The only way to scale anywhere notable at a global level and provide a fast service for cheap fees is through Lightning Network. Trying to achieve this task by raising the blocksize is objectively a losing game, and only leads to node centralization.
Lightning Network might help scale transactions
per user (assuming it can be made to work); it doesn't really help scale the user base. That's the point of the graphic.
Imagine the small-block super success scenario where we soon have 500 million people using bitcoin and a 1 MB block size limit. Each of those 500 million people need
at least one unspent output and probably more like ten or fifty or so to achieve acceptable privacy.
(500 x 10^6 users) x (10 outputs/user) * (40 bytes output) = 200 GB UTXO set size
Don't you think it would be bizarre to worry about "1 MB blocks" making it difficult for people to run nodes on low-cost hardware if that same hardware needs a UTXO database at least 200 GB in size?
Personally, I want to allow Bitcoin to continue to grow freely like it did for the first seven years of its life. But for those of you who think we need to "constrain" it to keep the cost of running a node low, at least be consistent: if you're going to worry so much about the size of blocks, shouldn't you be even more worried about the size of the UTXO set? Don't you think it's odd that LN is being promoted as a solution to allow bitcoin to scale its userbase when the truth is that it (assuming it can be made to work) really only helps scale the number of transactions
per user?
to summarise this post.
imagine alice has 2btc in a standard p2pkh address unspend (1AliceAddress : 2btc -unspent)
imagine bob has 2btc in a standard p2pkh address unspend (1bobAddress : 2btc -unspent)
when going into LN
all that changes is the address holding it.
thus alice has 2btc in a LN p2wsh address unspend (3AlicebobmultisigAddress : 2btc -unspent)
thus bob has 2btc in a LN p2wsh address unspend (3AlicebobmultisigAddress : 2btc -unspent)
its still 2 unspents whether on people own personal permissionless addresses or in a multisig permissioned address
rationally we are not going to get 500million people over night, nor 7billion people.
today we only have 0.026% of the population. rationally we should be thinking that 5% of the world population may use bitcoin (making bitcoin one of the top 5 nations) but this wont happen over night, expect natural slow adoption over DECADES.
even if we get to less, say 0.05% of world population. knowing that there are 200 countries in the world still makes bitcoin as good as a nation.
but if we have 5%
in a few decades thats more like 500mill(total world pop gets to 10bill) at most realistic
TOP expectation.
remember. there are old people in the 99% club that are going to just stick to fiat. because they cant cope with technology
remember. there are children that are just not old enough to have a bank account.make an income
remember. there are unemployed/disabled people that are reliant on fiat social security so they dont have any disposable income to throw at bitcoin
so only expect 5% at most world adoption. which is still higher than world adoption of gold as a asset store, emphasis happening over DECADES, not night.
in short we should not halt natural growth now. using fake fear of 'billions by midnight' . allow natural onchain growth to begin so that it can scale over DECADES, naturally, rationally. and done so by the node consensus. not dictatorship king devs spoon feeding
