500 sats \ 10 replies \ @frostdragon 3 Apr \ on: Luke Dash Jr.: "Big blockers are back. Apparently with Bitcoin Core in support" bitcoin
Are you familiar with the Blocksize Wars?
The short version is, back in 2017 a large number of bitcoiners thought bitcoin wasn't going to be able to continue to scale because of the "small" number of transactions that can fit into a block, which can only be mined about every 10 minutes...
The problem is, increasing the blocksize decreases overall security. There was a massive clash in the bitcoin community about this, leading to a hard fork, which became Bitcoin Cash...
Apparently some people are being vocal about wanting a larger blocksize again, but we already know how that plays out - Bitcoin Cash failed.
If you're interested in getting the full history, I'd highly recommend this book. Really great info in here on how changes are made to the protocol.
https://www.amazon.com/Blocksize-War-controls-Bitcoins-protocol/dp/B08YQMC2WM
I am familiar and I read it. I don't understand who in Bitcoin Core supports big blocks though.
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with big blocks I take it it's now proven that they take longer to propagate, so you'd potentially have miners spending more time mining on top of 'stale' blocks, which reduces hash power securing the network, so miners are incentivized to be close together on the network?
anyway, lukewarm jr has lost a lot of credibility over the past year.
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It’s not the size of the block that matters, it’s what you do with it…. 😏
Hash rate refers to how many hashes you can produce per second. It’s a measure of total power needed to solve for the hash of a block.
Once a miner solves the hash, they get to add the next block.
Blocksize essentially refers to the number of transactions you can fit into a block. That can be done rather instantly, it doesn’t really take any extra time to fill a 1 MB block vs a 2 MB block. It does take extra computational power to go through and validate the transactions, but not to solve for the hash itself. Shouldn’t affect hash power.
Some people think we should have large blocks so the network can scale by handling more transactions… the problem is, that weakens the security of the network. It allows for a greater DoS impact, it makes mining a little harder for individuals, it’ll make nodes require significantly more storage, and all of that pushes the network towards centralization.
Only thing you really need to know, though, is that it this failed in the past.
If you want to know more about how this stuff works, start at the 99bitcoins channel to make sure you have a solid understanding of mining, and then read the Blocksize Wars by Jonathan Bier.
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