Everyone can look at the numbers and decide the most plausible explanation : https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=all https://blockchain.info

Everyone can look at the numbers and decide the most plausible explanation : https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=all https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=all To my eyes, thats a graph of user growth, not a spam attack. Similarly, this graph tells the story of an artificial barrier being hit up against : https://quantblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/median_mean_blocksize.png https://quantblog.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/median_mean_bl... In June mempools did go up to 100 or 120 MB ... I think due to new users, who then backed off as fees went up .. but even if we factor that out, there has been a steady increase over the past several years, and mempools are routinely up to 20MB every day - ie. 20x times the number of transactions are waiting for a block, as can fit in that block .. so they have to wait around to be cleared. This is not due mainly to spam, it is due to users wanting to send money with bitcoin. I disagree that "SegWit is a block size increase" - taking the signature data out of the transaction, means the same 1MB block can squeeze in more transactions, but I think a more honest way of saying this is block "compression" or call it an "effective block size increase". If segwit saves 50-60% of transaction space in the block buffer, then combined with an actual 2x blocksize increase, thats an effective block increase of ~4x .. which is urgently needed. I also disagree that blocks need to be small due to the 'firewall of china centralization issue'. I suspect 8MB blocks would flow rather well across Chinas virtual borders, particularly if there are good economic reasons for those blocks to flow. Keep in mind we're talking a paltry 200MB of transactions per day .. I'm sure that level of bandwidth is dwarfed by general internet traffic. Your explanations are presented as "very good engineering reasons", but I genuinely don't think they are. Speaking plainly - transaction throughput, and thus user growth, is being strangled by a small block size.