Author: Pieter Wuille 2015-05-07 03:47:16
Published on: 2015-05-07T03:47:16+00:00
Pieter Wuille, a Bitcoin Core developer, expressed his concerns about the recent flurry of posts by Gavin Andresen advocating strongly for increasing the maximum block size. Wuille stated that he is generally in favour of increasing the size blocks, as technology grows, there is no reason why the systems built on them can't scale proportionally. However, he argued that the current state of affairs worries him greatly. Wuille provided several reasons for his concern. Firstly, he argued that a hard fork could have controversial consequences and lead to a split in the Bitcoin blockchain, which would effectively fail Bitcoin's primary purpose. Secondly, he argued that if "we need more space in blocks" is the reason to do an upgrade, it won't stop after 20 MB. Thirdly, he argued that if we increase the block size, it will lead to miner centralisation. Fourthly, he argued that increasing the block size will reduce the ability of users to use a full node, which is the most secure way of using bitcoin. Finally, he argued that there are skewed incentives for improvements, and that increasing the block size now will simply make it cheap enough to continue business as usual for a while - while forcing a massive cost increase (and not just a monetary one) on the entire ecosystem.
Updated on: 2023-05-19T20:06:04.237336+00:00