That does not compute. I have just read that the 1MB maxblocksize was added as an anti spam measure. We all know that the flooding of the mempool is because some group is spamming the network, so if we hard fork to an 32MB maxblocksize and some other group is not happy and decide to spam the network that will lead to more blockchain bloat.
It would become pretty expensive to bloat a blockchain that had 32mb blocks. Let's say a transaction is 0.5 kb, that's 2048 x 32 = 65,536 transactions per block. At a nickel a transaction, that would be $3276.80. That's just for one block. That's $19,660.80 an hour, and $471,859.20 a day.
But it is still hypothetically possible. Why not maintain the small maxblocksize as an anti spam measure
Because the context is completely different and we are talking about
2 completely different kinds of 'anti-spam measures'.
When Satoshi put in the 1mb limit, the avergae block was 1kb,
or 1000 times smaller than the limit, and fees were 0.
Thus, the spam filter was not operating by making it
expensive for spammers. Instead, it simply limited
bloat.
Today, it is more effective to make it economically
expensive, and the way to do that is with bigger
blocks, not smaller ones.
The 'hypothetically possible' that you mention
is a) 'hypothetically possible' at any scale
given enough money and b) 32x cheaper
at 1mb than 32mb.
and create an offchain transaction layer built on top that anyone is free to use.
I'm not against offchain networks per se. I think its a very cool idea.
I want to ask you, if Blockstream was not involved in any of this, are you open to a smaller maxblocksize and an offchain transaction layer for Bitcoin? Honestly.
If there is to be a maximum blocksize, it should be for a very good reason,
and unless someone convinces me otherwise, it should always be well
beyond that of market demand. So, if there was no blockstream
but core devs refused to raise it (lets say because of their economic
beliefs) i'd be screaming just as loudly. It just so happens that
their involvement with blockstream provides a logical explanation
for why they wouldn't take sensible steps to allow growth.