The long-lasting block-size dispute seems to be inching toward a climax.
A large segment of Bitcoin’s academic and engineering community has been discussing the possibilities and tradeoffs of scaling Bitcoin at the Scaling Bitcoin workshop in Hong Kong this past weekend, while prominent Bitcoin companies such as Coinbase , BitPay , Bitstamp and others have posed a “December deadline” afterward, at which point they will change their code to allow for bigger blocks.
But not according to Ciphrex CEO and Bitcoin Core developer Eric Lombrozo: “Talk of ‘deadlines’ is just that: talk. In the end it is not really up to these companies to impose any such deadline.”
According Lombrozo, whose Ciphrex is the company behind the Bitcoin wallet mSIGNA , the block-size dispute represents a clash of visions. And the only way to reconcile these visions to some degree, he thinks, is through added layers on top of the Bitcoin protocol, such as payment channels and the Lightning Network .
“At one extreme – the ‘big block’ side – we have a system where anyone can transact but few can verify, and at the other we have a system where anyone can verify but few can transact,” Lombrozo explained. “The first is not really much different from exisisting centralized payment systems, and the latter is only well-suited for high-value settlement. Neither extreme is desirable. Bitcoin, in its current form, presents us with this fundamental tradeoff. To get the best of both worlds, or something close to it, will require additional technology layers.”
This assesment is not shared by Google veteran Mike Hearn and former Bitcoin Core developer Gavin Andresen. While not opposing additional layers, Hearn and Andresen maintain that Bitcoin should be allowed to scale “on-chain,” which is why they implemented BIP 101 in Bitcoin XT. BIP 101 is programmed to increase the […]
