I don't know. It depends. It is true for now, but I am not sure it will be true in the future. For example, there are proposals like CoinPool. In general, there are proposals to put more people into a channel. Also, there are some ideas flying around, how to solve the problem with on-chain interaction. You know what does it mean? It means Bitcoin could end up in a scenario, where there would be no need to open or close channels, because it will be resolved by more deep layers. So, it could be possible to have some opened LN channel, and then create some coins on L3, without touching L1, everything inside L2. Then, it could be possible to extend "a coin in a coin" or "a layer based on a layer" to that extent, that it could require no interaction with on-chain coins.
We gotta see this in practice and the implications of it, it could definitely be a double edged sword.
More advanced does not mean "better". Also, the current consensus has its limitations, and the whole chain will stop, unless there will be some hard fork. But as far as I know the Bitcoin community, they will use hard forks only if they will be forced to do so. And by "forced" I really mean "forced". Maybe 2038 year problem will be resolved by increasing timestamps in a soft-fork way? Maybe when the chain will stop, the last block will be endlessly replaced? Maybe people would start making the blockchain smaller, by completing "D" in the "CRUD" model, so that "Delete" operation will be executed by overwriting the chain, and adding the hash of the previous chain in the first block after the Genesis Block? Why not? We could start mining on top of the Genesis Block, and produce 2016 blocks so strong, that they will be stronger than ever (so that will trigger the biggest chain reorganization ever), and then we can pretend that the Genesis Block is not from 2009, but from "2009+offset"? And what then? Because there are a lot of ways, how soft-forks or no-forks can save the day, and be used to avoid hard-forks always and forever.
But the hardware will evolve, i think its false to assume, there wont be any more significant progress in a timeframe of the next 30-120 years. People in the year 2100 wont be running around with the same rpi4 with 1 tb ssd, its just unrealisitc. So then when people are actually running into limits and they see the hardware is capable to store bigger chains, it wouldnt be rational or economical to keep the chain unusable. Just like it isnt rational rn to increase the blocksize when we didnt run into limits and cheap hardware cant handle a huge chain yet.
Why would the chain stop without a hard fork? And why should the bitcoin community do useless hard forks for no reason? Anyone is free to do their own hard fork at any time, but the majority won’t follow scams.
Blockchains are supposed to be append only, if we’re going back to CRUD we can just go back to traditional databases. I don’t get the point, it’s already possible to run pruned nodes so no need to castrate the whole chain.
I can see a different trend. People think that no block size increase is needed, so also no increase in the use of the mainchain is needed. I think it could be reduced, because a lot of soft-forks and no-forks can be used to make things happen, no matter what developers want, and without their permission.
It can be increased when necessary, it’s really that simple. What’s the rational argument behind increasing the hardware requirements now, when we didn’t ran into a limit yet and adoption isn’t big enough yet. Timing is important in this case, why trade decentralization for scalability now, when we didn’t even run into a scalability limit yet that made Bitcoin unusable. But at a later point in time, the decentralization compromise might be negligible with better hardware and then people can consider it again.
I think that will be true in the future. Exactly that last sentence about "getting tyrannical". And I mean "really tyrannical", so not increasing the max block size is one thing, but I can also imagine making the whole chain smaller than it currently is, so for example going from the current ~450 GB to ~1 GB in the future. All that is needed is reaching consensus, and creating some Proof of Work that would overwrite the chain. I think it is possible, if miners could be rewarded directly in the Lightning Network. Another thing is that doing it once is more than enough. Some soft-fork or no-fork could make it permanent, and alter all rules.
I can see the tyrannical part happening, but then again if most users don’t get served anymore they have the power to fork into a non tyrannical network. But what point would deleting the chain serve and how would it work in practice? No one will agree to this, if you don’t believe me, try it and see how many nodes would follow. The point of Bitcoin is immutability.
There are many reasons, feel free to pick anything, or even extend that list:
1) they don't have good and working solutions for some problems
2) they don't care, they hope that things will be fixed automatically, when we will get there
3) they don't want to implement it now, when something is too crazy to reach consensus right here and right now
Nah i dont think so it just doesn’t make sense psychologically, the playing field in a few decades will be completely different than now.
I don't care about "legal reasons", because in many countries, the law is outdated, and it cannot catch the crypto world correctly. For example, imagine that Satoshi invented the simplest tax system that is possible: transaction fee. If you govern a country and use crypto, you can keep being just some user, even if you are a government, and it will work fine, it will just be a different scale. If you want to mint new coins, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, and create CBDC for your local currency, when you could just use existing crypto, right? Also, you don't have to force your citizens to fill some papers, to go through the whole system of "spaghetti law", you can just collect transaction fees, and not require any additional fees than that. If you want, you can require an explicit payment, you can show each user the explicit amount they have to pay, and you can make things very simple. So why governments don't want to go that way? I have no idea, maybe they are missing the bigger picture of what is possible, and the whole reason that such ideas can also be beneficial for them.
The problem is that individuals in the government don’t benefit from efficiency, it would mean less positions, lower budgets, less control and no one to blame. And laws will probably be completely different about crypto by the time Bitcoin reaches mass adoption. There will be use cases and demand for transactions on public ledgers in the business space for sure, it could just be deducted as a business expense.