Hardfork: what is happening around bitcoin
In the cryptocurrency community, the heated debate on increasing the maximum size of a bitcoin block does not abate. Analyst mining service HashFlare prepared a small geek educational program on what is happening now and what to expect in the near future.
The block size limit has been a controversial issue over the past few years. Initially, Satoshi Nakamoto imposed a limit of 1 megabyte as a measure against spam. Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn have long and aggressively promoted the idea of ​​increasing the size of Bitcoin blocks 20 times "to improve scalability." Such manipulations with the network are possible only by means of hard forks (introducing compulsory fundamental changes to the basic Bitcoin protocol). However, this position contradicts the opinion of 80% of Bitcoin Core developers, who do not believe that a sharp increase in block size is such a great idea. They fear that the decentralization of the system will be the first victim of the transaction count.
In fact, with a 20 megabyte block size, which also increases by 40% annually, the blockchain size will very quickly begin to be counted not by tens or hundreds of gigabytes, as now, but by terabytes, and then petabytes. This means that no Bitcoin user will very soon be able to use the full client on his PC or smartphone, limited to light versions depending on centralized servers. Independent bitcoin nodes will also come to naught: only the largest operators such as payment processors and services like Circle and Coinbase will be able to afford full-fledged bitcoin nodes, which will require huge costs for information storage and processing.
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Huge blocks will be transferred over the network for a very long time, which means the irrevocable centralization of mining: only a few of the largest pools and industrial mining farms connected by dedicated high-speed lines will be able to exchange these giant blocks in time and participate in mining, and for any individual miners to enter this market will be finally closed. Thus, mining, nodes and services will very quickly be centralized in the hands of a handful of players.
Last week, Mike Hearn added more fuel to the fire. Previously, he insisted that if the community does not accept his ultimatum to increase the block size, he will launch his own alt-fork Bitcoin-XT, which will become “more correct Bitcoin” (with partial support from Andresen). And so, on August 15, Mike Hearn announced that his alt-fork Bitcoin XT was ready and called for miners and merchants to support this innovation.
Opinions of bitcoiners were divided: to maintain the original Bitcoin Core protocol, or to make concessions and agree to Mike Hearn's proposal - to switch to the alt-fork of Bitcoin XT, which he personally controls.
In his publication on Medium, Mike Hirn interprets Satoshi Nakamoto's old quotations as support for his solution to the problem of block size limits. But on the same day, Satoshi Nakamoto or someone under his pseudonym denied Hearn's statements. Someone using Satoshi’s previously uncompromised email address posted a message in the mailing list for developers. He claims to be the founder of Bitcoin and is closely following the issue. Satoshi Nakamoto called this fork "very dangerous." It seems that the creator of Bitcoin is unhappy with a possible network split, following the adoption of this alt fork by part of the community (while the rest will remain on the Bitcoin Core).
In the meantime, the very idea of ​​hard forks, underlying Bitcoin XT, still does not find a response from the largest players in the cryptocurrency market. In particular, the two largest bitcoin exchanges in China - BTCChina and Huobi - expressed a negative attitude to the proposal of the main Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen to increase the block size limit to 20 megabytes and the Mike Hearn project.
However, in recent months in the world of cryptocurrency, in the atmosphere of general confusion, another dark horse has appeared. And her name is Coinwallet.
In July, the Bitcoin network underwent another stress test: a spam attack carried out by someone with deep knowledge of the basic bitcoin protocol had significantly slowed the network down for 8 hours. Many Bitcoiners agree that the purpose of the test was clearly to draw community attention to the block size problem. Responsibility for this attack took Coinwallet.
Coinwallet.eu first made itself felt a few months ago, and its appearance immediately caused many questions. The website looks like a stub , the legal address does not say anything, because the office exists only in the cloud, the phone number is never available, the employees act anonymously.
The next spam attack, Coinwallet.eu, is scheduled for September , and this time, if the attack is successful, the network will “hang” for 30 days.
The bloggers recalled that shortly before the first stress test, Gavin Andersen identified the block size problem as urgent. Up to this point, the question loomed, like some abstract perspective, but there was no urgency. Are the surprise attacks of unknowns, spurring the decision on the size of the block, and the active lobbying company Gavin Andersen and Mike Hearn pedaling their own projects?
Part of the crypto community believes that there is a link, referring to the statements of CoinWallet representatives, in particular, the following :
The first results of this activity are so far disappointing: Altfork has already caused a noticeable drop in the cost of the already volatile Bitcoin and provoked a split among developers and network users.
Whether the battle of forks will grow in scale before the wars of formats like HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, whether there will be an unequivocal winner in it and whether bitcoin will retain its independence - we'll see. In the meantime, we are waiting for September.
In the meantime , everything is calm on our servers . Do not be naughty, do not touch anyone, mine:
The block size limit has been a controversial issue over the past few years. Initially, Satoshi Nakamoto imposed a limit of 1 megabyte as a measure against spam. Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn have long and aggressively promoted the idea of ​​increasing the size of Bitcoin blocks 20 times "to improve scalability." Such manipulations with the network are possible only by means of hard forks (introducing compulsory fundamental changes to the basic Bitcoin protocol). However, this position contradicts the opinion of 80% of Bitcoin Core developers, who do not believe that a sharp increase in block size is such a great idea. They fear that the decentralization of the system will be the first victim of the transaction count.
In fact, with a 20 megabyte block size, which also increases by 40% annually, the blockchain size will very quickly begin to be counted not by tens or hundreds of gigabytes, as now, but by terabytes, and then petabytes. This means that no Bitcoin user will very soon be able to use the full client on his PC or smartphone, limited to light versions depending on centralized servers. Independent bitcoin nodes will also come to naught: only the largest operators such as payment processors and services like Circle and Coinbase will be able to afford full-fledged bitcoin nodes, which will require huge costs for information storage and processing.
')
Huge blocks will be transferred over the network for a very long time, which means the irrevocable centralization of mining: only a few of the largest pools and industrial mining farms connected by dedicated high-speed lines will be able to exchange these giant blocks in time and participate in mining, and for any individual miners to enter this market will be finally closed. Thus, mining, nodes and services will very quickly be centralized in the hands of a handful of players.
Last week, Mike Hearn added more fuel to the fire. Previously, he insisted that if the community does not accept his ultimatum to increase the block size, he will launch his own alt-fork Bitcoin-XT, which will become “more correct Bitcoin” (with partial support from Andresen). And so, on August 15, Mike Hearn announced that his alt-fork Bitcoin XT was ready and called for miners and merchants to support this innovation.
Opinions of bitcoiners were divided: to maintain the original Bitcoin Core protocol, or to make concessions and agree to Mike Hearn's proposal - to switch to the alt-fork of Bitcoin XT, which he personally controls.
In his publication on Medium, Mike Hirn interprets Satoshi Nakamoto's old quotations as support for his solution to the problem of block size limits. But on the same day, Satoshi Nakamoto or someone under his pseudonym denied Hearn's statements. Someone using Satoshi’s previously uncompromised email address posted a message in the mailing list for developers. He claims to be the founder of Bitcoin and is closely following the issue. Satoshi Nakamoto called this fork "very dangerous." It seems that the creator of Bitcoin is unhappy with a possible network split, following the adoption of this alt fork by part of the community (while the rest will remain on the Bitcoin Core).
In the meantime, the very idea of ​​hard forks, underlying Bitcoin XT, still does not find a response from the largest players in the cryptocurrency market. In particular, the two largest bitcoin exchanges in China - BTCChina and Huobi - expressed a negative attitude to the proposal of the main Bitcoin developer Gavin Andresen to increase the block size limit to 20 megabytes and the Mike Hearn project.
However, in recent months in the world of cryptocurrency, in the atmosphere of general confusion, another dark horse has appeared. And her name is Coinwallet.
In July, the Bitcoin network underwent another stress test: a spam attack carried out by someone with deep knowledge of the basic bitcoin protocol had significantly slowed the network down for 8 hours. Many Bitcoiners agree that the purpose of the test was clearly to draw community attention to the block size problem. Responsibility for this attack took Coinwallet.
Coinwallet.eu first made itself felt a few months ago, and its appearance immediately caused many questions. The website looks like a stub , the legal address does not say anything, because the office exists only in the cloud, the phone number is never available, the employees act anonymously.
The next spam attack, Coinwallet.eu, is scheduled for September , and this time, if the attack is successful, the network will “hang” for 30 days.
The bloggers recalled that shortly before the first stress test, Gavin Andersen identified the block size problem as urgent. Up to this point, the question loomed, like some abstract perspective, but there was no urgency. Are the surprise attacks of unknowns, spurring the decision on the size of the block, and the active lobbying company Gavin Andersen and Mike Hearn pedaling their own projects?
Part of the crypto community believes that there is a link, referring to the statements of CoinWallet representatives, in particular, the following :
I do not know the exact date of the next attack, but it will happen in September. I'm too busy this month to do the dough now ... It's amazing that the alt fork project has not yet been implemented.
The first results of this activity are so far disappointing: Altfork has already caused a noticeable drop in the cost of the already volatile Bitcoin and provoked a split among developers and network users.
Whether the battle of forks will grow in scale before the wars of formats like HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, whether there will be an unequivocal winner in it and whether bitcoin will retain its independence - we'll see. In the meantime, we are waiting for September.
In the meantime , everything is calm on our servers . Do not be naughty, do not touch anyone, mine:
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/366211/
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