This week, bitcoin Jesus Roger Ver weighed in on the block size debate stating that the block size limit should be increased if it is technologically achievable.
Specifically, Ver tweeted:
The block size debate has been underway for some time now and a lot of developers including Bitcoin Core Developers and the Bitcoin community are getting exasperated with the current impasse. In addition, many developers are now spending a lot of time and money seeking alternative solutions.
Expanding the Bitcoin block size to 20 MB as proposed by Gavin Andresen may “break Bitcoin” since it may be too big of a change for those running Bitcoin nodes around the world. However, it is also true that the current one megabyte block size limit is too small for Bitcoin going forward and will be a huge problem if the 1 MB block sizes are consistently full.
As mentioned by Ver, it will take 55 years to overfill a single hard drive with current 1 MB sized blocks.
However, Bitcoin core developer Peter Todd told Cointelegraph recently:
“I personally think at this point in time we're much better letting fees go up a bit and giving the market an incentive to come up with real solutions to scaling Bitcoin.”
Although the Core Developers are very far from reaching a consensus, all developers agree and recognize the inevitable fact that Bitcoin block size will have to be expanded as the network grows.
Recognizing the problem of bitcoin’s scalability, Bitcoin Core Developer Pieter Wuille published a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) this week to increase the block size by 17.7% each year starting in January 2017.
Still, many Bitcoin enthusiasts including Pete Dushenski states that expanding the block size will expand the overall size of the blockchain, and will thus require more computing power and bandwidth to secure the blockchain.
“The larger the Blockchain, the more hashpower is required to maintain the same level of security,” Dushenski argues in a blog post. “Larger things are inherently more fragile and are therefore exponentially more resource intensive to protect from the forces of nature.”
Meanwhile, Ver stated on August 5:
While increasing the block size may put the Bitcoin blockchain at greater risk, it will be interesting to see how other Core Developers and Bitcoin enthusiasts respond now that the block size increase has received additional support from “Bitcoin Jesus” Roger Ver.
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