Author: slush 2015-05-06 22:30:12
Published on: 2015-05-06T22:30:12+00:00
In May 2015, a discussion was started on the Bitcoin-development mailing list about the topic of increasing the maximum block size. There had been recent posts by Gavin Andresen advocating for an increase, but there had not been any public technical discussion in several years. The question of block size has no clear answer and involves many technical tradeoffs. While some community members have strong opinions, the lack of public discussion is disappointing. One member, Matt Corallo, expressed his strong opposition to an increase in block size in the near future. He believes that fee pressure is necessary for long-term incentive compatibility and that blocks should be consistently full or nearly full. Currently, transactions can enjoy next-block confirmations with little to no fee pressure, which allows the well-funded Bitcoin ecosystem to continue building centralized platforms while pretending to scale. Corallo argues that instead, efforts should be focused on technologies that bring Bitcoin's trustlessness to systems that scale beyond a blockchain's limitations. Finally, another community member requested that if there were to be a fork, SIGHASH_WITHINPUTVALUE or its alternative be included to benefit lightweight (blockchain-less) clients.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T19:35:07.476881+00:00