It is fascinating, that anyone seriously thinking we are going to stay at 1/2/4 etc MB blockchain size.
The arguments fearing node centralization are laughable (like everyone back in 2010 - incl. Satoshi - knew). Bitcoin has like minimum a million users with PCs capable to run a node today, yet, less than 1% choose to run a node (the numbers may be waaay worse than that, like 5k "node runners" out of 5million users/holders).
Increasing the blocksize, lets say to 20 MB won't matter regarding the broadcast speed, mempool load, HDD space for the average user to run/not run a node - because they do not do it today, not even with 1MB/ avg. 10 min. They won't change a thing.
Today, if someone runs a node (or more than one) would do it even with 20 MB limits (many would do with way more hardware constrains, would even pay for it - like i do - just out of principle).
It is not technical properties, which are constrain node running, it is knowledge/care.
Does anyone with "smalblock" sentiment really thinks Bitcoin can growth even to 1% of today's financial network transaction volume without scaling the blockchain size to terrabytes in the next 5 years?
"The Blockchain" can bring so much utility besides money transactions! And that is exactly what it needs to be - and what most of us were fascinated about, land/property registry, ownership titles, escrow in an uncheatable global ledger, so no, not a settlement layer. "IT IS ON THE BLOCKCHAIN" should be a proverb for "as final as set in stone"- in the 10/100k$ area, because the account units can do more than coffee buys, yet, those daily 100,000 "coffee buys" will be the big thing to bring the first 1 billionth user. The average Joes, who so many look down here, yet, they are 95% of the population. Bitcoin needs them, we can not have a global financial system without the global....
I can not grasp, how experienced - and certainly well meaning, and i am saying this honestly and respectuflly - bitcoiners miss this point, which is: if blockchain can satisfy more than pure value transaction in its p2p concept, it will magnify in value/unit wise, which is all what WE want.
I think I disagree with this. Bitcoin is an incentives machine. Nobody should be expected to do anything on principle.
Yes, and no
Yes, it is an incentives machine for the 99,8%. Hence they do not run nodes, there is no incentive (material) to run one, unless they have serious investments (lots of BTCs), so a healthy network is in their best interest - or we run it on principle, even if it is in the negative. That is why i say, that if we reach even 1% of global financial volume, thousands of merchants, corporations, server farms, miner conglomerates will run nodes, just to be able to check those 10k payments/minute coming from the global customer base, since they CAN, and can not, or want to rely on 3rd parties -that is the whole point!
That is the exact reason i laugh at smallblockers: they still pretend that a global financial computer network should and can be done by average Joes who can barely install apps safely to their mobile phones.
In the future -just as Satoshi said - it will either be server farm, corporations, merchants, universities, economics research institutes, wealthy individuals who are going to run nodes, or none of us ("there will be either huge transaction volume, or none").
