Author: Mark Friedenbach 2015-08-07 19:15:34
Published on: 2015-08-07T19:15:34+00:00
The discussion in this context revolves around the topic of increasing the blocksize in Bitcoin. Ryan Butler argues that an increase in blocksize can help the system support more users and transactions while keeping downsides such as centralization to a minimum. He also mentions Peter's latest proposal being too conservative for following technological evolution. However, Mark Friedenbach mentions that it is impossible to scale Bitcoin to terabyte-sized blocks that would be necessary to service the world's financial transactions without sacrificing protection of policy neutrality achieved through decentralization. Pieter Wuille believes that demand is infinite if a fee minimum is not set, and acting out of fear of running out of capacity does not improve the system. He also thinks that 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. Gavin Andresen thinks there are multiple reasons to raise the maximum block size, including fear of bad things happening as the system runs up against the 1MB limit. He suggests that future Bitcoin engineers should consider raising the maximum block size if needed and if the benefits outweigh the costs. Overall, the conversation highlights the tradeoffs involved in increasing blocksize and the need for considering technical criteria and economic implications.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T18:31:01.734492+00:00