A Lower Block Time Could Help Bitcoin Scale, But Will It Work?
A small tweak to bitcoin could have a big impact. This has been the central point of contention in bitcoin's "block size debate", a long-running dispute over whether to lift a hardcoded limit on the amount of data that can be included in each block of transactions. One side sees increasing the block size as an easy way to boost the number of transactions processed on the network, potentially expanding bitcoin’s user base. Those opposed to the move worry about the consequences (think centralization and instability) of such a change, or at least question the need to lift the block....
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/u/dpinna submitted a technical paper on the Bitcoin Subreddit to the dev-list which outlines the advantages gained by increasing block sizes. It is well known that block size has been a matter of debate for quite a while, and Bitcoin users on both sides of the argument are very passionate. /u/dpinna’s paper outlines how miner advantages actually scale up with network and mempool properties in the scenario of uncapped block sizes. Taking inspiration from uPeter__R ‘s work, /u/dpinna further explains (through evidence and mathematical models) how miners receive more benefit from scaling....
A Bitcoin hardfork is coming. In a recent post to the Bitcoin Foundation's blog, Chief Scientist Gavin Andresen sketched out "one possible path for the behind-the-scenes technical work that is being done (or will need to get done) over the next few years to scale up Bitcoin." He proposed that the Bitcoin protocol would require a hardfork to implement an annual 50% increase in maximum block size. When Bitcoin first started off, there was technically an infinite maximum block size; though, Andresen mentions that the p2p protocol limited the block size to 32 mb. Following increased media....
The block size debate has been going on for quite some time now, prompting developers Andresen and Hearn to create a new version of the bitcoin software and force the network to a hard fork. The hope is that the system can make the decision itself based on consensus, which is typically how the network functions anyway. However, developers suggest another option, which is to scale bitcoin. Sidechains have also been discussed as a potential workaround to the issue of increasing the block size from 1MB to 8MB, possibly allowing the network to handle more transactions and verify those in a....
Bitcoin Price action seems to be seeing out 2014 doing what it's done best all year. The decline is, by now, extended to the point of disbelief, yet it shows no sign of letting up. We take a look at some technical chart features that may present targets lower down. Bitcoin Price Analysis. Time of analysis: 13h00 UTC. Bitstamp 4-Hour Chart. Unlike the initial version of this Bitstamp chart that has been examined since Saturday's analysis, the 4-hour chart below is not in log scale but vanilla arithmetic scale. Changing the scale causes price to change the scale in relation to the existing....
On January 24, the Bitcoin blockchain transaction queue was significantly backed up with unconfirmed transactions. At the peak of the backlog, the mempool showed over 67 thousand unconfirmed transactions. Following this event Bitcoin developer Lukejr has revealed his latest Github BIP proposal asking to lower the block size even more. After a Day of....