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Scalability means O(ln(n)) performance, but they are working with O(n) performance (to be generous) — they are only kicking the can down the road.

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dgerard 1 year ago

Transactions were O(1) until mid-2015, when they hit a brick wall and are now O(wtf). (may jstolfi forgive my trespasses against the proper usage of big O notation)

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jstolfi 1 year ago

The incoming traffic and average block size grew approximately 100% per year from mid 2013 to late 2015, when it slowed down because of the 1 MB limit.

If it wasn't for that limit, right now the average block size probably would be 1.6 MB. By Jan/2018 (the earliest that the "compromise" 2 MB hard fork is to be activated) it would be 2.4 MB.

Thus, that 2 MB limit will probably be hit again very soon after the hard fork, as the repressed demand reappears. Then the network will again be operating in the same "clogged toilet" mode that it has operated since Jan/2016: with huge backlogs, unpredictably high fees, and unpredictably long delays.

The "compromise" is therefore simply a capitulation to Blockstream.

Evolution of the bitcoin protocol has clearly became a political and social game played by a bunch of pseudo-gurus and phony entrepreneurs who do not really understand the technology and the economics -- and do not care to.

All that those second-rate swindlers care for is to preserve the appearance of orderly progress, so that they can keep their milking their marks for another six months. That is what this "compromise" is all about.

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[deleted] 1 year ago

> Evolution of the bitcoin protocol has clearly became a political and social game played by a bunch of pseudo-gurus and phony entrepreneurs who do not really understand the technology and the economics -- and do not care to. That's not necessarily true. In many ways Greg's Clogged Toilet Model seems to be working quite well. The price is climbing due to forced scarcity. Mining fees are through the roof. In fact, I can't understand why the miners would want to ruin the good thing the have going on right now. If the block size doubled today the mining fees would plummet. Miners would be doing more work building bigger blocks for less overall revenue. The only apparent advantage of bigger blocks to a miner is that it puts both mining and node-running farther out of reach for those without industrial-level infrastructure.

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jstolfi 1 year ago

> In many ways Greg's Clogged Toilet Model seems to be working quite well. A bit of an overstatement that is, no? A more accurate assessment would be "he did not quite manage to bring the system to a *complete* halt yet". > The price is climbing due to forced scarcity There is no visible correlation between price moves and the salient events of the Block Size War. The price is in fact totally oblivious to the usability of the payment system. There is no reason to expect that the price of *bitcoins* be correlated to the scarcity of *block space*; quite the opposite. It would be like expecting the price of railroad *cars* to rise because the main railroad company decided to limit its capacity to 1000 passengers per day, forcing passengers to camp for weeks at the train stations. > Mining fees are through the roof ... If the block size doubled today the mining fees would plummet. Miners would be doing more work building bigger blocks for less overall revenue. Indeed the miners' revenue from fees is now ~1.2 million USD/day, whereas the block reward is ~4.7 million. While substantial, the miners would make more money from a 30% rise in the bitcoin price. However, the miners would surely get more fee revenue, if the min fee was set to the same level as the current average fee (~8 USD/kB, or ~4 USD per average transaction), while removing the block size limit. This alternative would be much better for users, since they would not need to guess the proper fee, and would be almost guaranteed to get confirmation in the next block. By the way, the cost of validating, storing, and propagating one extra kB of transactions is minuscule (much less than $0.05, it seems). That is not a reason to oppose bigger blocks. Besides paying huge fees, the users now also have to pay a huge "time is money" cost whenever their transactions are delayed for hours to weeks. While the money that they lose in fees goes to reward the miners's for their service, this second part of the cost does not benefit anyone: it is simply wasted. Greg's "Clogged Toilet" redesign is just stupid.

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[deleted] 1 year ago

> However, the miners would surely get more fee revenue, if the min fee was set to the same level as the current average fee (~8 USD/kB, or ~4 USD per average transaction) I don't think that anyone who gets a boner from decentralization would want to do that. I think it's a non-starter in this community. Clogging the toilet achieves the same effect, and adhers to ideology, if it's conveniently ignored that the 1 mb itself is counter-ideological. > There is no visible correlation between price moves and the salient events of the Block Size War. The price is in fact totally oblivious to the usability of the payment system. I'm not so sure. I have a hard time believing that there is zero correlation. I think your model is oversimplified, and that's why it hasn't been accurate. > Greg's "Clogged Toilet" redesign is just stupid. If you're a hodler it would appear to be working just fine, objectively. That's the real ideological split here. The big blockers want a currency that's good for more than just hiding under a birdbath.

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jstolfi 1 year ago

> I don't think that anyone who gets a boner from decentralization would want to do that. Setting such a minimum fee and removing the block size limit would have no detectable effect on **mining** centralization, and would definitely increase the miners' fee revenue. Bigger blocks do not increase the cost of simple clients. It just increases the cost of the "full but non-mining" **relay nodes** that wish to be middlemen between clients and miners. However, those relays contribute nothing to the network; on the contrary, they completely wreck its security model. The sooner they disappear, the better. > Clogging the toilet achieves the same effect It is equivalent to the min-fee alternative above **only** in forcing users to pay the same 4 USD/tx average fee. In all other aspects, the clogged toilet model is worse for the miners, and much worse for the users. > adheres to ideology Sorry, what ideology? > I have a hard time believing that there is zero correlation [between price moves and the salient events of the Block Size War] The price rose from Nov/2015 to the end of ~~May~~ Apr/2017 in an unbroken exponential trend. There were a couple of short-lived bumps clearly correlated with external events, such as the Brexit scare and the approaching of the COIN decision by the SEC. The normal traffic started to hit the 1 MB limit only in early 2016. From that time to a month ago, the network performed erratically, but in the same overall regime: with scattered backlogs lasting hours or days, separated by periods of no backlog, often during weekends. Meanwhile, the Block Size war saw three "attacks" by big-blockians: XT, Classic, and BU. The first two fizzled after a couple of months, but the last was still going strong until last week. SegWit got included in the Core release sometime in 2016, but the miner votes for its activation are still stalled at 40% -- wheres votes for big blocks have surpassed 50%. I cannot see any echo of those events in the price chart. > If you're a hodler it would appear to be working just fine, objectively. A smart hodler should remember that the only reason why bitcoins are expected to be worth zillions in the future is because bitcoin is expected to be widely adopted as an alternative to Visa or PayPal. That will never happen if the network continues to be congested. (Even if some day someone comes up with a viable design for the LN, it will surely require an uncongested bitcoin underlayer, with almost guaranteed next-block confirmation and predictable fees.)

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cacamalaca 1 year ago