The 1mb cap wasn't introduced because of concerns over the bandwidth requirements for nodes, it was intended to be an anti-spam measure, but apparently it failed miserably in that goal. The blockchain didn't "grow huge" before the cap was put in place. Also, it's not a "solution" at all if it doesn't solve the problem of limiting the amount of fees the miners can collect. Nodes won't be any use at all without sufficiently incentivised miners to secure the network. In order to generate more fees for miners, it will be necessary to accommodate more transactions over time. Users want to get their transactions on a blockchain. If Bitcoin isn't the simplest and most convenient way to do that because you're funneling transactions into your lightning colostomy bag network, another coin will come along that hasn't been artificially crippled and doesn't rely on a third party bolted on top. If that coin turns out to be a more attractive proposition for users, what's their reason to continue using Bitcoin? If users are then transacting on another network, why are miners going to stick around to secure this one?
Third party layers should be strictly reserved for micropayments and transactions that don't include a fee. And as much as small block proponents obsess about micropayments, they really aren't the issue. Even after they're swept under the carpet, Bitcoin still needs to support more than two-thirds of a floppy disk every ten minutes. If it doesn't, something else will.
Why would users care if their transacations went over the blockchain or not? All they want is to transfer money.
And why do we need to increase transacations to increase mining fees? When we could just increase the fees?
I do not agree with either parts of your post. Filling up a block costs money, and I doubt that someone would be able to make huge blocks without that costing them a lot. Even if this was the case, a simple higher cap can be implemented to prevent this from happening.
There is no risking with a proper hard fork. Why risk using third party solutions; i.e. meaning we stop relying on the protocol itself?
So you are advocating a even higher block size if the spammers fill up the 8MB blocks?
You have not? What about those recent spam attacks that happened? A lot of people were complaining about their transactions not going through because the blocks were full. The market did not adapt that time, nor do I understand why people think that higher fees are going to be beneficial to Bitcoin.
The market did not adapt? Are you kidding? The only people that complained were people that used no fees or very low fees. Those transactions should not be on the blockchain to begin with. They are SPAM.
Which shows that the current anti SPAM system works.
Wrong. Nobody is saying that it is the best possible option. If the majority vote for X, then you go with X regardless of what is best. Is this not the way that decentralized consensus was supposed to work around here?
Obviously people have different opinions when we talk about the best possible option, so there is none.
The best option is out there. It's just that we cannot agree what the best option is. And therefore we cannot reach consensus.
