Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Block Size Increase

From: Alan Reiner <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 08 May 2015 11:23:24 -0400

On 05/08/2015 01:13 AM, Tom Harding wrote:
> On 5/7/2015 7:09 PM, Jeff Garzik wrote:
>> G proposed 20MB blocks, AFAIK - 140 tps
>> A proposed 100MB blocks - 700 tps
>> For ref,
>> Paypal is around 115 tps
>> VISA is around 2000 tps (perhaps 4000 tps peak)
>>

For reference, I'm not "proposing" 100 MB blocks right now.  I was
simply suggesting that if Bitcoin is to *ultimately* achieve the goal of
being a globally useful payment rails, 7tps is embarrassingly small. 
Even with off-chain transactions.  It should be a no-brainer that block
size has to go up.

My goal was to bring some long-term perspective into the discussion.  I
don't know if 100 MB blocks will *actually* be necessary for Bitcoin in
20 years, but it's feasible that it will be.  It's an open, global
payments system.  Therefore, we shouldn't be arguing about whether 1 MB
blocks is sufficient--it's very clearly not.  And admitting this as a
valid point is also an admission that not everyone in the world will be
able to run a full node in 20 years.

I don't think there's a solution that can accommodate all future
scenarios, nor that we can even find a solution right now that avoids
more hard forks in the future.   But the goal of "everyone should be
able to download and verify the world's global transactions on a
smartphone" is a non-starter and should not drive decisions.