[bduerst]

I'm referring to the famed blocksize debate [1] that's happened with Bitcoin, in which several miners have gained control of the blockchain through economies of scale and are preventing forks for block size increase [2]. This size increase would allow for more than 7 tx/s but it would also increase costs for miners, so the miners are ignoring it, effectively making it tragedy of the commons.

Note: This isn't a blockchain issue, it's a Bitcoin issue. Other blockchains have implemented different measures to deal with transaction saturation and block size caps.

[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy

[1] https://blog.plan99.net/the-resolution-of-the-bitcoin-experi...

[stale2002]

Look, I am a pro big blocker myself (I think that the network would be perfectly fine with a 4-8x capacity increase). But Peter Todd has a point. (I would hope so. He is literally one of the experts)

Imagine if blocks were x Gigabytes. Thats X GigaBytes that have to be sent to every single miner in the world every 10 minutes!

There is a fundamental N squared problem in blockchains that you can't get around without using some very clever tricks that haven't been implemented yet.

[pmorici]

The creator of Bitcoin very much disagreed with Peter Todd's view. In 1999 people thought sending video let alone HD video over the Internet was totally nuts and impossible. Then YouTube happened and now we have HD video streaming to the extent that cable companies are worried it is going to put them out of business.

[bduerst]

Litecoin has the same blocksize as Bitcoin, but resolves blocks every 2.5 minutes instead of 10, giving it more 4x capacity. ZCash just forces block size increases as hard forks.

Like I said, different blockchains solves the blocksize differently, and Bitcoin has demonstrated that it's not capable of addressing it's blocksize issue and can't scale.

You can scoff and say, "That's a non-issue.", but even at the start of an NPR Planet Money podcast episode about Bitcoins, where they do a Bitcoin transfer, it hits the cap and gets lost.

[stale2002]

Litecoin's capacity is still nothing compared to VISA or Mastercard.

The question is not whether a crytocurrency can do 4X. The question is whether it can do 1,000X or more.

[bduerst]

Right, but Litecoin hasn't repeatedly hit it's transaction cap yet. Litecoin is still unproven as to whether or not it will fail to scale, which Bitcoin has already proven to fail at.

You're splitting hairs and ignoring ZCash. The point is that other cryptocurrencies are better implementations of a blockchain than Bitcoin, even with regards to the block size.

[TGilmour]

The market will, and has decided that what you're claiming is wrong. The point that other cryptocurrencies are better implementations is moot, bitcoin is 8 years old and still working very well.

I'm not saying Bitcoin is perfect and complete, it does need to scale, but to claim it has failed is ridiculous. Bitcoin development (or developers) will not implement something that isn't vigorously tested and could jeopardize the network. It isn't as simple as change 1mb to 8mb. If you can provide a technical case for why its so simple or that its safe to do so please post below! I'd be happy to review.

[bduerst]

>The market will, and has decided that what you're claiming is wrong.

Here's the podcast where the bitcoin "market" fails NPR in just the first few minutes: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/06/29/484029238/episo...

I said bitcoin has failed to scale because the miners who have consensus control won't accept any of the forks to increase blocksize. Bitcoin hasn't failed once, twice, but five times now with BIP 100, 101, 102, 103, and 109.

If you think existence is proof of success, then I have some very successful beanie babies to sell you.

[tlrobinson]

You don't need to settle every transaction on the blockchain itself.

See https://lightning.network/

[bduerst]

Sidechains are not a workaround, even ignoring that they're centralized and marketed as such.

Sidechains only solve the problem of user scalability, not volume scalability, because they still require the Bitcoin network to verify.

For example, on a side chain it would take seconds to make 10,000,000 transactions between 2 people, but making 2 transactions between 10,000,000 people would take over a month.

[tlrobinson]

Sidechains and Lightning Network are not the same thing.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Lightning_Network

https://lightning.network/

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/greg-maxwell-lightning-...

It's basically a network of "payment channels" you can route instantaneous off-chain payments over, which occasionally settle on the blockchain. And you don't need to trust anyone in the network with your funds.

[stale2002]

Exactly, that is one of the "clever solutions" that I was referencing.