Decline in Empty Blocks Has Increased Bitcoin’s Transaction Capacity
Empty blocks have turned into a controversial topic in the Bitcoin community over the past few months. This renewed attention on the topic has been sparked by the number of nearly-empty blocks mined by Antpool recently. An empty block is one that only contains a coinbase transaction. This may seem counterproductive, but there are incentives in place that....
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Blocks on the Bitcoin blockchain have a maximum size of 1 MB. Proof of work difficulty is calibrated so 1 block is created every 10 minutes. It is generally accepted a miner would want to maximise the number of transactions it includes in a block as it collects the transaction fees. Logically, with the growing popularity of Bitcoin, the average block size is getting closer to its limit. In this environment, it is surprising to see a number of empty blocks being mined. An empty block is not entirely empty, it has 1 transaction : the coinbase transaction which allocates the mining reward to....
Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist at the Bitcoin Foundation and Lead Developer of Bitcoin until 2014, held an extensive Q&A session with the Chinese bitcoin community yesterday. Answering a range of questions from a diverse array of topics, the session focused on the most pressing issue in bitcoin, transaction capacity. Acknowledging the Beijing meeting between miners and industry in a number of answers, Andresen’s response to what seems to be the biggest worry, the co-existence of two-chains, was: “BIP109 does not hard fork at 75%, it hard forks 28 days after 75% has been reached– so....
Luke-jr, developer of the Bitcoin Core client and Blockstream contractor, has recommended in a developers’ mailing list Bitcoin Improvement Proposal announcement an instant 70% reduction of bitcoin’s transaction capacity to 300kb, followed by a yearly increase of around 17%, reaching the current transaction capacity of 1MB in 2024. Thereafter, it is intended to continue increasing by 17%, reaching a maximum capacity of 31MB in around half a century. The proposal to reduce transaction capacity that Luke-jr says he can “immediately recommend… for adoption,” is made no more than two days....
On November 15, 2020, the Bitcoin Cash blockchain experienced a network upgrade and a bifurcation of the chain as well. While the Bitcoin Cash network continued on smoothly, the ABC pro infrastructure funding plan (IFP) side of the chain had a rocky and extremely slow start. Since the 15th, the nameless ABC chain has seen 197 blocks processed to-date, as a few miners are pointing hashrate at the network keeping the new blockchain going. Just recently Bitcoin Cash (BCH) endured a network upgrade and a consensus split when the full node project Bitcoin ABC decided to keep the IFP baked into....
The first release for an alternative implementation of bitcoin that would double its transaction capacity has been published. Today, bitcoin users run or rely on versions of Bitcoin Core, the descendent of the original bitcoin software developed by its pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Yet the ongoing debate on how to increase capacity has opened the door to other implementations of bitcoin to gain prominence, as previously demonstrated by the rise and subsequent fall of Bitcoin XT. The release of Bitcoin Classic, which constitutes a repackaging of the latest Bitcoin Core software....