Author: Peter Todd 2015-05-07 17:29:56
Published on: 2015-05-07T17:29:56+00:00
In a discussion thread, Gavin Andresen expressed his desire to find a concrete course of action that would establish a consensus on how much transaction volume the main Bitcoin blockchain will be able to support over the next eleven years. Jorge Timón agreed with this and believed that it explained the urgency in taking a decision. However, there is a problem in telling companies about the supply side of the equation without knowing the demand side of it. It is difficult to predict what Bitcoin will be used for in the future or even what it is currently being used for. Use cases like Satoshidice and smart contracts (escrows, futures, etc) can drive a significant amount of transaction volume, but the fundamental underlying architecture of the blockchain has inherently poor O(n^2) scaling. Therefore, there will always be some level of demand where it breaks and/or incentivizes actors in the space to push up against "safety stops" like soft blocksize limits and get them removed. In the past, bumping up against soft policy limits resulted in highly public calls at the first hint of trouble.
Updated on: 2023-06-09T19:33:16.400440+00:00