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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?

#351

Post by mrgordon »

Jasper_ wrote: post #218
mrgordon wrote: post #206

I’m not sure why so many people ignore that Bitcoin and all other serious cryptocurrencies are focused on their next generation scalability improvements. Several of the most viable blockchains like EOS are built to be scalable and the legacy coins like Bitcoin are working to adopt similar ideas. When the entire 2018 roadmap is about scalability, it gets boring reading these same posts about how it’s too slow and does…

Because the whole 2016 roadmap and the whole 2017 roadmap was also about scalability. All they've done so far is throw their hands up and say "it's a really hard problem trust us guys". And nobody has shown any sort of traction on a solution: the developers admitted Lightning Network won't solve scalability concerns. Some people are getting a little tired of the pony show.

Then people will move to Ethereum and EOS (or whatever competing blockchains get scalability first). With interoperability of blockchains, transactions can be done on alt blockchains that are cheap and fast instead of on the Bitcoin chain.

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

#352

Post by owenversteeg »

grubles wrote: post #234
Bombthecat wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Child pays for parent. Use it. https://themerkle.com/what-is-child-pay-for-parent/

TL;DR you perform a new transaction that depends on the prior, unconfirmed transaction. To do this you have to pay double fees for the new transaction to make it attractive to miners to confirm both.

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

#353

Post by zargon »

grubles wrote: post #260
pmorici wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Either way neither of those "bcash"'s are What I'm talking about Bitcoin Cash. I think you are confused.

Don't feign ignorance. You know exactly what I'm talking about. :)

For those who don't understand what this is about: one of the tactics that trolls like grubles use is referring to Bitcoin Cash as Bcash as a form of derision. Bitcoin Cash does not call itself Bcash and the term Bcash is considered derogatory.

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

#354

Post by oarsinsync »

spookthesunset wrote: post #262
jwatte wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it does is not just arbitration things, but establish global consensus and an unalterable log of that consensus. If you've tried linking distributed Oracle databases between just a few different sites, you'd understand this has tons of failure cases and is, in fact, not a solved problem, even in the centralized world. (Bigtable probably gets the closest these days, if you want proprietary and not globally audita…

> What it does is not just arbitration things, but establish global consensus and an unalterable log of that consensus. That is nice. But can I, and everybody else in the USA successfully use Bitcoin on Black Friday? According to the National Retail Foundation, in 2016 over 101 million people went out on black friday to buy something. If Bitcoin could somehow 10x its transaction rate to even 40 transactions per secon…

That's a problem that hasn't been solved (yet).

That shouldn't diminish all the other things that BTC does successfully.

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

#355

Post by PaulRobinson »

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…

PoS will never be adopted by Bitcoin. The mining pools that have invested in PoW won't allow it.

Every attempt to date to improve transaction rates on BTC have been hampered by a small group of developers who have a vested interest in it not scaling for reasons explained here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/info...

Bitcoin won't get any of the improvements you hope it will because there is too much money vested in keeping it exactly how it is today.

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

#356

Post by wildsatchmo »

pmorici wrote: post #232
makomk wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin Cash does indeed have very low fees... and about a tenth the transaction volume of Bitcoin proper, with few places using it, mainly just a handful of people involved in creating it. It's certainly not as ridiculous an option as it was back before the difficulty adjustment fix when its supporters were promoting it as the fast option despite it usually taking days for transactions to confirm (supporters respond…

Bitcoin Cash has been around for 3 months. 1 tenth the volume in that time is extremely impressive given than popular services like Coinbase and Bitpay don't even support it yet.

Exactly. Price aside, the growth is insane. Things are being built. Merchants are coming back online. Within a few months the sentiment will start to change for BCH.

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

#357

Post by vasilipupkin »

oarsinsync wrote: post #350
vasilipupkin wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what outrageous fees? you can send a billion dollars for 10 bucks.

I'd be surprised if you weren't aware that the fee isn't proportional to the amount being transacted. A $10 fee on a $10 transaction is outrageous.

right, but you can set the fee to 20 cents, if you are willing to wait for a confirm

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

#358

Post by etr-strike »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #355
etr-strike wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

PoS will never be adopted by Bitcoin. The mining pools that have invested in PoW won't allow it. Every attempt to date to improve transaction rates on BTC have been hampered by a small group of developers who have a vested interest in it not scaling for reasons explained here: https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/info... Bitcoin won't get any of the improvements you hope it will because there is to…

SegWit was activated. Lightning is working. Mimble Wimble and Schnorr signatures are in development.

I understand big blockers are upset they didn’t get their way. They need to understand the reason big blocks don’t have consensus is that they increase propagation delays and propagation delays leads to centralization. Core devs are pursuing many alternative and intelligent scaling avenues.

Also, miners don’t determine consensus rules. If PoS works, another UASF initiative will arise and everyone running a node can decide the new PoW scheme. The fact that you don’t understand this leads me to believe you don’t have a good understanding of the technology yet.

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

#359

Post by ben_w »

etr-strike wrote: post #328
rspeer wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 entire transactions per second? Amazing! Who has ever heard of software that could do 20 things in a second?

I don’t think I ever claimed 20 t/s was sufficient. Just pointing out the throughput has increased by an order of magnitude and there is a tremendous amount of ongoing innovation in this space.

Marvellous, one whole order of magnitude! If you manage another factor of 5000 and Bitcoin will reach what Visa and Mastercard (and, separately, another cryptocurrency) managed several years ago.

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

#360

Post by PaulRobinson »

Animats wrote: post #184
blondie9x wrote: post #141

As engineers and technologists we must always be mindful of our impact on the planet. Bitcoin has been a disaster when it comes to environmental concerns. It is a shadow on techs efforts to lead the way toward a sustainable future. We need to figure out a way to solve this issue, especially if cryptocurrency utilization is to increase, in particular through Bitcoin: Bitcoin uses about 32 terawatts of energy every yea…

The number I've seen is about 1 gigawatt, +- 50%. That's about one big power plant. It could be worse. Bitcoin mining is centralized in mining centers running custom ASICs, mostly located in cold areas with cheap hydroelectric power. That wasn't the original plan. If Bitcoin mining was widely distributed, we could have a billion laptops mining in the background. Laptops running 24/7, wearing out their ICs through ele…

They're not running in places with cheap hydroelectric. It's cheap coal. It's all coal.

https://qz.com/1054805/what-its-like-working-at-a-sprawling-...

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