I think the idea is that advances in networking technologies will mean we can transfer more data in the same amount of time as. As long as networking capacities grow quicker than the blockchain then we will be able to avoid the problem you have described.

I don't think the network is the problem, sure initial download of the blockchain would take a really really long time (especially if you verify every tx signature,  but that can be skipped anyway), but day to day broadcast of blocks and transactions would be fine.

My understanding is that it's just a disk storage issue.
Again I don't think it's a network issue. If the block size was 8mb like in BIP-101 then it would be 13.33kb/s. I'm certain modern day CPUs can handle the tx verification even if we increased the # of txs a lot, and there really doesn't seem to be a network issue unless I'm totally missing something; so it must be storage.

The chain can be pruned. Whether full nodes are storing the entire blockchain isn't the major issue. Storage space is a bottleneck and can stop people from running full nodes, but bandwidth and latency are more pressing issues.


Exchanges and basically any service who credits accounts based on the blockchain need to run full nodes.

I'd say that the more people that run full nodes, the better. Without full nodes enforcing the consensus rules, miners and economically important nodes can collude to change the protocol. If the chain will be hard forked, SPV nodes have zero say about it. Only full nodes are relevant in hard fork attempts.


Larger blocks cause propagation delays. This increases orphaning rates, which disproportionately hurts smaller miners and will eventually force them off the network via unprofitability. Miners can sidestep these problems by centralizing -- pooling hashpower, colocation. Less mining entities, each with larger market share = bigger threat of transaction censorship, government targeting of miners, 51%/selfish mining attacks, political hard fork attacks, etc.

Larger blocks also cause increased bandwidth requirements. Data upload limitations are the primary bottleneck here. People who don't have access to unlimited internet data will become increasingly likely to shut down their nodes as it begins to interfere with streaming, gaming, file sharing, etc. The less full nodes there are, the easier the consensus is to attack.

There's still a larger problem here that most people don't discuss. Even if hardware advancement allows us to significantly increase block sizes over time, that doesn't address whether doing so is compatible with Bitcoin's hard cap on supply.

Without inflation, the system needs fee revenue to continue incentivizing miners. The block size limit is the only means we have to enforce scarcity of block space, which guarantees fee revenue. Otherwise, Bitcoin's Byzantine fault tolerance may be threatened as block rewards decline in value. You can't have a network worth many billions or trillions of USD where miners have no incentive to secure the network.

what your not realising is that you cant have a network that is core demandd to stick with under 600k transactions a day as that then just makes the network only useful to under 600k people wanting to use/monitor/care about bitcoin daily.

people end up using other networks that are cheaper and able to process more than 600k transactions a day and bitcoin is left stranded as the coin no one wants to return to because the costs become too high..

LN thunderdome: btc and LTC iou's may enter, only LTC iou's may leave

secondly the REAL incentive to pools is not for the next few decade requiring fee's. the block reward is sufficient enough
(in short dont even bother bringing 'fee's for pools' into a scaling debate unless its a few decades in the future)

thirdly fee COST USERS funds, not incentivise users.
arguing that things need to be done for user benefit, then push that argument aside to then say fe's need to rise to benefit pools. is just playing games and empty excuses as to why scaling should be stalled/stagnant

again forcing utility to remain at 600k a day transactions helps no one, incentivises no one and actually makes peopl want to care less about bitcoin if they cant use it as and when they like.

so if it costs something just to monitor 600k peoples transactions as a user.. and then costs a user $1+ just to use it themselves. then its the fee's that will push people away far sooner.

the real goal would be to
allow more transactions
allow the combined (lower fees) to accumulate to be more as a total.

thus making bitcoins blockchain USEFUL for users. and also cheap to use for users.thus users continue to be full nodes

which after years of progressive growth would then become enough to cover costs for pools eventually(when pools actually need it)

LN is NOT a bitcoin network. it is a thunderdome network for multiple coins.
for those that dont get the movie reference.. its a fortknox custodial banking system of not 100% control

which once you enter it. you wont want to leave and obtain BTC on exit. because it will become too impractical/expensive(fees) to close out and withdraw bitcoin from the locks

people will end up just atomic swapping to altcoin ious(12 decimal unconfirmed LN payments) within LN and exit using LTC or other coins that have been modified to have gateways to LN but have more transaction counts and cheaper fee's

oh by the way. those wanting to be full nodes for LN will end up actually harbouring multiple chains to allow channels to atomic swap. so if bitcoin for instance is too much to handle. imagine full node running multiple chains at once..
stick that scenario in your play book and run with it.. itll shock you in a hard way

LN's design is to take utility AWAY from bitcoin


^ blah blah blah social drama distraction.

im guessing your the kind of person that only has one plate, one knife and fork and one shelf in your kitchn because you only plan on minimal reserves.

smart people have extra wardrobe space in their bedroom. a full plate and cuttlery set in the kitchen so that they can cope with change and growth/expansion rather then race around at the last minut when theings happen

EG when you buy a computer do you buy a computer with the minimalist of features or do you try to buy a computer that has more than you need so that yor covered for future changes?

3 years after we hit the implied tx count limit and bitcoins network has not improved.. instead "use this other network and stop using bitcoin".... (facepalm) thats a 200 year old business model which we all know how it ended

gold is limited utility, lock it up and use these promissory notes, oh and by the way it will be expensive if you want your gold back so here have some silver and nickel if you dont wanna play with promissory notes

I think you hit on the answer earlier in your post: bigger blocks = a bigger blockchain = less people running full nodes = more centralization.

Somewhat humorously, BCH blocks never come close to getting filled and are on average much smaller than BTC blocks. BSV block size limit is even bigger and has even fewer transactions.

I think both the on- and off-chain scaling solutions are a much better approach than increasing the block size limit, for the very reason that its a bad idea to let the blockchain become exponentially larger. Right now its growing at a linear rate and it should be kept that way.

Of course there are those who absolutely insist on "staying true to Satoshi's white paper," which itself is not perfect and merely an outline for the idea of what went on to become bitcoin. I see increasing block size as merely the twiddling of an ancient parameter and rather a stagnant approach to a technology still largely under development.

Ironically here i am, weeks into syncing the blockchain and run a full node, but I'm barely halfway there (84g). I like bitcoin core solution, and the market likes bitcoin core as well regardless of what fork supporters say.

This is not "a war" though. It is about CHOICE. If you have a "better" idea, you are free to fork and see if others follow you. So far what others have proposed is clearly not good enough to take over the crown. Bitcoin as it is handled by the core team remains The King.

LN provides neat things like (true) decentralized exchange, you could theoretically directly exchange litecoin for bitcoin and back without using any web site (wallet to wallet). LN is optional, you may use it or not. Either way, providing this option is already offloading the on chain network enough for it to scale. Each shop could run its own LN node, and why not, a full Bitcoin node along it (and while you are at it an Electrum server pointed to your node).

Perhaps someone will sell some raspi pre-installed with everything so its plug and play and shops can have their solution ready, or same as there is a linux distro for "miners", a linux distro foe "nodes" (or the same distro could do both).

Anyway, enlarging blocks is dumb, I wish newbies stopped requesting that as a "solution" for a "problem" that is no more... Spend that energy pushing for faster wallet LN adoption...

Decentralization is an ambiguous word. I'm afraid this problem is more "political" than technical. It's about what kind of device (money) that you are willing to invest or include in the bitcoin network. The bigger the block, the more infrastructure you need to be able to process the block.

Source: https://bt.irlbtc.com/view/532.msg6306#msg6306

Above is Satoshi's opinion. Core team might have a different opinion about this matter, but I'm not interested in politics. "Big blocker" and "small blocker" could be correct at the same time. Let's see what will happen in the next few years.