How does this scale?
How does this scale?
Posted Nov 12, 2010 0:28 UTC (Fri) by jgarzik (guest, #8364)In reply to: How does this scale? by droundy
Parent article: Bitcoin: Virtual money created by CPU cycles
This limit can be raised in the future; it currently exists to avoid DoS.
As block size increases, transaction fees increase.
It is presumed that the system will scale up with dedicated P2P nodes processing blocks, and the vast majority of bitcoin users using a website or lightweight client that simply sends and receives transactions into the network.
Posted Nov 12, 2010 5:22 UTC (Fri)
by JohnLenz (guest, #42089)
[Link] (4 responses)
I don't think you understand how far you must scale. From here, it looks like Visa handled an average of 8,442 transactions per second in 2008 and built a new datacenter to handle up to 10,000 transactions per second. Also from the article, Visa handles only about 33% of all transactions. So using your numbers, 1 MB block gives about 7.71 transactions per second. Scaling from 7.71 transactions per second to 8,000 per second? So just to handle the volume visa saw in 2008, each block must be over one gigabyte? And this is only the US. By its nature, there is only a single bitcon currency for the whole world so 8,000 transactions per second is on the far low end.
Posted Nov 12, 2010 8:31 UTC (Fri)
by jgarzik (guest, #8364)
[Link] (2 responses)
A gigabyte every ten minutes is quite doable for modern machines and networks, and even more so in an imaginary future where bitcoin transaction rates equal Visa transaction rates.
At those rates, it's not hobbyists running the P2P network anymore; from the transaction fees alone, you're looking at competition among professional players with major investments in the network.
Posted Nov 12, 2010 21:30 UTC (Fri)
by droundy (subscriber, #4559)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Nov 13, 2010 0:34 UTC (Sat)
by jgarzik (guest, #8364)
[Link]
At Visa/Paypal transaction rates, most bitcoin clients will be leaf nodes, that send and receive transactions, but don't bother with the block chain.
Beefy ultrapeer nodes would be the ones storing transactions, building blocks, monitoring and verifying the block chain, etc. They are incentivized to do this with transaction fees, which non-generating leaf nodes would not receive.
Posted Nov 19, 2010 22:26 UTC (Fri)
by creighto (guest, #71377)
[Link]
How does this scale?
How does this scale?
How does this scale?
How does this scale?
How does this scale?