Author: Ryan Butler 2015-08-07 19:07:28
Published on: 2015-08-07T19:07:28+00:00
There is a debate about the block size increase proposals for Bitcoin. The proposals aim to increase the available space on the chain and follow technological evolution while addressing the demand exceeding the available space. Peter's latest proposal is considered too conservative by some, and it is believed that raising the block size can support more users and transactions while keeping downsides to a minimum. However, there is a fundamental disagreement between smart engineers who believe that demand is infinite and others who think that real-world engineering issues require trade-offs. It is impossible to scale Bitcoin to the terabyte-sized blocks that would be necessary to service the entire world's financial transactions without sacrificing entirely the protection of policy neutrality achieved through decentralization. Technical discussion over where to draw the line has been missing from this debate. Transactions below that level are simply pushed into higher level or off-chain protocols. It is a matter of finding the right balance between increasing adoption or lower transaction fees, increased reliability, higher operating costs for full-nodes, and the disruption caused by ANY consensus rule change. Whatever size blocks are produced, the result will either be something people consider too small to be competitive or something that is very centralized in practice, and likely both.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T18:36:29.925685+00:00