Author: Stefan Thomas 2012-06-15 16:56:38
Published on: 2012-06-15T16:56:38+00:00
The email thread discusses the issue of scalability and fee economics in Bitcoin. The discussion focuses on the block size limit, which puts a floor on prices by limiting supply beyond what it would otherwise be. There are both real and artificial limits to transaction validation. The artificial limits, such as the block size limit, prevent more transactions from being confirmed. The real limits are the bandwidth, computing, and memory resources of participating nodes. The economic actors tend to plan ahead and will generate the largest possible block that they are still confident other miners will accept and process. In practice, economic self-interest ensures a genuine fee-based verification market. There is no need for a global block size limit. The existing economic incentives won't manifest unless somebody translates them into code. On the miner side, the block size limit should be configurable with a relatively high default. It should also be a soft rather than a hard limit.On the user side, the fee should be displayed on the Send Coins dialog, and users should be allowed to choose a different fee per transaction. Discouraging address reuse will not change the amount of transactions, but it may make certain use cases, like green addresses, more complicated. It may also make it harder to read information straight out of the blockchain. Additionally, it may force people into privacy best practices that they don't want to follow.The discussion proposes several solutions, including changing the mining code to group transactions together with their mempool dependencies and then calculating all fees as a group. This would allow miners to maximize their revenue and better represent the existing priorities that users express through fees. SatoshiDice pays fees and generates a lot of transactions, pushing more traditional traffic out due to artificial throttles. To address this, SatoshiDice should use the same fee algorithms as Bitcoin-Qt to avoid paying excessive fees and queue-jumping.Scalability improvements are necessary but complicated. Making the block size limit float is better than picking a new arbitrary threshold. There are technical ways to implement block chain pruning such that there is no change of trust requirements. The discussion concludes by suggesting SPV clients like MultiBit and Android Wallet already exist and will get better with time.On a separate note, the email thread also mentions the client's bandwidth usage and parse overheads from end users. The conversation mentions that at some point, Bitcoin-Qt can have a dual mode, but it is uncertain when this will be implemented.In addition to this technical talk, an unrelated advertisement for a Live Security Virtual Conference is included. The exclusive live event will cover the latest in malware threats, endpoint security, and mobile security, offering IT managers a comprehensive view of today's security and threat landscape.
Updated on: 2023-06-06T05:14:27.420945+00:00