> Bitcoin's transaction throughput is dismally low
A discussion on this cannot take place without a mention of the lightning network.
The vast majority of transaction have a low stake. Most amounts are fairly low, people respect the fact they have parted from some value. Using such a highly price consensus seems like overkill. What you want is to concentrate on the litigious ones, on the higher amounts; while still securing the rest.
This is exactly what is happening in the lightning network smart contract. Bitcoins are taken apart in a channel, and people can do their business as usual. The protocol concentrates the stakes in a single on-chain transaction; with a tremendous pressure in not settling on the last channel state. It sorts of changes the transaction representation space to its dual. From a white-list of all approved transactions -and nothing else- to a black-list of misbehaving business relations -all other consented transactions being allowed-.
Bitcoin's 7 transactions per second is demultiplied by some order of magnitude here. That represents about 3 channels per second. 3 licenses to indefinitely transact up to a certain balance.
The lightning network is about rationalizing the use of this high-priced consensus.
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As for the electricity consumption, I'm of the opinion that the halvenings will take care of that; In 10 years, the reward will have diminished by about an order of magnitude.
Bitcoin gained too much popularity too quickly if you ask me. I think a super-exponential difficulty adjustment would have been better suited (make it require an exp(x\^2) hash rate instead of exp(x)).
The growth of Bitcoin is capped exponentially, as it is based on human adoption. Only something super-exponential can regulate this properly.
But IMHO, this is only a slight inconvenience. We'll waste electricity but only in the next few years.
A discussion on this cannot take place without a mention of the lightning network.
The vast majority of transaction have a low stake. Most amounts are fairly low, people respect the fact they have parted from some value. Using such a highly price consensus seems like overkill. What you want is to concentrate on the litigious ones, on the higher amounts; while still securing the rest.
This is exactly what is happening in the lightning network smart contract. Bitcoins are taken apart in a channel, and people can do their business as usual. The protocol concentrates the stakes in a single on-chain transaction; with a tremendous pressure in not settling on the last channel state. It sorts of changes the transaction representation space to its dual. From a white-list of all approved transactions -and nothing else- to a black-list of misbehaving business relations -all other consented transactions being allowed-.
Bitcoin's 7 transactions per second is demultiplied by some order of magnitude here. That represents about 3 channels per second. 3 licenses to indefinitely transact up to a certain balance.
The lightning network is about rationalizing the use of this high-priced consensus.
----
As for the electricity consumption, I'm of the opinion that the halvenings will take care of that; In 10 years, the reward will have diminished by about an order of magnitude.
Bitcoin gained too much popularity too quickly if you ask me. I think a super-exponential difficulty adjustment would have been better suited (make it require an exp(x\^2) hash rate instead of exp(x)).
The growth of Bitcoin is capped exponentially, as it is based on human adoption. Only something super-exponential can regulate this properly.
But IMHO, this is only a slight inconvenience. We'll waste electricity but only in the next few years.