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Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#191

Post by spookthesunset »

zrm wrote: post #180
omio wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That wouldn't work because mining blocks also validates transactions.

> That wouldn't work because mining blocks also validates transactions. It's possible to validate transactions with proof of work and compensate the work with transaction fees rather than the creation of new coins.

> creation of new coins.

If your crypto-coin starts life with all the coins instantly sprung into existence, that means everybody gets to buy their coins from you--the founder. There is a name for this--it is a pre-mine scam. All you do is mine most of the coins yourself, then go pimp your coin so it gets some buyers, and sell them all off for a sweet profit.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#192

Post by barnacs »

runeks wrote: post #47
barnacs wrote: post #36

> How is this expected to work with 7 billion people using it for every tiny financial transaction? https://lightning.network/ tl;dr: a network of off-chain, transitive payment channels. two on-chain transactions (to fund and settle channel) allow for ~unlimited, ~free, ~instant transactions across a p2p network of nodes off-chain

Payment channels (which Lightning Network uses) allows for unlimited transactions, but not an unlimited number of users, because — as you say — two on-chain transactions (deposit+withdrawal) are required to initiate and finalize a transfer. Given that the Bitcoin blockchain can only handle ~20M transaction per month, this means only 20M people can deposit to/withdraw from the Lightning Network (LN) per month. To this…

Sure, LN alone might not be enough to serve the daily transactions of billions of users. Still, it proves how layers built on top of the blockchain can improve the efficiency by several orders of magnitude with some reasonable trade-offs. LN is probably just the first of such layers.

Things like sidechains, cross-chain atomic swaps, various block space usage improvements (eg. Schnorr signatures) are also in the pipeline right now, all of which could further improve throughput.

So while LN may not be the silver bullet, it makes me hopeful that at least from a technical perspective, Bitcoin will be able to scale to become a global currency.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#193

Post by VarFarYonder »

jen729w wrote: post #4

IMHO (because to claim to "know" anything about how this is all going to turn out is to be a fraud), Bitcoin is the proof of concept for this whole crypto thing. It was the first. It was the genesis idea. But good lord, do we think it's the actual solution? What would be the odds? I imagine that Bitcoin will play its part as the public face of the blockchain revolution, but something else - or many other somethings -…

> If I had a large holding in Bitcoin now I would be cashing out or I'd be nervous. I'm not saying it won't go higher, I'm saying that at some point its demise is inevitable. Might be quick, might be slow, but it'll happen because Bitcoin is not the technically best solution in this incredibly exciting field. It's not even close.

My guess is that this is less of factor than you think. I don't think that HTML/CSS/JS is the best technical solution for creating websites, and yet that is what all browsers use and there are few signs that that is changing anytime soon.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#194

Post by scotty79 »

Bombthecat wrote: post #186
moduspol wrote: post #79

Others here are touching on Bitcoin being like the "1.0" of cryptocurrency, but it's actually a lot more than that. In the public eye, it's a symbol of what cryptocurrencies can be. You're suggesting Bitcoin just proved it can't scale, but it actually just proved it did--just not with transaction volume. The network continued to process transactions averaging one block every ten minutes exactly as it was built to do,…

Dude, It literally stopped accepting transactions. After 72 hours your transaction is dropped. Without further notice. Until then you must guess if it was processed or not.

If you give a recommended fee it can go as fast as ever.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#195

Post by runeks »

codecamper wrote: post #130
runeks wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin has no particular requirement for energy, it’s an arbitrage involving the prices of three components: 1) a bitcoin 2) a KWh of power 3) mining hardware. As long as the value of newly minted bitcoins makes it profitable to buy mining hardware and burn off power to earn them, the amount of power used by bitcoin miners will increase. So, way before Bitcoin miners consume all of the world’s energy, either energy…

And a kWh of power is of course done with coal. How pathetic.

I believe most mining operations make use of hydro-electric power, simply because it’s much cheaper than burning off coal.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#196

Post by spookthesunset »

dumbfounder wrote: post #69
runeks wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Payment channels (which Lightning Network uses) allows for unlimited transactions, but not an unlimited number of users, because — as you say — two on-chain transactions (deposit+withdrawal) are required to initiate and finalize a transfer. Given that the Bitcoin blockchain can only handle ~20M transaction per month, this means only 20M people can deposit to/withdraw from the Lightning Network (LN) per month. To this…

There will be large rewards for companies that do tackle these types of problems though. It's still early in the game.

> It's still early in the game.

Bitcoin is 9 year old tech--that is an eternity in tech. Lightning network has been touted as "the scaling solution" for many of those years and has yet to see any use. And even then, the scaling solution Lightning Network provides is "don't use bitcoin". All the solutions for bitcoins scaling problems boil down to "don't use bitcoin".

So if the only way to scale Bitcoin is to not use it... again... what is the point?

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#197

Post by always_good »

Bombthecat wrote: post #186
moduspol wrote: post #79

Others here are touching on Bitcoin being like the "1.0" of cryptocurrency, but it's actually a lot more than that. In the public eye, it's a symbol of what cryptocurrencies can be. You're suggesting Bitcoin just proved it can't scale, but it actually just proved it did--just not with transaction volume. The network continued to process transactions averaging one block every ten minutes exactly as it was built to do,…

Dude, It literally stopped accepting transactions. After 72 hours your transaction is dropped. Without further notice. Until then you must guess if it was processed or not.

Well, that's not accurate either. Miners sort transactions by fee and fill up a 1MB block.

Use https://estimatefee.com/. Not paying enough to win the fee auction is not the same as no transactions getting through at all. You seem a bit misinformed to be using the "Dude" prologue.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#199

Post by xorcist »

jen729w wrote: post #4

IMHO (because to claim to "know" anything about how this is all going to turn out is to be a fraud), Bitcoin is the proof of concept for this whole crypto thing. It was the first. It was the genesis idea. But good lord, do we think it's the actual solution? What would be the odds? I imagine that Bitcoin will play its part as the public face of the blockchain revolution, but something else - or many other somethings -…

Somebody who feels compelled to sell their Bitcoins because the technology is not ready has probably not acquired any in the first place.

Whatever technology replaces Bitcoin is likely something you can buy with Bitcoin. That's why people rush to buy something which obviously isn't "ready" (but maybe "good enough"). It's speculative, but do not think that people who invested a lot in this didn't think this through at least as much as you have.

Re: Did Bitcoin just prove it can't scale?

#200

Post by KirinDave »

etr-strike wrote: post #182
KirinDave wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is a lot of things, and many of them interesting, but suggesting that ~4 t/s is impressive or "scaling" is an insult to kids in high school writing rails apps that can do 100x the volume. We already know at least 2 obvious ways to improve the transaction flow rate of bitcoin in trustless ways, and many others are being proposed that do not also create energy arms races. Please don't redefine success.

If proof of stake proves itself to actually work, Bitcoin will adopt it. Migrating a 200 billion dollar network to an untested PoW proposal would be irresponsible. Arbitrarily increasing blocksize without addressing propagation delay and centralization impacts is also irresponsible. Bitcoin has been tirelessly working on the scaling problem in a responsible way. SegWit will allow up to 12t/s. Mimble Wimble and Schnor…

I'll believe any of that will work when people don't cite Satoshi's holy insight as a reason why the block size shouldn't increase.
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