Published on: 2015-02-01T06:50:41+00:00
Wladimir expresses his view on the scalability of blockchain technology, stating that while the everyone-validates-everything approach is valuable for settling larger transactions in a secure manner, it is not scalable. He argues against the idea of the whole world having to validate every small transaction, such as buying a cup of coffee or a bus ticket, by six billion others. Gavin supports this argument, emphasizing that artificially limiting transactions could cause competition to be lost. He further elaborates on this point in a blog post.The author raises concerns about two projects that could potentially increase transaction volume by up to 100 times: legal bittorrent file sales and P2P Amazon (OpenBazaar). They note that current centralized solutions like Bitpay and Coinbase are necessary to manage the expected volume until technology can handle it in a true peer-to-peer fashion. The author also questions the validity of Alipay's claim of handling up to 2.85 million transactions per minute, suggesting that scalability is a sign of popularity. They emphasize the importance of gaining users rather than focusing solely on broadcast protocols.The discussion then shifts to the scalability of Bitcoin. Concerns are raised about whether miners have enough bandwidth and CPU power to handle the increasing amount of data generated by transactions. However, it is acknowledged that scaling is a positive problem to have, and the focus should be on gaining users rather than worrying about precise broadcast protocols.In another conversation, Nick Simpson and Wladimir discuss the limitations of Bitcoin replacing all methods of payment and scalability concerns. Wladimir argues against broadcasting all transactions over one channel, highlighting the need for settling larger transactions in a secure way. He suggests that future scalable payment systems based on Bitcoin may involve off-blockchain transactions or a hierarchical/subdivided system.The writer challenges the notion that on-chain transactions are the only way to use Bitcoin and scale it. They refer to an article in MIT's Tech Review, which highlights Alipay's ability to handle a large number of transactions. The writer calculates that to handle 100,000 transactions per minute, a block size 1300 times larger than the current one would be needed. They further estimate that if double the number of transactions handled by Alipay were included, it would require around 15 gigabytes per block to be broadcast and hashed by all full nodes every ten minutes, consuming significant storage. The writer questions whether miners have sufficient bandwidth and CPU power to handle this level of scalability.In summary, the Chinese payment platform Alipay demonstrates impressive scalability, handling millions of transactions per minute. This raises concerns about Bitcoin's ability to compete with global financial services. The writer calculates that significant increases in transaction volume would require substantial adjustments to block sizes and could strain miners' bandwidth and CPU power. These scalability concerns prompt discussions on alternative approaches to scaling Bitcoin and the importance of gaining users.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T11:16:08.850671+00:00