Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 234 posts

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#201

Post by chromaton »

answertojob wrote: post #200
chromaton wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked into this and IOTA requires special blessed "Coordinator" nodes, so it's not really decentralized.

i want to elucidate my downvoters that I was not shilling the project. I was just pointing towards a network structure that you guys might find interesting given the problems we were discussing. I was not expecting to get some kind of reddit r/cryptocurrency style backlash. what you said is indeed true chromaton, but is also already solved and on its way to removing it this year. the theoretical solution to that was…

Fair enough. But I don't really buy anyone saying it's "on its way", as I've heard that one before. You can see a lot of "on its way" in this thread as well.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#202

Post by tastyfreeze »

billytetrud wrote: post #119
loveitmore wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0 that scale better? XRP performs better at scale and I don’t believe for a second Bitcoin is anymore decentralized. That being said, I don’t know enough about the security aspect - so your claim may end up being correct!

XRP isn't decentralized at all... Bitcoin is absolutely far far far more decentralized than a currency that is wholely controlled by a single company.

Define decentralized.

Ripple owns a lot of XRP(in escrow). That is the only claim of centralization that is true. The network has equal or greater decentralization than BTC.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#203

Post by [deleted] »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #128
billytetrud wrote: post #112

A little late, but I wanted to mention that I came to work on this because of the debate about block size and scaling ideas around the segwit update. Lots of opinions are generally thrown around without a whole lot of data to back it up, so I wanted to put in the work to make a systematic framework for estimating and comparing alternatives. I wanted to make it easier for other people to evalute what bitcoin's actual…

For a rebuttal to your analysis, please see this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27136533

[deleted]

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#204

Post by billytetrud »

harwoodleon wrote: post #172

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.

True, the paper is just about bitcoin specifically. I've read through Nano and the spam problem was #1 in my mind. It seemed to me that there was no possible way to prevent spam in Nano without turning it into a strictly-worse form of cryptocurrency than other proof of work systems. So my determination about Nano was that if it maintained its current course, it would flame out (transactions would increase without bound until no one could run Nano nodes) OR that they would have to change course to something like increasing the transaction PoW, which would increase the work done on end-user machines to the point where its very cumbersome (slow and expensive) to create a transaction.

I'm curious to know what "time as a currency" is and how it solves the spam problem. Do you have a good link that explains?

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#205

Post by billytetrud »

bluepnume wrote: post #146

Take a look at "The Blocksize War" for a fantastic rundown of the events that led to Bitcoin not increasing its throughput. TLDR: Massively rushed changes, pushed by people with a lot of power on the network (miners and corporations), which ended up being largely antithetical to Bitcoin's decentralization thesis. Bitcoin's value is in its stability, its decentralization, and its lack of hurried change. It is in the c…

> led to Bitcoin not increasing its throughput

Bitcoin did increase its blocksize and throughput. It about doubled it in fact.

> Its value is not in its ability to pivot every few years like a startup to fulfill some new purpose.

Yes, people don't realize that we don't want bitcoin to be agile, move fast and break things. We want it to be well considered, move slowly, and be safe and careful. Similarly, it aggrivates me that people complain about how "congress moves too slow, there's too much deadlock". We shouldn't want lawmaking to move fast. Like bitcoin, it should be slow, methodical, and careful. The problem with US congress is not that its slow, its that it is massively corrupt and opposing sides rush to put things together and then don't cooperate on improving proposals into a considered compromise. Slow compromise is what we want, not fast stubborn corrupt legislators.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#206

Post by billytetrud »

ketzo wrote: post #27
djschnei wrote: post #14

Bitcoin doesn't need to increase its throughput. This is what layer 2 (3,4,...,n) solutions are for. This is like saying "Well, the dollar is useless because Fedwire TPS doesn't accommodate all transactions." If you compare apples to apples, Bitcoin is more than adequate to replace something like Fedwire with a zero trust decentralized system. Layer 2 solutions for Bitcoin can look something like The Lightning Networ…

If you want people to actually be able to pay for things with Bitcoin (often a stated goal), then yes, it does.

He mentioned the Lightning Network - that is exactly what its for.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#207

Post by billytetrud »

lottin wrote: post #53
djschnei wrote: post #14

Bitcoin doesn't need to increase its throughput. This is what layer 2 (3,4,...,n) solutions are for. This is like saying "Well, the dollar is useless because Fedwire TPS doesn't accommodate all transactions." If you compare apples to apples, Bitcoin is more than adequate to replace something like Fedwire with a zero trust decentralized system. Layer 2 solutions for Bitcoin can look something like The Lightning Networ…

Sorry but bitcoin is peer-to-peer cash system. If it can't handle peer-to-peer transactions then it's an utter failure.

It can. The lightning network is part of bitcoin as peer to peer cash.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#208

Post by brighton36 »

viraptor wrote: post #161
brighton36 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll note that my comment was downvoted. This evidence is immoral. Thus, it won't be aired. You can go to pandaanalytics.com if you'd like, and play with their index options. See what strategies have worked well. (I weight by market cap, top-10, no stablecoins)

Your comment was downvoted, likely due to claims with no evidence but instead a story about how you're about to be silenced. You could've just posted something to support your position instead and we'd skip all the drama in this exchange.

Is this really drama? I don't actually care if I'm downvoted. People will always upvote iced cream, and downvote brocolli. It's not hard to see that, or understand why that would be the case. Mostly I find it funny.

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#209

Post by etrabroline »

dylkil wrote: post #191
billytetrud wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>problem with the bch people was that they were reckless and dishonest Anything relevant you would like to share to back up this claim?

There were opportunists on both sides but the blockstream people argued that purely observational non-mining nodes somehow 'secure' the network despite having no effect and need to be possible to run with a non-broadband connection and less than 100GB of free disk space. Satoshi himself in the Bitcoin whitepaper estimated higher bandwidth and storage requirements for nodes than what the blockstream employed devs said were too high. The point of Wall Street getting involved was to kill Bitcoin as a currency and turn it into a pure speculator's playground. (aka bitcoin as gold)

Re: An analysis of Bitcoin's throughput bottlenecks

#210

Post by beiller »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #85
beiller wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there can theoretically be a run on the exchange because in theory all the deposits are there, in the exchange, in theory, unlike a bank which only had a fraction of the deposited money in reserve. A run on a crypto exchange would be great for them considering they usually charge a withdrawal fee.

Those aren't withdrawal fees, those are transaction fees for the network. Most cryptocurrencies cost next to nothing for each transaction, while bitcoin and ethereum cost from $20 - $60 USD for the average transaction.

No I'm not confusing it. My exchange and all other exchanges charge a fee to withdrawal money. Its usually quite large.
Post reply on HN