[No exaggeration: Bitcoin is on the brink of life and death] We urge all coin holders to support the 2MB expansion

Author : Jiang Zhuoer, founder of Litecoin Mining Pool
Interested parties : Bitcoin/Litecoin miners, coin holders

It is no exaggeration to say that Bitcoin is on the brink of life and death :
BlockStream has hired some of the core developers from the Bitcoin Core development team.
BlockStream has developed the Lightning Network, a sidechain for small Bitcoin transactions.
If Bitcoin expands, even small transactions can be sent on the Bitcoin main chain, and the value of the Lightning Network will be greatly reduced or even meaningless.

Some of the core developers employed by BlockStream have long been opposed to any expansion, even to 2MB .
Gavin Andresen, who inherited the mantle of Satoshi Nakamoto, and another core developer Jeff Garzik could not convince them.
Therefore, a Bitcoin Classic development team was established to promote the 2MB expansion, but the current situation is quite not optimistic.

If Gavin's final effort fails, Bitcoin may be locked below 1MB by the Core development team for a long time, or even forever, and become a large-scale clearing network similar to that between banks.
Unless you and I are willing to pay a transaction fee of tens or even hundreds of yuan, we will no longer be able to use the Bitcoin main chain, and Bitcoin will eventually fail.

Below I will refute the arguments of 1MB supporters one by one:

[1MB supporters: Expansion will lead to a reduction in Bitcoin full nodes and reduce Bitcoin security. ]

Rebuttal: A full node is a node that runs with a fixed IP address for a long time and provides block data to other nodes.
Similar to the torrent in BT download, it is a node that only contributes but has no power. Currently, there are about 6,000 full nodes in the world.

The biggest role of a full node is to quickly propagate new blocks throughout the network.
But this does not mean that the reduction in full nodes means that new blocks cannot be transmitted throughout the entire network (at most it will be slower), and it does not mean that Bitcoin is unsafe.

The nodes have no destructive power, and any false data sent by the nodes will be rejected by other nodes.
The only "damage" a node can do is to act as a blood sucker, downloading data without uploading it, just like some blood sucking BT clients.
But this will only delay, not prevent, the spread of new blocks across the network.

This is like in BT download, a resource with 6000 seeds may download faster than a resource with 3000 seeds.
But it doesn't mean that you can't download it when there is only one seed - at most you will start slowly, and when everyone has finished downloading, you can pass it to each other and it will be faster.
It is even more unacceptable that the lack of seeds will cause the downloaded movie to be replaced by Calabash Brothers - BT download and BTC can both guarantee the absolute consistency of data.

Although the number of full nodes has been decreasing slightly recently, the quality of nodes (the total upload bandwidth they can provide) has been increasing.
With the development of Bitcoin, Bitcoin-related companies (mining pools, exchanges, wallets, payments, applications, merchants) continue to increase.
The number of high-quality full nodes is also increasing, which has led many early Bitcoin enthusiasts to find that they no longer need to seed. With so many servers seeding, it doesn’t make much difference whether I seed or not.
Therefore, the illusion that “the number of full nodes is decreasing” appears.

[1MB supporters: Expansion will lead to a reduction in Bitcoin full nodes, making Bitcoin further centralized. ]

Rebuttal: This is a ridiculous reason, just like the National Development and Reform Commission said:
The oil price is not lowered in order to control the domestic smog.

Many people outside the circle cannot distinguish between pyramid schemes, Ponzi schemes and bubbles. Similarly, many people inside the circle cannot distinguish between "centralization" and "centralization".

The exact meaning of “decentralization” is “decentralization of power”, not “decentralization”.
Satoshi Nakamoto mined 1 million bitcoins in the early days, which is called the "centralization" of Bitcoin.
No person or organization (not even Satoshi Nakamoto) has the right to confiscate other people's Bitcoin. This is called the "decentralization" of Bitcoin.

Centralization is an inevitable phenomenon in a system.
If we believe that “decentralization” means “decentralization”, then should we release a new version to distribute the coins mined by Satoshi Nakamoto equally?
** Some Core developers hired by BlockStream insist on not expanding even to 2MB, and want to force ordinary users to the Lightning Network controlled by BlockStream. This is the most terrifying centralization of power. **

[1MB supporters: We will expand the capacity this time, and expand it again next time when it is full. If we continue to expand the capacity and put all transactions on the main chain, only supercomputers will be able to run the client in the end, and ordinary people will no longer be able to run the client with their laptops. ]

Rebuttal: First of all, this is a substitution of concepts. Too radical expansion plans, such as BIP101, have been opposed.
The mining pool will not blindly expand to a level that the network cannot bear, otherwise the mining pool itself will suffer losses (increase in orphaned blocks).
2MB is a very safe capacity. For example, F2pool believes that 8MB is acceptable now.

The current controversy is that Core is unwilling to upgrade to 2MB .

Why not upgrade to 2MB? Because if you upgrade to 2MB, it will be enough for at least one or two years.
When the 2MB is full, if the network conditions allow, it will most likely be upgraded to 4MB or 8MB as usual.
After a few years, since the main chain is sufficient, BlockStream's side chain (Lightning Network) will not be used by many people.
Therefore, BlockStream must prevent any upgrade of the main chain at all costs, even if it is only upgraded to 2MB.
Even in the future 1MB may not be enough to serve as a clearing network.

Second, even if all transactions are placed on the main chain, so what?

Moore's Law points out the rapid, exponential growth of computer performance, but the human population cannot grow at an exponential rate.
Will the global population reach 70 billion? 700 billion? Or will each person need to generate 100? 1,000 transactions per day?
Therefore, it is impossible for the Bitcoin network to be unable to support global transactions.
Now a personal computer is enough to easily store the identity information of the world's population, and the future when a personal computer can easily handle global transactions is not too far away.

Assume that in the distant future, there are 2 billion people using Bitcoin, and each person generates an average of 3 transactions per day, with each transaction being 200 bytes.
2 billion*3*200 bytes = 1.2TB of transaction data will be generated every day, averaging 144 blocks a day, and each block is 8.3GB.
Assuming that an average user can download the data within 1 minute, a broadband of 0.138GB/S = 1.11Gbs is required.
This isn't particularly exaggerated broadband even today, let alone in the distant future.

Even without considering future technologies, the maximum speed of a single optical fiber in the laboratory has reached 43T (43000G) (Tencent "43Tbps New Network Speed ​​Record Birth").
Processing transactions for 2 billion people is just a drop in the bucket.

[1MB supporters: Core insists on not expanding, so expansion will require hard forking to Classic. Hard forking is very dangerous. Bitcoin's security and stability are above all else. Other things should be left to applications (such as side chains and lightning networks). ]

Rebuttal: Hard forks are not terrible. Bitcoin has experienced many hard forks.
As long as the hard fork reaches a consensus, it is just a normal upgrade.
Currently, it is difficult to reach a complete consensus because three Core developers are firmly opposed to the 2MB upgrade.
If a hard fork is to take place, it will be the most dangerous hard fork in history. This has also caused some people to feel fear and be coerced by these three Core developers, and even come up with strange theories such as "Bitcoin is sufficient as a clearing network."

But are millions of Bitcoin users being manipulated by these three Core developers?
Any birth is inevitably accompanied by risks. Isn't it dangerous for women to get pregnant and give birth?
Where did all of you come from? Didn’t your mothers risk their lives to give birth to you?

The greatness of Satoshi Nakamoto does not lie in the creation of Bitcoin, but in the fact that after creating Bitcoin,
In order to eliminate the biggest power center of Bitcoin, the founder of Bitcoin, he did not hesitate to exile himself.
Now Bitcoin only has one power center left - the code power center: the Bitcoin Core development team.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. If corruption is not nipped in the bud,
Instead, for the sake of so-called "maintaining stability", they do not hesitate to echo corrupt elements. Their feelings may be forgiven, but their hearts should be condemned.

Pregnancy and childbirth involve risks, so you should make adequate preparations and plans, rather than not giving up the baby when the situation becomes dangerous.
Hard forks are risky and may cause panic and a major crash in coin prices.
Then we should have more communication in the community and reach a broader consensus.
Let everyone know clearly what is going to happen and why it is happening.
Let the vast majority of Bitcoin users crush all obstacles.
Instead of me thinking there is a risk, I decide for you and we make Bitcoin a clearing network.

Metcalfe's Law states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users connected to it.
A network of 100,000 people is worth 10 billion, but if it is split into 10 networks of 10,000 people, the total value is only 1 billion.

How many nodes can use a 1MB clearing network?
There are a bunch of lightning side chains, Shanbao side chains, and Shantong side chains hanging under the clearing network. How are they different from online banking, Alipay, and Tenpay, which are not connected to each other?
Is this still our Bitcoin?

[1MB supporter: The Classic development team has only two core developers in the near future, which can easily lead to dictatorship. There is not enough development power in the medium term, and there is no clear plan for the long term. ]

Rebuttal: As a newly established development team, the Classic development team cannot be expected to have as many developers as the long-established Core development team.
But now that Gavin Andresen and Jeff Garzik, the core developers of Core, can set up a separate Classic development team,
Can't the more than 300 code contributors of the Core development team continue to develop in the Classic development team? Are they all the private property of the Core development team?
When Satoshi Nakamoto was developing Bitcoin alone, was he prone to dictatorship and lacked sufficient development power?

In development, the correct direction is far more important than the number of developers.
Even if Classic does nothing, it is 10,000 times stronger than Core, which is developing towards a 1MB clearing network.
Lao Tzu believed that "I do nothing, and the people will be transformed by themselves; I like peace, and the people will be upright by themselves; I do nothing, and the people will be rich by themselves; I have no desires, and the people will be simple by themselves."
“Governing by doing nothing” means not intervening too much, letting nature take its own course, giving full play to the creativity of the people, and achieving self-realization.

Bitcoin Core does not need to have any more complex functions and development.
Maintain the availability and stability of the core, and place additional functions on additional side chains.
Instead of castrating the core usability, even basic transfers are transferred to the side chain.

【Written at the end】

The earliest block size limit of Bitcoin was 33.5MB.
1MB was just a temporary limit added by Satoshi Nakamoto when Bitcoin was only worth a few cents in the early days to prevent spam transactions from maliciously increasing the block data.
In the discussion on Bitcointalk about the block cap, Satoshi Nakamoto also gave a detailed method for future block expansion:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1347.msg15366#msg15366

Larger block limits could be introduced in stages, such as:

When block number > 115000,
maxblocksize = a larger limit.

This code can be written in a certain version much earlier, so that when this code takes effect at a specified block height, the old version that does not contain this code will have been eliminated.

As we get closer to the cutoff block height, I will display an alert on older versions to ensure that older users know they must upgrade.

Unexpectedly, this temporary 1MB limit, after being used by some absolute powers, has become a hurdle for Bitcoin.

As a long-term Bitcoin fan,
As a die-hard believer who firmly believes that the total market value of Bitcoin will be on par with that of gold (that is, one coin is worth 2 million yuan),
I have a deep understanding of Bitcoin and have done a lot of popular science work on forums, Zhihu, etc.
(Welcome to try the "Basic Science of Bitcoin" which is most suitable for people with non-technical backgrounds.
https://www.zhihu.com/question/22076666/answer/69638270)
Therefore, I am also very clear that 1MB of Bitcoin is definitely a dead end.

I firmly believe that the wheel of history will roll forward.
But I also know that nothing in the world can go as we wish, so I just want to do my best to have a clear conscience.
I will do my best to help Bitcoin overcome this obstacle.
If Bitcoin unfortunately fails before this critical juncture and is permanently limited to 1MB by Core developers,
I will also admit that Bitcoin is nothing more than a dream of a loser's counterattack, and clear out all the Bitcoins and mining machines.

January 22, 2016 at 6:00 AM

Author: Jiang Zhuoer from LiteBit Mining Pool