Why Bigger Might Not Be Better For Bitcoin Scaling
The block size debate, long one of the defining challenges hanging over bitcoin's tech community, took an interesting twist late last month. A years-long discussion about how best to scale the functioning $15bn economic network mid-flight, the debate has largely been characterized by a face-off between those who would increase the 1MB block size via an efficiency improvement called SegWit, and those who want to change the hard-coded block size limit to 2MB or more. You'll notice that, so far, neither side has called for a block size decrease. But that was exactly the view represented in a....
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While these words should always be taken with a grain of salt, a bigger problem is highlighted by this statement. A recent bitcoin meetup in China was supposed to be about addressing scalability. This topic has been kicked around for quite some time now, yet there is no solution in sight. Samson Mow took to Twitter and explained how this meeting was not about on-chain scaling. Instead, he called it a “social and marketing event” organized by Bitmain. There have always been different opinions on any event taking place discussing Bitcoin scalability. The majority of these meetings have been....
This weekend's official XT release was made under pretense that a bigger block size will supposedly increase Bitcoin's capacity and allow more transactions per second, cheaper fees and wider adoption. So why had the decision caused so much controversy and why didn't the Core developers just implement it already? We all want a large scale Bitcoin with maximum participation, don't we? As it turns out, the XT developers are not telling the whole truth and are knowingly putting Bitcoin's future on the line. Disclaimer: The information presented in this article is intended to be informational....
ShapeShift CEO Erik Voorhees has hit out at suggestions that changing Bitcoin’s algorithm is an effective way of resolving its scaling problem. In a tweet on Monday, Voorhees branded the idea as “the most absurd and reckless thing I've heard in the scaling debate.” His comment sparked a lengthy exchange in which multiple posters accused Voorhees of siding with Bitcoin Unlimited’s bigger blocks solution, something he repeatedly denied. “[Threats and blackmail] is [sic] not a legit option. It's the height of foolishness and desperation, the last bastion of a tribe unwilling to put egos....
Jim Burton, the British lead developer of "lightweight" Bitcoin client MultiBit, favors a rapid block-size increase in order to allow for more transactions on the network, rather than focusing on layers built on top of Bitcoin. "Philosophically, we think that Satoshi's vision of a peer-to-peer currency needs bigger blocks," Burton told Bitcoin Magazine. We want people to be able to transact person-to-person 'on-chain'. We are starting to see large transaction backlogs, for instance recently on Black Friday, so the need for bigger blocks is clear." The block-size dispute - which represents....
The lineup for the third edition of the bitcoin developer conference Scaling Bitcoin is now available. Released today, the lineup features a heavy emphasis on talks devoted to scaling, or proposed improvements that would boost the transaction capacity of the bitcoin protocol. Planned talks include "Sidechain Scaling" by Bloq’s Paul Sztorc and "Progress on Scaling via Client-Side Validation" by developer Peter Todd. The event is scheduled to be held from 8th to 9th October in Milan, Italy, at Politecnico di Milano. The full program is divided into six sections including....