Author: Jorge Timón 2015-05-07 15:33:54
Published on: 2015-05-07T15:33:54+00:00
The conversation between Mike Hearn and Wladimir van der Laan is about the Bitcoin consensus process and the role of developers in it. Hearn argues that the notion of developer consensus is flawed because it leads to a situation where people only believe in consensus as long as it goes their way. Van der Laan clarifies that he is only talking about arguments and not people, and that there must be a single decision-maker for any given codebase. The conversation then shifts to the issue of block size and the scalability of Bitcoin. Hearn asks whether people should have to pay enormous fees or wait thousands of blocks for their transactions to get included in the chain if the block size limit is not increased. Van der Laan responds that he will write an article explaining his position on the matter. He also believes that Bitcoin will not end up like Visa even if it is wildly successful because he has done calculations that show it won't happen. The two discuss the tradeoff between transaction volume and centralization and the need to find the right consensus limit for block size. They also discuss the urgency of increasing the block size limit and the possibility of fee competition. Van der Laan suggests that there are many possibilities and that increasing the block size limit to 20 MB as soon as possible may not be the obvious answer for everyone.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T19:32:24.732617+00:00