How A Bigger Blockchain Is Less Secure And Why Block Size Ain’t Gonna Increase Any Time Soon

Just last night, our good friends over at Qntra posted Gavin Andresen Proposes Scalability Roadmap and Hardfork. I enjoyed the article and took it upon myself to call out Teh Lead Derp of Teh Bitcoin Fundation scammers on my second favouritei channel for doing so, Twitter:

https://twitter.com/pete_d/status/519364709451968512

When Andresen finally rolled out of bed and read his Notifications this morning, he chimed in on the comments section of Qntra’s article, saying:

Gavin Andresen says:

This is lulzy first and intentionally malicious second. Why lulzy? Because that’s exactly what Gavin is proposing. Why intentionally malicious? What’s so bad about the USG’s proposal to make the block size bigger because “it’s good for Bitcoin and just as safe” when in fact the opposite is true on both counts? Well, let’s pick apart their naïve little argument and explore its entrails. Therein we will find truth. Let’s let MP kick it off:

Consider the simple problem of a blockchain with infinite block size and zero block reward. Is its security then zero ? Consider the reverse problem, of a blockchain with zero block size. Is its security then infinite ? Consider a finite block size and infinite block reward (disregarding 2ndary effects). Is the security also infinite ? Consider the case of oil supply halving. Does price double or explode ? So that’s what it is. The only way Bitcoin has a future is through the block size remaining limited. Bitcoin is not here to serve the poor. Fuck them. That’s what Bitcoin means.

In essence, the security of the Bitcoin network is ensured by mining as represented by the hashrate. The more petahashes the network maintains, the more secure the network is to attacks, that is, the more costly attacks become.ii Think of the hashrate as the height of the walls around a fortified city. When Bitcoin first started out, its walls were small enough that a 5-year-old could walk over them. That is, it would’ve cost a trivial amount of computing power, and therefore money, to take over the network. Today, of course, the walls of the Bitcoin network are Babylonesque and the cost of taking over the network can no longer be calculated in worthless government trademarks.

However, in this consideration of security as wall height, we must also take into account the size of the area we’re protecting, which, in Bitcoin terms, is what the Blockchain amounts to. Clearly, a city the size of Tokyo (6,993 sq km) would be vastly more expensive to build continuous fortified walls around than Singapore (479 sq km), at a given height. And we can’t ignore the concave non-linearities at work here either. Just imagine the difference in the size of the base of a wall when comparing a 30 metre wall vs. a 5 metre wall.iii Just think how hard it was to build a wall that could keep the Mongolians out of China.

Building taller walls, that is, making the city more secure against mauraders and would-be invaders, isn’t just a little bit more expensive for larger cities, it’s a lot more expensive. As the city grows, there’s an undeniable cost to breaking down some of the exterior walls and rebuilding them to encompass a larger land area. That’s a cost borne by those who build the walls. If an additional cost can’t be borne by the builders, nor additional taxes levied on the citizens, and the expansion in the city’s footprint is to increase regardless, then bricks and stones from the tops of walls in other parts of the city must be reused to build the new walls, resulting in shorter walls all the way around. Thus, as shorter walls are easier to attack, the city has grown at the expense of security.

To bring this into relevant (Bitcoin) terms, the size of the city is the Blockchain and the height of its walls is the network’s hashrate. As such, the larger the Blockchain, the more hashpower is required to maintain the same level of security. Larger things are inherently more fragile and are therefore exponentially more resource intensive to protect from the forces of nature. This is why Mircea Popescu and the rest of The Bitcoin Lordship will roll over in their fucking graves before letting Gavin increase the block size. Mark MP‘s words here:

The problem with Gavin’s idiocy is that roughly speaking, the square of the block size and the total network hash are on opposite sides of an equality, which describes total network security. So basically, he’s proposing significant downstepping of current blockchain security. Neither of these are getting merged into bitcoin, Whatever Gavin says or whatever forks happen. If indeed they’re stupid enough to fork it, I will sink their fork on the open market. And if that’s the path they wish to use to introduce faux Bitcoin-lite for the US domestic market, that’s fine, but it won’t go over any better than an attempt from scratch. “We” know what bitcoin is and why we’re using it.

With Bitcoin’s Blockchain, now well over 20 GBiv the task faced in securing its perimeter is growing, which is why ASICs came just in the nick of time to protect Bitcoin from Andresen et al. Hashes were our salvation and they weren’t a moment too soon.

The biggest challenge ahead isn’t “bringing Bitcoin to the people” or some such nonsense, it’s in maintaining a sufficient number of nodes to relay and verify transactions. This is challenging issue that has yet to be fully addressed.v

But hey, we need something to do in 2015 once all the derps are dead, y’know?

___ ___ ___

  1. This blog is #1.
  2. While there are various types of possible attacks, the most significant is the “51% attack,” wherein a pool of mining power gains the ability to double-spend bitcoins.
  3. Or just look at the size of the base of the Burj Khalifa vs. your average 15-story apartment building.
  4. And nearly triple what it was a year ago.
  5. And it’s one that further affirms the need to keep blocks small.

74 thoughts on “How A Bigger Blockchain Is Less Secure And Why Block Size Ain’t Gonna Increase Any Time Soon

  1. i still have no idea what y’all are talking about.

    You do know that no matter how large the block, only the 80-byte block header is hashed?

    If you are just trolling, then kudos, you got my attention for about three minutes.

  2. Tal says:

    You assert that “the larger the Blockchain, the more hashpower is required to maintain the same level of security” without describing why you think the analogy works.

    What is the exact mechanism by which you think a larger blockchain makes the network less secure?

    • A larger blockchain takes up more physical space in the form of hard drives in full nodes. The full nodes are in charge of governing the network; not the miners. The miners are like the police force, enforcing the rules set by the nodes. It seems as if Gavin would like to significantly increase the barrier to entry into this governing body, and I suspect it has something to do with the fact that an ever increasing number of them are refusing to go along with his proposed rule changes. You aren’t the king of Bitcoin, Gavin. Go home.

  3. Lemme use small words so maybe you can understand:

    The number of transactions in a block does not affect the amount of work miners need to do to solve the proof-of-work function.

    All of the transactions are condensed using what is called a “Merkle Tree” into a single 32-byte value.

    Larger blocks does mean that all validating nodes will have to spend more CPU time building the Merkle tree, but CPUs are insanely fast. Really amazingly, blazingly fast, and getting faster all the time.

    So network bandwidth will be the limiting factor, not CPU or memory or disk– all of those have been growing, and are projected to continue to grow, faster than network bandwidth.

    RE: disk space: please read the blog post. In the near future, most fully-validating nodes will NOT store the entire blockchain, they will store a few gigabytes of recent blocks.

    • Pete D. says:

      The number of transactions in a block does not affect the amount of work miners need to do to solve the proof-of-work function.

      No shit.

      Larger blocks does mean that all validating nodes will have to spend more CPU time building the Merkle tree, but CPUs are insanely fast. Really amazingly, blazingly fast, and getting faster all the time. So network bandwidth will be the limiting factor, not CPU or memory or disk– all of those have been growing, and are projected to continue to grow, faster than network bandwidth.

      I don’t give a fuck about your “projections.” You can’t make linear forecasts about computing power based on Moore’s soon-to-be-defunct law and expect anyone to swallow it. The point is entirely that larger blocks require more processing power to validate. Processing power doesn’t grow on trees. You must’ve been thinking of that fiat money your handlers are shoving into your pockets.

      Speaking of which, what’s the deal with “Gavin” commenting from two different IP addresses listing two different email addresses and two different URLs? Maybe you PGP sign next time, lest your handlers pay you for work someone else did.

    • BingoBoingo says:

      The other, bigger constraining factor: Bandwidth

    • Tal says:

      “The point is entirely that larger blocks require more processing power to validate.”

      Gavin correctly points out that the processing power to add transactions to blocks is trivially small.

      Can you point to anyone with any technical expertise who thinks this is worth worrying about? It would be instructive for you to actually calculate the cost of adding a transaction in terms of CPU power.

    • Pete D. says:

      Gavin correctly points out that the processing power to add transactions to blocks is trivially small.

      Gavin isn’t in a position to say what’s trivial and what isn’t. If he wants to demonstrate the necessary calculations, he’s more than welcome to. It’s his claim, not mine.

      More to the point, what is increasing block size if not inflation? Bitcoin is about being a scarce resource and so it shall remain. Remember, deflation is Bitcoin’s solution.

    • Tal says:

      “More to the point, what is increasing block size if not inflation?”

      It’s inflation of something, yes. Are you so against monetary inflation that you dislike when anything inflates?

      You have yet to describe how exactly an increasing blocksize makes Bitcoin less secure. Can you clearly describe the mechanism without resorting to vague analogies?

      Read http://log.bitcoin-assets.com/?date=08-10-2014#864652. nubbins’ describes why you needn’t worry.

    • Pete D. says:

      Oooo #b-a logs quotes! I LOVE this game. Let’s try these on for size:

      mircea_popescu: thestringpuller: so average bandwidth in US (where Gavin is based) is 10Mbit. An incearse of .5 per year is like what 15 next then 22.5 after that etc etc <<< in 20 years the per-block subsidy will be just about 40 bitcents. at that same time, gavin's block size will be 110 mb. So one block will fit 100x as many tx, and each solved block will yield 50x less in subsidies. that's a 5k drop over 20 years. it's high enough to kill the price, and with it mining, and with all that bring bitcoin back within the financial ability of the us, which is exactly the point of all this fucking derpage.

      mircea_popescu: nubbins`: [50 Mbps] is not unusual for a first-world country, is it? << here's the problem : you went from cable to optic fibre to do that. There's nothing after optic fiber. Sure, for as long as you're rubbing sticks together, things can increase massively. once you start running up against the limits of the universe however, that's that. Moreover, the way net neutrality etc. is going, not to mention the realpolitics of you know, actual wars, financial or otherwise, it wouldn't be surprising if in 20 years the average us citizen is on dialup. In short : just because your tits grew up 100% a week for half a year starting on your eleventh birthday doesn't mean jack. for one thing, the first cubic centimetre happened then. Imagining you'll keep doubling bra cup into your 30s is a little out there. And incidentally exactly, but EXACTLY how idiots just like gavin end up with mortgages they can't pay.

      In essence, bigger blocks require more computing power and more bandwidth for the nodes to properly verify transactions. That both of these will be increasingly abundant at some arbitrarily defined rate is unlikely enough that it’s worth ignoring.

      Utlimately, there’s no sense in “changing things just in case something somewhere happens” just because we can imagine them. We don’t have an asteroid-proof bunkers in our home and Bitcoin doesn’t need to “keep up with PayPal” or “future proof” itself. Bitcoin is fine just how it is, thank you very much.

      It will be the world that conforms to Bitcoin, not the other way around.

      It’s inflation of something, yes. Are you so against monetary inflation that you dislike when anything inflates?

      Pretty much.

    • Most nodes won’t store the full blockchain? Your garbage code might do that, but people like me certainly won’t run it. I’ll run 0.7.2 until someone competent comes out with a decent replacement. You’ve got some nerve speaking as though your ideas are law in the land of bitcoin.

    • BananasBoat says:

      @Pete D.
      Do you really thing your ‘fuck’ based language covers your poor logic?

    • Pete D. says:

      I don’t really ‘thing’ that you’re in any position to assess either the poverty or the richness of my logic, certainly not until you check your emotional banana baggage at the door.

    • BananasBoat says:

      Your reply confirms the poor logic I mentioned before but you are also correct in one thing.
      There is an unknown var here >> your real intension, because assuming:

      1. You really believe what you wrote.
      In this case your logic is provable poor, visible for all readers with a sense for details.

      2. You don’t believe what you wrote (for whatever reason).
      In this case your reply could be valid because your ‘real’ logic quality is unknown.

      However, both scenarios aren’t good, means for me you are just a talker not a maker.

    • Pete D. says:

      Alright banana bandit, here’s how this works : my ‘intension’ is stated in the article and supporting comments above, wherein I make specific claims as to security, the future of computing, bandwidth costs, the strength of the network, and more.

      Now, you can either make specific counter-claims and present your public case for whatever it’s worth, which you’re more than welcome to do, or you can be a good little troll and run along now. If you choose to run along, you can take your delusions that ‘all the readers with a sense for details’ are anything other than a figment of your tropically-flavoured imagination with you. They really don’t hold water here.

  4. Eric K says:

    Pete, I think you’re being a little dramatic.

    I’ll run a full node til the day I die. I’ve got bandwidth, TBs of storage and 3 CPUs just sitting idle at home. Shit, my digital photos alone take up 10x as much space as the blockchain and I barely use the bandwidth I pay for. I know many people like me who WILL adopt bitcoin and are not yet contributing, but they will. Especially if the ideas in the the roadmap are implemented.

    IMO, It makes sense and is absolutely necessary for the network to be able to do the transaction volume we are aiming for(VISA). The current network can easily get bogged down during a black swan. Your analogies have left me scratching my head tho..

    Will someone still be able to send funds from US to Ivory Coast and back in an hour for next to nothing? That’s all I care about. Oh wait, “fuck the poor”, right?

    My “handlers” have verified this post ;)

    • Pete D. says:

      Pete, I think you’re being a little dramatic.

      This is the Internet, neh? ;)

      I know many people like me who WILL adopt bitcoin and are not yet contributing, but they will. Especially if the ideas in the the roadmap are implemented.

      This is the same broken thinking as the merchant adoption nonsense. Bitcoin has nothing to do with lowering itself to the level of people who are “waiting until the time is right.” The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second best time is now, and all that. Bitcoin waits for no man.

      IMO, It makes sense and is absolutely necessary for the network to be able to do the transaction volume we are aiming for(VISA).

      Bitcoin competes with gold and diamonds, who said anything about Visa, PayPal, etc? This isn’t a consumer technology. That should be increasingly clear.

      Will someone still be able to send funds from US to Ivory Coast and back in an hour for next to nothing? That’s all I care about.

      Hey, what’s wrong with third-world countries doing business together? The Bitcoin that exists today already facilitates this. I see zero fucking need to “improve” the protocol by making shit “easier” or “faster.” Bitcoin already embarrasses gold in every regard, what more do you want?

  5. See this thread for CPU costs of verifying a transaction as of three years ago. It was about one tenth of a cent back then.

    CPUs are about six times more powerful today, so divide by six. Then divide by 2, because we no longer check signatures twice. And then divide by… uh, I think 5, because Pieter’s libsecp256k1 code is 5 times as fast as OpenSSL.

    Which gives a CPU cost of about 2 thousandths of a cent per transaction.

    RE: Bitcoin as SOLELY a store of value:

    Okey dokey, it is nice you think that. I see my job as paying attention to the needs of EVERYBODY using Bitcoin, and promoting technical solutions that make it better for as many use cases as possible — store of value, medium of exchange, and distributed ledger. I’m not smart enough to know how Bitcoin will be used in the future.

    • Pete D. says:

      From that thread, maybe you should listen to your friend Mike Hearn (who apparently wasn’t always as corrupted as you are, though he certainly followed your lead with Heartbleed this year):

      These calculations make me uncomfortable because they assume nodes scale up infinitely given small dollar amounts. Really, for CPU time you should be counting the cost of the CPU core as well.

      What’s more, there are hard scalability limits to how big a single node can get. Most of those 10,000 nodes will be running on single or dual core machines. A few people might run them on 8 or 16 core machines, but even very large cloud computing operations rarely go much higher than this. So using Hals number of 12ms per transaction we can do ~80 transaction/sec/core (a bit more than the 50 I estimated) so, optimistically, 160 tps for the entire network because every node has to be able to keep up.

      That’s a limited and scarce resource. The right approach to pricing a scarce resource is to let the price of it float on the market rather than trying to figure out its component costs and then simply pegging the price to that. Otherwise you’re imposing price controls and can end up with shortages.

      This is what is boils down to: scarcity. There’s no room in Bitcoin for inflation of any kind. Other applications and whatnot can be built on top of it as is. It’s for the world to adapt and conform to Bitcoin, not the other way around.

      Which gives a CPU cost of about 2 thousandths of a cent per transaction.

      Ok, but that doesn’t mean you get to extrapolate that line into infinity and assume that you’ll always and forever continue to see such performance gains in personal computing and, lest we forget the big one, bandwidth. The world is a finite place. Let’s act accordingly.

      I’m not smart enough to know how Bitcoin will be used in the future.

      I seriously wonder whether you’re smart enough to know how Bitcoin is used today. You should drop by #bitcoin-assets on IRC for a chat when you have a spare hour. You’ll get a much better view of how Bitcoin is currently used.

      Gotta work from causes, not towards wholly imagined purposes, y’know?

  6. Zeke says:

    Gavin has done quite a lot for the bitcoin project, and is one of the few people who can credibly represent it to lay people. Still, I agree with the Romanian school inasmuch as the blockchain increase seems unnecessary and potentially disastrous to me. It’s inviting a fork that will not be honored by a large portion of the current hash power, and the current wallet balance. Thus it is a Bad Idea. What about side chains, and all the other ways that BTC can grow in real transaction volume?

    To soften my comment, I would not want to replace Gavin with some loony that thinks the USG is competent enough to undermine bitcoin in any organized way. All this talk about Mike and Gavin being stooges is absurd, and undermines my respect for much of the other (very insightful) stuff you guys write on the Internet. They can be wrong, without being corrupt.

    • It doesn’t matter what the minors feel like “honoring.” The miners will follow the full nodes; they won’t waste energy mining the fork when its coins aren’t worth the time it takes to send them to an exchange. This is what it means to sink their fork on the open market. People like me will decide to sell one version of bitcoin and buy the other (remember, we will have equal amounts of each from the moment of fork). People like me, who run full nodes, will also decide whether or not to actually use this perverted version of bitcoin being proposed. Don’t get me wrong; the minors certainly provide the security for the blockchain, but the full nodes determine which version of bitcoin you will have available as a payment option when you feel like shorting it for some coffee or whatever next “first X business to accept bitcoin” has to offer.

    • organofcorti says:

      Pools, solominers, farms and p2pool miner nodes have better network connection than most full nodes. In fact it’s one area of research all large farms undertake, in order to reduce the possibility of orphaned blocks. Mining pools and farms aim to lead the network not follow it, and many maintain multiple nodes to help.

      So it’s possible that miners will not follow the unforked node unless that subset makes up more than 50% of the network, or unless a lot of time is spent convincing miners, pools and farms of your views.

    • Pete D. says:

      Who’s to say that the miners, pools, farms, and I don’t share the same views?

      The burden of proof rests in the hands of those who want to change the Bitcoin protocol under wholly imagined pretenses, not in the hands of those who’re quite content with Bitcoin as it is.

      So what’s possible, and in fact at this point so likely as to be virtually assured, is that everyone of import will ignore Gavin’s proposal. Again. Just like we do with everything the Power Rangers propose, which is how and why we dodged the Heartbleed headshot. And so it will go the next time Gavin et al. open their traps. All the way until they’re standing on the street corner in SF hustling for quarters.

      And so those of us smart enough, strong enough, and uncompromising enough will continue on our merry way towards global domination. One step at a time.

    • organofcorti says:

      > Who’s to say that the miners, pools, farms, and I don’t share the same views?

      My response was to your original point:

      > “It doesn’t matter what the minors feel like “honoring.” The miners will follow the full nodes; they won’t waste energy mining the fork when its coins aren’t worth the time it takes to send them to an exchange. ”

      I’m pointing out that it *does* matter what the pools and solo miners think, and from your comment I think that you agree with me. If they do not share your view, you’re going to need to win pools and solominers over to your point of view.

      This means that “sinking a fork” cannot be considered fait accompli. It will be more like an infowar.

    • Pete D. says:

      This means that “sinking a fork” cannot be considered fait accompli. It will be more like an infowar.

      This is why seeing Gavin so publicly humiliated and so thoroughly discredited, as he is in the comments section of this very article, is so very important. He’s losing the infowar so badly that his braindamaged schemes have no chance of making it to market. Powerful things, these blogs.

    • Pretty much all the miners are also full nodes, what nonsense dychotomy is this ? The full nodes that aren’t miners can for a short while create a lalalalnd where they work on a different Bitcoin, and nobody will care.

    • Zeke says:

      You are absolutely right.

    • Pete D. says:

      I agree with the Romanian school

      Lol excellent term, this.

      Thus it is a Bad Idea.

      Too true.

      All this talk about Mike and Gavin being stooges is absurd, and undermines my respect for much of the other (very insightful) stuff you guys write on the Internet. They can be wrong, without being corrupt.

      They can be wrong once without being corrupt. Not twice. And definitely not this many fucking times in a row. Anyone with half a functioning brain would’ve spent the rest of their miserable, worthless existences cowering in the shadows after the 0.9 Heartbleed fuck-up but not these guys. Oh no, not them. Zeke, you’re too nice and too easy on them.

      One cannot be wrong this many times in a row, not this spectacularly at least, and not be rotten to the, well, Core. That’s not how it works.

    • Zeke says:

      To be fair, the most harm perpetrated on the human race has been committed historically by bumblers with good intentions.

    • So what is your standard of proof ?

    • Zeke says:

      Ideally I would like compromising video of Gavin and his handlers cavorting in a Turkish whorehouse. Then I will withdraw my skepticism.

    • The sad thing here is that I agree with you, 2012 Gavin was a totally different animal.

      But by now his influence is moreover toxic, specifically because lay people have no ready way to distinguish Bitcoin from Bitcoin-flavoured exploded whale guts (or, as the case may be here, from a tub of lardgerine with “BTC” scribbled on).

      I suppose this speaks to the wisdom of retiring before senility hits. Back in the day when the most complex object people could spawn were more people, that senility was a result of biological degeneracy. These days, there’s the added benefit that p2p creatures easily and rapidly get a life of their own, and in a short few years one looks quite senile without having biologically degenerated all that much.

    • Zeke says:

      Revolutionaries are often poor governors. I’m thinking of Zviad Gamsakhurdia, for example. The great genius of Satoshi (or George Washington) is that they were able to exit the stage gracefully.

      I often refer back to your article about how the world of finance will fragment into thousands of crapcoins, the real money will be made by people who understand how that works, and ordinary people will just be fucked up the ass harder and deeper with a sharper implement. Or something along those lines. Sadly, I think that is the inevitable direction dictated by the laws of financial thermodynamics. Or let’s call it the Georgian Revolution model.

    • BingoBoingo says:

      Zeke, honestly given the changes in Gavin it is probably best to assume he’s been compromised. Especially since, if he was he wouldn’t be able to advertise it.

  7. simply curious says:

    If there were a hard fork to increase blocksize, or any change for that matter, and the original chain is amazeballs and the newer chain is terrible, what permanent damage does the existence of the second chain do to the first?

    Why not sell your second chain coins and double your amazeball coins while simultaneously teaching derps a lesson in economics?

    Why prevent a fork, when a fork will clearly demonstrate which method is better?

  8. Nick Jachelson says:

    Completely agree on the need to keep the network secure from bad actors and attacks. However, when block rewards decline/disappear, how will the current volume of transactions per block generate enough fees to keep up the current hashrate? It seems you either need either higher fees per transaction or more transactions per block.

    • Pete D. says:

      when block rewards decline/disappear, how will the current volume of transactions per block generate enough fees to keep up the current hashrate?

      This is a long, long ways out. Bitcoin is a baby still (if a baby dragon). Let’s let her grow organically rather than burden her with our imagined incentive problems that will only be issues in 50-100 years from now.

      It seems you either need either higher fees per transaction or more transactions per block.

      So why not higher transaction fees? Bitcoin will be worth more than mountains by the time this is an issue. Let the market sort this out.

  9. […] latté however sweet and creamy you want, but no, you cannot control the weather and no, you cannot increase the block size. You’re in no way in control of the world, but you are in control of […]

  10. […] he can keep pretending like it’s 1999, he buys Chief Derpists to unconvincingly derp about block size increases, and he buys LMO food because “optimal stock.” Generally, he swings his stupidity and […]

  11. […] A forty-eight year old Gavin Bellii is stuck doing the song and the dance, whether it suits him or not, whether it’s flattering or humiliating, whether it even accrues any notable benefit for the […]

  12. […] if you don’t think Contravex is as influential as I claim, you didn’t see me roast the lead figure of the Bitcoin populare on a spit for all the world to see. This is where shit goes down. Way more people read these pages than you […]

  13. […] the price, the network difficulty, and the derps who try (and fail) to fuck with our lovely Bitcoin and turn it into an inflationary wrat…,i the issue of full relay nodes flies under the radar. Yet if you own even a single bitcoin, you […]

  14. […] than a year ago as users are realising the value of this little experiment. 5. Bitcoin Foundation: USGavin‘s Foundation is dead, long live the new one and its quest for a healthier relay network! 6. […]

  15. […] And because you believed that they promoted you because of equality, fairness, merit and shit, you’re just as guilty as the rest of them. Your complete inability to see the true motives of the people who really drove the company/government/whatever into the ground makes you as guilty as them. There’s no avoiding the decisions you made and, despite the repeated warnings, you chose to associate with scum. […]

  16. […] you’ll recall, his block size increase proposal was torpedoed right here, on these very pages, barely three months ago. The holy shyster himself, Gavin, commented directly on the article, three […]

  17. […] this is the point in the article where I point the obligatory finger at Gavin Andresen and his merry band of wreckers.i Requiring 1 GB of RAM + 1GB swap to run a node, as is apparently […]

  18. […] Bitcoin-Anleihen-Börse (MPex) und laut eigener Angabe einer der reichsten in Bitcoinland, ist gegen größere Blöcke. “Betrachte das einfache Problem einer Blockchain mit unendlicher Blockgröße und null […]

  19. […] there still seems to be a handful of holdouts who disagree that a bigger blockchain is less secure and that the block size ain’t gonna increase any time soon, let’s do some math to further the point, shall we […]

  20. […] Oh, and did I mention that the files themselves are also unimaginably heavy and predicated on USGavin’s infinite bandwidth theory of the world ? God knows how anyone still uses this file […]

  21. […] that is this rapidly depreciating high capital cost asset, and you quite rightly want to check your emotional banana baggage at the door, either drive the car one day and come back the next day to settle,ii bring someone […]

  22. […] As explained by Pete D., an author at Qntra and Contravex, the Bitcoin blockchain is like a city and the height of its walls is the network’s hashrate. […]

  23. […] “The larger the Blockchain, the more hashpower is required to maintain the same level of security,” D. argues in a blog post. […]

  24. […] growth to 8 GB blocks the verification problem will become increasingly more pronounced with dire consequences for XTCoin's security. As makers of computing hardware struggle against physics to continue improving CPU performance the […]

  25. […] In the intimate 50-seater space in the basement of the El Cortez Tequila Bar + Kitchen, in scarcely more than a hundred square feet of floor space for the seven or eight performers to wedge their mostly shorter and some less than light frames into, was a healthy score of sketch comedy routines, some involving the entire cast singing mostly in-key, some involving boogie nights dancing while seductively licking and then devouring a taco, and some involving grown men dressed as giant bananas while they tremblingly ate smaller bananas in a well-executed if less than rip-roaringly hilarious display of tropically-flavoured humanoid cannibalism. This latter bit didn’t move me, but then again, the rest of the crowd was pissing their pants at the ‘bananabal,’ so maybe I just didn’t understand the trolling. Wouldn’t be the first time. […]

  26. […] be too young for. Way back in October 2014, Gavincoin was sunk,ii that much we know and that much we will never forget. Then, just a few weeks ago, Hearncoin aka BIP 101 aka Bitcoin XT was sunk, that much we know and […]

  27. […] pay rent. As to the products of these swine, we’ve got American Idol, Louis Vuitton degrees, ph4iled ph0rks, and not a whole lot besides. The differences between post-post-modern Europe and America are […]

  28. […] not the “headers first” Gavinotronic turd but rather therealbitcoin nodes. […]

  29. […] was itself motivated by an article I’d penned just a few days prior, specifically […]

  30. […] “The size of the city is the Blockchain and the height of its walls is the network’s hashrate. As such, the larger the Blockchain, the more hashpower is required to maintain the same level of security. Larger things are inherently more fragile and are therefore exponentially more resource intensive to protect from the forces of nature,” explained D.. […]

  31. […] “The size of the city is the blockchain and the height of its walls is the network’s hashrate. As such, the larger the blockchain, the more hashpower is required to maintain the same level of security. Larger things are inherently more fragile and are therefore exponentially more resource intensive to protect from the forces of nature,” explained D.. […]

  32. […] Bitcoin and security expert Pete D. explains, “To bring this into relevant (Bitcoin) terms, the size of the city is the Blockchain and the […]

  33. […] In April 2015, freedom smiled radiantly as TMSR~ graduated from warring with a scammy pretense to relevance to tackling a dimly illuminated hedge fund head-on.vii I could hardly take an appreciable amount of the credit, if any at all, but some of the deeper flesh wounds inflicted on Gavin did just so happen to be administered on these very pages in both articles and comments. […]

  34. […] Bitcoin expert Pete D. describes it with this analogy: […]

  35. […] to blogger Pete D., as shorter walls are easier to attack, “the city has grown at the expense of security.” The […]

  36. […] of art based on ancient history you’re probably too young to recall. If you need a refresher, this is a good place to start. […]

  37. […] you do your required reading sooner rather than later, that’d be a reference to this Mike and that Gavin. […]

  38. […] on both traffic and timestamps of “new” “ideas.” […]

  39. […] Reusing Bitcoin Addresses 14. Tell The Grand Inquisitor There’s No Fucking Bitcoin Taint. 15. How A Bigger Blockchain Is Less Secure And Why Block Size Ain’t Gonna Increase Any Time Soon 16. Adding Value To Bitcoin 17. The Revolution Was Fiat, The Reaction Is Bitcoin 18. Breaking A […]

  40. […] the more hashpower is required to maintain the same level of security,” D. argues in a blog post. “Larger things are inherently more fragile and are therefore exponentially more resource […]

  41. […] our context (of contexts) Our blockchain, our blog Memory, written record Even pseudonymous […]

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