? I'm thinking they might not, but maybe they do.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#264

Post by maxerickson »

_red wrote: post #217
zby wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably not possible to solve the scaling problems on-chain - a secure decentralized consensus on a global scale cannot be fast. Currently the bitcoin protocol processes about 7 transactions per second. Doubling the speed by doubling blocks will not make it much closer to the 50K transactions per second of a system like VISA. But it is probably possible to scale the transaction system off-chain - with https://…

The 7 TPS claim is an apples-to-oranges comparison. You must remember that Bitcoin transactions are "settled" in that 7 TPS timescale, whereas VISA transactions are merely "recorded" in their 50K TPS rate. In reality, it generally takes a minimum of 15 days for your VISA transaction to "settle" with your bank account. Thereby the true TPS rate is orders of magnitude lower for VISA.

So how many transactions does each system fully settle in a month?

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#265

Post by geofft »

Hermel wrote: post #71
zby wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably not possible to solve the scaling problems on-chain - a secure decentralized consensus on a global scale cannot be fast. Currently the bitcoin protocol processes about 7 transactions per second. Doubling the speed by doubling blocks will not make it much closer to the 50K transactions per second of a system like VISA. But it is probably possible to scale the transaction system off-chain - with https://…

I'm really tired of hearing the "increasing the block size won't suffice"-argument. Yes, increasing blocks to 10 MB won't give us VISA-scale, but it will allow Bitcoin to serve TEN TIMES AS MANY USERS! I can't believe how many otherwise intelligent people fail to see that this is desirable. It's like driving your car at 10 km/h per hour on the high-way and refusing to increase your speed because that would still not…

It seems to me that the otherwise-intelligent people are seeing the appropriate analogy as refusing to learn to run fast because they're trying to buy a car. Yes, most humans are capable of running faster and for longer distances than they currently can, with training. But training is a lot of work, and if your long-term goal is to go much faster than any human is known to be able to run, it's not clear that training is your best approach.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#266

Post by ceejayoz »

_red wrote: post #217
zby wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably not possible to solve the scaling problems on-chain - a secure decentralized consensus on a global scale cannot be fast. Currently the bitcoin protocol processes about 7 transactions per second. Doubling the speed by doubling blocks will not make it much closer to the 50K transactions per second of a system like VISA. But it is probably possible to scale the transaction system off-chain - with https://…

The 7 TPS claim is an apples-to-oranges comparison. You must remember that Bitcoin transactions are "settled" in that 7 TPS timescale, whereas VISA transactions are merely "recorded" in their 50K TPS rate. In reality, it generally takes a minimum of 15 days for your VISA transaction to "settle" with your bank account. Thereby the true TPS rate is orders of magnitude lower for VISA.

If your mouth is sewn shut, it doesn't matter that much how fast you can digest food.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#267

Post by walls »

simias wrote: post #143
zby wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably not possible to solve the scaling problems on-chain - a secure decentralized consensus on a global scale cannot be fast. Currently the bitcoin protocol processes about 7 transactions per second. Doubling the speed by doubling blocks will not make it much closer to the 50K transactions per second of a system like VISA. But it is probably possible to scale the transaction system off-chain - with https://…

While I agree that only increasing block size forever (or simply removing the size limit) doesn't seem reasonable in the long run, are we sure that segwit and the off-chain scaling solutions proposed today will really solve the long-term scaling issues of BTC? All the practical "here's how lightning's going to work" papers I've read so far leave me very skeptical. Here's an example: http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/…

And if all my purchases are to unique vendors, I gain nothing?

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#268

Post by zby »

lisper wrote: post #248
gtrubetskoy wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Increasing the block will solve the problem until the new size is not enough, which will be very soon. A larger block means a larger blockchain, and the nice thing about the blockchain is that you can download the entire thing. With a larger block it will outpace the storage advances and will not be downloadable for the average user, which means that only specifically equipped entities such as miners will be able to…

> With a larger block it will outpace the storage advances and will not be downloadable for the average user This has nothing to do with the block size. The size of the chain is proportional to the number of transactions. Whether those are sliced-and-diced into small blocks or large ones is completely irrelevant to how big the chain is. The only thing the block size influences is how many transactions can be mined in…

If you don't change the rate of block creation - then the rate of blockchain growth is proportional to the block size. If you increase blocks - then the blockchain will grow faster. This is kind of obvious.

But yeah - the size of the blocks does depend on the number and size of transactions and if you don't have transactions to fill up the block in full (i.e. so that its size is just under the maximal block size) - then the transactions will be the limiting factor.

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#269

Post by tree_of_item »

jcfrei wrote: post #195
zby wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably not possible to solve the scaling problems on-chain - a secure decentralized consensus on a global scale cannot be fast. Currently the bitcoin protocol processes about 7 transactions per second. Doubling the speed by doubling blocks will not make it much closer to the 50K transactions per second of a system like VISA. But it is probably possible to scale the transaction system off-chain - with https://…

There are some new attempts being made without using a blockchain but still reaching the same level of consensus or finality. They are usually based on DAOs (directed acyclic graphs - not to be confused with The DAO Organization). A good introduction is this paper: Blockchain-Free Cryptocurrencies: A Framework for Truly Decentralised Fast Transactions - https://eprint.iacr.org/2016/871.pdf It was previously discussed…

The acronym for directed acylic graphs is DAG, not DAO. That's also an incredibly vague thing to be "based on" and seems more like an appeal to "impressive technical sounding name that actually happens to be extremely trivial and something people learn about in a first year undergraduate mathematics course".

Re: Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st

#270

Post by GenericsMotors »

moduspol wrote: post #211
matt_wulfeck wrote: post #58

> This means that any bitcoins you receive after that time may later disappear from your wallet or be a type of bitcoin that other people will not accept as payment. Can you imagine the uproar if Visa said the same thing? It would be totally unthinkable. Bitcoin can get away with this type of "disruption" because it's not really being used for anything other than a speculative vehicle.

Visa is only a payment network. Bitcoin is both a currency and a payment network. If you as a business accept(ed) Visa payments in Zimbabwe's currency in 2008, or Venezuelan bolivars over the last few years, you absolutely can have its value disappear from you.

> you absolutely can have its value disappear from you.

This is not a fair representation of what the article says. It doesn't only say that coins you've received may lose value, it says that there's no guarantee the network will recognize the contents of your wallet in the future.

A more accurate analogy would be me handing you a crisp $100 bill which you place in your wallet, and tomorrow when you go to retrieve it, it has vanished into thin air.

Even a turd of a currency like ZWD won't materially vanish. You just have to spend it as quickly as possibly after you receive it, while it still holds value.

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