Back: Raising Bitcoin block size to 1GB would cause network failure
Adam Back · a16z Podcast | Hard Forks, Hard Choices for Bitcoin · Jan 2, 2019 · at 5:36
Cryptographer Adam Back argues against aggressive, large-scale increases to Bitcoin's block size during the Bitcoin scaling debate.
0:00 / 0:05exact quote · 5.8s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“If we jumped up the block size to a gigabyte now, security would fail, the network would probably fail.”
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 Adam Back
Back: Everyone agrees Bitcoin needs a block size increase
“If we need to increase the block size, which I think everybody agrees with at this point in time.”
Back: Three or four colluding mining companies could influence Bitcoin policy
“You know, it's probably the case that you could, you know, If you could get collaboration from three, four companies in various parts of the world, you could start to apply some policy influence to Bitcoin.”
Back proposes scaling Bitcoin block size limit to 8MB over four years
“So the proposal I made was to increase to two megabytes failure immediately, as soon as we can roll out change, which to be clear, any of them would take about six months to roll out. Increase to four megabytes after two years, and eight megabytes after four y…”
Back: 99% of Bitcoin transactions occur off the main blockchain
“Estimates are something like currently 99% of them are happening off the blockchain.”
Back: Lightning Network could scale Bitcoin capacity up to 10,000x
“There's also right now quite active work on this sort of Bitcoin enhancement called lightning, which is a best described as a kind of right caching layer for Bitcoin, which might scale Bitcoin by a factor of a thousand or 10,000.”
Back: Massively scaling Bitcoin sacrifices decentralization, turning it into PayPal
“You can scale massively and lose the decentralization, and at that point, Bitcoin loses most of its distinguishing features, and you're left with a kind of PayPal situation With all the things people gripe about with PayPal.”