An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks • Hacker News Board

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#171

Post by somjeed » Thu, May 13, 2021, 5:07 AM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #147

billytetrud wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There is substantially more development on Ethereum: https://medium.com/electric-capital/electric-capital-develop... There is also substantially more economic activity on Ethereum, with users paying 10X more fees to utilize it over the last 7 days: https://twitter.com/iamDCinvestor/status/1392468184482164741

I'm skeptical of a few things in the medium post, for instance if you compare the etherium's ERC20 defi ecosystem to bitcoin, you will get more git repositories because there are simply more coins. Secondly, more is not always better, and measuring developer activity by git repositories is like measuring lines of code as a metric for the amount of work being done.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#172

Post by harwoodleon » Thu, May 13, 2021, 5:17 AM UTC

This paper is very considered. But it does not consider that these questions have all been addressed in other cryptocurrencies like Nano (nano.org), which is a far more usable system than Bitcoin. Especially now that “Time as a currency” spam mitigation measures are being rolled out.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#173

Post by mullingitover » Thu, May 13, 2021, 5:26 AM UTC

Taek wrote: post #80

mullingitover wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The whole point of a trustless transaction is that you don't need to worry about who the counterparty is. You don't need the leverage to sue somebody because fraud is not possible. For digital transactions, the lack of trust can be two-way - two mutually distrusting people can confidently exchange Bitcoin for Ethereum in a transaction, because the software and math behind the blockchain prevents fraud from happening…

> Whether or not the payment is accepted is at the sole discretion of the recipient.

Forgot to mention - no? This isn't how the protocol works, you have zero discretion about whether to accept payment or not in BTC. If ISIL sends your wallet a million dollars then that's that, you've just received money from a terrorist group, the whole world knows it, and now the feds want to talk to you.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#174

Post by Ar-Curunir » Thu, May 13, 2021, 5:28 AM UTC

billytetrud wrote: post #115

vmception wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum has 8 distinct active layer 2 technologies including things analogous to lightning network, as they are permissionless to build and deploy there. Turns out nobody likes watchtowers which lightning style solutions require, the market is not choosing that Bitcoin does not represent choice, it represents throwing all eggs in one basket and defending that with no competition (lightning). More like a state capita…

> Bitcoin does not represent choice Why not? Anyone can use bitcoin for anything they want. And any other cryptocurrency can compete with bitcoin if they want (and clearly many try). Seems we have plenty of choice in the market at the cryptocurrency moment. The difference is that in Bitcoin land, people cooperate to build standards. In Ethereum, far fewer standards are created, and instead people just build whatever…

Decentralized cryptocurrency tech is in its infancy. Just like you wouldn't standardize on programming languages in the 50s, it makes no sense to already talk about standardizing things that are under active research.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#175

Post by Ar-Curunir » Thu, May 13, 2021, 5:37 AM UTC

aeternum wrote: post #33

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/

Those are on-chain transactions. Coinbase and many other wallets now support offline, or 'Instant Sends' which is more akin to the simple database update that PayPal/Visa performs. Sure those aren't purely decentralized but a decentralized settlement layer is probably where most of the value is anyway.

If I wanted that, I would be using something like Venmo, instead of Bitcoin.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#176

Post by ButtSpark69 » Thu, May 13, 2021, 5:45 AM UTC

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…

Because right now Bitcoin can only do currency, whereas Ethereum (and some other crypto's) can do anything a computer can do, since they are turing complete.

Granted there are projects on Bitcoin, like rootstock, that have the goal of adding the capability, but my personal take (and I think a lot of others) from being in the space many years, is that its unlikely these will ever get released and/or adpoted.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#177

Post by ButtSpark69 » Thu, May 13, 2021, 5:49 AM UTC

dboreham wrote: post #77

pa7x1 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ethereum layer 1 is processing closer to 20 per second. In particular, it did 1716000 in the last 24 h. Ethereum's layer 2 can handle tens of thousands transactions per second. These are then settled on chain as a single transaction. There are multiple layer 2 solutions already working and more are coming. It's not a pipedream anymore they are live.

"already working" hmm.

they're not lying. Loopring is one example among half a dozen. The issue is that current L2's are purpose-built by individual dapps. What doesn't currently exist (should be released in next few months) is the code that lets you copy/paste your current L1 code into an L2 code with almost no effort. At that point all the current dapps running on L1 can just port over to L2 very quickly and without the huge risk of a bug in a ton of new code lines.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#178

Post by fsh » Thu, May 13, 2021, 5:56 AM UTC

zionic wrote: post #133

billytetrud wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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”.

Except that I can easily run a full bitcoin node on my desktop but not an ethereum node. What is the point of having a cryptocurrency if I have to trust someone else to run the software for me?

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#179

Post by topranks » Thu, May 13, 2021, 6:26 AM UTC

billytetrud wrote: post #129

dylkil wrote: post #23

its a pity bitcoin devs are so opposed to changing the protocol. So much research has been done showing the feasibility of increasing bitcoins throughput. Xthinner for instance is capable of compressing bitcoin blocks by up to 99% using bloom filters [1]. Much of this research was conducted on the bitcoin fork, bitcoin cash, by people ostracized from the bitcoin community for wanting to explore these ideas. [1] https…

The actual transactions must all still be transmitted, so this "compression" is actually a way to avoid transmitting transaction data that has already been received by the other side. Bitcoin already does this and while maybe xthinner is better (I don't know) its absolutely not a 99X improvement over standard bitcoin. The problem with the bch people was that they were reckless and dishonest, not that they didn't occa…

It’s core principal; that the 1MB blocks use cap was arbitrary and holding back the network, remains 100% true.

The arguments against SPV wallet use in this text don’t ring true for me.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#180

Post by topranks » Thu, May 13, 2021, 6:27 AM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #32

dylkil wrote: post #23

its a pity bitcoin devs are so opposed to changing the protocol. So much research has been done showing the feasibility of increasing bitcoins throughput. Xthinner for instance is capable of compressing bitcoin blocks by up to 99% using bloom filters [1]. Much of this research was conducted on the bitcoin fork, bitcoin cash, by people ostracized from the bitcoin community for wanting to explore these ideas. [1] https…

The lower transaction throuput,the higher the fees, the higher the incentive for the miners to process transactions. They probably don't want to mess with that dynamic too harshly.

This is the real reason for the block size cap.