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Why upgrade to 8MB but not 20MB? (self.Bitcoin)

8btc_news が 投稿

China’s five largest mining pools gathered today at the National Conference Center in Beijing to hold a technical discussion about the ramifications of increasing the max block size on the Bitcoin network. In attendance were F2Pool, BW, BTCChina, Huobi.com, and Antpool. After undergoing deep consideration and discussion, the five pools agree that while the block size does need to be increased, a compromise should be made to increase the network max block size to 8 megabytes. We believe that this is a realistic short term adjustment that remains fair to all miners and node operators worldwide.

Why upgrade to 8MB but not 20MB?

1.Chinese internet bandwidth infrastructure is not built out to the same advanced level as those found in other countries.

2.Chinese outbound bandwidth is restricted; causing increased latency in connections between China & Europe or the US.

3.Not all Chinese mining pools are ready for the jump to 20MB blocks, and fear that this could cause an orphan rate that is too high.

The bitcoin miners of China agree that the blocksize must be increased, but we believe that increasing to 8MB first is the most reasonable course of action. We believe that 20MB blocks will cause a high orphan rate for miners, leading to hard forks down the road. If the bitcoin community can come to a consensus to upgrade to 8MB blocks first, we believe that this lays a strong foundation for future discussions around the block size. At present, China’s five largest mining pools account for more than 60% of the network hashrate.

Signed,

F2Pool, Antpool,BW,BTCChina,Huobi

June 12th, 2015

via http://www.8btc.com/blocksize-increase-2

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[–]sgornick 35ポイント36ポイント  (30子コメント)

Signed,

F2Pool, Antpool,BW,BTCChina,Huobi

How can the authenticity of such a claim be verified?

[–]Tardigrade1 21ポイント22ポイント  (26子コメント)

This post reeks of BS. Afterall, changing the blocksize in no way implies the blocks will actually be the maximum size any time soon. People all think that changing the blocksize to 8 or 20 mb will mean new blocks will all be that size but that doesn't make any sense at all. It might be years before we even see a block approach maximum size.

[–]smartfbrankings 1ポイント2ポイント  (23子コメント)

No one thinks that.

[–]Tardigrade1 5ポイント6ポイント  (1子コメント)

Peter Todd does

[–]smartfbrankings -2ポイント-1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Where? They might be, but no one is so stupid to assume that every block would be that size.

Though it does look like there are incentives that would give some miners an advantage to fill blocks with spam.

[–]GibbsSamplePlatter -1ポイント0ポイント  (1子コメント)

It might be years before we even see a block approach maximum size.

Then why are we rushing? Why is Hearn so dead set and talking about splitting consensus to get there?

[–]cypherdoc2 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

market perceptions that Bitcoin can't or won't (as in consciously refusing due to a few obstructionists) scale. Bitcoin is currently not a threat at 1MB.

[–]abolish_karma 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I would SO like to see a cryptographic signature of this, and a link pointing to it, in tweets&press releases.

[–]btc-ftw 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yes this is an important question because although I agree with others who point out that Chinese m8ners have other advantages I'll bet the scaling side would compromise down to 8mb esp if the patch raised that amt as the years go by.

[–]aminok 17ポイント18ポイント  (0子コメント)

And you forgot: 8 is a lucky number in China.

[–]cbeast 14ポイント15ポイント  (0子コメント)

China currently subsidizes electricity. So they can afford more hashrate. When China starts subsidizing internet, then their miners will want larger blocks.

[–]yeh-nah-yeh 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

Welcome to reddit OP. Any evidence or proof or sources or statements from the pool operators to suggest this is anything but fake BS clickbait?

[–]btc24user 6ポイント7ポイント  (6子コメント)

My opinion: a hard limit of 8MB is not a good solution. Like someone has written above, the limit does not cause blocks to be that size right from the start. And if bitcoin naturally grows to that size over time and china can't handle it, then the free market will have to sort it out again and another fork has to be done. Not the best outlook. The best solution I see so far is BIP100. The hard limit of 32MB is ok to me. 4.6GB/day - That is A LOT of data compared to today. Combined with the floating limit to prevent sudden huge block size changes. Not that we need 8MB blocks this or next year, but a hard limit this low is not good as we might have the same discussions again in a year or two. A low hard limit can be a huge problem, should a wave of adoption happen which increases usage in an exponential way for even a short amount of time.

[–]anddrade 4ポイント5ポイント  (1子コメント)

32 MB even is a low hard limit in the long run. A hard fork now is already very complicated; it will only get more complicated by the time 32 MB starts being a cripling limit to Bitcoin.

It is okay to have a hard limit, as long as it increases automatically over time. Bitcoin's original vision is of a world currency, so we should aim to have enough space to onboard everybody in the long run.

[–]drlsd 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thank you. Anyone talking about scaling and hard limits in the same sentence obviously has no idea what he's talking about.

[–]E7ernal 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

Wait, 32 MB is only 4.6 GB a day?

Shit, I do 4.6 GB an hour without blinking. Why are people so concerned?

[–]kodemage 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Because most people in the world have a 2gb data cap. When you realize that cell phones are the primary means of internet access world wide...

[–]eleuthria 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Nobody is expecting people to run full nodes on their cell phones, and doing so would be amazingly stupid.

[–]kodemage 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Except that's how the world connects these days so it has to be a concern.

[–]bitdoggy 6ポイント7ポイント  (4子コメント)

I think 8 MB is reasonable because we need a quick solution. The pressure could be put to remaining miners (10-20%?; BW?, Ant?) who still have 750k soft limit to raise it to 1MB.

Let's schedule hard fork for 8 MB for as soon as possible. In the meantime, Garzik's proposal (or other) could also be implemented because static 8MB is only a temporary solution.

It would be also great if exchanges/wallets start supporting multiple fees for users to choose (at least in Mycellium fashion: 1mBTC-priority, 0.1mBTC-default, 0.01mBTC-economic)

[–]i_wolf 2ポイント3ポイント  (3子コメント)

20MB is better, but maybe 8MB is better than Bitcoin split in half. It still gives some time and (I pray) will convince others that higher limit doesn't necessarily mean bigger blocks.

[–]procabiak 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

The change to 20 or 8 mb involves applying a type of fork that can split Bitcoin in two. I don't know what you are referring to when you say the opposite.

BIP100 is the safer route. This hard fork is backwards compatible up to the first vote is successful (which means all / most of the miners would have upgraded their software by then).

[–]i_wolf 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

I meant that 8MB seems less controversial for the skeptiks than 20MB at the moment.

[–]procabiak 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I see. But they're all controversial and we really don't know what the split % is. 8mb iirc still isn't on Mike Hearn's radar, he has set his mind on 20mb and I don't see him coming to a compromise.

Secondly his push for XT worries me. If he wants to roll out this change and be serious about it, he shouldn't hook in his Lighthouse specific changes to it.

[–]aquentin 4ポイント5ポイント  (5子コメント)

So now that even miners have come out in favour of increasing the blocksize... it is a supermajority of users, businesses, miners, basically it is everyone vs 4 core devs.

Moreover, none of the core devs can argue that they have the technical expertise and everyone else just doesn't understand the issues. I am sure Gavin has just as much, if not more technical expertise, having had the vision to join so early and tirelessly work on bitcoin and I am sure Satoshi has the technical expertise and understands the issue dare I say better than everyone else.

So what exactly is stopping this mythical consensus, or, much more correctly since we do have consensus, what exactly is stopping this core dev consensus?

If there is a concrete objection... then core devs please bring it forward. Otherwise please explain why exactly do you remain against and whether you would move on to XT if it does succeed or whether you will leave bitcoin.

[–]davout-bc 0ポイント1ポイント  (4子コメント)

There's no consensus, except maybe on reddit.

[–]aquentin 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Did you even read the op post? It says miners who control 60% hashrate want bigger blocks.

[–]GibbsSamplePlatter -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

Everyone wants bigger blocks, given their desired level of decentralization.

The fact that Gavin bit off more than he could chew after backdooring talks with companies that are least effected by the downsides of an increase isn't anyone's fault but his own.

[–]davout-bc -3ポイント-2ポイント  (1子コメント)

See? This gets downvoted, not argued with, not countered with a couple relevant metrics, just downvoted.

Because hey, hiding inconvenient truths make them go away.

[–]BTCisGod 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Just keep your little exchange open to sell bitcoins on the old blockchain and the other little services surrounding Mircea Popescu's clique, and all will be good, mate.

[–]ncsakira 5ポイント6ポイント  (12子コメント)

And when 8mb blocks are full, what's their backup plan?

[–]snooville 7ポイント8ポイント  (5子コメント)

The answer is above. Read it:

If the bitcoin community can come to a consensus to upgrade to 8MB blocks first, we believe that this lays a strong foundation for future discussions around the block size.

To put it into perspective current limit is 1MB but we haven't had a block that size yet. Larger blocks have higher latency so miners avoid them. They prefer smaller blocks because the chances of them becoming orphans is lower than larger blocks.

[–]ronohara 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

We have had full blocks ... though often that is the default 750k soft limit rather than the hard limit of 1Mb

[–]cypherdoc2 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Wouldn't all those >950 kb blocks be considered full ?

[–]chriswen 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

and they take 30s to propagate.

[–]cypherdoc2 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Theoretically, even with no limit they will continue to construct only blocks big enough that they can reliably transmit. Wasting time on larger block attacks doesn't make sense.

[–]Adrian-X 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

8MB means we need to do this all again if there is no consensus when we get there.

[–]rydan -4ポイント-3ポイント  (5子コメント)

It took 6 years to even get close to filling up 1MB. This won't be a problem for several years.

[–]ncsakira 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Looks like Gavin and the silicon valley start ups beg to differ...

[–]Vibr8gKiwi 3ポイント4ポイント  (2子コメント)

Growth is exponential.

[–]cypherdoc2 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

As they say, the exponential function is the hardest thing for people to understand.

[–]PettyHoe 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Everyone has seen cell growth. Just think about those little buggers multiplying so fast.

[–]jimmykitten 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

http://nakamotoinstitute.org/mempool/hyperbitcoinization/

And what if this were to happen sooner than people realize...

[–]i_wolf 10ポイント11ポイント  (78子コメント)

Not all Chinese mining pools are ready for the jump to 20MB blocks, and fear that this could cause an orphan rate that is too high.

Then they shouldn't mine 20MB blocks. All miners already have the incentive to mine blocks as small as possible, for the faster propagation.

Don't they understand the difference between 20MB limit and 20MB blocks?

[–]exo762 2ポイント3ポイント  (6子コメント)

They still would have to accept blocks coming from outside. And if limit is set to 20MB, they would sometimes get blocks as large as 20MB and they would be obliged to accept those blocks or risk mining on orphan branch.

Hard limit is for incoming blocks.
Soft limit is for your own, outgoing blocks.

[–]i_wolf 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

The point is, a higher limit itself will not make blocks bigger.

[–]exo762 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Yes, it does not.

Then they shouldn't mine 20MB blocks.

It's not a choice. And miners do not have collective consciousness. If your connection is fast enough - you can just accept all transactions non-zero fees and be ok.

[–]i_wolf 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Every miner has a choice of size of his blocks. You don't mine bigger blocks just because you can, because it costs you more money.

[–]Ant-n 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

This is something miner will have to deal with..

Same thing as now you cannot mine anymore if you don't have enough hash rate then you will be disadvantaged if cannot download a 20MB on time...

(but com'on the bandwidth cost to deal with 20MB is negligible compare to the cost of hashing power..)

[–]jedigras 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

u clearly haven't tried testing network speed from inside china to the rest of the world through the great Chinese firewall. yes, this thing is really what the argument is about.

[–]Ant-n 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

You are right I didn't. It is part of the free market, You have to spend money to make money,

But then again if you spend 1 million dollar in your mining rig and you move it to a place with very cheap electricity but crappy internet connection, well either you are knowingly taking a risk (nothing wrong with that) or.... you are an idiot really...

[–]etherminer24 6ポイント7ポイント  (6子コメント)

No. You don't understand. 20MB blocks made in america won't propagate to the chinese farms fast enough, they'll be at a disadvantage

[–]i_wolf 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

Making 20MB blocks will require higher costs for a maker, which will put him at disadvantage among other western miners.

Chinese miners will just have to pay higher costs for bandwidth; but they are already have the advantage of cheap electricity, labor, and relaxed regulations; should we reduce the difficulty to subsidize the american miners? It's exactly the same argument.

Restring growth of Bitcoin just to please part of miners who are already have the biggest farms is illogical and will be harmful for Bitcoin.

[–]ecafyelims 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

heh, Chinese farms arguing against unfair geographic competitive advantage. Let's even the playing field on all accounts, regulations, labor costs, electric costs, and then we'll talk about what dis/advantages the Chinese businesses enjoy.

[–]Adrian-X 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I don't understand why people don't just blow this Chinese nonsense off you make a great point.

On top of that China and Hong Kong together have fewer than 100 nodes so they don't have much say on which nodes to build blocks on.

[–]Adrian-X 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

No Bitcoin isn't a Chinese charity.

If cheep electricity and overhead comes with poor internet infrastructure choosing to setup business there is not a Bitcoin problem, it's a business trade off.

Reading the op it's all about bandwidth and orphan rate. Problems specific to China.

When the Chinese started domination mining no one had any authority to prevent the Chinese from investing the central control governance committee could have said your cheep electricity and rent isn't fair to miners who have good internet.

[–]chriswen 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Will they really be at a disadvantage? Or will American miners be at a disadvantage because they aren't able to propagate to chinese miners.

[–]smartfbrankings -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

Not only that, but a big block will be able to include more transactions, hurting their revenue as well. Although LOL @ anyone paying a transaction fee in Gavincoin.

[–]Cthulhumorist 7ポイント8ポイント  (34子コメント)

Do you understand that the complaint about unacceptably slow propagation of 20MB blocks across slow networks applies to blocksmined outside of china, too?

If you can mine a 20MB block and orphan 40+% of your competition for at least the next round... do you still have the incentive to mine blocks as small as possible?

[–]moral_agent 14ポイント15ポイント  (10子コメント)

Do you understand that the complaint about unacceptably slow propagation of 20MB blocks across slow networks applies to blocksmined outside of china, too?

I have a complaint too. America does not have sufficiently low electricity prices to make it competitive to mine here. We should probably address that problem at the protocol level.

Or, I don't know, maybe bitcoin does not care where mining is most profitable?

[–]bitskeptic 1ポイント2ポイント  (8子コメント)

They have 60% combined network hash rate. They can destroy the 20MB chain if they want to. So "fuck them" doesn't seem like a good strategy.

[–]bit-cash 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

they WILL direct their massive investments on mining equipment to mining coins on the chain that have the most value, so they WILL go along with whatever the economic consensus of bitcoin turns out to be. If they don't, they are going to be fucked indeed. But they will, they're not idiots. But if few of them are, those are going to be bankrupt idiots, which are quite harmless.

[–]i_wolf 4ポイント5ポイント  (3子コメント)

They have 60% combined network hash rate.

So, let's give them even more because they're threatening us? That's your suggestion?

They can destroy the 20MB chain if they want to.

Why would they? It will destroy their own investments. They only need to pay higher costs for the bandwidth, and it's not a real issue since the chance of actual 20MB blocks earlier than 2025 is low.

[–]Ant-n 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

And the bandwidth cost for 20MB will probably be negligible for them..

Are they using 56k or what....?

[–]i_wolf 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Apparently they deliberately move to rural areas for the cheap electricity and then complain about slow internet there.

"a massive, secretive Bitcoin mine housed within a repurposed factory in the Liaoning Province in rural northeast China."

[–]Ant-n 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Well they take the risk... I am sure they have check the number,

They make money now and if the internet connection is not good enough at some point, well they get a better one.. or they move...

[–]moral_agent 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

Don't mistake impartiality for lack of respect. Also, it is certainly possible that a regional subset of miners is powerful enough to force the rest of us to accept their wishes at the expense of the overall ecosystem by threatening to destroy Bitcoin. If that is their attitude, then fuck them.

[–]Adrian-X 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

They have less than 100 nodes in China so changing the global network to accommodate them is not consistent, keep in mind a 51% attacker earns nothing while they destroyed the 20MB fork.

The motivation isn't to mine big blocks but to have your blocks propagate fast so they won't be orphaned.

Even if there was no limit miners are still incentives to make the smallest blocks with the highest fees.

[–]smartfbrankings -2ポイント-1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Just centralize checkpoints under the leadership of Chairman Hearn and Comrade Andressen. Problem solved.

[–]Cthulhumorist -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

Or, I don't know, maybe bitcoin does not care where mining is most profitable?

If 20MB blocks cause the predicted chain fragmentation and regular catastrophic failures of the mining net, how profitable do you think mining bitcoin's gonna be?

And if mining bitcoin isn't profitable, maybe attacking bitcoin will be a better way to make money... who knows.

Oh, or we could try to avoid that.

[–]i_wolf 4ポイント5ポイント  (18子コメント)

There is competition outside of China too. You're risking to lose against non-chinese miners.

Besides, IBLT can make the orphan rate issue irrelevant.

[–]Cthulhumorist 0ポイント1ポイント  (17子コメント)

There is competition outside of China too. You're risking to lose against non-chinese miners.

Suppose you control 20% of the effective computation. You're at risk of losing to 80% of other miners (including the chinese).

If you can orphan 40% of your competition by mining a 20MB block you now control 33% of the effective computation... you're at risk of losing to 66% of other remaining miners.

Besides, IBLT can make the orphan rate issue irrelevant.

<blinks> Blocks. Not Tx. Different problem.

[–]i_wolf 4ポイント5ポイント  (6子コメント)

If you can orphan 40% of your competition by mining a 20MB block you now control 33% of the effective computation...

What about the costs of mining unnecessary bigger blocks? It's expensive for you too, 40x more bandwidth than the average block currently, you're losing to other western miners.

Hell, why can't Chinese pay higher costs if they want to stay competitive? They already have dirt cheap electricity and labor, who are we subsidizing? It would be effectively a welfare for the biggest farms today.

[–]Cthulhumorist 0ポイント1ポイント  (4子コメント)

What about the costs of mining unnecessary bigger blocks? It's expensive for you too, 40x more bandwidth than the average block currently, you're losing to other western miners.

You can control those since you're not obligated to mine 20MB blocks continuously. Also you'd only need to produce them when the network has recovered from the fragmentation. The rest of the time you could mine normally to take full advantage of your greater share of the effective network.

Hell, why can't Chinese pay higher costs if they want to stay competitive?

Probably the same reason Western miners don't just produce more power so it's cheaper... they don't control the relevant infrastructure.

They already have dirt cheap electricity and labor, who are we subsidizing? It would be effectively a welfare for the biggest farms today.

Are farms even have a chance of being profitable after the next halvening? It seems kind of shortsighted if people are really moaning about something that's going to be irrelevant in about a year.

[–]i_wolf 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

The rest of the time you could mine normally to take full advantage of your greater share of the effective network.

Why do I have greater share if the average block size is 0.4MB again, just as today?

they don't control the relevant infrastructure.

people are really moaning

Americans don't control their electricity plants and can't have cheap power either. Not sure if you're serious with this argument. I am moaning too because I can't mine on my Geforce GTX570. Can I have my free bitcoins please?

No miners are better than the others, it's free market.

[–]Cthulhumorist 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Why do I have greater share if the average block size is 0.4MB again, just as today?

Nodes in slower areas of the network are not competing in mining the next block because they are still waiting for the current block, or are mining orphans.

Americans don't control their electricity plants and can't have cheap power either.

And Chinese don't control their networks and can't have have faster data, either.

Not sure if you're serious with this argument.

If you understand that my argument is "This is a stupid argument.", yes, I'm serious about it. If you think I'm serious about the stupid argument, no, I'm not.

I am moaning too because I can't mine on my Geforce GTX570. Can I have my free bitcoins please?

You can mine the next block, it wouldn't be profitable, but you'd still be providing useful computation and competing with profitable miners.

"It's not profitable" is a different problem from being unable to mine the next block because of network fragmentation.

No miners are better than the others, it's free market.

If the network is healthy, yes. If the network is not healthy, leading to miners working on orphans, then bitcoin has a problem.

[–]i_wolf 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Nodes in slower areas of the network are not competing in mining the next block because they are still waiting for the current block, or are mining orphans.

They will catch up eventually, your attack is unsustainable and is just a waste of resources since you can't make 20MB blocks all the time.

"Chinese are moaning" is a stupid argument, not every person in the world can mine, and just because you're doing it now, doesn't mean the network is obligated to cover your costs till the end of your life.

Americans don't control their electricity plants and can't have cheap power either.

And Chinese don't control their networks and can't have have faster data, either.

And yet nobody asks for subsidies to Americans; so don't subsidize the Chinese.

They just need to pay more for higher bandwidth, that's it, because they deliberately moved to rural places for cheaper electricity. They will have less profits, that's what they are complaining about, but nobody is obligated to provide profits for them at the expense of the network.

The network is healthy: you're not a part of the network if you can't mine. Bitcoin had no problems when Chinese farm didn't existed, and it will survive even if they disappear - which will not happen anyway.

[–]Cthulhumorist 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

$/J, J/Hash, Hash/block.

Network fragmentation affects hash/block and is a problem with bitcoin. Through conversions you can get to $/block, but this is not a problem with profitability.

Electricity prices affect $/J and is a problem with profitability. Through conversions you can get to $/block, but this is not a problem with bitcoin.

nobody is obligated to provide profits for them at the expense of the network.

Applies to the $/J complaint, not to the hash/block complaint.

The network is healthy: you're not a part of the network if you can't mine. Bitcoin had no problems when Chinese farm didn't existed, and it will survive even if they disappear - which will not happen anyway.

We'll find out in a little over a year, I guess. Luckily most of these are solved problems with ready solutions found in various more-advanced cryptocoins.

[–]i_wolf 0ポイント1ポイント  (5子コメント)

Besides, IBLT can make the orphan rate issue irrelevant.

<blinks> Blocks. Not Tx. Different problem

Explain?

https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/e20c3b5a1d4b97f79ac2

Bitcoin miners want their newly-found blocks to propagate across the network as quickly as possible, because every millisecond of delay increases the chances that another block, found at about the same time, wins the "block race." With today's p2p protocol, this gives miners an incentive to limit the number of transactions included in their blocks.

...

we can't force miners to upgrade; we have to make the technology better so they WANT to upgrade. Miners that adopt this change will see fewer orphans. Miners that do not will lose out.

[–]Cthulhumorist 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

The problem IBLT solves is the time it takes for a node to validate a 20MB block and approve it for further relay.

The problem described here is the time it takes to relay the 20MB of data itself between nodes.

[–]i_wolf 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

The problem described here is the time it takes to relay the 20MB of data itself between nodes.

Maybe I'm misreading something, but it sounds to as a solution to relay times as well

O(1) Block Propagation

Bitcoin miners want their newly-found blocks to propagate across the network as quickly as possible, .. This is inefficient (transaction data is transmitted across the network twice, using twice as much bandwidth)

[–]Cthulhumorist 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Ah, I guess that would help.

Thought there's no guarantee Western miners wouldn't oppose IBLT, too, for profitability, rather than technical, reasons.

[–]petertoddPeter Todd - Bitcoin Expert -1ポイント0ポイント  (1子コメント)

Those pools are already running the IBLT equivalent implemented in Matt Corallo's block relay network; they've taken that into account.

IBLT only works if everyone cooperates, and there's incentives not to cooperate in many situations.

[–]cypherdoc2 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

My plan is to plug in a bunch of my full nodes into the relay network which should neutralize neutralize this large miner connectivity advantage. And why can't small miners do so also?

[–]chriswen 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

How do you know you won't get orphaned because your block will take longer to propagate.

[–]Cthulhumorist 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

The exploit relies on a known network nonuniformity.

It's a probabilistic advantage.

[–]chriswen 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

While you're propagating your block, the other 60% of the network could fine their own block and work on that one instead of yours. You have a chance of getting orphaned.

[–]Cthulhumorist 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

It's a probabilistic advantage.

You have a chance

[–]cypherdoc2 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

A simple defensive move to this is to do what the Chinese miners are doing today when a large block comes in. Immediately start mining a headers only block with 0 TX's during the time you're validating the large block.

[–]Cthulhumorist 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/3195

[–]awemany 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Which increases fee pressure by the way, because it means a certain fraction of hash power is idling by choice because fees are deemed too low.

Only when fees increase enough so it is worthwhile to include the block will that policy change.

But no, we don't have a working fee market and everything will go crazy when we go to 20MB blocks. /s

[–]Adrian-X 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

They don't teach this at school maybe they will learn.

[–]snooville 1ポイント2ポイント  (11子コメント)

Why raise the limit if you don't want blocks that size? If you know that blocks that size are infeasible then drop the idea of raising the limit to that level.

[–]i_wolf 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

Because we don't want to face rigid obstacles in case of unexpected spike in demand. It will bring skyrocketing price and profits for miners more than enough to cover higher costs of bandwidth. That is what happened in 2013, that bubble motivated many Chinese miners to enter the market despite blocks getting bigger. Or, they can set their own soft limits, if they can't handle it.

[–]kraml 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

There are more miners in the world, some of which can feasibly mine larger blocks. No reason to artificially restrict them. Every miner should be able to decide for themselves what their orphan risk is and put their limit accordingly.

[–]ronohara 1ポイント2ポイント  (8子コメント)

Because we want to avoid a 2nd hard fork when it becomes a problem again in a few years.

[–]snooville -3ポイント-2ポイント  (7子コメント)

It won't become a problem. Transaction fees will just rise to compensate. Want your transaction confirmed faster during peak times? Pay a higher fee!

[–]i_wolf 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

You're assuming users are willing to pay constantly growing fees. The purpose of the fees is to restrict usage, but Bitcoin is still tiny and needs to grow as high as possible.

[–]snooville 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

The purpose of the fees is to restrict usage

Purpose of the fees is to prevent spamming not to restrict usage.

Bitcoin is actually a very expensive payment system. As Peter Todd said if it weren't irreversible it would just be a much more expensive version of fiat. If transaction fees are low it's because miners are being compensated through inflation and that's a cost the holders are bearing.

Higher transaction fees are inevitable as the block subsidy falls. They are fairer than inflation too because those who use the network pay for it while those who just let their coins sit don't.

[–]i_wolf 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Purpose of the fees is to prevent spamming not to restrict usage.

To prevent sending transactions is to restrict usage. "Spam" is subjective, it's just numerous small transactions, too many to handle.

Higher fees are inevitable indeed, but only when we approach natural limits of technology available at the moment, when miners themselves decide they can't handle more transactions, then they will set their own fees and their own limits. It's impossible to predict where that limit lays and where will be in 10 years; besides, that limit is always floating.

[–]Lixen 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

Increasing max blocksize allows more transactions so that the total fee amount can rise without making transactions artificially expensive. Want more fee rewards? Allow higher max block size.

[–]snooville 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

Miners will not mine larger blocks. The chances of a block being orphaned goes up as the size of the block goes up.

[–]Lixen 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

So then let the miner decide which transactions to include that have a sufficiently high fee to offset an increased orphan rate.

I have yet to come across a single convincing argument against raising max block size to 20 MB or against implementing some algorithm such as BIP100 proposes.

[–]Ant-n 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

And all that create the condition for an health fee market,

Balance between Tx fees and Block size orphan risk.

Not a "wall" to crash against...

Otherwise Bitcoin has to modified to deal with that "wall" (safely record pending Tx for possible long duration, the network has to 'let you know' how much fees you suppose to pay and how long time to wait... etc...)

[–]ericpashman -1ポイント0ポイント  (16子コメント)

All miners already have the incentive to mine blocks as small as possible, for the faster propagation.

Except where bandwidth considerations dominate, miners have an incentive to mine every transaction with a positive transaction fee.

This dynamic means that miners need to collude to prevent transaction fees from falling to near zero, since the marginal cost of including a transaction in a block is negligible, so long as there is space available. A binding limit on the size of blocks is a mechanism equivalent to a means of collusion among miners, by which they can enforce a minimum transaction fee.

Unfortunately the incentives on offer in today's protocol don't allow for a well functioning fee market without a cap on the block size.

[–]Ant-n 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Miner don't have to collude.

Each miner take Tx fees they found appropriate and the associated reward, and that's it you need nothing else to create a fee market.

Today the miner rely on coinbase reward for income.. but after the halving potential reward from fees will double, and if we go to 20MB the potential reward will be 40x you can be sure miner will look a lot more closely to the fees in the future,

No need to artificialy create a fee market, it is already there!

[–]i_wolf 0ポイント1ポイント  (14子コメント)

the marginal cost of including a transaction in a block is zero so long as there is space available.

As long as space is available, fees should be zero or near zero. When space is not available or block reward isn't sufficient, then the cost of transactions is not zero, and miners are free to raise the fees. It doesn't require "collusion", the free unrestricted trade will set find equilibrium of fees. Even without any limits, the fees would be astronomical, when the block reward diminishes. $26 trillion global volume 0.01% fee = $2.6 billion even with today's fees.

[–]etherminer24 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

No. fees are required to stop spam tx's

[–]i_wolf 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

"Spam" is subjective; fees are required to reduce the number of transactions in general due to inability of miners to handle them, because of bandwidth/storage/hashpower costs. Today it's used for spam only because block reward pays for everything; it will change when reward won't be sufficient anymore.

[–]BitFast -1ポイント0ポイント  (6子コメント)

or block reward isn't sufficient

Isn't the halving just around the corner?

[–]i_wolf 2ポイント3ポイント  (3子コメント)

Irrelevant; either price can jump, or miners can raise the fees.

[–]BitFast -2ポイント-1ポイント  (2子コメント)

hard to raise fees when blocks get a 2000% increase in max size, unless you expect miners to collude

[–]i_wolf 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

If it's hard because processing transactions is cheap or profitable, then fees should be low; otherwise it's not hard, nobody will be able to process them for free.

[–]Ant-n 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Miner will collude if they need more income from fees, Because they will have a commun interest and that is what you see in a free market,

("colluding" here is just reacting to the market signals)

[–]ronohara 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

58 weeks or so....

http://bitcoinclock.com/

[–]marcus_of_augustus -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

Chinese miners have decided to delay on that one at this particular time.

[–]ericpashman 0ポイント1ポイント  (4子コメント)

As long as space is available, fees should be zero or near zero.

Precisely. A fee market cannot function without a space constraint under the protocol's current rules. (This failure of incentives is due to the aggregation of transactions into blocks—a premature technological optimization that creates perverse incentives—not an intrinsic feature of a Bitcoin-like transaction model.)

When ... [a] block reward isn't sufficient, then the cost of transactions is not zero, and miners are free to raise the fees.

The marginal cost of including another transaction in a block is zero so long as there is space available (i.e., so long as you aren't forced to exclude some transaction with a positive fee in order to fit a higher-paying transaction into the block you're hashing). That means that without a mechanism for enforcing higher fees, miners will include every known transaction with a positive fee into the block they're working on, which in turn allows users to originate transactions with arbitrarily low fees.

But an artificial cap on the block size gives miners a way to enforce higher transaction fees. It's equivalent to a means of colluding among themselves to enforce higher transaction fees. But don't blame the miners—Bitcoin's transaction model simply cannot support a functioning fee market without an artificial limit on block sizes.

All of the bikeshedding about technical factors, almost all of which are plainly inconsequential, is simply obscuritantism. Miners know full well that this debate is about economics.

[–]i_wolf 2ポイント3ポイント  (2子コメント)

Precisely. A fee market cannot function without a space constraint under the protocol's current rules

A fee market works already, the market has decided the current level of fees is sufficient.

so long as there is space available

We're talking about the situation in future when the space isn't available anymore because block reward doesn't cover the costs of hashing/sending/storing anymore.

That means that without a mechanism for enforcing higher fees, miners will include every known transaction with a positive fee into the block they're working on, which in turn allows users to originate transactions with arbitrarily low fees.

They can't include every transaction if fees don't cover the cost, everything has cost, hashing, storing, sending, we live in a physical world with physical limitations. You're assuming miners have infinite resources, which is nonsense. Even if it were true, then fees should have been near zero.

But don't blame the miners—Bitcoin's transaction model simply cannot support a functioning fee market without an artificial limit on block sizes.

Repeating isn't proving.

[–]ericpashman -1ポイント0ポイント  (1子コメント)

Are you even reading what I'm writing? Do you understand the concept of marginal cost? Yes? Then tell me, how much does it cost a miner to add a transaction to the transaction set he's trying to hash into a block? Got it? Now, what fee do I need to attach to a transaction to get a miner to hash it into a block when there's no limit on the block size?

I'm happy to explain if what I've written is unclear. And I understand that the level discourse here rarely reaches above Sesame Street-level economics. But please don't just repeat nonsense over and over.

[–]i_wolf 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Are you even reading what I'm writing? Do you understand the concept of marginal cost? Yes? Then tell me, how much does it cost a miner to add a transaction to the transaction set he's trying to hash into a block?

Yes I understand and I suggest you trying to do the same. The cost of adding a transaction depends on resources available to him and the total number of transactions. The cost of a transaction today is about $6.25, and it is fully paid with inflation, regardless of any limits.

The cost can only remain zero if amount of resources is infinite. When total amount of transactions approaches the limit of resources available to the miner, cost increases. You're clearly confusing absence of hardcoded limit with absence of natural physical limits.

If a miner only have 1Mbps bandwidth, then he can process 75 megabytes of transactions max in every 10 minutes, or 262 transactions per second, even without taking costs of storage and hashing into account.

[–]Ant-n 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

That means that without a mechanism for enforcing higher fees, miners will include every known transaction with a positive fee into the block they're working on, which in turn allows users to originate transactions with arbitrarily low fees.

Miner can refuse to include Tx with low fees.

Let's say you don't include the smallest fees Tx and by doing that you just lost 0,08BTC but your block is 3x smaller than the current average then maybe it's a small price to pay to protect your block from being orphaned,

[–]supermari0 5ポイント6ポイント  (2子コメント)

We should lower the difficulty, because the west generally can't compete with china's low electricity costs. We could do that by increasing the blocksize limit to 20mb so that chinese miners lose their advantage and drop out of the mining game, thus lowering difficulty.

(Bad chinese internet infrastructure as an argument is very weak.)

[–]i_wolf 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

you should've added /s because downvoters don't understand sarcasm.

[–]allblood 2ポイント3ポイント  (4子コメント)

These 5 pools controls more than 40% hashrate.

If they want 8MB size, they will make it real, huh?

[–]marcus_of_augustus 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

More like > 50% ...

[–]rydan -2ポイント-1ポイント  (0子コメント)

And therein lies the problem. If you fork bitcoin they will obliterate you and your fortune.

[–]snooville 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

It says 60% in the OP

[–]GibbsSamplePlatter 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Chinese miners as a whole have 60%. I'm guessing most agree though.

[–]tigerstrain 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

At present, China’s five largest mining pools account for more than 60% of the network hashrate.

Signed,

F2Pool, Antpool,BW,BTCChina,Huobi

June 12th, 2015

Anyone else feel like that last sentence read like China just whipped out their big bitcoin cock?

[–]rydan 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

I've been saying it for over a year. At some point you are going to see triads of miners blackmailing the network. We are about to witness that. Tread carefully.

[–]Taidiji 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Mining pool are just pools. They don't have the power to guess what individual miners in their pools want.

[–]bitdoggy 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

unless they are private

[–]sumBTC 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

We have a fair consensus for 8MB blocks. Now cut the crap and go for it!

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Eight_is_Great

[–]MeanOfPhidias 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Why does Bitcoin have to cater to China? Why not cater to the 4 billion people who connect to the internet with cell phones?

[–]Blake55 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

They have most of the hashrate, they have the power. It's actually them catering to us.

[–]hey-woqu 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

hope you can reach agreement

[–]dmz241 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I read somewhere of a suggestion for a dynamic block size which I think is more suitable if it can be inbuilt into the code. Its not just china most 3rd world countries cant do it and are capped on size.

[–]ProfessorViking 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Just do it. Once we get one hard fork without it being the end of the world, the next fork will be subject to less drama and easier to find consensus on.

[–]AbsoluteZero2 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Put this message in the blocks or it didn't happen. Also, protocol could allow blocks of 20MG and Chinese miners can make blocks of 8 MG and nobody can force them to make them bigger.

[–]saddit42 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

soo.. let it be 8 then

[–]funbuck_superhighway 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

The opinion of any miners choosing to mine empty blocks should be discarded just like their hashing power is discarded from the utility of the network.

[–]bitpool 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Let's go to 88MB. That's twice as lucky as 8MB. The Chinese will be thrilled!

[–]anddrade 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

From what I heard, the problem with big blocks is that some miner could put out a 100 MB block and that would cause miners with lower bandwidth to spend most of their time downloading and verifying this block instead of mining on top of it.

Here is what I don't understand:

I believe one only needs the block header to start mining on top of the old one, so these miners could start mining for the next block (possibly an empty one) even if they haven't already checked its content.

Eventually this miner will finish checking the big block, and there are two possibilities: (a) the big block was valid all along, in which case we are all happy; or (b) the big block was invalid, and so is now the empty one mined on top of it, in which case both miners lose their rewards, so there is no incentive to put out an invalid block in the first place.

So what is the problem with big blocks?

[–]ThePiGuy2 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

It would be such a pain in the ass to do 2 major hard forks, when we could just do one.

[–]6to23 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

The bigger question is why increase the block size, when we could just have more frequent blocks, like 3-5 blocks every minute.

  • much better user experience, as 1st confirmation arrives within seconds usually.

  • better decentralization, as small solo miners will find blocks much more frequently, low variance.

  • less network bottleneck, as 1MB(or probably much smaller since blocks are now more frequent) blocks will travel the network easily, while 8MB blocks will bottleneck the network as everyone scramble to download 8MB of data at once.

The counter points about "more orphans" or "wasted hashrate" doesn't make any sense, since if all miners get more orphans or waste hashrates, then it ends up being still a fair system. Hashrate can't really be wasted anyway, since the hashes doesn't calculate any useful work to begin with. PoW mining is basically a competition to see who can waste more hashes by buying more miners.

[–]rende 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

multiples of 8MB work better with storage?

[–]danster82 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

whatever just increase the size and do it soon.

[–]JeocfeechNocisy 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Even 4MB would be more than enough for now.

[–]bit-cash 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Even 4MB would be more than enough for now.

not if the party gets started, which may be any moment

[–]waspoza 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

8MB + annual increase is good enough for me.

[–]rydan 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

You really shouldn't use time when dealing with distributed systems. Use block heights.

[–]waspoza 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Sure thing, "annual" actually means "after xxx blocks". :)

[–]oakpacific -1ポイント0ポイント  (2子コメント)

The better question would be: then why 20 MB, why not 10 MB, 30 MB, 40MB? Why not any other size? Because somebody apparently think they know better, they know better than any of the real participants in the market, this is the sort of confidence any centralized economy planner in any socialist country once have.

[–]laisee 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

because ... research and simulations by people who know Bitcoin.

See http://blog.bitcoinfoundation.org/a-scalability-roadmap for a start.

[–]oakpacific 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

FYI, all centralized economy planners do a lot of both. Free market is exactly about whatever you project in advance cannot beat the law of supply and demand. Espeically with miners telling you in your face that your projection is not working for them.

[–]finway 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Miners have no say in this, and miners can always set their soft limit.

[–]smartfbrankings 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

It's not that simple. If others mine bigger blocks easier, it puts you at a disadvantage. The only solution is to soft-fork and try to actively orphan big blocks that you cannot keep up with.

[–]rydan -4ポイント-3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Here's why you can't go with 20MB.

If you go ahead with 20MB leaving these miners by themselves they have no incentive to further cooperate with you. You can expect a 51% attack because it will be in their best interest to cooperate with each other to destroy your coin in the case of a fork. Anyone with half a brain will immediately realize that the 8MB bitcoin is the real bitcoin and use it exclusively just as they want.

[–]emusher -3ポイント-2ポイント  (0子コメント)

lol , 8MB is coming ?