Published on: 2012-06-16T08:30:30+00:00
Joseph, the operator of SatoshiDice, has expressed a willingness to cooperate and not harm the Bitcoin network. It has been proposed that instead of asking him to stop attaching small fees to every transaction, bitcoinj should be fixed to have smarter fee codes. The issue of SatoshiDice and its impact on Bitcoin's scalability was raised by Jeff Garzik. However, no data was presented to indicate whether SatoshiDice was shutting out other traffic. Jonathan Warren regularly measures mainnet confirmation times and noted that fee-paying transactions now take longer to confirm than before. In June 2012, Jeff Garzik brought up concerns about Bitcoin's scalability in relation to SatoshiDice. He suggested that a hard fork should only be considered if there was evidence that SatoshiDice was preventing other traffic. To support his suggestion, he asked if anyone measured confirmation times for "normal tx" on the mainnet regularly. Jonathan Warren responded with a graph showing confirmation times for transactions on the mainnet, indicating that fee-paying transactions now take longer to confirm. No action was taken as a result of this discussion.Jonathan Warren, known as Atheros on Bitcointalk, regularly measures mainnet confirmation times. He posted a chart of transaction confirmation times from June 2012, showing that fee-paying transactions used to confirm faster. Jeff Garzik raised the issue of SatoshiDice and scalability in an email to the bitcoin-development mailing list. He mentioned that a hard fork would require significant community buy-in, as older clients would not accept blocks larger than 1MB. Garzik asked for regular measurement of mainnet "normal tx" confirmation times and requested any other hard data available.The discussion focuses on the block size limit and its potential impact on Bitcoin. There are concerns about the block size being exhausted despite many transactions in the memory pool, leading to delays in confirming low priority transactions. SatoshiDice's ability to pay 0.0005 BTC fees and fill up the memory pool exacerbates the issue. It is suggested that prioritization needs to be smarter or the average actual block size should increase. Changing the block size limit is considered a hard fork measure that requires significant community buy-in. Before making any changes, hard data is needed to show whether SatoshiDice is shutting out other network traffic. Regular measurement of mainnet "normal tx" confirmation times is proposed to quantify the situation.In an email conversation between Jeff Garzik and Stefan Thomas on June 15, 2012, they discussed the possibility of changing the block size limit. Garzik mentioned that this would require a high level of community buy-in since it would exclude older clients that do not accept blocks larger than 1MB. Increasing the block size limit in the short term is unlikely due to its perceived impact. Garzik requested solid data indicating whether SatoshiDice was shutting out most of the network traffic, as significant changes would require justification. He acknowledged that while SatoshiDice is a heavy user of the network, there is a distinction between a stress test and a flood that excludes non-SatoshiDice users. Therefore, Garzik asked for quantification of the situation.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T03:38:09.852343+00:00