Bitcoin Forum

Scalability is a word that should most likely have come across on our journey into cryptocurrency.

Scalability is the ability of a system to conviniently expand and accommodate growth and increase in scale

A basic example would be the human stomach, it's an organ that comfortably expands to accommodate as much food as we can take in, and never does it get to point that stomach all the way to oesophagus gets filled and we can take in no more.

Scalability issue is faced in may technologies and businesses and it comes in different forms and the blockchain technology, more specifically, the bitcoin blockchain technology, is not an exception.

Unlike the human system which disposes of food as waste, every transaction made on the blockchain is stored on the system.
Bitcoin transactions operate on a POW algorithm and are confirmed by miners, who compete individually for the confirmation of the next block in the chain until the transaction is completed. The block size is 1MB, and that's the amount of transactions that can be stored in it.

Bitcoin has grown in popularity over the years and this has lead to increased adoption and higher number of transaction requiring confirmation.
So basically a limited block size is used to accommodate an infinitely growing number of transactions.
This has lead to lagging and low tps (transaction per second); scalability issues. And the blockchain can only handle 7 transactions per second.

Solutions to bitcoin's Scalability Problem

A lot of suggestions has been put forward to solve the scalability problem of bitcoin
- Hard (or soft) Fork
- Segregated Witness (segwit)
- Lightening network and more,

Hard fork is a splitting of a block into two separate chains. We have hard and soft fork, a hard fork is one whose transactions can not be recognized by the parent chain, (a complete split) while a soft fork can be recognized by the parent chain.
Bitcoin Cash was a hard fork of bitcoin which was split in 2017, and increased the bitcoin blocksize to 8MB and was a temporary solution to the scalability problem.

Segwit and the lightening network are whole topics of discuss and would require a separate post
They have been touted as a permanent solutions to bitcoin's scalability. They are both yet to be fully launched on the system.

I have been a big fan of the lightening network and I'm just waiting for its full launch so I can witness its effect first hand. I strongly believe the solution to bitcoin scalability problem will be the "Lightening network".

Question: OP you talked about the hard and soft fork and gave example to only hard fork what about soft fork? Give an example for better understanding. (Note, if bitcoin haven't experience it use other blockchain for example)

This is very wide and interesting topic And I have been interested in it for a while I think this article will help you very much
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Softfork

Happy reading

Bitcoin improvement proposal, BIP, such as BIP 141 or Segwit is an example of a soft fork in bitcoin.
It seems to be a sort of segregation of a transaction after it is completed. It is separated from the block and stored off to increase blocksize in order to handle more transactions per second.

At this time they are all just proposals and due to the decentralization of bitcoin there is no central body to approve all the BIPs, until a consensus is reached.

Scalability is a recurrent issue limiting bitcoin mass adoption. And a permanent solution needs to be used from the different numerous proposals.
I fancy lightening network to bring the solution and increase bitcoin scalability.

You have done a great topic, however I personally think you are lacking a section about "what will happen to Bitcoin without it being scalable". If you choose to add one this is something you might want to add in your post. Some common issue we will have is of course blockchain will be clogged by thousands of unconfirmed transactions this transaction will of course be left unconfirmed for weeks (or even months) and to top it we will have higher and a much expensive network fees in order to achieve a acceptable confirmation time. Some members here think that scalability is only a feature for BTC to have forked coins but it is more than that and it is really helping the network.