Why Satoshi's temporary anti-spam measure isn'ttemporary

Summary:

The PoW-blockchain is a largely singleton data structure for security reasons and it is hard for an alternative chain to bootstrap or provide meaningful security. The world largely lacks expertise to maintain a blockchain to Bitcoin's security level, and no competing system can achieve better properties by bypassing security as any blockchain faces the same fundamental security/decentralization limitations. Furthermore, Bitcoin can compete with itself with different parameters as > 99% of Bitcoin transactions right now are happening in Bitcoin related systems with various degrees of audit, reconciliation, provable reserves, etc. This trend will continue and become more secure via more reconciliation, and longer-term via lightning or Bitcoin sidechains with different parameters. A single central system (Bitcoin with parameters changed to the point of centralization failure) versus having multiple choices can be interesting because some transactions can more easily use relatively centralized systems (e.g., micropayments). In addition, the combination of a secure and decentralized layer 1 plus choices of less decentralized layer 2 options can be beneficial because the layer 2 is provided cover from attack. Furthermore, lightning should add significant scale while retaining trustlessness and a good degree of decentralization. Finally, the limits are technical and relating to decentralization and security. Any chain that tried to go to extreme parameters (very low block intervals, or very large blocksizes) would have the same decentralization problems as Bitcoin would if it did the same thing. There are inherent security limits. Modern economic study has shown that liquidity moves to the location of least friction, and people like cheap fees. As for limiting the size of the blockchain being an attempt to artificially raise transaction fees, that is not the case. Reluctance to concede blocksize is an attempt to protect its degree of decentralization.

Updated on: 2023-06-10T04:16:10.914012+00:00