<story><title>Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st</title><url>https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2017-07-12-potential-split</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zby</author><text>It is probably not possible to solve the scaling problems on-chain - a secure decentralized consensus on a global scale cannot be fast. Currently the bitcoin protocol processes about 7 transactions per second. Doubling the speed by doubling blocks will not make it much closer to the 50K transactions per second of a system like VISA. But it is probably possible to scale the transaction system off-chain - with &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lightning.network&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lightning.network&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; - which works like a protocol for writing and accepting checks. As far as I know Lightning is impossible or very hard without SegWit.
But with Lightning off-loading the bulk of transactions miners will lose a bit of their power - so maybe this is what makes them against it.&lt;p&gt;Another aspect of the riddle is that SegWit will eliminate ASICBoost - which is an optimization developed by one of the biggest ASIC miners producer - so he is probably also against it. There is also the thing that ASICBoost is probably patented - so it has a lot of opposition in the community.</text></item><item><author>jpatokal</author><text>Well, that&amp;#x27;s a remarkably uninformative announcement.  Here&amp;#x27;s an attempt at a neutral tl;dr from a Bitcoin amateur.&lt;p&gt;Bitcoin is currently suffering from significant scaling problems, which lead to high transaction fees.  Numerous proposals to fix the scaling issue have been proposed, the two main camps being &amp;quot;increase the block size&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;muddle through by discarding less useful data&amp;quot; (aka Segregated Witness&amp;#x2F;SegWit).  However, any changes require consensus from the miners who create Bitcoins and process transactions, and because it&amp;#x27;s not in their best incentive to do anything to reduce those transaction fees, no change has received majority consensus.&lt;p&gt;In an attempt to break this deadlock, there is a &amp;quot;Bitcoin Improvement Proposal #148&amp;quot; (BIP148) that proposes a User-Activated Soft Fork (UASF) taking effect on August 1, 2017. Basically, everybody who agrees to this proposal wants SegWit to happen and (here&amp;#x27;s the key part) commits to discarding all confirmations that do not flag support for SegWit from this date onward.  If successful, this will fork Bitcoin, because whether a transaction succeeded or not is going to depend on which side of the network you believe.&lt;p&gt;However, BIP148&amp;#x27;s odds of success look low, as many of the largest miners out there led by Bitmain have stated that they will trigger a User-Activated Hard Fork (UAHF) if needed to stop it.  Specifically, if UASF appears successful, instead of complying with SegWit, they&amp;#x27;ll start mining BTC with large blocks instead: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.bitmain.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip148&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.bitmain.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip14...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it all boils down to significant uncertainty, and unless you&amp;#x27;ve got a dog in the race you&amp;#x27;ll probably want to refraining from making BTC transactions around the deadline or purchasing new BTC until the dust settles down.&lt;p&gt;And an important disclaimer: this is an &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; contentious issue in the Bitcoin community and it&amp;#x27;s really difficult to find info that&amp;#x27;s not polarized one way or the other.  Most notably, Reddit&amp;#x27;s &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;bitcoin is rabidly pro-
BIP148 and &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;btc is equally rabidly against it.  Here&amp;#x27;s one reasonably neutral primer: 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bitcoinmagazine.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-beginners-guide-surviving-bip-148-uasf&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bitcoinmagazine.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-beginners-guide...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>julian_1</author><text>A counter-argument is that the Lightening work is a proprietary development outside of bitcoin core (lead by Blockstream) and the work is even patent-encumbered.&lt;p&gt;They state the ip is for defensive purposes only - however that is questionable given that anything they implement, automatically becomes prior-art. It is also contrary to the spirit and practice of the majority of crypto&amp;#x2F;alt projects.&lt;p&gt;It is unreasonable to attack miners for having interests, without disclosing that other interests may benefit from the current levels of network congestion that a skeptic would say are caused by having artificially small blocks.</text></comment>
<story><title>Bitcoin – Potential Network Disruption on July 31st</title><url>https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2017-07-12-potential-split</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>zby</author><text>It is probably not possible to solve the scaling problems on-chain - a secure decentralized consensus on a global scale cannot be fast. Currently the bitcoin protocol processes about 7 transactions per second. Doubling the speed by doubling blocks will not make it much closer to the 50K transactions per second of a system like VISA. But it is probably possible to scale the transaction system off-chain - with &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lightning.network&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;lightning.network&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; - which works like a protocol for writing and accepting checks. As far as I know Lightning is impossible or very hard without SegWit.
But with Lightning off-loading the bulk of transactions miners will lose a bit of their power - so maybe this is what makes them against it.&lt;p&gt;Another aspect of the riddle is that SegWit will eliminate ASICBoost - which is an optimization developed by one of the biggest ASIC miners producer - so he is probably also against it. There is also the thing that ASICBoost is probably patented - so it has a lot of opposition in the community.</text></item><item><author>jpatokal</author><text>Well, that&amp;#x27;s a remarkably uninformative announcement.  Here&amp;#x27;s an attempt at a neutral tl;dr from a Bitcoin amateur.&lt;p&gt;Bitcoin is currently suffering from significant scaling problems, which lead to high transaction fees.  Numerous proposals to fix the scaling issue have been proposed, the two main camps being &amp;quot;increase the block size&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;muddle through by discarding less useful data&amp;quot; (aka Segregated Witness&amp;#x2F;SegWit).  However, any changes require consensus from the miners who create Bitcoins and process transactions, and because it&amp;#x27;s not in their best incentive to do anything to reduce those transaction fees, no change has received majority consensus.&lt;p&gt;In an attempt to break this deadlock, there is a &amp;quot;Bitcoin Improvement Proposal #148&amp;quot; (BIP148) that proposes a User-Activated Soft Fork (UASF) taking effect on August 1, 2017. Basically, everybody who agrees to this proposal wants SegWit to happen and (here&amp;#x27;s the key part) commits to discarding all confirmations that do not flag support for SegWit from this date onward.  If successful, this will fork Bitcoin, because whether a transaction succeeded or not is going to depend on which side of the network you believe.&lt;p&gt;However, BIP148&amp;#x27;s odds of success look low, as many of the largest miners out there led by Bitmain have stated that they will trigger a User-Activated Hard Fork (UAHF) if needed to stop it.  Specifically, if UASF appears successful, instead of complying with SegWit, they&amp;#x27;ll start mining BTC with large blocks instead: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.bitmain.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip148&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blog.bitmain.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;uahf-contingency-plan-uasf-bip14...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Anyway, it all boils down to significant uncertainty, and unless you&amp;#x27;ve got a dog in the race you&amp;#x27;ll probably want to refraining from making BTC transactions around the deadline or purchasing new BTC until the dust settles down.&lt;p&gt;And an important disclaimer: this is an &lt;i&gt;extremely&lt;/i&gt; contentious issue in the Bitcoin community and it&amp;#x27;s really difficult to find info that&amp;#x27;s not polarized one way or the other.  Most notably, Reddit&amp;#x27;s &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;bitcoin is rabidly pro-
BIP148 and &amp;#x2F;r&amp;#x2F;btc is equally rabidly against it.  Here&amp;#x27;s one reasonably neutral primer: 
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bitcoinmagazine.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-beginners-guide-surviving-bip-148-uasf&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;bitcoinmagazine.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;bitcoin-beginners-guide...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Hermel</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m really tired of hearing the &amp;quot;increasing the block size won&amp;#x27;t suffice&amp;quot;-argument. Yes, increasing blocks to 10 MB won&amp;#x27;t give us VISA-scale, but it will allow Bitcoin to serve TEN TIMES AS MANY USERS! I can&amp;#x27;t believe how many otherwise intelligent people fail to see that this is desirable. It&amp;#x27;s like driving your car at 10 km&amp;#x2F;h per hour on the high-way and refusing to increase your speed because that would still not make you as fast as a rocket.</text></comment>