Kevin's Bacon on Nostr: One of the biggest issues with Monero is the blockchain bloat. Full, node space ...
One of the biggest issues with Monero is the blockchain bloat. Full, node space requirements are growing very fast and are not extremely scalable, as they are tied to Monero's transaction volume. This limits how decentralized it can be according to how popular it becomes. Even though there is a penalty for mining extraordinarily large blocks, the penalty is based on an average which can grow substantially due to user demand, user demand which is not checked by supply constraints in the long run, though it is in the short run. This means that the greater the number of transactions it gets as it becomes more popular, the more centralized noderunning will have to be, unless its popularity grows significantly slower than hard drive space.
One of the best things going for it, in light of this, is that it doesn't have mass appeal. This is enforced by the tail emissions, which although clever as a way to replace lost coins, dilutes people's holdings compared to Bitcoin's emission schedule of having a hard cap. Bitcoin is therefore so scarce that its NGU is stronger than any other currency in the world, and this is constantly drawing more people to it as a way to not only store wealth, but grow wealth over time compared to Monero. Bitcoin is also the most established player and it is scaling with layers and very slow iterative changes within a voluntary consensus.
For Monero to work for as many people as bitcoin can now, let alone the whole world, it would need to make further changes have some way of enforcing not only a mean reversion of block size as it has now, but also tailoring this mean to reflect the growth in hardware capacity of a typical person to keep the network decentralized on the full node level. If it got really really popular, it would then also likely need layered scaling solutions like Bitcoin has, like Fedimint, Liquid, and Lightning. Even then, it will not be a global settlement layer, as that needs to be protected by ASICs, not general purpose CPUs. And given the choice between a sound issuance schedule like Monero's and an extremely sound issuance schedule like Bitcoin's, people, especially the big players, are going to converge on Bitcoin as the store of most of their wealth. Monero, if it implemented some of these changes, could continue to be a compelling private electronic cash system as it arguably is now. Until then, its future is uncertain, and lightning with BOLT12, Liquid, and P2P exchanges facilitate a similar experience on Bitcoin that holds its value better and scales to many many millions without losing its decentralization.
One of the best things going for it, in light of this, is that it doesn't have mass appeal. This is enforced by the tail emissions, which although clever as a way to replace lost coins, dilutes people's holdings compared to Bitcoin's emission schedule of having a hard cap. Bitcoin is therefore so scarce that its NGU is stronger than any other currency in the world, and this is constantly drawing more people to it as a way to not only store wealth, but grow wealth over time compared to Monero. Bitcoin is also the most established player and it is scaling with layers and very slow iterative changes within a voluntary consensus.
For Monero to work for as many people as bitcoin can now, let alone the whole world, it would need to make further changes have some way of enforcing not only a mean reversion of block size as it has now, but also tailoring this mean to reflect the growth in hardware capacity of a typical person to keep the network decentralized on the full node level. If it got really really popular, it would then also likely need layered scaling solutions like Bitcoin has, like Fedimint, Liquid, and Lightning. Even then, it will not be a global settlement layer, as that needs to be protected by ASICs, not general purpose CPUs. And given the choice between a sound issuance schedule like Monero's and an extremely sound issuance schedule like Bitcoin's, people, especially the big players, are going to converge on Bitcoin as the store of most of their wealth. Monero, if it implemented some of these changes, could continue to be a compelling private electronic cash system as it arguably is now. Until then, its future is uncertain, and lightning with BOLT12, Liquid, and P2P exchanges facilitate a similar experience on Bitcoin that holds its value better and scales to many many millions without losing its decentralization.