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

From: Jeff Garzik <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 May 2015 11:49:48 -0400

On Fri, May 8, 2015 at 10:59 AM, Alan Reiner <[email-masked]> wrote:

>
> This isn't about "everyone's coffee".  This is about an absolute minimum
> amount of participation by people who wish to use the network.   If our
> goal is really for bitcoin to really be a global, open transaction network
> that makes money fluid, then 7tps is already a failure.  If even 5% of the
> world (350M people) was using the network for 1 tx per month (perhaps to
> open payment channels, or shift money between side chains), we'll be above
> 100 tps.  And that doesn't include all the non-individuals (organizations)
> that want to use it.
>
> The goals of "a global transaction network" and "everyone must be able to
> run a full node with their $200 dell laptop" are not compatible.  We need
> to accept that a global transaction system cannot be fully/constantly
> audited by everyone and their mother.  The important feature of the network
> is that it is open and anyone *can* get the history and verify it.  But not
> everyone is required to.   Trying to promote a system where the history can
> be forever handled by a low-end PC is already falling out of reach, even
> with our miniscule 7 tps.  Clinging to that goal needlessly limits the
> capability for the network to scale to be a useful global payments system
>
>
To repeat, the very first point in my email reply was: "Agree that 7 tps is
too low"  Never was it said that bit

Therefore a reply arguing against the low end is nonsense, and the relevant
question remains on the table.

How high do you want to go - and can Layer 1 bitcoin really scale to get
there?

It is highly disappointing to see people endorse "moar bitcoin volume!"
with zero thinking behind that besides "adoption!"  Need to actually
project what bitcoin looks like at the desired levels, what network
resources are required to get to those levels -- including traffic to serve
those SPV clients via P2P -- and then work backwards from that to see who
can support it, and then work backwards to discern a maximum tps.

-- 
Jeff Garzik
Bitcoin core developer and open source evangelist
BitPay, Inc.      https://bitpay.com/