{"id":26993,"date":"2016-01-07T17:13:51","date_gmt":"2016-01-07T17:13:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ci027cfe7ae0052697"},"modified":"2016-01-07T17:13:51","modified_gmt":"2016-01-07T17:13:51","slug":"coinomi-founder-john-jegutanis-scale-bitcoin-by-decreasing-latency-1452186831","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/technical\/coinomi-founder-john-jegutanis-scale-bitcoin-by-decreasing-latency-1452186831","title":{"rendered":"Coinomi Founder John Jegutanis: Scale Bitcoin by Decreasing Latency"},"content":{"rendered":"
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John Jegutanis, co-founder of bitcoin and altcoin mobile wallet
Coinomi<\/a>, recently proposed the concept of \u201dSoft Blocks<\/a>\u201c to help scale Bitcoin. Soft Blocks, Jegutanis says, could reduce the risk of increasing Bitcoin’s block-size limit. <\/p>\n

Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine<\/em>, he explained: \u201cIt is not so much the block size \u2013 although yes, it must be increased \u2013 but the inefficiency of our current block relay mechanism that needs solving.\u201d <\/p>\n

The block-size dispute \u2013 which made headlines throughout 2015 \u2013 represents a trade-off between the number of transactions<\/a> the Bitcoin network can handle and its decentralization<\/a>. <\/p>\n

While larger blocks would allow for more transactions, these blocks would take longer to propagate over the network. This could increase the rate of pruned (\u201corphaned\u201d) blocks, as miners will build blocks on top of older blocks while newer blocks are still making their way to them. Some worry this would favor larger miners (and pools) more than smaller miners, as larger pools don’t need to wait for blocks as often; they mine more blocks themselves. (Additionally, a higher prune rate would decrease Bitcoin\u2019s security overall, as the hash power invested in these blocks doesn\u2019t secure the network.) <\/p>\n

Jegutanis’ Coinomi was one of the first Bitcoin wallets to test Bitcoin XT \u2013 designed to hard fork a block-size limit increase through BIP 101<\/a>. While Coinomi is compatible with Bitcoin XT, Jegutanis decided not to enable it in production until developer consensus has emerged. <\/p>\n

Jegutanis still supports a hard fork to increase the block size, however, and proposes to decrease propagation time through Soft Blocks. <\/p>\n

Similar to other potential block propagation improvements such as IBLTs<\/a> and \u2013 in particular \u2013 \u201cWeak Blocks<\/a>,\u201d Soft Blocks do away with the need to transmit full blocks over the Bitcoin network once a block is found. <\/p>\n

Instead, miners can effectively transmit a confirmation and proof that they, indeed, found a block, which requires much less data to be sent around the network. This vastly decreases propagation time, limiting pruning risk. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhile it is true that slow propagation favors larger miners, I believe we can relegate this to a theoretical concern only,\u201d Jegutanis explained. \u201cIn reality, miners will want to propagate their blocks to as many miners as fast as possible; they would be gambling otherwise. Solutions such as Matt Corallo\u2019s relay network<\/a> and soft blocks will help them with that.\u201d <\/p>\n

As such, Jegutanis believes the block-size limit should be increased more rather than less. While he supports the Segregated<\/a>Witness<\/a> – heavy<\/a> scalability road map<\/a> as laid out by Bitcoin Core and Blockstream developer Gregory Maxwell, Jegutanis indicated he believes Bitcoin will need a hard fork to increase the block-size limit in the longer term. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think Segregated Witness is a really, really smart ‘hack’ that solves many problems,\u201d Jegutanis said. \u201cBut it creates a new problem: It’s effectively a block-size increase that the peer-to-peer network cannot efficiently handle. We, therefore, need a solution to increase block propagation as well, like soft blocks. And if we have that, we might as well increase the block-size limit a lot more. BIP 101 solves the problem of full blocks for once and for all. We will never hit this ceiling as we are hitting the 1 megabyte ceiling recently.\u201d <\/p>\n

Photo Emile Aben<\/a> \/ Creative Commons<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Jegutanis, co-founder of bitcoin and altcoin mobile walletCoinomi, recently proposed the concept of \u201dSoft Blocks\u201c to help scale Bitcoin. Soft Blocks, Jegutanis says, could reduce the risk of increasing Bitcoin’s block-size limit. Speaking to Bitcoin Magazine, he explained: \u201cIt is not so much the block size \u2013 although yes, it must be increased \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2509,"featured_media":26992,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[3592,1687,1662,1694,143,3181,86,1582,705,1079,708],"class_list":{"0":"post-26993","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technical","8":"tag-bip-101","9":"tag-bips","10":"tag-block-size","11":"tag-blocks","12":"tag-decentralization","13":"tag-matt-corallo","14":"tag-miners","15":"tag-pools","16":"tag-scaling","17":"tag-segwit","18":"tag-transactions"},"author_data":{"id":2509,"name":"Aaron van Wirdum","nicename":"aaron-van-wirdum","avatar_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/aaron-van-wirdum-96x96.jpg"},"featured_image_url":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/coinomi-founder-john-jegutanis-scale-bitcoin-by-decreasing-latency.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2509"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26993\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitcoinmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}