3 ms·

The currently most popular implementation of this "open database" (Bitcoin) is indeed slow and scales poorly. But if you start looking into the new ideas, you'l

The currently most popular implementation of this "open database" (Bitcoin) is indeed slow and scales poorly. But if you start looking into the new ideas, you'll find there are plenty of still decentralized blockchains with much faster confirmation times (even as low as 5 seconds) today.

endisneigh 5y ago
Which coins have confirmation times that low with the volume of Bitcoin?
- capableweb 5y ago
  The volume has nothing to do with the confirmation time, it's a constant no matter if it's 1 or 10000 transactions. Avalanche, Algorand, Polygon and more fits the bill of very fast transactions, in case you're interested in looking into the matter further.
  - jshen 5y ago
    Nothing can promise constant performance at infinite volume. 10,000 transactions are a tiny number for most modern and popular products these days.
jshen 5y ago
5 seconds is a long time, especially when a normal modern tech stack can do the same things in milliseconds. I'd also love a reference showing that any of these chains can handle 100k requests per second with a latency of a few seconds. I've never seen it.
kevinak 5y ago
The amount of space in a Bitcoin block is around 7 TPS. Other blockchains make decentralization tradeoffs to process more transactions on-chain per second. For example, Ethereum requires better hardware: larger storage, better CPU and more memory. Solana makes even larger tradeoffs: expensive server hardware costing up to $25000, making it pretty much a central service controlled by the few. The key innovation of Bitcoin is the decentralization; almost anyone can participate and no one can control it. Sacrificing this for negligble is not worth it. Especially since there are smarter ways to scale the system. Even if you could improve throughput by 100x by making the system slightly less decentralized you would still not reach VISA levels of TPS. The correct way to scale these systems is using off-chain solutions like the Lightning Network. This way you can process millions of transactions per second.

endisneigh 5y ago

Which coins have confirmation times that low with the volume of Bitcoin?

capableweb 5y ago
The volume has nothing to do with the confirmation time, it's a constant no matter if it's 1 or 10000 transactions. Avalanche, Algorand, Polygon and more fits the bill of very fast transactions, in case you're interested in looking into the matter further.
- jshen 5y ago
  Nothing can promise constant performance at infinite volume. 10,000 transactions are a tiny number for most modern and popular products these days.

jshen 5y ago

5 seconds is a long time, especially when a normal modern tech stack can do the same things in milliseconds. I'd also love a reference showing that any of these chains can handle 100k requests per second with a latency of a few seconds. I've never seen it.

kevinak 5y ago

The amount of space in a Bitcoin block is around 7 TPS. Other blockchains make decentralization tradeoffs to process more transactions on-chain per second. For example, Ethereum requires better hardware: larger storage, better CPU and more memory. Solana makes even larger tradeoffs: expensive server hardware costing up to $25000, making it pretty much a central service controlled by the few. The key innovation of Bitcoin is the decentralization; almost anyone can participate and no one can control it. Sacrificing this for negligble is not worth it. Especially since there are smarter ways to scale the system. Even if you could improve throughput by 100x by making the system slightly less decentralized you would still not reach VISA levels of TPS. The correct way to scale these systems is using off-chain solutions like the Lightning Network. This way you can process millions of transactions per second.