A team of researchers from the Bitcoin Policy Institute, a non-profit think tank, have recently disputed the conclusions presented in a paper published in 2022, which claimed that Bitcoin has an intrinsic scaling problem that will lead to limited adoption in the future. The original paper, titled “Bitcoin’s Limited Adoption Problem,” is based on three questionable assumptions, as per the researchers.
Firstly, the authors of the initial paper argue that payments on the Bitcoin network necessitate full network consensus for settlement. Secondly, they posit that adding miners to the network extends the time to settlement by “delaying network consensus.” Lastly, they contend that there is an upper limit on Bitcoin payments due to the architecture of the cryptocurrency’s blockchain.
However, the Bitcoin Policy Institute researchers reject each of these premises in a recently-published paper titled “Bitcoin works in practice, but does it work in theory?” They believe that the “limited adoption problem” is a theoretical concern, and it does not align with how Bitcoin operates in reality.
The researchers argue that the original paper’s authors “fundamentally misunderstand how Bitcoin achieves consensus and how the entry and exit of miners affect the timing of new transaction blocks.” Furthermore, their research overlooks “existing, widely-implemented scaling solutions.”
While the Institute’s research paper does agree with the original paper’s conclusion—that “Bitcoin’s blockchain does not scale well for on-chain payments”—it also highlights that these scaling issues have been known since the inception of Bitcoin. As a result, appropriate mitigation measures have been implemented over time.
Ultimately, the Institute researchers observe that the original paper’s authors are focused on the wrong aspect of Bitcoin’s scaling. According to them, “Bitcoin scales through off-chain payments, not by increasing throughput at the base layer. Off-chain protocols afford more scalability precisely because they do not require consensus of the entire network.”
Despite opposing viewpoints, both papers contribute to the ongoing conversation around the future of Bitcoin and blockchain technology. It remains crucial to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these innovative systems and find ways to improve upon existing structures to ensure their long-term viability and adoption.
Source: Cointelegraph
