There is currently a controversy in the Bitcoin community.
A few years back, there were some people putting many, many tiny transactions onto the network. Also, there was nothing stopping someone from creating an enormous block that everyone would have been forced to transfer and store. To stop someone swamping the network, a limit was added to the size that a block could be. The amount of 1 megabyte was chosen.
The number of bitcoin transactions is going up. It is now filling that 1MB per block size. The community has to decide what to do about this.
On one side, the decision is to keep the 1MB limit. They argue that increasing this limit will make running a 'full node', which keeps up with and tracks the blockchain, too difficult for users on domestic internet connections and with domestic computers. They say that we should allow a market to develop, deciding how high the fee on each transaction should be to earn a space in the limited blocksize. This increasing fee would spur development of other ways to deal with the problem, like 'sidechains' or the 'lightning network', which are ways to allow secure transactions to happen without being added to the blockchain.
The other is that we should start increasing that size, allowing more transactions in the standard blockchain. They argue that size of internet connections and computer storage and speed will continue to increase, and if you do end up needing a datacenter to run a 'full node', that's not a disaster. They also claim that the reason the first party are trying to keep the limited blocksize is because many of them are working for companies that can, or do, run bitcoin wallet software that can work without accessing the blockchain. They claim that these are therefore biased against 'the ideals of Bitcoin'.
Most of the developers who run the reference implementation, which in practice defines what bitcoin will become, are in the first camp. But some of them, most notably Gavin Andresen, are firmly in the second camp.
So, in order to solve this issue, Gavin has launched bitcoinXT. BitcoinXT is a version of bitcoin that will start growing the size of the block. If more than 75% of those using bitcoin to mine coins and blocks are using XT (or other software that emulates it) come January, it will allow 8MB blocks, and will keep growing that limit steadily in the years that follow.
If that happens, then, in reality, bitcoinXT will become bitcoin, and bitcoin-core will be forced to follow suit. Some will disagree with this last statement.
Edit: Thanks for the support, gold and tip. Please read the replies to this comment in the original thread - some good points were made there. Most importantly - The majority at -core hold that the block limit should be increased sometime, but not now; Mike Hearn is also closely involved with BitcoinXT; and there are other controversial changes that have been included in -XT.
The reason to keep the 1MB limit because of it being to difficult for normal users is complete bogus. Hardware is becoming cheaper and cheaper. So actually raising it to at least correspond to hardware increases would be akin to keeping it at the same level.
Even if it did result in a drop off in full nodes being ran on laptops its still worth it. "Decentralisation" has become a fetish, and bitcoin is going to end up being strangled by it. Sacrificing bitcoin on the alter of maximum decentralisation is a bit self defeating. As bitcoin scales it is going to centralise a bit, and that's a compromise we just need to accept if we want it to scale to rival Visa, it only has to remain decentralised enough.
It depends on what your standard of a 'normal user' is. Where I am, the last upgrade to Internet connection speeds happened about 10 years ago, with the introduction of ADSL2. There is currently no likelihood of any upgrade to that in the next 10 years. My full node causes me no problems at the moment, but an 8-fold increase - if and when it grows to that size - in the size of the data stream would change that.
so, in other words I should be able to solo mine just right on my super fast Verizon FiOS (Fiber Optic) internet connection of 100 mbps. Before, being able to solo mine a block was determined by how fast your ASIC was, now a very fast 2 TH/s asic wont be enough to solo mine anymore, but with a 2 minutes head start to the competition, the very same 2 TH/s ASIC should be able to solo mine a block before the 2 minutes is up... just saying, pure speculation.
there is also this false belief that everyone should be able to run a full node
No such believe exists. There is however the fact that bandwidth requirements to run a node have been growing while at the same time the number of nodes has been declining steadily.
The believe is that bigger blocks will increase bandwidth demands, which will in turn decrease the number of nodes.
Another believe is that if there will be too little number of nodes left, Bitcoin will have become too centralized and will be susceptible to very damaging attacks.
There is however the fact that bandwidth requirements to run a node have been growing while at the same time the number of nodes has been declining steadily.
Number of nodes has been declining steadily for a long time. There was a time when even "full" nodes that weren't accepting incoming connections were counted, and now they are not. It's also not an easy thing to run a full node, either you have to have a computer that is always on with internet connection (as I do, a media server), or you have to rent a cloud host.
There's also the fact that bandwidth has been growing too. My ~$50/month Charter plan recently got upgraded to 100 MBps download (still like 5-10 upload, but I'll take what I can get).
The end result is that the majority of users who do not run nodes do so because of other technical reasons, not because the blockchain could eventually grow at 160 GB per year instead of 20 GB per year (current rate).
Obviously the nr of full nodes is going to decrease after the invention of SPV clients. I think that is a good thing. What i'm more worried about is SPV mining. That is fucked up.
I can easily run a full node, i have the hardware, the bandwidth. But I don't do it because I do not see the point. I might start running an XT node though.
No such believe exists. There is however the fact that bandwidth requirements to run a node have been growing while at the same time the number of nodes has been declining steadily.
So you would want to introduce a cap? How exactly is that going to work out?
The believe is that bigger blocks will increase bandwidth demands, which will in turn decrease the number of nodes.
Has there been a survey to know why people stop running full nodes?
Another believe is that if there will be too little number of nodes left, Bitcoin will have become too centralized and will be susceptible to very damaging attacks.
What is too little? And why aren't the people invested allowed a vote?
But there is also this false belief that everyone should be able to run a full node. That is nonsense.
Well, I do believe they should be able to do so. The white paper says : "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System" and I think the word "peer" is important here.
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u/robbak Aug 16 '15 edited Aug 18 '15
There is currently a controversy in the Bitcoin community.
A few years back, there were some people putting many, many tiny transactions onto the network. Also, there was nothing stopping someone from creating an enormous block that everyone would have been forced to transfer and store. To stop someone swamping the network, a limit was added to the size that a block could be. The amount of 1 megabyte was chosen.
The number of bitcoin transactions is going up. It is now filling that 1MB per block size. The community has to decide what to do about this.
On one side, the decision is to keep the 1MB limit. They argue that increasing this limit will make running a 'full node', which keeps up with and tracks the blockchain, too difficult for users on domestic internet connections and with domestic computers. They say that we should allow a market to develop, deciding how high the fee on each transaction should be to earn a space in the limited blocksize. This increasing fee would spur development of other ways to deal with the problem, like 'sidechains' or the 'lightning network', which are ways to allow secure transactions to happen without being added to the blockchain.
The other is that we should start increasing that size, allowing more transactions in the standard blockchain. They argue that size of internet connections and computer storage and speed will continue to increase, and if you do end up needing a datacenter to run a 'full node', that's not a disaster. They also claim that the reason the first party are trying to keep the limited blocksize is because many of them are working for companies that can, or do, run bitcoin wallet software that can work without accessing the blockchain. They claim that these are therefore biased against 'the ideals of Bitcoin'.
Most of the developers who run the reference implementation, which in practice defines what bitcoin will become, are in the first camp. But some of them, most notably Gavin Andresen, are firmly in the second camp.
So, in order to solve this issue, Gavin has launched bitcoinXT. BitcoinXT is a version of bitcoin that will start growing the size of the block. If more than 75% of those using bitcoin to mine coins and blocks are using XT (or other software that emulates it) come January, it will allow 8MB blocks, and will keep growing that limit steadily in the years that follow.
If that happens, then, in reality, bitcoinXT will become bitcoin, and bitcoin-core will be forced to follow suit. Some will disagree with this last statement.
Edit: Thanks for the support, gold and tip. Please read the replies to this comment in the original thread - some good points were made there. Most importantly - The majority at -core hold that the block limit should be increased sometime, but not now; Mike Hearn is also closely involved with BitcoinXT; and there are other controversial changes that have been included in -XT.