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* Re: [Bitcoin-development] No Bitcoin For You
@ 2015-05-26  2:30 Thy Shizzle
  2015-05-26  2:41 ` gabe appleton
  2015-05-26  2:53 ` Jim Phillips
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Thy Shizzle @ 2015-05-26  2:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Jim Phillips, Mike Hearn; +Cc: Bitcoin Dev


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Nah don't make blocks 20mb, then you are slowing down block propagation and blowing out conf tikes as a result. Just decrease the time it takes to make a 1mb block, then you still see the same propagation times today and just increase the transaction throughput.
________________________________
From: Jim Phillips<mailto:jim@ergophobia•org>
Sent: ‎26/‎05/‎2015 12:27 PM
To: Mike Hearn<mailto:mike@plan99•net>
Cc: Bitcoin Dev<mailto:bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] No Bitcoin For You

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 1:36 PM, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99•net> wrote:

This meme about datacenter-sized nodes has to die. The Bitcoin wiki is down
> right now, but I showed years ago that you could keep up with VISA on a
> single well specced server with today's technology. Only people living in a
> dreamworld think that Bitcoin might actually have to match that level of
> transaction demand with today's hardware. As noted previously, "too many
> users" is simply not a problem Bitcoin has .... and may never have!
>
>
... And will certainly NEVER have if we can't solve the capacity problem
SOON.

In a former life, I was a capacity planner for Bank of America's mid-range
server group. We had one hard and fast rule. When you are typically
exceeding 75% of capacity on a given metric, it's time to expand capacity.
Period. You don't do silly things like adjusting the business model to
disincentivize use. Unless there's some flaw in the system and it's leaking
resources, if usage has increased to the point where you are at or near the
limits of capacity, you expand capacity. It's as simple as that, and I've
found that same rule fits quite well in a number of systems.

In Bitcoin, we're not leaking resources. There's no flaw. The system is
performing as intended. Usage is increasing because it works so well, and
there is huge potential for future growth as we identify more uses and
attract more users. There might be a few technical things we can do to
reduce consumption, but the metric we're concerned with right now is how
many transactions we can fit in a block. We've broken through the 75%
marker and are regularly bumping up against the 100% limit.

It is time to stop debating this and take action to expand capacity. The
only questions that should remain are how much capacity do we add, and how
soon can we do it. Given that most existing computer systems and networks
can easily handle 20MB blocks every 10 minutes, and given that that will
increase capacity 20-fold, I can't think of a single reason why we can't go
to 20MB as soon as humanly possible. And in a few years, when the average
block size is over 15MB, we bump it up again to as high as we can go then
without pushing typical computers or networks beyond their capacity. We can
worry about ways to slow down growth without affecting the usefulness of
Bitcoin as we get closer to the hard technical limits on our capacity.

And you know what else? If miners need higher fees to accommodate the costs
of bigger blocks, they can configure their nodes to only mine transactions
with higher fees.. Let the miners decide how to charge enough to pay for
their costs. We don't need to cripple the network just for them.

--
*James G. Phillips IV*
<https://plus.google.com/u/0/113107039501292625391/posts>

*"Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals."
-- David Ogilvy*

 *This message was created with 100% recycled electrons. Please think twice
before printing.*

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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights
Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight.
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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] No Bitcoin For You
@ 2015-05-26  3:02 Thy Shizzle
  2015-05-26  3:23 ` Jim Phillips
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 13+ messages in thread
From: Thy Shizzle @ 2015-05-26  3:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Jim Phillips; +Cc: Bitcoin Dev

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Indeed Jim, your internet connection makes a good reason why I don't like 20mb blocks (right now). It would take you well over a minute to download the block before you could even relay it on, so much slow down in propagation! Yes I do see how decreasing the time to create blocks is a bit of a band-aid fix, and to use tge term I've seen mentioned here "kicking the can down the road" I agree that this is doing this, however as you say bandwidth is our biggest enemy right now and so hopefully by the time we exceed the capacity gained by the decrease in block time, we can then look to bump up block size because hopefully 20mbps connections will be baseline by then etc.
________________________________
From: Jim Phillips<mailto:jim@ergophobia•org>
Sent: ‎26/‎05/‎2015 12:53 PM
To: Thy Shizzle<mailto:thyshizzle@outlook•com>
Cc: Mike Hearn<mailto:mike@plan99•net>; Bitcoin Dev<mailto:bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] No Bitcoin For You

Frankly I'm good with either way. I'm definitely in favor of faster
confirmation times.

The important thing is that we need to increase the amount of transactions
that get into blocks over a given time frame to a point that is in line
with what current technology can handle. We can handle WAY more than we are
doing right now. The Bitcoin network is not currently Disk, CPU, or RAM
bound.. Not even close. The metric we're closest to being restricted by
would be Network bandwidth. I live in a developing country. 2Mbps is a
typical broadband speed here (although 5Mbps and 10Mbps connections are
affordable). That equates to about 17MB per minute, or 170x more capacity
than what I need to receive a full copy of the blockchain if I only talk to
one peer. If I relay to say 10 peers, I can still handle 17x larger block
sizes on a slow 2Mbps connection.

Also, even if we reduce the difficulty so that we're doing 1MB blocks every
minute, that's still only 10MB every 10 minutes. Eventually we're going to
have to increase that, and we can only reduce the confirmation period so
much. I think someone once said 30 seconds or so is about the shortest
period you can practically achieve.

--
*James G. Phillips IV*
<https://plus.google.com/u/0/113107039501292625391/posts>
<http://www.linkedin.com/in/ergophobe>

*"Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals."
-- David Ogilvy*

 *This message was created with 100% recycled electrons. Please think twice
before printing.*

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 9:30 PM, Thy Shizzle <thyshizzle@outlook•com> wrote:

>  Nah don't make blocks 20mb, then you are slowing down block propagation
> and blowing out conf tikes as a result. Just decrease the time it takes to
> make a 1mb block, then you still see the same propagation times today and
> just increase the transaction throughput.
>  ------------------------------
> From: Jim Phillips <jim@ergophobia•org>
> Sent: ‎26/‎05/‎2015 12:27 PM
> To: Mike Hearn <mike@plan99•net>
> Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
> Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] No Bitcoin For You
>
>
> On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 1:36 PM, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99•net> wrote:
>
>   This meme about datacenter-sized nodes has to die. The Bitcoin wiki is
> down right now, but I showed years ago that you could keep up with VISA on
> a single well specced server with today's technology. Only people living in
> a dreamworld think that Bitcoin might actually have to match that level of
> transaction demand with today's hardware. As noted previously, "too many
> users" is simply not a problem Bitcoin has .... and may never have!
>
>
>  ... And will certainly NEVER have if we can't solve the capacity problem
> SOON.
>
>  In a former life, I was a capacity planner for Bank of America's
> mid-range server group. We had one hard and fast rule. When you are
> typically exceeding 75% of capacity on a given metric, it's time to expand
> capacity. Period. You don't do silly things like adjusting the business
> model to disincentivize use. Unless there's some flaw in the system and
> it's leaking resources, if usage has increased to the point where you are
> at or near the limits of capacity, you expand capacity. It's as simple as
> that, and I've found that same rule fits quite well in a number of systems.
>
>  In Bitcoin, we're not leaking resources. There's no flaw. The system is
> performing as intended. Usage is increasing because it works so well, and
> there is huge potential for future growth as we identify more uses and
> attract more users. There might be a few technical things we can do to
> reduce consumption, but the metric we're concerned with right now is how
> many transactions we can fit in a block. We've broken through the 75%
> marker and are regularly bumping up against the 100% limit.
>
>  It is time to stop debating this and take action to expand capacity. The
> only questions that should remain are how much capacity do we add, and how
> soon can we do it. Given that most existing computer systems and networks
> can easily handle 20MB blocks every 10 minutes, and given that that will
> increase capacity 20-fold, I can't think of a single reason why we can't go
> to 20MB as soon as humanly possible. And in a few years, when the average
> block size is over 15MB, we bump it up again to as high as we can go then
> without pushing typical computers or networks beyond their capacity. We can
> worry about ways to slow down growth without affecting the usefulness of
> Bitcoin as we get closer to the hard technical limits on our capacity.
>
>  And you know what else? If miners need higher fees to accommodate the
> costs of bigger blocks, they can configure their nodes to only mine
> transactions with higher fees.. Let the miners decide how to charge enough
> to pay for their costs. We don't need to cripple the network just for them.
>
>  --
> *James G. Phillips IV*
> <https://plus.google.com/u/0/113107039501292625391/posts>
>
> *"Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals."
> -- David Ogilvy *
>
>   *This message was created with 100% recycled electrons. Please think
> twice before printing.*
>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* Re: [Bitcoin-development] No Bitcoin For You
@ 2015-05-26  2:51 Thy Shizzle
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Thy Shizzle @ 2015-05-26  2:51 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: gabe appleton; +Cc: Dev, Bitcoin

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I wouldn't say same trade-off because you need the whole 20mb block before you can start to use it where as a 1mb block can be used quicker thus transactions found in tge block quicker etc. As for tge higher rate of orphans, I think this would be complimented by a faster correction rate, so if you're pumping out blocks at a rate of 1 per minute, if we get a fork and the next block comes in 10 minutes and is the decider, it took 10 minutes to determine which block is the orphan. But at a rate of 1 block per 1 minute then it only takes 1 minute to resolve the orphan (obviously this is very simplified) so I'm not so sure that orphan rate is a big issue here. Indeed you would need to draw upon more confirmations for easier block creation but surely that is not an issue?

Why would sync time be longer as opposed to 20mb blocks?
________________________________
From: gabe appleton<mailto:gappleto97@gmail•com>
Sent: ‎26/‎05/‎2015 12:41 PM
To: Thy Shizzle<mailto:thyshizzle@outlook•com>
Cc: Jim Phillips<mailto:jim@ergophobia•org>; Mike Hearn<mailto:mike@plan99•net>; Bitcoin Dev<mailto:bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] No Bitcoin For You

But don't you see the same trade-off in the end there? You're still
propagating the same amount of data over the same amount of time, so unless
I misunderstand, the costs of such a move should be approximately the same,
just in different areas. The risks as I understand are as follows:

20MB:


   1. Longer per-block propagation (eventually)
   2. Longer processing time (eventually)
   3. Longer sync time

1 Minute:

   1. Weaker individual confirmations (approx. equal per confirmation*time)
   2. Higher orphan rate (immediately)
   3. Longer sync time

That risk-set makes me want a middle-ground approach. Something where the
immediate consequences aren't all that strong, and where we have some idea
of what to do in the future. Is there any chance we can get decent network
simulations at various configurations (5MB/4min, etc)? Perhaps
re-appropriate the testnet?

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 10:30 PM, Thy Shizzle <thyshizzle@outlook•com>
wrote:

>  Nah don't make blocks 20mb, then you are slowing down block propagation
> and blowing out conf tikes as a result. Just decrease the time it takes to
> make a 1mb block, then you still see the same propagation times today and
> just increase the transaction throughput.
>  ------------------------------
> From: Jim Phillips <jim@ergophobia•org>
> Sent: ‎26/‎05/‎2015 12:27 PM
> To: Mike Hearn <mike@plan99•net>
> Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net>
> Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] No Bitcoin For You
>
>
> On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 1:36 PM, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99•net> wrote:
>
>   This meme about datacenter-sized nodes has to die. The Bitcoin wiki is
> down right now, but I showed years ago that you could keep up with VISA on
> a single well specced server with today's technology. Only people living in
> a dreamworld think that Bitcoin might actually have to match that level of
> transaction demand with today's hardware. As noted previously, "too many
> users" is simply not a problem Bitcoin has .... and may never have!
>
>
>  ... And will certainly NEVER have if we can't solve the capacity problem
> SOON.
>
>  In a former life, I was a capacity planner for Bank of America's
> mid-range server group. We had one hard and fast rule. When you are
> typically exceeding 75% of capacity on a given metric, it's time to expand
> capacity. Period. You don't do silly things like adjusting the business
> model to disincentivize use. Unless there's some flaw in the system and
> it's leaking resources, if usage has increased to the point where you are
> at or near the limits of capacity, you expand capacity. It's as simple as
> that, and I've found that same rule fits quite well in a number of systems.
>
>  In Bitcoin, we're not leaking resources. There's no flaw. The system is
> performing as intended. Usage is increasing because it works so well, and
> there is huge potential for future growth as we identify more uses and
> attract more users. There might be a few technical things we can do to
> reduce consumption, but the metric we're concerned with right now is how
> many transactions we can fit in a block. We've broken through the 75%
> marker and are regularly bumping up against the 100% limit.
>
>  It is time to stop debating this and take action to expand capacity. The
> only questions that should remain are how much capacity do we add, and how
> soon can we do it. Given that most existing computer systems and networks
> can easily handle 20MB blocks every 10 minutes, and given that that will
> increase capacity 20-fold, I can't think of a single reason why we can't go
> to 20MB as soon as humanly possible. And in a few years, when the average
> block size is over 15MB, we bump it up again to as high as we can go then
> without pushing typical computers or networks beyond their capacity. We can
> worry about ways to slow down growth without affecting the usefulness of
> Bitcoin as we get closer to the hard technical limits on our capacity.
>
>  And you know what else? If miners need higher fees to accommodate the
> costs of bigger blocks, they can configure their nodes to only mine
> transactions with higher fees.. Let the miners decide how to charge enough
> to pay for their costs. We don't need to cripple the network just for them.
>
>  --
> *James G. Phillips IV*
> <https://plus.google.com/u/0/113107039501292625391/posts>
>
> *"Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals."
> -- David Ogilvy *
>
>   *This message was created with 100% recycled electrons. Please think
> twice before printing.*
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> One dashboard for servers and applications across Physical-Virtual-Cloud
> Widest out-of-the-box monitoring support with 50+ applications
> Performance metrics, stats and reports that give you Actionable Insights
> Deep dive visibility with transaction tracing using APM Insight.
> http://ad.doubleclick.net/ddm/clk/290420510;117567292;y
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
* [Bitcoin-development] No Bitcoin For You
@ 2015-05-14 15:22 Tom Harding
  2015-05-17  2:31 ` Ryan X. Charles
  2015-05-25 18:36 ` Mike Hearn
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 13+ messages in thread
From: Tom Harding @ 2015-05-14 15:22 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bitcoin Dev

A recent post, which I cannot find after much effort, made an excellent
point.

If capacity grows, fewer individuals would be able to run full nodes. 
Those individuals, like many already, would have to give up running a
full-node wallet :(

That sounds bad, until you consider that the alternative is running a
full node on the bitcoin 'settlement network', while massive numbers of
people *give up any hope of directly owning bitcoin at all*.

If today's global payments are 100Ktps, and move to the Lightning
Network, they will have to be consolidated by a factor of 25000:1 to fit
into bitcoin's current 4tps capacity as a settlement network.  You
executing a personal transaction on that network will be about as likely
as you personally conducting a $100 SWIFT transfer to yourself today. 
For current holders, just selling or spending will get very expensive!

Forcing block capacity to stay small, so that individuals can run full
nodes, is precisely what will force bitcoin to become a backbone that is
too expensive for individuals to use.  I can't avoid the conclusion that
Bitcoin has to scale, and we might as well be thinking about how.

There may be a an escape window.  As current trends continue toward a
landscape of billions of SPV wallets, it may still be possible for
individuals collectively to make up the majority of the network, if more
parts of the network itself rely on SPV-level security.

With SPV-level security, it might be possible to implement a scalable
DHT-type network of nodes that collectively store and index the
exhaustive and fast-growing corpus of transaction history, up to and
including currently unconfirmed transactions.  Each individual node
could host a slice of the transaction set with a configurable size,
let's say down to a few GB today.

Such a network would have the desirable property of being run by the
community.  Most transactions would be submitted to it, and like today's
network, it would disseminate blocks (which would be rapidly torn apart
and digested).  Therefore miners and other full nodes would depend on
it, which is rather critical as those nodes grow closer to data-center
proportions.





^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 13+ messages in thread
end of thread, other threads:[~2015-05-26  8:30 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 13+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2015-05-26  2:30 [Bitcoin-development] No Bitcoin For You Thy Shizzle
2015-05-26  2:41 ` gabe appleton
2015-05-26  2:53 ` Jim Phillips
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2015-05-26  3:02 Thy Shizzle
2015-05-26  3:23 ` Jim Phillips
2015-05-26  3:49   ` Jim Phillips
2015-05-26  5:43     ` gabe appleton
2015-05-26  8:29       ` Jim Phillips
2015-05-26  2:51 Thy Shizzle
2015-05-14 15:22 Tom Harding
2015-05-17  2:31 ` Ryan X. Charles
2015-05-25 18:36 ` Mike Hearn
2015-05-26  2:26   ` Jim Phillips

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