Archived Can someone please give me a rundown on this whole XT thing? (bitcoin)
submitted ago by InternetTuffGuy
Posted by: InternetTuffGuy
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Archived on: 2/12/2017 1:51:00 AM
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Archived Can someone please give me a rundown on this whole XT thing? (bitcoin)
submitted ago by InternetTuffGuy
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[–] Koinan 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
Can some one ELI5 whether a block size increase will effect bitcoins security?
[–] Milty 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago (edited ago)
Many of the arguments against increasing the block size are somewhat...silly...if you ask me.
Originally the block size cap was put in place so that malicious nodes posing as regular nodes couldn't overload the system by creating massive blocks (like 20gigs worth) filled with garbage transactions. That security threat still doesn't really threaten XT though because the block size is set to increase a little at a time (like 1MB to 8MB and so on) as it's needed basically, so even if a node tried this attack it would still be easily handled by the network because anything excessively large would be discarded without being processed.
The alternative is only processing 1MB worth of transactions every time a block is mined, which is about every 10 minutes. Hence if the block size is never increased, the bitcoin network will never be able to process more than it's current approximate cap which is about 4 transactions a second.
It should be noted that this cap is already being hit on some blocks which means as a user you have to wait longer for your transaction to be put into a block. If your transaction is not yet in a block, it basically isn't set in stone yet, it's just a "proposed" transaction, once it's in a block it's confirmed and once it's got a few blocks behind it in the chain it's basically not coming off the record until bitcoin and probably the internet are dead and gone. If the limit is constantly being hit at every block, that means more transactions are being generated than can fit into the blocks so every time a block is mined a big backlog of transactions are just left behind and don't get confirmed. Sucks to be one of the ones who gets left behind, better hope your transaction makes it into the next block...or it could be in the backlog...again...
Believe it or not some people actually argue that this is a good thing because they think it will create a 'market' for mining fees. Basically to get a transaction through you'd have to put a high enough fee on it to ensure the miner selects your transaction to put into it's block because the miner would obviously select the transactions with the most fees to put through so it can claim the fees and make money. So then whatever transactions don't have high enough fees are left behind. I personally think this situation sounds kinda shitty and probably wouldn't use bitcoin if I had to "fee battle" to get my transactions confirmed...like wtf?
The community (or rather the main developers of bitcoin core) has been torn up until this point on how to proceed as many people are advocating the "lightning network" which is a whole other proposed method of solving the problem involving a side chain to the bitcoin network that would allow micro transactions and things like that. I think the way it works is keeping track of a shitload of tiny transactions and then lumping them all into a big transaction on the regular bitcoin block chain. That's the gist of in anyway. I definitely understand this less but I do know that there is no code for it yet. So the choice is between Mike Hearn's solution (BitcoinXT) which is ready to go NOW when we need it OR this theoretical lightning network which somebody will have to implement (code) while the current network slowly gets shittier and shittier...
Finally, increasing the block size increases the amount of data being moved around and the amount of processing a node has to do to check all the transactions in a given block. This fact means that the computing power required to run a full node will be slightly higher if the block size is increased. Some argue that this makes the network less decentralized because it's harder for the "average joe" to run a full node and that the result will be less full nodes on the network and therefore more power in the hands of the nodes who are still running and more potential for something like a 51% attack which is a security threat if it can be pulled off. This argument has some validity to it IMO, but it also seems kinda negligible too. The first increases in block size are pretty tiny, 8MB isn't that much, and computing power and bandwidth have been getting cheaper over time so I'm optimistic that these will balance out and keep it relatively easy to run a full node. I really don't think the effect would be big enough, if it's even observable at all, to destabilize the network completely.
I'm sure I missed something but that's my understanding of the situation so far...
[–] InternetTuffGuy [S] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Not an ELI5, but from what I gather it wont effect security but it will effect the amount of transactions processed per minute. I believe it would slow it down from a few thousand to about a few dozen.
[–] KurtB 0 points 3 points 3 points (+3|-0) ago
Substantially.
http://www.econotimes.com/Nick-Szabo-Rapid-block-size-increase-a-Huge-Security-Risk-77728