Author: Adam Back 2017-07-11 16:49:57
Published on: 2017-07-11T16:49:57+00:00
The Bitcoin community needs to revise its scaling roadmap, as the December 2015 version is now obsolete and outdated. The roadmap helped synchronize the community, but since conversations lack authoritative sources, they have a problematic lack of progress. A new roadmap would help remedy this problem. The new roadmap should remove what has been accomplished, introduce new innovations and approaches, and update deadlines and projections. The proposed roadmap includes technologies that increase Bitcoin's maximum tps rate ("capacity"), or make it easier to process a higher volume of transactions ("scalability"). Several items on the previous roadmap have been completed, including VersionBits (BIP9), Compact Blocks (BIP152), and Check Sequence Verify (BIP112). Segregated Witness (BIP141) awaits activation and is estimated to increase capacity by a factor of 2.2. The Lightning Network, which allows users to transact without broadcasting to the network, is complete and awaits activation of SegWit. Transaction Compression would improve scalability by roughly 20%, and Schnorr Signature Aggregation would likely be ready by Q4 of 2016, resulting in storage and bandwidth savings of at least 25%. Drivechain allows bitcoins to be temporarily offloaded to 'alternative' blockchain networks, increasing capacity, although with less decentralization. Finally, if these improvements are insufficient, a hard fork may be necessary to increase the block size, and Spoonnet is currently the most attractive option for such a hardfork. Safe deployment methods are also a major consideration.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T03:31:27.249705+00:00