Hearn: Satoshi set Bitcoin's 1MB limit when blocks were under 10KB
Mike Hearn · a16z Podcast | Bitcoin's Growing Pains -- and Possibilities · Jan 2, 2019 · at 1:55
Bitcoin core developer Mike Hearn discusses the history of the 1MB block size limit introduced by Satoshi Nakamoto.
0:00 / 0:14exact quote · 14.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“He imposed a maximum one megabyte block size, and as there's one block every 10 minutes on average, that's, you know, you can calculate a maximum transaction rate from that. And at the time he put it in, we were around, you know, less than 10 kilobytes per block, so a long way from that.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Mike Hearn
Hearn: Reaching Bitcoin capacity limits will kick users out of the system
“At worst, things break quite badly, but even at best, even if things don't break, some users won't be able to use Bitcoin, right? They will be kicked out of the system, effectively. There won't be enough capacity to handle them.”
Hearn: Western Bitcoin adoption suffers from poor messaging, not lack of utility
“If you're in the West and you have access to, you know, credit card payments and so on, it's not always clear why you would want to use Bitcoin, but that's not because there aren't good reasons, it's because we're not doing a good job of, like, telling people …”
Hearn: Bitcoin will hit its 1MB block size limit next year
“And we're now at more like half of that block size, and it, you know, as traffic is growing, it looks like we might start hitting that limit sometime next year.”
Hearn: Developers have not fully utilized Bitcoin's scripting capabilities
“We've never really fully used the capabilities of even Bitcoin's fairly limited language.”
Hearn: M-Pesa succeeded by bypassing Western anti-money laundering requirements
“M-Pesa was partly successful because it sort of ignored all of the Western anti-money laundering requirements and so on. Like you can just have a SIM card and start sending money, right, with M-Pesa in Kenya. You don't need to have a passport and, you know, an…”