No End In Sight For Block Size Debate As ‘Halving’ Approaches: Will The Bitcoin Network Survive?
The conflict over how to expand the bitcoin network has reached a critical point with no resolution in sight as the “halving” approaches in June, according to Paul Vigna, The Wall Street Journal’s “Moneybeat” blogger. Bobby Lee, CEO of BTCC, compared the rift to a split between religions. The conflict pits bitcoin miners against bitcoin entrepreneurs. The Classic camp, consisting of the entrepreneurs, wants a more immediate fix to expanding the network by increasing the block size. The Core camp, consisting of miners, doesn’t want to increase the block size since some miners will be less....
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There seems to be no end in sight for the block size debate as the Bitcoin community continues to go around in circles trying to drive the same set of points home... The Bitcoin block size debate rages on. It has been almost a year since we started hearing the Bitcoin community fiercely contesting about whether to increase the bitcoin block size from the existing 1 MB or not. Both the sides have so far come up with some valid arguments, of which few are very convincing towards both the causes. Recently the “Jesus of Bitcoin”, Roger Ver wrote an article about why the Bitcoin block size....
In this article I will explain how the size of Bitcoin blocks is determined in the absence of an arbitrary size limit. Oleg has already written an excellent post on this topic, but I have a few things to add and I wish to relate the discussion to the current debate over increasing the block size. If the maximum limit on block size is removed, it is not the case that blocks will simply grow without limit. There is a natural size that is determined by the market. The block size will change until the marginal revenue of adding more transactions approaches the marginal cost; this could happen....
One of the main reasons why the Bitcoin block size debate has been attracting so much attention is that there is a growing number of network transactions that need to be validated. By increasing the Bitcoin block size limit, more transactions can be included in every network block. According to Gregory Maxwell, there is no real need to include more....
Bitcoin developers have been debating whether or not to increase the allowable block size to 20MB, as the network is struggling with verifying transactions now that volumes are growing. At the moment, there is a limit of 1MB per block, which limits the number of transactions that the network can handle per second. According to lead bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen, the best solution might be to develop a code that would allow for a larger block size. His proposal features a bitcoin hard fork that would allow any block with a timestamp on or after March 1, 2016 to be up to 20 megabytes.....
As much as most people would like to think otherwise, the Bitcoin block size debate is far from over. Various new proposals have been suggested in the past, and another interesting concept was posted on Reddit earlier today. According to this user, a small block size increase should be done first, followed by the integration of Segregated Witness. Addressing the key issue as soon as possible should be the top priority for all Bitcoin developers. Based on the findings of the Reddit in question, Segregated Witness should not be the first and foremost solution to settling the Bitcoin block....