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For some reason ethereum devs refuse to (recommend to) increase the gas limit, even though it's the only short-term way to decrease fees while increasing decent
by nootropicat 6y ago
For some reason ethereum devs refuse to (recommend to) increase the gas limit, even though it's the only short-term way to decrease fees while increasing decentralization, in a mistaken idea that if a node doesn't run on a raspberry pi (it does) the network isn't decentralized.
People run nodes when they need them. Decentralization is a function of fees and node costs, not just node costs. Right now deploying a large contract costs more than a good gaming pc while a node to verify blocks can be a pi with a ssd for a small fraction of the cost. As a result normal people just stay away - fees too high decrease decentralization regardless of node costs. The opposite would make much more sense: few dollars for deployment, gaming pc for nodes. More people would actually run nodes in this scenario.
As long as a node only requires a high end pc rather than a server in a datacenter the network can stay decentralized. Even current (very underinvested) geth could handle 50M blocks, which would provide relief until rollups get going and prevent activity from relocating elsewhere.
This is the most dangerous, with the danger completely self-imposed, time for ethereum ever. Maybe everything works out and rollups release soon enough, but the risk calculus is completely bonkers.
- thebean11 6y agoThe hardware it takes to run a node now isn't the only consideration. Higher gas limit means the storage size of the history grows at a faster rate; every single full node needs to store that history forever.
- nootropicat 6y agoBy the time it becomes a real problem (when the db containing state starts to approach 4TB) presumably some other solution would be in place, like state witnesses in blocks (verification without needing to access local state), or other ideas like reducing the size of 'hot' state and requiring witnesses for old state. In any case, it's better to have ethereum with heavier nodes than everything move to a completely centralized DPoS or PoA network.