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Some ideas for native Bitcoin apps

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Re: Some ideas for native Bitcoin apps

#71

Post by Animats »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #68
Hermel wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allow me to correct a few of your misconceptions: > Bitcoin can't handle micropayments. The block chain is limited to about 7 transactions per second, Note that this is not a technical limit, it is an arbitrarily set parameter. Gavin argues it could be increased at least 1000-fold with more professional infrastructure over time. Even with a tenfold increase, an average PC with mediocre broadband could still process e…

> That's not true, traffic goes up linearly with the number of transactions. If there are twice as many transactions, twice as much data needs to be sent around in the network. It is also linear in the number of full nodes running - but most users do not run a full node. How does that make sense in a peer to peer environment?

Traffic is number of transactions times number of full nodes. That's why there's a scaling problem.

Re: Some ideas for native Bitcoin apps

#72

Post by Animats »

bduerst wrote: post #51
eric_bullington wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement that Bitcoin cannot handle micropayments is absolutely incorrect. Are you familiar with payment microchannels? With microchannels, Bitcoin solves the micropayment problem like it solves other, related problems: with simple p2p network tech combined with cryptography. In short, Mike Hearn and others figured out how to exploit Bitcoin's native scripting capabilities to support microtransactions. They cal…

This is just one of many competing "techniques" for bitcoin microtransactions. As it stands now there is no universal standard, which is needed before you can say bitcoin is ready for microtransactions. It's a market issue, not a technical one.

Right. There are proposed technical solutions for Bitcoin's scaling problems, but none of them are widely deployed. They're vaporware.

Re: Some ideas for native Bitcoin apps

#73

Post by Jasper_ »

Hermel wrote: post #45
Animats wrote: post #17

Bitcoin can't handle micropayments. The block chain is limited to about 7 transactions per second, and every node has a full copy of the block chain, so traffic goes up roughly as the square of usage. There's a minimum fee for each transaction (if you want it confirmed in any reasonable length of time) and it's currently about $0.30. That's more than many merchants pay to process a credit card transaction. Nor can Bi…

Allow me to correct a few of your misconceptions: > Bitcoin can't handle micropayments. The block chain is limited to about 7 transactions per second, Note that this is not a technical limit, it is an arbitrarily set parameter. Gavin argues it could be increased at least 1000-fold with more professional infrastructure over time. Even with a tenfold increase, an average PC with mediocre broadband could still process e…

> I'm confident that as soon as the need arises, this limit will be increased.

Why hasn't the need arised yet? People have been saying this since the limit was introduced, and it hasn't changed.

> Wrong again. At the moment, the recommended minimum fee is 0.03 USD, or 0 for high-priority transactions (those who move large amounts or old coins).

This is before the next halving. Right now, miners get 25BTC for completing a successful block. Satoshi expected that at the time this became halved, fees to the miners would take over. So sending 0.01BTC wouldn't make sense since they'd need 12.5BTC in fees to make it profitable.

The reward will be halved in two years ( http://bitcoinclock.com/ )

Re: Some ideas for native Bitcoin apps

#74

Post by SkyMarshal »

kolev wrote: post #40
eric_bullington wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your statement that Bitcoin cannot handle micropayments is absolutely incorrect. Are you familiar with payment microchannels? With microchannels, Bitcoin solves the micropayment problem like it solves other, related problems: with simple p2p network tech combined with cryptography. In short, Mike Hearn and others figured out how to exploit Bitcoin's native scripting capabilities to support microtransactions. They cal…

This is getting ridiculous. So much patchwork and overcomplications show how unfit for the real world Bitcoin is. Just drop Bitcoin for Stellar and problem solved. But, wait, all that vested interest and money in Bitcoin keeps people stick to Bitcoin and reject anything else.

Ripple/Stellar is even more of a patchwork than Bitcoin. At least Bitcoin was created by a cohort of folks well-versed in the computer science of consensus and has some rigor behind it, Ripple is just a hacked up scheme with a (flawed) "whitepaper" as marketing. Same with Stealar unless David Mazieres makes some significant changes to it.

Re: Some ideas for native Bitcoin apps

#76

Post by joyce »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #74
kolev wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is getting ridiculous. So much patchwork and overcomplications show how unfit for the real world Bitcoin is. Just drop Bitcoin for Stellar and problem solved. But, wait, all that vested interest and money in Bitcoin keeps people stick to Bitcoin and reject anything else.

Ripple/Stellar is even more of a patchwork than Bitcoin. At least Bitcoin was created by a cohort of folks well-versed in the computer science of consensus and has some rigor behind it, Ripple is just a hacked up scheme with a (flawed) "whitepaper" as marketing. Same with Stealar unless David Mazieres makes some significant changes to it.

Joyce from Stellar here. Prof. David Mazieres is creating a new provably-correct version of the consensus system and will be publishing a white paper that will be in line with his normal, rigorous academic standards.

In addition, Graydon Hoare (creator of Rust) has also joined the Stellar team from Mozilla. Now that Stellar supports over 2.3 million wallets, making it the largest implementation of this system, we have found certain scaling limitations of the core tech. Graydon is one of the developers spearheading efforts to make Stellar capable of scaling well beyond its current limitations.

Once these two efforts are complete in a few months, I think you will feel much more comfortable with the robustness of the Stellar protocol.

Re: Some ideas for native Bitcoin apps

#77

Post by kolev »

joyce wrote: post #76
SkyMarshal wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ripple/Stellar is even more of a patchwork than Bitcoin. At least Bitcoin was created by a cohort of folks well-versed in the computer science of consensus and has some rigor behind it, Ripple is just a hacked up scheme with a (flawed) "whitepaper" as marketing. Same with Stealar unless David Mazieres makes some significant changes to it.

Joyce from Stellar here. Prof. David Mazieres is creating a new provably-correct version of the consensus system and will be publishing a white paper that will be in line with his normal, rigorous academic standards. In addition, Graydon Hoare (creator of Rust) has also joined the Stellar team from Mozilla. Now that Stellar supports over 2.3 million wallets, making it the largest implementation of this system, we hav…

Stellar running on Rust soon?!

Re: Some ideas for native Bitcoin apps

#78

Post by eterm »

Kiro wrote: post #58
eterm wrote: post #14

Micro-gambling Peer-2-peer gambling Webcams The real wonder is why haven't any of the major players in these areas adopted it in any way. Curiously it is the payment provider industry who has paid it some attention, rather than any of these. Perhaps the traceable nature of bitcoin makes it unappealing for these use cases. In the early days of bitcoin where it was relatively easy to get anonymous bitcoins (by paying c…

> Micro-gambling Peer-2-peer gambling Webcams What does that mean?

It means line breaks are removed when not double line breaks here. Sorry.

Re: Some ideas for native Bitcoin apps

#79

Post by lpgauth »

derefr wrote: post #66
lpgauth wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool idea, the only problem I can see is how you define a reduction. In the Erlang VM a reduction is kind of a magical unit... and not a reductions are created equal.

I think the definition of a reduction (in terms of what it buys) is allowed to be pretty much arbitrary while still having an effective distributed economy emerge on top of it. Think of it as a communist state that both issues currency, and sets arbitrary prices for all state-produced goods in terms of that currency. In one state, a loaf of bread (or a multiplication) might be worth $1, and a hamburger (or a network…

Right, if reductions are market based then yes, it would work.

Re: Some ideas for native Bitcoin apps

#80

Post by [deleted] »

Hermel wrote: post #45
Animats wrote: post #17

Bitcoin can't handle micropayments. The block chain is limited to about 7 transactions per second, and every node has a full copy of the block chain, so traffic goes up roughly as the square of usage. There's a minimum fee for each transaction (if you want it confirmed in any reasonable length of time) and it's currently about $0.30. That's more than many merchants pay to process a credit card transaction. Nor can Bi…

Allow me to correct a few of your misconceptions: > Bitcoin can't handle micropayments. The block chain is limited to about 7 transactions per second, Note that this is not a technical limit, it is an arbitrarily set parameter. Gavin argues it could be increased at least 1000-fold with more professional infrastructure over time. Even with a tenfold increase, an average PC with mediocre broadband could still process e…

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