You are viewing a single comment's thread from:

RE: Fork Christ's Sake: Bitcoin is going to fork. Is SegWit Bitcoin? Whose side should I be on?

in #bitcoin7 years ago (edited)

Can you detail how larger blocks lead to centralization?

Because physics. You can't propagate blocks faster than light. With bigger blocks you need more time to propagate to other nodes - and if they get the blocks too late, they got cut off (orphaned blocks?). Before you see it, only on guy in China will validate all your transactions because he has the funds and free energy to hoard all the blocks for himself. Which almost happened - almost, because UASF.

This is how I see bigger blocks:

You can add more lanes to the highway but it won't eliminate traffic jams. You need new solutions, from public transport to hyperloop. Lightning Network doesn't work? No problem, we will build better layers on top of bitcoin. As far as I know big blockers tried to make their own bitcoin before. How did it end? I don't hear much about bitcoin unlimited. Bitcoin ABC sounds ever more silly.

It would be best to gradually increase block size and add upgrades to bitcoin - but at the moment chinese miners almost took bitcoin for themselves. With bigger blocks it would be much easier for them. Bitcoin is for users, not miners. But that's just my opinion. In the end I like the fact, that there's so much debate, that really smart people (not me!) are trying to find best option. Conflict is an inherent part of this. Cheers.

Sort:  

Well yeah... everything is limited by bandwidth. You don't have much of a point there.

Before you see it, only on guy in China will validate all your transactions because he has the funds and free energy to hoard all the blocks for himself. Which almost happened - almost, because UASF.

Yeah no. Not quite how the game theory works. Or the economics. Or UASF for that matter.

You do need new solutions. Nobody disagrees there. No LN does not work and is inherently centeralized - is that bad, maybe not but it is not the catch all. All off chain solutions are inherently less secure than a Bitcoin transaction. Do you want Bitcoin to be an extremely centeralized settlement layer?

Small blocks lead to more centralization than larger blocks. Period.

Nobody is talking about 2GB blocks tomorrow. 32MB would serve us just fine for the near term. No centeralization risk there.

How did it end?
Well they were silenced by groups looking to capitalize on a crippled bitcoin by developing sidechains.

It would be best to gradually increase block size and add upgrades to bitcoin - but at the moment chinese miners almost took bitcoin for themselves. With bigger blocks it would be much easier for them. Bitcoin is for users, not miners. But that's just my opinion. In the end I like the fact, that there's so much debate, that really smart people (not me!) are trying to find best option. Conflict is an inherent part of this. Cheers.

Yep a gradual increase is how it should be done. Bitcoin ABC, Bitcoin XT, Bitcoin Classic and Bitcoin Unlimited all support this feature -- Emergent consensus is a thing too.

You are wrong about the Chinese miner thing. How on earth would it make it easier for them. Last I checked Xthin was freaking developed to make it easier for them to propagate blocks. Chinese have a hard time with that great firewall of theirs. How did the Chinese miners almost take Bitcoin for themselves?

Miners are large stakeholders in the network. They are users.

There is a reason I'm the one ponying up hashrate here.

Conflict is absolutely inherent.

If big blocks would be easier for Chinese miners why do most not support them? I haven't followed this really closely but I thought only one Chinese miner was supporting big blocks and the others had signed up for the blockstream segwit solution.

Because, we - the users, oppose :) #uasf

But there is a huge community of users that are all for them? I think the view we have online is skewed. I talk to people every day about bitcoin and I've still never met anyone in person that is against larger blocks. It's a complete disconnect from what I see online.

Not representing the economic majority properly.

Well you can all UASF yourself away from the rest of the hashrate that will be following the Segwit2x chain. Designed especially to prevent the silly UASF movement from causing a chainsplit.

Not sure why you, as a user, want SegWit - not bigger blocks.

Did you read my post here?

The Chinese do support bigger blocks actually.
Signaling acceptance for SegWit (dispite all the problems) does not mean you are against a HF blocksize increase.

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.21
TRX 0.25
JST 0.038
BTC 95554.61
ETH 3368.38
USDT 1.00
SBD 3.14