On Consensus, or Why Bitcoin's Block-Size Presents a Political Trade-Off
Bitcoin’s block-size dispute rages on. A proposed change to a single parameter in Bitcoin’s reference implementation has spawned into a great debate, resulting in tireless discussion, multiple conferences , a growing split within the Bitcoin community and at least one prominent developer joining a bank-run alternative. The subject of debate itself,....
Related News
The block size dispute, perhaps the first ever real political controversy within the Bitcoin community, has raged for years, with no clear long-term solution in sight. Seven relevant BIPs (Bitcoin Improvement Proposals) have been submitted that could increase the maximum block size in order to allow for more transactions on the Bitcoin network, and alternative Bitcoin implementation Bitcoin XT is even attempting a blockchain fork to increase the limit. But none of the proposed solutions seem to be gathering enough support to establish a new consensus. And even if a consensus is to be found....
BTCC COO Samson Mow: Without Consensus on Block-size Limit, Stakeholders Might Implement an Increase
BTCC Chief Operating Officer Samson Mow indicated that the leading Chinese mining pool and exchange supports an incremental increase of Bitcoin's block-size limit to 8 megabytes in order to buy time for alternative solutions to be developed. Moreover, Mow believes the Bitcoin industry might opt to raise Bitcoin's block-size limit even if no consensus is found among the Bitcoin Core development community. "If there is no consensus soon, I could see a situation where stakeholders make a decision to implement a small increase," Mow said. "Without bigger blocks, a fee market will develop,....
Bitcoin Core developers and leading mining firms have come to a consensus on the block size debate. On February 21, 2016, representatives of the Bitcoin industry and Bitcoin Core developers have finally come to a consensus to settle the never-ending block size debate. The meeting was participated by Bitcoin Core developers and representatives of leading bitcoin mining firms and exchanges including Antpool, BitFury, Bitmain, Bit-X, Blockcloud, BTCC, BW, Coinfloor F2Pool, Genesis Mining, HaoBTC, Huobi, Ledger, OKCoin and Spoodoolies-Tech. All representatives of the abovementioned companies....
The debate to increase the bitcoin block size from its current 1MB has been going on for quite some time now. Those who are calling for a larger limit say that the current size of the network can no longer handle the transactions efficiently with such a small block size. Some say that it should be increased to 20MB while others think that 8MB would suffice. According to lead bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen, the best solution to the limited transactions of the bitcoin network is to increase the maximum block size. He even pointed out that if solution isn't implemented right away, the....
Bitcoin Core developer Jeff Garzik has submitted a proposal to raise the block size limit from 1MB to 2MB. The proposal is intended to buy more time to reach a consensus on a more durable solution before the maximum amount of transactions on the Bitcoin network is reached. As the debate on a possible raise of the block size limit has been raging for months – years even – without consensus on a durable solution within sight, Garzik has proposed to adapt a temporary solution. This new Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP), named BIP 102, holds that the Bitcoin block size limit be doubled on....