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August 03, 2017, 07:33:43 AM |
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There are a allot of posts here an on reddit and everywhere about the scaling issues. It's a real quagmire for most people who don't commit most of their time to this sector, especially as there are so many annoyingly immature reactionary emotional posts spamming up the internet. So I would like to try to put things as simply as possible here, as I see it. I do hope that those of you with a better understanding may correct me or add nice links to concise, easy to understand explanations for newcomers. Apologies is this is not concise enough!
My understanding of the situation is this:
- some people want a large blocksize. This should be good for transaction fees and prevent delays on transactions, due to the rate of transactions (>1MB every 10 minutes) not being limited by small (1MB). However, very large blocks would mean that bitcoin nodes would need much more expensive equipment given current available technology, thus driving Bitcoin network to be supported by fewer people, so less decentralised, and therefore more vulnerable to 51% attack. BCH does this. It does not yet have a solution to the 'malleability bug', and other bugs apparently.
- some people want to keep the 1MB blocksize. This might be good for decentralisation as mentioned in the above point. Segwit, LN, and other solutions are developed to compensate for the limited blocksize so that as Bitcoin is adopted further, the rising rate of transactions can somehow be managed. I don't know whether these additions would lower transaction fees sufficiently for Bitcoin use in coffee shops and developing countries. Segwit has fixes for the malleability bug and others, but has been criticised by some for being bad for security. Other than that it is new and might need more testing, I don't know the details of why Segwit might be bad for security.
- many people seem to be happy with the NYA Segwit2x proposal; the 'best of both worlds', for the time being... this sounds most reasonable to my mind, as it makes sense to gradually increase blocksize in line with the availability of affordable large hard drives. The blockchain is currently only 126MB, and is growing linearly. Affordable hard drive capacity is growing at a faster rate than the current 1MB blocksize bitcoin blockchain. Given this, I don't understand why anyone in Bitcoin (not BCH) would choose to not implement the doubling blocksize n November, agreed on for Segwit2x.
In brief, trying to summarise further:
- 8MB too big for now, so bad for node decentralisation, but should be fine once computer hardware gets cheaper. Computer hardware for 2MB is affordable currently. Both should bring down the transaction fees and free up the smooth running of the network.
- BCH doesn't have certain bug fixes which Segwit has. How critical are these bugs?
- How much of a security threat is Segwit? Can it be updated sufficiently well to address the issues raised (which I am not familiar with) pertaining to security?
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