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BTC Endgame

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Re: BTC Endgame

#231

Post by tromp »

WJW wrote: post #15
paulgb wrote: post #2

The linked Medium posts have a bit more content https://joekelly100.medium.com/how-to-kill-bitcoin-part-1-is... Note that this is from last July, when the price of BTC was significantly lower and thus the price of the attack is likely higher now. That said, this becomes more feasible in the long-run when mining is purely funded by transaction fees. Something I don’t see talked about much is the fact that, although Bi…

I always wondered about that and perhaps someone here can explain. After bitcoin reaches its "full" volume, mining rewards will go away and the only way miner income can stay the same is if transaction fees rise to match. Since the competition of miners basically converges to "block reward is equal to electricity cost equivalent", this would mean transaction costs increase to an insanely huge amount. Not paying the l…

This is discussed in this bitcointalk thread [1]. By constraining the block size, bitcoin is developing a fee market where transactions have to bid up the fee in order to be included in the next few blocks. Without such a constraint, transactions would only pay around 1 cent to be included (just to cover network broadcast costs), and it's next to impossible to make up for that tiny fee with a huge tx volume. In the next 3 or 4 halvings, as the block subsidy drops by an order of magnitude, fees will start to dominate the bitcoin block reward. The exponentially diminishing block subsidy is a bigger problem for less popular PoW coins that fail to develop a fee market, such as Bitcoin Cash.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5306354.0

Re: BTC Endgame

#232

Post by hombre_fatal »

Laforet wrote: post #214
wruza wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way larger blocks don't take longer to hash - only the fixed size header is used for PoW. Yeah, I forgot about merkle trees or something like that. So, do I get it right, there is no problem in increasing a block size? Just start to sign up to 50MB every 10 minutes in 2022 and that’s it? However larger or more blocks do require more bandwidth and storage to process. But isn’t amount of data depend on tx count?…

The original security model of bitcoins also assumes that: 1. Every network node participates in mining. So everybody is incentivized to keep, validate and forward the blocks they receive as quickly as possible. 2. Anybody should be able to bootstrap a network node and verify the entire blockchain from the genesis block without explicitly trusting any other node. Thus when a new block arrives one can independently ve…

Your speculation doesn't square well with the original whitepaper that preempts your concerns by pointing out how you don't have to run a full node. It introduces SPV and points out you just need to store 80byte block headers (total of 50MB in 2021). (Satoshi was a big believer in SPV)

Re: BTC Endgame

#233

Post by Laforet »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #232
Laforet wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The original security model of bitcoins also assumes that: 1. Every network node participates in mining. So everybody is incentivized to keep, validate and forward the blocks they receive as quickly as possible. 2. Anybody should be able to bootstrap a network node and verify the entire blockchain from the genesis block without explicitly trusting any other node. Thus when a new block arrives one can independently ve…

Your speculation doesn't square well with the original whitepaper that preempts your concerns by pointing out how you don't have to run a full node. It introduces SPV and points out you just need to store 80byte block headers (total of 50MB in 2021). (Satoshi was a big believer in SPV)

I was more or less quoting the point of view of the current crop of developer who are very keen to keep the status quo. Not that I necessarily agree with all of their arguments, however they make good counter points to the other extreme viewpoint of "let's have 4GB blocks tomorrow and everything will be A-OK"

Re: BTC Endgame

#234

Post by hombre_fatal »

wruza wrote: post #193
Laforet wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is best understood as a timestamping service that signs up to 1MB of information every 10 minutes. Recording monetary transactions is only one of its applications. The 10 minute interval is an important part of the consensus mechanism as it has been proven secure both theoretically and practically. With shorter block interval and odds of orphan blocks and small chain reorgs would become more likely and this c…

By the way larger blocks don't take longer to hash - only the fixed size header is used for PoW. Yeah, I forgot about merkle trees or something like that. So, do I get it right, there is no problem in increasing a block size? Just start to sign up to 50MB every 10 minutes in 2022 and that’s it? However larger or more blocks do require more bandwidth and storage to process. But isn’t amount of data depend on tx count?…

There aren't that many freebies, and the decision is more arbitrary than it seems.

But it has downsides like changing the fee market and making it more expensive for miners to race broadcasts.

Re: BTC Endgame

#235

Post by thysultan »

AffableSpatula wrote: post #26
thysultan wrote: post #10

For the first attack listed you'd need to be the 99% of mining power at which point the 1% could also just fork and leave you to your endeavours.

The purpose of the project is to encourage people to be concrete in what their proposed ruleset changes are to defend the attack.

It's not an attack vector precisely because of that. Another scenario is the 1% could just then continue mining non-empty blocks from where the attacker left of which would make them the most accurate blockchain with regards to proof of work, this case is even more passive than the hard fork option if you are in sync with the attacker at the time of the attack.

Re: BTC Endgame

#236

Post by topranks »

sushisource wrote: post #180
fanciestManimal wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an unsolved problem, and all solutions would require a majority of the mining pool to get on board. You could periodically increase the block size, splitting the transaction fee among more transactions. Although larger blocks make it more difficult to produce hashes, so more power would be consumed, thus increasing the transaction fees further. You could change the block reward such that there's a larger block r…

> You could switch to Proof of Work Wait, you mean "move away from" ?

Presumably meant to say “Proof of Stake”

Re: BTC Endgame

#237

Post by Ekaros »

WJW wrote: post #15
paulgb wrote: post #2

The linked Medium posts have a bit more content https://joekelly100.medium.com/how-to-kill-bitcoin-part-1-is... Note that this is from last July, when the price of BTC was significantly lower and thus the price of the attack is likely higher now. That said, this becomes more feasible in the long-run when mining is purely funded by transaction fees. Something I don’t see talked about much is the fact that, although Bi…

I always wondered about that and perhaps someone here can explain. After bitcoin reaches its "full" volume, mining rewards will go away and the only way miner income can stay the same is if transaction fees rise to match. Since the competition of miners basically converges to "block reward is equal to electricity cost equivalent", this would mean transaction costs increase to an insanely huge amount. Not paying the l…

It's interesting as well. If block rewards+transactions fees over confirmation period is lower than value of transaction it will lead to 51% attack being actually profitable. And actually even the transaction fees don't matter. As you can still collect them in 51% attack.

Re: BTC Endgame

#238

Post by topranks »

wruza wrote: post #193
Laforet wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin is best understood as a timestamping service that signs up to 1MB of information every 10 minutes. Recording monetary transactions is only one of its applications. The 10 minute interval is an important part of the consensus mechanism as it has been proven secure both theoretically and practically. With shorter block interval and odds of orphan blocks and small chain reorgs would become more likely and this c…

By the way larger blocks don't take longer to hash - only the fixed size header is used for PoW. Yeah, I forgot about merkle trees or something like that. So, do I get it right, there is no problem in increasing a block size? Just start to sign up to 50MB every 10 minutes in 2022 and that’s it? However larger or more blocks do require more bandwidth and storage to process. But isn’t amount of data depend on tx count?…

Well that’s the question and the reason for the block war and the BTC/BCH split.

I’m not sure myself. Attempt to drive people towards LN or other “second layer” solutions for payments? Or deliberate attempt to create a high fee market for miners? Or attempt to keep bandwidth and storage costs down to lower barrier to entry for mining, to keep it more decentralised?

Certainly the decision to keep the cap has caused the move from “digital currency” to “digital gold” / store of wealth.

Re: BTC Endgame

#239

Post by heidar »

eloff wrote: post #176
inopinatus wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Chinese government is not China any more than the US government is America or the Kremlin is Russia. Having a go at authoritarian demagoguery and secret police is one thing, have at it. But doubling down on the casual false equivalence between a people, a country, a government, and a person, just reinforces the point. Oh, and when you find a free country, do let me know. I haven’t seen one yet. So far, from Austr…

The OP was not taking about the Chinese people, he was taking about China the Chinese government. It was very clear to me reading that, I'm not sure why you're all confused.

The wumao and supporters of the CCP have been pushing this racism nonsense for a while now to try to divert criticism against the CCP. It’s unfortunately very common.

Re: BTC Endgame

#240

Post by Ekaros »

rspeele wrote: post #18
treve wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably mean deflation, right? In inflation the cost of goods and services are higher, because the currency is losing value.

The reward paid to miners is mostly newly minted BTC. Presently 6.25 BTC newly created with each block, about 1-2 BTC in fees. Mining has been paid for by increasing the BTC supply, for all of Bitcoin's history so far. Eventually that will have to change as the reward keeps halving. At some point there is no block reward and it's all fees. Will people pay enough in fees to sustain mining at a rate that's impossible f…

No they won't. As the cost of 51% attack is actually the cost of fee of cancelled transaction(and subsequent ones) plus created coins. The attacker can collect all the fees also from those blocks they mined for attack...

Ofc, if the mining is sufficiently large that it is impossible for anyone to collect enough power, then sure. But that is quite expensive proposition in general...

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