Bitcoin (BTC) Scaling Debate
Bitcoin (BTC) has made it clear it will not hard fork to increase block size. But the question remains can it continue to scale in the long run. I get the argument that keeping the same chain is far more feasible then splintering the community off.
Segwit removes one Ring Signature and makes it less numbers to add to blockchain. Jihan Wu doesn’t like that because less txt means less mining reward per txt. That’s why he wanted to block it from being added to Litecoin (see Whale Panda’s article). According to one of StopAndDecrypt’s articles you don’t need a non-segwit coin to have stealth transactions. So the real battle against Segwit is Bitmain wanting more mining rewards.
Actually, I think Segwit and off-chain could have great potential for non-financial purposes. Like if Bitcoin (BTC) wanted to make their own Micro-Blogging Site, posts go on off-chain, url goes on-chain. Another possible idea is Aliases and Reputation based system for Merchant Sellers which some altcoins already do.
The great question remains is blocksize even a factor? can Bitcoin just move to far more advanced ASIC Antminer clones to off set Bitcoin Cash (BCH) bigger block size? Better ASIC miners could drop transaction fees down to $0.50 so Bitcoin Cash (BCH) get serious competition in the Merchant Adoption area.
I’ll admit I jumped ship from BTC-only around 2017 Transaction Fee hike. But I do believe Blockstream is going to make a Bitcoin comeback. DashJr is talking about Quantum Computer Mining and breaking off from Bitmain’s ASIC monopoly. Original, I was very angry as a merchant that it took months to address the transaction fee hike. But now I realize that Bitcoin is a consensus and it takes time for a unanimous decision. Centralized coins can make decision at the snap of a finger without consensus, but doesn’t make them any better. Perhaps at the time I was looking for a quick solution to a complex problem.
In the end I’m kinda a newbie when it comes to cryptographic stuff. BCH’s bigger blocks, feeding poor people, and pushing for merchant adoption seems like a great idea. But I could totally be wrong about bigger blocks from a technical standpoint. Perhaps, there is another method to make the mempool stronger while keeping a small blocksize?
That’s were you guys come in, refute me if I’m wrong. Rather know the truth and get refuted, then be wrong and never know it.
Sources:
StopAndDecrypt’s Article:
https://hackernoon.com/thats-not-bitcoin-that-s-bcash-f730f0d0a837
WhalePanda's Article:
Big blocks aren't everything. The LN is an impressive technology and each LN channel(takes onchain txs to open)can support 500+tps. However BCH supporter are right be the fact the LN needs big blocks to support a larger network. However there are alternative to just increasing the blocksize. One is Schnorr :
https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@sames/schnorr-coming-to-bitcoin-in-the-next-few-months
Schnorr can increase Bitcoin capacity to more than 40% without evening increasing the blocksize.
7 TPS was the limit before segwit(in reality the TPS pre-segwit sometimes peaked above 10TPS due to variance)
14TPS with blocks mostly filled with segwit txs (2MB block averages)
14+25% = 17.5TPS
14+40% = 19.6 TPS (Variance would create higher peaks than 19.6)
Thus 17.5 TPS is not the max limit but the expected future average with full blocks
3-4 TPS was the average , limit was over 7TPS before segwit. Part of this reason might be why Bitmain and their partners were mining many empty blocks for covert asic boost back than. To make it look like Bitcoin could only do 3-4 tps.
MAST which I shall post about today will also help Bitcoin scale without bigger blocks.
At 6:58 EST I put the article link here:
There are other alternative to just increasing blocks as well. They are being worked on but those two are coming the soonest.
And also Bitcoin does plan on increasing blocks in the future.
Bitcoin already has a maximum specified blocksize that it wont exceed... That is why it is easy to predict what the price will be in the near future