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Comment by etr-strike | Hacker News Reader

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 Schnorr Signatures will further compress transaction size and increase t/s to roughly 20t/s. All this without increasing propagation delay (increasing blocksize).

Lightning network further reduces the number of onchain transactions necessary.

Rootstock adds ethereum compatible smart contracts to bitcoin as a side chain.

All these technologies responsibly scale Bitcoin. Your comment implies Bitcoin is stagnant which to me implies you don't know what you're talking about.

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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.

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.

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.

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?

Bitcoin Unlimited is successfully testing 1GB blocks: https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-unlimited-reveals-gigablock...

As I already wrote what matters is propagation between miners which is already very fast, even according your own link, which examins propagation throughout the network as a whole not between miners specifically.

This news article doesn’t tell me anything other than if you have a few state of the art computers geographically close all connected to a state of the art internet connection they will maybe be capable of mining 1gb blocks.

If that’s your idea of research, best of luck to bcash.

> bcash

triggered

Despite Bitcoin primarily using miner signaling for consensus changes so far, miners don’t actually matter as much as users: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority

If the vast majority of users and services decided to switch to PoS tomorrow there’s absolutely nothing miners could do about it.

That said, I’m not saying it would be easy to get consensus for such a major change. Futures markets might be useful for determining how much support for a change there is.

The lighting network completely undermines the entire purpose of bitcoin, and blockstreams seeming desire to sabotage bitcoin for daily use coincides suspiciously with their outside “investment”.

If you read the original bitcoin white paper it is clearly evident that the purpose of bitcoin was as a currency. These insane fees, wait times, and rediculous technical decisions by core have made it such that bitcoin is becoming “bank coin” aka only used for settling between large groups and useless for individuals (unless you’re a speculator).

This has to change

I am not sure why it matters what the original purpose was. It seems that current consensus of bitcoin is to be a competitor to gold for store of value. there may be other cryptocurrencies that act more like currencies

> It seems that current consensus of bitcoin is to be a competitor to gold for store of value.

Only made by the incompetent/corrupt developers. Regular users just don't want to pay outrageous fees.

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

This you may not be aware of, but there have been periods where the fee has remained in excess of over $1 for over 72 hours. A 20 cent fee will not cover you there.

Looking at my transaction history, of my last 10 transactions, all had fees in excess of $1, one as high as $14.

I'm not losing any sleep over it, but I'm also not going to call the fees reasonable.

I agree, bitcoin is not good for micropayments. But that's not the only use case that matters.

it's one of the only usecase that matters if you're talking about using it as a general-use currency...

Yes, but my original point is biggest holders of btc are talking about it as a digital replacement for gold, not as a general use currency

It depends on your definition of "micro payments" ... With a fixed number of bitcoin ever in existence for it to ever become a real world currency two things have to happen A) it's value inflate to a value that is an order of magnitude of all the value of the world .... B) be cheap enough, and fast enough that you can buy gum at the corner store

Without micro payments it's stuck in a niche paying ransoms and doing drug deals

Yea, no. Lightning network still depends on the bitcoin network. All it means is any two parties can transact off chain and settle up later. Not sure what the problem is.

That the Bitcoin network is being crippled in favor of these solutions.

You’re upset the core devs didn’t let Bitcoin become a centralized coin? If you refuse to acknowledge the benefit of SegWit or the other scaling solutions then I can’t help you.

Big blockers have their Jihan and Roger coin now. Stop trying to steal the bitcoin brand. If there was consensus for big blocks then Bitcoin would have activated. Jihan and Roger couldn’t convince the educated people that their proposals would work. Now they’re throwing a tantrum.

Sigh. Increasing the block size to 2MB nor 8MB for that matter will not make a centralized coin.

Segwit (besides being a crappy implementation) is by far not enough scaling.

That you blame Jihan and Roger is typical stupid propaganda which doesn't belong here.

According to actual research here: http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/49318d3f56c1d525aabf7fda78b23...

Each additional kb results in an additional 80ms of delay until the majority learns about a block. Increasing to 8mb means you’re adding a 9min delay in propagation. That is pretty much guaranteed centralization.

Perhaps you have some research you can point me to that demonstrates otherwise?

Which does not take into account xthin/compact blocks which cuts down propagation time a lot. In the future graphene will further reduce the time necessary.

How you can conclude a 9min propagation delay for 8MB blocks is beyond me as miners are basically directly connected to each other. This is the only thing that matters decentralization wise.

Bitcoin Unlimited are successfully testing 1GB blocks: https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-unlimited-reveals-gigablock...

Your link is a news article and not actual research. The details of their specific test are barely provided. Please provide actual research as I have provided you.

This overcautious, "let's test everything for 10 years before trying it" approach is exactly what Bitcoin doesn't need when it has 0.001% of world transaction throughput.

Bitcoin is the conservative approach to any change that decreases the keystone of decentralization that allows it to survive. The market is deciding what it values.

The market is reacting to the fact that Bitcoin is in the public consciousness, and that is a result of years of advocacy done for Bitcoin, when its advocates (e.g. Roger Ver, Coinbase, PayPal, and all of the other signatories of the SegWit2x agreement) still believed that it would scale with large blocks and thousands of transactions on-chain per second.

Is there any data available on how long BCH blocks take to propagate? It's testing big blocks out in the real world so we can see how much delay that introduces and whether that leads to a significant increase in centralisation.

The BCH blocks are all very small. Go look at their blockchain stats. Most blocks are 10kb in size. The network is barely used. Once they start actually mining big blocks we’ll get some real data. I think it’ll be very interesting to see, tbh.

Ah that's a shame it would have been really interesting to see how that worked in reality.

I wonder if it could be measured the _other_ way around - i.e. are the sustained tiny blocks on BCH _increasing_ decentralisation compared to BTC right now? I can't find any good information on block propagation time though :(

If you believe lightning undermines the whole purpose and is the product of sabotage (or whatever core is being accused of these days), there are multiple forks to choose from that don't use it.

No need to attack Bitcoin, just go all in on Bitcoin Cash , put your money where your mouth is, and move on.

Yea! And I wish all these American liberals would stop complaining about Trump policies. Put your money where your mouth is and move to Mexico already! /s

Terrible analogy. To be more accurate, you would copy america and change the policies you want. Then the market decides on what they believe in and want.

> If proof of stake proves itself to actually work, Bitcoin will adopt it.

I wouldn't hold my breath for that. Bitcoin still is having a holy war about increasing the blocksize.

One side effect of this whole deal is it shows that it is incredibly hard, if not possible, to change a decentralized system. By its very design, it will be all but impossible to make any breaking changes to bitcoin at this point.

> Lightning network further reduces the number of onchain transactions necessary.

Besides being complete vaporware, I do love how the solution to Bitcoin's scaling problems is to not use it...

Lightning isn’t vaporware. Follow the project on github, they are very active. Better yet, watch the first lightning transaction happen on mainnet which occurred just last week: https://youtu.be/a73Gz3Tvx3k

With regards to blocksize, the only reason it’s not widely embraced is because it’s known to directly impact propagation delay. One side couldn’t care less about centralization, the other side cares dearly. SegWit was activated, which compresses transaction size and doubles transactions per second without impacting propagation delay. Mimble Wimble and Schnorr signatures are coming soon, which are also soft forks and compress transaction size even further. There’s plenty of change happening that are all very intelligent scaling solutions. Big blocks are not intelligent nor difficult to implement.

It's not only vaporware, it's uneconomical. That demo doesn't withdraw Bitcoin - it locks it up. Two transactions for every channel. Lightning Network is just another bank, a third party with fees.

>Lightning Network is just another bank, a third party with fees.

source? afaik it's open source and it charges no fees.

Strange definition of vaporware you have, considering I just showed you lightning network operating across three different implementations of the protocol on the main bitcoin network.

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

This is by design. If you break bitcoin, such that it’s only usable by large financial institutions, you completely remove the decentralized nature that made it attractive in the first place.

Congratulations guys, you made the banks SWIFT 2.0. I’m sure they appreciate it very much.

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.

The lightning network is actually a textbook example of a decentralized network. But I agree, how it will work out in practice is unclear and it could lead to centralization. I see it as a trade off between cost and convenience on one side and freedom on the other.

> I wouldn't hold my breath for that. Bitcoin still is having a holy war about increasing the blocksize.

It doesn't matter - it can fork. And if the fork offers something compelling, it will get used. Even Bitcoin Cash, which is not (very) compelling, is now tradable more than most altcoins.

Complete vaporware? Uhm, no... https://www.coindesk.com/lightning-last-test-shows-bitcoin-s...

There have even been successful atomic Bitcoin<->Litecoin cross-chain transactions with Lightning last month.

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

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 auditable.)

> 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 second (which it can't and probably never will) it would take almost 30 days to process every order. At its current rate of 4tps, you are looking at about 292 days--during which, according to Wolfram Alpha, Venus will have made 1.3 trips around the sun.

So again, yeah, great job. Bitcoin solved some technical problem. Go team! But who gives a crap if some technical problem doesn't solve any real problem? Isn't that what we engineers exist to do? Solve real-world problems?

Do wire transfers solve no real problems? I do essentially all of my large transactions usinng bitcoin.

Lightning Network protocol has reached v1.0 and they have demonstrated transacting real bitcoins instantaneously on youtube.

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

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

When the correct answer is “bitcoin“, what is the question? I genuinely, genuinely, don’t see any task for which it is the best solution — not even for anonymous online payments or secret ways to store wealth.

"what is the most well tested and carefully developed payment system today that allows me to have complete control of my funds without having to trust any third party?"

I see your suggestion and raise you “precious metals”

a) Precious metals are not portable enough. With Bitcoin someone can transfer any amount of value within a few minutes to the other side of the globe (and no-one can stop you from doing so).

b) Precious metals are too reliant on physical security. Someone can break into your house much easier than into i.e. your hardware wallet.

c) Besides these, precious metals are not a payment system, much less a programmable one. You can't code for example a logic that requires multiple untrusted parties to sign a transaction for it to complete.

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.

Which cryptocurrency supports 60k t/s?

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

Never heard of it. I suspect their claim is either bogus or their coin is a database.

There are far too many cryptocurrencies to keep track of, bit even if the claim is false, Bitcoin is still absurdly slow compared to existing normal systems.

What existing “normal” systems?

Visa and Mastercard, like I wrote a few layers above.

My bad, I thought we were comparing global decentralized and trustless systems.

Does every conversation about bitcoin have to devolve into snark and disrespect? It's not fun. It doesn't do any good for anyone.

Good question. I’m frustrated by the unwillingness of bitcoin (specifically bitcoin, not blickchain or cryptocurrencies in general) fans to recognise the flaws. It’s like… huh, like politics. Or religion, which is kinda also politics.

This is low level trolling. Visa and Mastercard are not decentralized. Centralization is an easy way to scale. They are not apples and oranges.

Also, Bitcoin settles transactions in 30 days, merchants get their funds in 30 days if they are lucky to not have the charge back.

Apples and oranges.

> Centralization is an easy way to scale

That is one reason why I prefer centralised to decentralised. I have yet to see a justification for the cost of decentralisation. This cost is an important thing, not a trivial thing.

Other reasons include but are not limited to the governance mechanism of things like bitcoin not being demonstrably better than the governance systems of any other currency, but that’s a much longer topic of discussion.

12 or 20 transactions per second? Let me regale you with a story from my youth... Once upon a time, it was 1985 and I worked at a company that developed a “Transaction Processor”. A multiprocessor CP/M system, with a “4th Generation” integrated app development language, a data store with an mathematician-optimized b-tree indexing system, paired with the fastest 120MB drives we could find through a series of phone calls and sample evaluations. It would be considered a proto-server by today’s standards. We were so proud at Comdex, bragging about 60 t/s to anyone passing by.

We had a gentleman visit our booth from one of the big 4 airlines. He asked us what we were going to do to get to 1800 t/s, because that was the load requirement for the reservation system he and his division were tasked with creating, deploying and maintaining.

I’m fairly certain a currency system needs to scale beyond what a single airline needs in terms of transactions per second.

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.

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.

Could you point me to some sources that discuss simulation of the blockchain network? I would be interested to learn more.

Sure, here you go: http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/file/49318d3f56c1d525aabf7fda78b23...

Tl,dr: each additional kB in blocksize adds approximately 80ms of delay until the majority learns about a block.

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.

> Why what?

why does increasing propagation delay lead to centralization?

Because miners on the other side of the world don’t hear about the latest block until much later than other miners? Miners who hear about it first get a head start mining the next block. If the delay is significant, you get a single mining cartel.

Mining a block is suppose to be a lottery, not a race.

Thanks for the clarification here. I've read a lot of your comments today, and this is the first time I've understood your point.

I've learned a lot, btw... so thanks for that too.

So, you pretty much admitted that Bitcoin is unfit and outside of the fact that many people are vested in it, a new project would be a better idea unless we're emotionally and financially tied to the prehistoric thing.

Is there a good place to start reading about all of these scaling proposals, and maybe keep up to date on new ones as they emerge? Failing that, got any good links to papers/blogposts about the ones you mentioned?

Couldn’t have said better.

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