brickchain

Summary:

The idea of a method to increase throughput in the Bitcoin network is being discussed among developers. The current limit on transaction capacity, which ultimately limits global settlement throughput to a reduced number of tx/s, has been proposed for removal by big-blockers, but this proposal was widely rejected due to undesirable effects. The proposal aims to preserve 'small blocks' while allowing all transactions to go into the current block and keeping the block size small. The proposal requires changes in the PoW algorithm to allow a miner to include transactions until the block is filled with a new structure called "Brick." Once a brick is fully filled with transactions, it would be broadcasted and nodes would have it on a separate fork as usual. The accumulated PoW would be calculated using mathematics, and when a series of "minimum hashes" is computationally equivalent to the network difficulty, the full "brickchain" is valid as a block. The goal of the proposal is to completely flush mempools, keep transaction fees low, and increase throughput without an increase in the block size that would raise other concerns related to propagation. However, there are concerns about the workload of full-nodes and the potential to undermine layer 2 systems like LN. It is suggested that layered financial systems are vastly superior and protocols like MWEB could be used to build on lightning with less risk. Ultimately, the focus should be on layer 2 protocols that allow the ability to hold & transfer uncommitted transactions as pools/joins, so that layer 1's decentralization and incentives can remain undisturbed.

Updated on: 2023-05-22T22:49:29.130863+00:00