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An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

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Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#131

Post by billytetrud »

chromaton wrote: post #11

Here is the real world, Bitcoin is currently running a blazing 3.3 transactions per second. Etherium dwarfs that at a mighty 14 transactions per second. Meanwhile, PayPal crawls along with a pathetic 488 tps. https://www.statista.com/statistics/730838/number-of-daily-c... https://www.businessofapps.com/data/paypal-statistics/

Paypal isn't meaningfully decentralized. And Ethereum isn't sufficiently decentralized. Their throughput is part of what prevents Ethereum from being actually decentralized - pretty much no normal person can run a full ethereum node.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#132

Post by jlrubin »

Some of my congestion control research that helps large scale users make throughput/latency tradeoffs using simple "transaction templates":

https://utxos.org/uses/scaling/

https://utxos.org/analysis/bip_simulation/

https://utxos.org/analysis/batching_sim/

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/21702

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#133

Post by zionic »

billytetrud wrote: post #121
CyberDildonics wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is at least monero, bitcoin cash and ethereum. Bitcoin Cash and Ethereum both have more transactions than bitcoin already. Ethereum has four times the transaction throughput. Bitcoin Cash has 32x the max block size. There is no technical reason bitcoin could not increase their max block size, but then there would be no reason for their hacky second layer to exist. The only way what you are saying makes sense is…

> There is no technical reason bitcoin could not increase their max block size You should read the paper this thread is about. It tells you tons of technical reasons that it would be a bad idea to increase the max block size very much if at all.

Ethereum has increased its max block size 7+ times in the last 5 years and has had zero issues doing so. “Papers” from technically illiterate authors that ignore very real, tangible evidence contradicting them are about as useful as flat earth “math”.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#134

Post by billytetrud »

ChainOfFools wrote: post #30
chromaton wrote: post #11

Here is the real world, Bitcoin is currently running a blazing 3.3 transactions per second. Etherium dwarfs that at a mighty 14 transactions per second. Meanwhile, PayPal crawls along with a pathetic 488 tps. https://www.statista.com/statistics/730838/number-of-daily-c... https://www.businessofapps.com/data/paypal-statistics/

has anyone ever done the modeling on the dynamic limits of decentralized network consensus? my intuition has always been that getting, say, 100,000 globally distributed voting nodes to agree on even a simple truth value will quickly run into exponential (or worse) latency bottlenecks by way of metcalfe's law. the speed of light, as a hard limit, starts to become insurmountable when your consensus pathway has to be tr…

> has anyone ever done the modeling on the dynamic limits of decentralized network consensus?

I did in the paper this post is about (in the context of bitcoin). Look at the section on Miner Centralization Pressure: https://github.com/fresheneesz/bitcoinThroughputAnalysis#min...

> these high tps coins all seem to get around this by weakening decentralization

Yes, that's true.

> in order for every node to have an equal influence on the validity of every other node's vote

The trick is to ensure that distance does not play a substantial role in a node's "vote". That's one reason that blocks must take so much time to be mined in bitcoin (10 minutes). Proof of work systems that have less-than-a-minute block times are just not very safe. It takes time for lots of entities to come to a consensus across the whole world.

> I suspect the reason TX speed tends to stay mired in the tens per second region is that no amount of consensus accounting gimmickry will overcome the underlying physical limitations of true global scale decentralization of consensus.

Yeah, there are physical limits. The speed of light is the ultimate limit here. You can't come to a consensus with someone faster than you can send and receive a response from them. And the minimum requirements for consensus probably require a lot more than one message and one response.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#135

Post by zionic »

billytetrud wrote: post #113
Havoc wrote: post #82

I’m still not quite following why people are looking at bitcoin for this. Surely one of the newer generation like eth is better suited? Or better yet a layer 2 on eth

What's better about Ethereum in this regard? People are still looking to Bitcoin because its substantially larger than Ethereum in pretty much every way (development, market cap, awareness, etc), its got a way better track record than Ethereum, its far more decentralized (Vitalik is still the god of Ethereum). There's lots of reasons people still look to Bitcoin. > Surely one of the newer generation like eth is bette…

Bitcoin is essentially dead development wise, virtually all exciting development is happening on ETH.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#136

Post by billytetrud »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #2

> I will also show that while Bitcoin currently may not be in a safe state, future software optimizations could allow Bitcoin safely process likely more than 100 transactions/second on today's hardware. 100 transactions/second still doesn’t sound like a lot, especially if you want Bitcoin to be an actual currency used for exchange of goods.

It can be enough when combined with layer 2 solutions as well. But you can't get around the nature of reality.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#137

Post by billytetrud »

MereInterest wrote: post #3
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #2

> I will also show that while Bitcoin currently may not be in a safe state, future software optimizations could allow Bitcoin safely process likely more than 100 transactions/second on today's hardware. 100 transactions/second still doesn’t sound like a lot, especially if you want Bitcoin to be an actual currency used for exchange of goods.

If Bitcoin were used by everybody on the planet, the current max of 10 transactions/second means that each person could be part of a transaction once every 13 years (4 billion pairs of people / 10 Hz). Boosting the rate up to 100 transactions per second reduces that down to 15 months. Just think, receive you paycheck this week, and over a year later you can use it to buy groceries. Bitcoin's throughout is absolutely…

This is what the lightning network is for. It would be somewhat reasonable to withdraw or deposit to/from your lightning channel a couple times a year. Some other solutions would be needed to get the rest of the way, but improvement is improvement right? Why be so negative about it?

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#138

Post by zionic »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #108

This analysis is complete nonsense because it starts with assumptions that are entirely arbitrary and biased toward the argument of not scaling Bitcoin: >>Bitcoin.org documents the minimum requirements for running a full node, however with the current state of technology, we must substantially lower these requirements so as to make running a full node as accessible as possible to even people in poorer countries No, p…

In a just world this would be the top comment. Instead we have Bitcoin boomers asking if you’ve heard about their lord and savior lightning, which like Jesus is coming any day now!

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#139

Post by billytetrud »

mullingitover wrote: post #67
Taek wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In some senses it's not a lot, in other senses it is a lot. Large systems (like the US banking system) only do a few intra-bank settlements per day, 100 tps is well beyond what you need for nation states to do business with eachother. And then down at the consumer level it's nothing at all. During peak hours of the peak season (Christmas), Visa does something like 50,000 tps. What makes Bitcoin interesting is the tru…

> What makes Bitcoin interesting is the trustlessness of the transfers, and that tends to be more interesting higher up the stack (at the inter-bank and inter-national levels) than at the consumer level What's interesting about that? Higher up the stack, trustlessness is not compelling at all - if I'm transacting with you on the scale of six-plus figures, I absolutely won't transact with someone I don't trust, and an…

When you're talking international, there is little trust and little legal recourse. It is absolutely a problem that bitcoin can solve exceptionally well.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#140

Post by brighton36 »

rawtxapp wrote: post #102
brighton36 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where did you get these numbers? I assume this is a post-hoc rationalization?

I mean you can pull up the numbers for yourself if you don't believe me, people have also done the math themselves [1][2]. 1: https://preview.redd.it/c21qium7jyr61.png?width=1113&format=... 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/mmstrt/i_bo...

This is useful. Good numbers. Thank-you.
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