OnChain Scaling
2 HN recommenders · recommended in 5 months, 2017–2022
27:08 · 12K views · Nov 20, 2017
Peter Rizun and Andrew Stone present results of tests running 1 GB blocks on a Bitcoin test network at Scaling Bitcoin Stanford. The talk argues for big-block scaling and discusses its consequences.
Cited by big-block advocates as evidence that Bitcoin could handle far higher throughput.
6 comments from Hacker News
That's my point. BCH did not include some technical innovations like you stated. It simply increased hardcoded block size limit. Simple as that. Even Satoshi himself mentions this in his whitepaper. Other stuff has also changed. The difficulty adjustment (DAA) algorithm has changed to allow are more stable difficulty for miners. Segwit just changed what parts of a transaction counted as size in a block. In reality we're talking about 200KB or thereabouts extra space in blocks. Lightning network is based on a mesh-network. Furthermore it completely changes the bitcoins fundamental clockwork. Suddenly you can't receive payments if you don't hold any coins yourself. Even more detrimental; you can't receive payments if you are not online on the lightning network. It has several other flaws that are very hard to fix; [LINK] . I suggest you see this presentation on 1GB blocks (tested on test-net) by Peter Rizun; this video And his talk at "Satoshi's Vision" (here he talks about what is called "weak blocks" and how it can improve scaling and wasted PoW; [LINK] It's totally feasible and does not require super computers albeit a Raspberry Pi won't do no more. Scaling to VISA level of transactions is possible. I don't think it's really going to change too much in computing power with bigger blocks. The size of the merkle root won't change just because blocks are larger which means the block header size won't change. Why do you suspect a second-layer is needed?
A mesh network that requires YOU to be online to receive funds. Also you must have funds to open a channel. So in order to receive funds you must have funds already. It seems like a really big step backwards in big big scheme of things bitcoin. All of the above problems can be solved by increasing the block size. I'm not saying it's the definitive solution... but right now it is a better solution. A good talk about really big blocks on bitcoin and what the ramifications are; this video
I needed to clarify that it wasn’t my proposal, as to how to gradually approach this, test nets are already deployed on many of the uncapped networks, I believe you’ll enjoy this great presentation by Peter Rizun and Andrew Stone, they’re far smarter than I’ll ever be: this video
Uncapped is a pseudo name for “capped just in time”. It’s never really uncapped. If you’re interested in some work being done on such larger blocks, you’ll enjoy this presentation: this video
Everything is relative. The significant part is that increasing the block size steadily can scale to huge transaction volumes. Visa level transaction levels of around 2,000 TPS can be achieved with block size increases and higher end computer hardware. If we are talking visa level transaction volumes then the user base has to be at least 500 million users. If the userbase is that large then think of how many people would be willing to run full nodes. Not everyone but probably 10,000+. The current crypto ecosystem is probably a few million people across all coins. Also it is important to note that BTC could be like BCH at higher transaction levels if they increased the block size but that won't because of this lightning network idea. Which is what I don't get. You can increase the block size right NOW and work on the lightning network as well. Yet, they don't do that because the lightning network is everything and any other solution is not even considered. I used to also think that bigger blocks were always bad but that is simply not true. The original block size limit was purely implemented to stop spam when bitcoin's userbase was very low. Satoshi actually wanted to implement bigger blocks as the userbase grew. Bigger blocks is the not the long-term solution but it is a solution that we have right now that works. this video