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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?

#391

Post by tom_mellior »

garmaine wrote: post #349
tom_mellior wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Lightning allows instantaneous and cheap payments without the need to hit the chain. But a transaction to set up a channel needs to hit the chain first. What's the intended workflow for occasionally (once every few weeks) instantaneously ordering pizza via Lightning? Would I have to set up a very long lived channel with my preferred pizza place in advance?

No no no, that's just payment channels. Lightning is multi-hop payment protocol on top of the traditional channel idea. Alice has a channel with Bob, and Bob has a channel with the Pizza company, and the Pizza company has a channel with its employees for salary and tips. On delivery, Alice pays Bob, Bob pays the Pizza company, and the Pizza company keeps some and forwards on just Alice's tip to the delivery guy. This…

OK, thanks for this explanation! None of this appeared in the Lightning explainers I have seen so far.

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

#392

Post by Ajedi32 »

Obviously no, the current version of Bitcoin does not scale.

I don't see why you think that means Bitcoin _can't_ scale though. In order to convincingly make that claim, you'd need to be able to prove that all existing proposed solutions for scaling the network (lightning, block size increases, etc) cannot possibly work.

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

#393

Post by ben_w »

etr-strike wrote: post #363
ben_w wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

Which cryptocurrency supports 60k t/s?

BitShares, apparently. Press release June 10, 2015, claimed 100,000 t/s.

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

#395

Post by jondubois »

etr-strike wrote: post #327
jondubois wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The lightning network is not a decentralized solution. It gives more power/trust to a few large exchanges.

How is allowing two parties to transact off chain, and settle up later on chain, not a decentralized solution?

Because of the cost involved in setting up a channel. It's still not suitable for paying for a coffee or restaurant for example... Unless the cafe/restaurant happens to have an existing channel with an exchange that you yourself happen to also have a channel with; then you pay through that exchange... You can see how in this hypothetical word, it would be better to have fewer exchanges... More centralization.

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

#396

Post by lawn »

etr-strike wrote: post #358
PaulRobinson wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 determin…

You should realize block propagation is largely a solved problem using xthin, compact block and graphene. We could scale to 1GB and propagation would not be an issue.

> Core devs are pursuing many alternative and intelligent scaling avenues.

Their strategy of stalling for the last couple of years is the least intelligent approach they could have taken.

> Core devs are pursuing many alternative and intelligent scaling avenues.

Yes they do, that's the point of Bitcoin.

> If PoS works, another UASF initiative will arise and everyone running a node can decide the new PoW scheme

You mean if PoS works they can fork and use their altcoin.

> The fact that you don’t understand this leads me to believe you don’t have a good understanding of the technology yet.

The fact that you don't understand this leads me to believe you're either a Core shill or you have been seduced by their pretty words. The whitepaper makes all this clear.

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

#397

Post by ben_w »

Phenomenit wrote: post #382
ben_w wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two questions: 1) Is this wallet going to have any spendable money in it one second after creation, or do you have to wait for the network to process your transaction like everyone else? 2) How often is it useful to create a wallet in one second?

My point wasn't really about comparing Visa/Mastercard connected accounts with cryptoaccounts. I just wanted to highlight that for a traditional transaction to be completed between to accounts requires a lot more energy and infrastructure than just the energy consumed directly by those services. Nevertheless I still think its outrageous that so much energy is wasted mining BTC.

Please quantify the energy use of the conventional approach — many people want to make the same point as you, but there don’t seem to be any (easily referenced) numbers estimating the energy cost per transaction of the alternatives.

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

#398

Post by etr-strike »

KirinDave wrote: post #378
etr-strike wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn’t increase because simulations of increasing blocksize have demonstrated centralization. If we didn’t care about decentralization we’d just use a database.

Why?

Why what? Why does increasing block size increase propagation delay? Here’s the research paper on it: http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/49318d3f56c1d525aabf7fda78b23...

Tl,dr: each additional kB after 1mb adds an additional 80ms in propagation delay. It’s not just bandwidth that’s the problem. Nodes need to validate the block, then communicate that block to other nodes who also need to validate. Big blockers are drinking Roger Ver koolaid. The man doesn’t even know how to program, yet has convinced an army of redditors he knows best.

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

#399

Post by asimpletune »

KirinDave wrote: post #167
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,…

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.

Just 100x?

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

#400

Post by etr-strike »

lawn wrote: post #396
etr-strike wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 determin…

You should realize block propagation is largely a solved problem using xthin, compact block and graphene. We could scale to 1GB and propagation would not be an issue. > Core devs are pursuing many alternative and intelligent scaling avenues. Their strategy of stalling for the last couple of years is the least intelligent approach they could have taken. > Core devs are pursuing many alternative and intelligent scaling…

You continue to ignore the actual research.

http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/49318d3f56c1d525aabf7fda78b23...

The above directly demonstrates how block size results in significant propagation delay.

I ask you again: can you show me the research which demonstrates increasing blocksize won’t result in significant propagation delay?

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