From what I understand, a larger block size would mean more transactions (or data in general) can be included in each block effectively increasing the number of transactions the network can handle in a finite time frame (at least 1 block long). Consequently, the size of the blockchain will increase at a greater rate since more data is being added everytime a block is accepted. Eventually, this would mean the blockchain would be too large to store so only dedicated companies will be able to have full nodes, resulting in the centralization of mining.
Wouldn't that happen eventually anyway? Sure it'll take longer but unless the chain is pruned how will people be able to store it?
Wouldn't that happen eventually anyway? Sure it'll take longer but unless the chain is pruned how will people be able to store it?
Exactly,
blockchain is already over 193 gigabytes
prune nodes are not really full nodes, as they can not help a new nodes sync from the beginning
The only people running full nodes now are enthusiasts who like verifying everything themselves (though it's getting harder since the blockchain is already pretty big), pool operators, and mining farms or services like NiceHash/Blockchain.com
This is not a post in support of a change in block size or for sidechains, I'm not qualified to take a side in that debate at all lol.
What are the consequences of a block size increase and more specifically how it would be harmful for bitcoin's decentralization?
This is not a post in support of a change in block size or for sidechains, I'm not qualified to take a side in that debate at all lol.
What are the consequences of a block size increase and more specifically how it would be harmful for bitcoin's decentralization?
Block Size increase means only people with financial incentives will run true full nodes. (prune nodes don't count at all)
Others without a direct financial reason, will no longer run full nodes as not wanting to waste the money.
Which as you correctly surmised that is already happening.
It has very little to do with the miners decentralization , as the mining pools select their own full nodes already.
Companies that are big players or process payments for merchants will still run their own full nodes as a way to verify their ledgers.
Mom and Pop companies, won't mess with running a full node anymore than they will mess with running an LN hub,
they want 3rd party services that make it easy for them for a small fee.
So since it really seems like larger blocks especially 2mb or 4mb would have had little effect on who did or did not run a full node,
here is the real reason, by forcing the blocks to stay small with limited transaction capacity,
they Force a Offchain LN Market to come into creation, so the banking industry can enter crypto as a middle-man and make money off of fees, an eventually reinstate the same control over crypto that they currently have in fiat.
Things to remember , Satoshi kicked the middle men out of crypto with bitcoin, LN brings them back in,
LN is not a Bitcoin only solution , it can work with any segwit enabled crypto coin.
Meaning the banks are looking to charge fees to swap between crypto in addition to getting a piece of every transactions.
(LN is designed for Large Banking Hubs to Prosper as they will need less hops to complete transactions.)
One thing of interest, if segwit was not activated, then all LN hubs would have been required to run full nodes to even attempt offchain scaling,
the developers intentionally designed segwit so that LN hubs would not need to run a true full node, (seems like they did not really want any more full nodes
).LN Hubs will eventually require more resources than Full Nodes,
Considering Bitcoin Full Nodes store a limited block every ~10 minutes and an LN Hub could technically store thousands of transactions per second, the size of large scale LN hubs hardware requirements will Grow significantly faster than the bitcoin nodes.
(*Note, anyone that does any financial transactions for the general public are required by general statutes to keep record of said transaction for usually 10 years since their last transaction for an individual or in perpetuity for a corporation. The people thinking that they can just discard LN transactions to save space will be in for a very rude awaking.)
Once an LN to FIAT gateway is created , most will ignore bitcoin , transact only in LN and Cash in/out Directly in LN bypassing the onchain blockchain altogether. At this time the Banks will have won, and the future generations will be in debt slavery and satoshi's dream of freedom dead.
Question: When is an LN Note not a bitcoin?
Answer : It never was a Bitcoin, only an IOU redeemable for a bitcoin.