5 ms·

That's not entirely accurate. His solution was to increase the block limit [1], and use faster computers [2]. Note that Bitcoin Cash is currently implementing

by toomim 6y ago

That's not entirely accurate. His solution was to increase the block limit [1], and use faster computers [2]. Note that Bitcoin Cash is currently implementing this, and succeeding at scaling to 1,100 tx/sec on testnet. (Bitcoin Core supports 3 to 7 tx/sec.) [1] "It can be phased in, like: if (blocknumber > 115000) maxblocksize = largerlimit It can start being in versions way ahead, so by the time it reaches that block number and goes into effect, the older versions that don't have it are already obsolete. When we're near the cutoff block number, I can put an alert to old versions to make sure they know they have to upgrade." ~ Satoshi Nakamoto, on bitcointalk.org, October 04, 2010, 07:48:40 PM [2] "Hi Mike, I'm glad to answer any questions you have. If I get time, I ought to write a FAQ to supplement the paper. There is only one global chain. The existing Visa credit card network processes about 15 million Internet purchases per day worldwide. Bitcoin can already scale much larger than that with existing hardware for a fraction of the cost. It never really hits a scale ceiling. If you're interested, I can go over the ways it would cope with extreme size. By Moore's Law, we can expect hardware speed to be 10 times faster in 5 years and 100 times faster in 10. Even if Bitcoin grows at crazy adoption rates, I think computer speeds will stay ahead of the number of transactions. I don't anticipate that fees will be needed anytime soon, but if it becomes too burdensome to run a node, it is possible to run a node that only processes transactions that include a transaction fee. The owner of the node would decide the minimum fee they'll accept. Right now, such a node would get nothing, because nobody includes a fee, but if enough nodes did that, then users would get faster acceptance if they include a fee, or slower if they don't. The fee the market would settle on should be minimal. If a node requires a higher fee, that node would be passing up all transactions with lower fees. It could do more volume and probably make more money by processing as many paying transactions as it can. The transition is not controlled by some human in charge of the system though, just individuals reacting on their own to market forces. Eventually, most nodes may be run by specialists with multiple GPU cards. For now, it's nice that anyone with a PC can play without worrying about what video card they have, and hopefully it'll stay that way for a while. More computers are shipping with fairly decent GPUs these days, so maybe later we'll transition to that." ~ Satoshi Nakamoto in correspondence with Mike Hearn

xiphias2 6y ago
It's interesting, so he didn't see the limits of the system. Scaling tx/s is easy, scaling it without increasing block verification time and cost is what's impossible. So Bitcoin is not exactly what Satoshi planned, but for me it changed my life completely.
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  Satoshi did actually see those limits and discussed them in the early days on Metzdowd and Bitcointalk.org. But he covered his bases and allowed for both big data centers and/or layer 2 architectures to solve that problem. I’m don’t recall if he expressed a strong preference for one over the other, though.
  - __blockcipher__ 6y ago
    Could you please point to me where Satoshi discussed using "layer 2 architectures" to handle the scaling problem? To my knowledge he always talked about scaling from the perspective of every transaction being published to the blockchain, because that's how the whole system works.
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  > It's interesting, so he didn't see the limits of the system. Scaling tx/s is easy, scaling it without increasing block verification time and cost is what's impossible. Nonsense, he absolutely thought about scaling and in his head it was quite simple...because it was. You just need blocks big enough to allow the transaction throughput the world requires, but they need to be a finite size. That's all. Not sure what you mean about "block verification time" having a scaling problem. It really doesn't.
gruez 6y ago
>That's not entirely accurate. His solution was to increase the block limit [1], and use faster computers [2]. This doesn't address the storage requirement problem. 15M transactions per day * 250 bytes per transaction = 1.369 TB per year. After a year most home users wouldn't be able to run a full node without shelling out for extra hardware. After 10 years you'll need to spend hundreds on hard drives just to get started. Sure, it's still decentralized in the sense that you can still run a node, but it'd be closer to usenet (users connecting to independent server farms) than what we have now.

by toomim 6y ago

xiphias2 6y ago

It's interesting, so he didn't see the limits of the system. Scaling tx/s is easy, scaling it without increasing block verification time and cost is what's impossible. So Bitcoin is not exactly what Satoshi planned, but for me it changed my life completely.

SkyMarshal 6y ago
Satoshi did actually see those limits and discussed them in the early days on Metzdowd and Bitcointalk.org. But he covered his bases and allowed for both big data centers and/or layer 2 architectures to solve that problem. I’m don’t recall if he expressed a strong preference for one over the other, though.
- __blockcipher__ 6y ago
  Could you please point to me where Satoshi discussed using "layer 2 architectures" to handle the scaling problem? To my knowledge he always talked about scaling from the perspective of every transaction being published to the blockchain, because that's how the whole system works.
__blockcipher__ 6y ago
> It's interesting, so he didn't see the limits of the system. Scaling tx/s is easy, scaling it without increasing block verification time and cost is what's impossible. Nonsense, he absolutely thought about scaling and in his head it was quite simple...because it was. You just need blocks big enough to allow the transaction throughput the world requires, but they need to be a finite size. That's all. Not sure what you mean about "block verification time" having a scaling problem. It really doesn't.

gruez 6y ago

>That's not entirely accurate. His solution was to increase the block limit [1], and use faster computers [2]. This doesn't address the storage requirement problem. 15M transactions per day * 250 bytes per transaction = 1.369 TB per year. After a year most home users wouldn't be able to run a full node without shelling out for extra hardware. After 10 years you'll need to spend hundreds on hard drives just to get started. Sure, it's still decentralized in the sense that you can still run a node, but it'd be closer to usenet (users connecting to independent server farms) than what we have now.