I’m a fan of Bitcoin Core. They’ve shown themselves up to the task of delivering a reliable and revolutionary software, an incredibly strong foundation upon which Bitcoin has been built.
On top of this, they have a vision for the future that is truly scalable.
The fears coming from the bigger blocks side of the debate are that full blocks are going to create a fee event and lead to a slow down in processing transactions.
I’m sure most people would agree that if fees got ‘too’ high, or transactions became ‘too’ slow, any potential risks from implementing hard fork and increasing centralisation would be outweighed by the serious damage that would be inflicted upon Bitcoin’s reputation and usefulness.
While I agree that full blocks and slower transactions in the short term do not have to signal disaster, I do have a threshold where I think an increase in block size should be urgently implemented.
Everybody has a different threshold, for some, any increase in fee will signal disaster, others may think $1000 fees per transaction are acceptable.
I know from the Core team their roadmap for scaling. I just would appreciate some clarification from them as to where they would draw the line push out a block size increase if network performance or fee prices were getting bloated.
Perhaps the Core developers are closer to the big blockers than we all realise. If we can have a pre-agreed criteria as to what conditions would trigger an emergency block size increase, then the community could unite.
Let’s give a completely hypothetical example, maybe 7 consecutive days where a 15 cent fee fails, on average, to reach the block chain within an hour, maybe that could be the threshold that would trigger the Core developers to release a hard fork block size increase. Some sort of threshold would eliminate all the uncertainty which has spawned so much of the tension.
I’d just like some indication from Core as to where they stand on this. If they turn around and say they think up to $10 average fees in 2016 would be acceptable and why, I can make an objective decision about whether I share their vision. At the moment I feel a little like I’m making that decision blind.
Just some sort of clarification could help make the community feel more at ease, and diffuse the tension that has been building. This dispute has been been a hotbed of fear, uncertainty and doubt, transparency is the best weapon we have against them.
John Hardy
Longtime Bitcoin advocate.
Email [email protected]
Donations welcome: 1H2zNWjxkaVeeE3yX6uVqng5Qoi6gGvYTE
Latest posts by John Hardy (see all)
- The great P2PK Bitcoin heist. Millions of Bitcoins WILL be stolen, but should we even try to stop it? - 24 Aug 2018
- Follow up: Bitcoin Cash has 51% attack vulnerability double jeopardy - 31 Jul 2018
- Bitcoin rival has a major vulnerability which could help Bitcoin miners to destroy it in 2020 - 30 Jul 2018
