From 15c50f46da1acfe001ceef4c102530935e338fc1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: FatGriefer <64256485+FatGriefer@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2020 18:26:01 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 1/2] Update 01_introduction.asciidoc --- 01_introduction.asciidoc | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/01_introduction.asciidoc b/01_introduction.asciidoc index 299ade9..a29c2ba 100644 --- a/01_introduction.asciidoc +++ b/01_introduction.asciidoc @@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ Many users will increase the fees they're willing to pay in order to buy space f At the same time, an increasing number of users are left behind. Their transactions, e.g. microtransactions such as common small spendings, are not economically qualified to be on the network. We could increase the block size to create space for these smaller transactions. -However increasing block size simply shifts the problem to node operators, and requires them to expend resources to faciliate these additional transactions. +However, increasing block size simply shifts the problem to node operators, and requires them to expend resources to faciliate these additional transactions. Because blockchains are gossip protocols, each node is required to know and validate every single transaction that occurs on the network. Furthermore, once validated, each transaction and block must be propagated to the node's "neighbors", multiplying the bandwidth requirements. As such, the greater the block size, the greater the bandwidth, processing, and storage requirements for each individual node, effectively limiting the amount of scaling that can be done this way. Furthermore, scaling in this fashion has an undesirable side effect of centralizing the network by reducing the number of nodes and node operators. Since node operators are not compensated for running nodes, if nodes are very expensive to run, only a few well funded node operators will continue to run nodes. @@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ But what if each node wasn't required to know and validate every single transact In February 2015, Joseph Poon and Thaddeus Dryja proposed a possible solution to the Bitcoin Scalability Problem, with the publication of _"The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments"_ footnote:[Joseph Poon, Thaddeus Dryja - "The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments" (https://lightning.network/lightning-network-paper.pdf).] -In the meanwhile outdated whitepaper, Poon and Dryja estimate that in order for Bitcoin to reach the 47,000 transactions per second processed at peak by Visa, it would require 8 GB blocks. +In the now outdated whitepaper, Poon and Dryja estimate that in order for Bitcoin to reach the 47,000 transactions per second processed at peak by Visa, it would require 8 GB blocks. This would make running a node completely untenable for anyone but large scale enterprises and industrial grade operations. The result would be a network in which only a few users can actually validate the state of the ledger. Bitcoin relies on users validating the ledger for themselves, without explicitly trusting third parties, in order to stay decentralized. From cc0e184c85fc5f3d4aff27a6401517656cf910e4 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: tigeryant <64256485+tigeryant@users.noreply.github.com> Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2020 18:42:33 +0100 Subject: [PATCH 2/2] Update preface.asciidoc --- preface.asciidoc | 1 + 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+) diff --git a/preface.asciidoc b/preface.asciidoc index 431e712..49e2ac0 100644 --- a/preface.asciidoc +++ b/preface.asciidoc @@ -186,6 +186,7 @@ Following is an alphabetically sorted list of all the GitHub contributors, inclu * Haoyu Lin (@HAOYUatHZ) * Hatim Boufnichel (@boufni95) * Imran Lorgat (@ImranLorgat) +* John Davies (@tigeryant) * Julien Wendling (@trigger67) * Kory Newton (@korynewton) * Luigi (@gin)