Author: Chris Pacia 2015-06-19 00:57:58
Published on: 2015-06-19T00:57:58+00:00
Mark Friedenbach, a Bitcoin Core developer, proposed several steps to improve the scalability of Bitcoin network in an email sent on June 18, 2015. The first step includes adding safe forms of replace-by-fee and child-pays-for-parent features to version 0.12. Secondly, cross-platform libraries for managing micropayment channels should be developed and wallet authors should adopt them. Thirdly, off-chain solutions such as fidelity bonds and solvency proofs should be used to minimize risk as interim measures until soft-fork changes for scalable solutions like the Lightning Network are deployed. However, one of the biggest concerns is that these solutions, especially the Lightning Network, may be worse than a network using larger blocks in terms of decentralization. It is uncertain what the economies of scale are for pay hubs and there could end up being far fewer hubs than nodes at any block size. While it could turn out to be fantastic, forcing everyone in the ecosystem to collectively spend millions of dollars upgrading to Lightning before seeing whether it improves decentralization seems like a huge gamble. A more reasonable approach would be to allow people to voluntarily opt into other solutions after testing them and seeing how they function in practice, but this cannot happen if the network runs out of capacity first.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T23:25:11.685714+00:00