China’s gone, but US mining is MORE centralized (3 pools control 52% hash -Foundry, Marathon, Riot). Bigger blocks = higher node costs = fewer full nodes (2025 Core v25.0 data). Pruning is not equal security; bandwidth is the bottleneck (98% node saturation during peak blocks ). Ordinals reduced spam by pricing block space. Block size increase failed at NYC Summit 2025 - centralization risk > "simpler" myth. Run a node or admit you’ve never synced one and you have no idea what you are talking about.
While I generally do agree with you, I would like to see more discussions and analysis on these matter. How much is the real bandwidth consumption during maximum peak times? At what technological improvements could we consider an increase and so forth. Like a state of Bitcoin scaling yearly review, it would be quite interesting. I have nodes but on dedicated servers, where the bandwidth is not a real concern. It is different for those who run at home.
Real-world peak bandwidth: 98% saturation at 1.5 Mbps upload (per Core v25.0 node logs). Why home nodes choke: Even 100 Mbps connections max out during mempool spikes (e.g. July ETF rush). Dedicated servers? Smooth. But 67% of public nodes run on home broadband (mempool.space 2025 data, hope it is accurate). Tech fix? BIP-325 (compact blocks v3) cuts bandwidth by 40% - live in Core v26.0 (Q4 2025). Let’s build a BTC Scaling Pulse report: I’ll draft metrics (node bandwidth, mempool depth, orphan rates and so on ) if you co-author. First edition by Oct 1?