Blocksize debate:
I've always liked the idea of the blockchain being a settlement layer with instant-transaction merchant layers on top. A blockchain can never complete with the capacity, functionality, flexibility etc of merchant payment layers no matter how fast. A supermarket, for example, could never use a blockchain directly, it has to be able to have so much meta-functionality and support like insured trades, instant reversibility when someone puts their conrflakes on the belt too close to the customer in front.
The nice thing about Dash is that it can do both.
tok - Can you elaborate on this please? I have an ulterior motive for asking. I'm meeting with a group of heavy hitting devs in the DCO world later this week. I need all the ammo I can get.
Naeborra !
The blockchain was never designed as a payments processor - it was designed as actual base money. The difference is that a payments processor plays around with numbers until things are "agreed", and then when the dust settles, sends the net balance to a more permanent settlement system for permanent "settlement".
There can be many layers in the payments processing process. In the example I described before, when you park your cornflakes too close to the person in front in the supermarket checkout queue and they get lumped in with the other person's transaction, the till staffer simply reverses it out of one and into the other. The software in the cash till buffers all that messing around and only later moves the settled balances onto the next "stage" (which isn't even the clearing bank stage yet).
A few hours later, all the till balances are dumped and reconciled and the transactions can sit in a payment processor ledger (like, say stripe) for a week where people get a chance to make claims, do chargebacks, resolve disputes and whatnot.
Maybe a week later the supermarket actually receives the money.
There are therefore several layers of "buffering" in the system - one at the cash till, another at the payment processor (Visa, Maestro etc). Only much later do the transactions actually hit the clearing banks and permanently "embed" themselves in the system.
In crypto, the blockchain is the "bottom layer" in the financial system - the permanent settlement layer. In a mature commercial economy, there's a very large gap between the payment processor and the settlement layer. i.e. you would never have a heavy duty commercial merchant doing blockchain transactions because:
a) the blockchain is not a payment processor and doesn't remotely support all the functionality needed at the point of sale
b) it's far too permanent and slow for heavy duty point of sale
On the bitcoin network, we're starting to see this "meta layer" of payment processor buffering appear. One example is the Lightning network but there are others such as coinbase that do payment buffering so that - although the bitcoin blockchain may have slow clearing times - transactions are instantaneous at the point of sale.
As the crypto economy matures, that layer will become progressively deeper and more of the front line transactional weight will be absorbed by the meta payment processing layer and possibly only a minority by the blockchain settlement layer.
In the Bitcoin XT (Gavin Andreesen) vs Bitcoin Core (Peter Todd) debate, Gavin's point is that he wants the blockchain to be as diverse as possible in its potential use and therefore wants it to be potentially able to support a very high transaction capacity, including micro transactions. Peter Todd's view on the other hand is that he thinks the blockchain should now be left alone so that the payment processing meta layer can start to grow and mature.