melvincarvalho on Nostr: Neither of you are wrong, which is why it was a nuanced argument. Back in the long, ...
Neither of you are wrong, which is why it was a nuanced argument.
Back in the long, long ago there was pretty much consensus, to increase the block size. However as time went on people realized that such a move had certain trade-offs. The two big ones were around decentralization. Firstly, bitcoin is unique in having a fair distribution of money. Secondly it allows hobbyists to run a node and verify the chain, and also prevent hostile take overs, which bcash (and seg2x) were. Hostile takeovers are very common in open source projects as they gain success.
By taking a conservative approach bitcoin was (just about) able to preserve the properties that make it unique. That's a big reason that bitcoin grew 100x in market cap, and is 200x bigger than bcash.
However, at this point most of the coins are issued. We still have to prvent against hostile chain splits and social attacks, but that's another problem.
There is still a case for a bigger mempool with lower fees. But I think we are too early because there are so many trade offs. And you can do this all on a side-chain anyway. Many devs are allergic to the block size issue, and with good reason. But actually were we left it in 2016 was that segwit was indeed a block size increase. And we'd be open to one in the mid term.
The basic problem here is that if fees go to zero, what prevents a reorg, when the subsidies go away. I think we need a full 4 years to discuss this topic in a sensible way. But long story short, both paths are possible and you can do all of this today with cheap fees on liquid or a side chain. Lightning is a great innovation, but let's face it, it's flaky at times, and users have high expectations.
Back in the long, long ago there was pretty much consensus, to increase the block size. However as time went on people realized that such a move had certain trade-offs. The two big ones were around decentralization. Firstly, bitcoin is unique in having a fair distribution of money. Secondly it allows hobbyists to run a node and verify the chain, and also prevent hostile take overs, which bcash (and seg2x) were. Hostile takeovers are very common in open source projects as they gain success.
By taking a conservative approach bitcoin was (just about) able to preserve the properties that make it unique. That's a big reason that bitcoin grew 100x in market cap, and is 200x bigger than bcash.
However, at this point most of the coins are issued. We still have to prvent against hostile chain splits and social attacks, but that's another problem.
There is still a case for a bigger mempool with lower fees. But I think we are too early because there are so many trade offs. And you can do this all on a side-chain anyway. Many devs are allergic to the block size issue, and with good reason. But actually were we left it in 2016 was that segwit was indeed a block size increase. And we'd be open to one in the mid term.
The basic problem here is that if fees go to zero, what prevents a reorg, when the subsidies go away. I think we need a full 4 years to discuss this topic in a sensible way. But long story short, both paths are possible and you can do all of this today with cheap fees on liquid or a side chain. Lightning is a great innovation, but let's face it, it's flaky at times, and users have high expectations.