Blocksize 24 MB.
No more zero to low fee transactions.
It can be done.
In all the Crypto debates, that seem to be going on lately, it seems that mostly it has a focus on the Bitcoin mining battlefield. Will it be BTC or BCH? While a lot of the Bitcoin purists and maximalists still call other Cryptos degradingly Alts, all kinds of nonsense is claimed by them too. But when one compares the transaction throughput of Bitshares or Steem for example with that of Bitcoin or Bcash, than it becomes a big laugh really. Just like that almost religious way of getting the Bitcoin Whitepaper into every conversation. Just like the weird believe that the group 'Nakamoto Satoshi' is a he, a male human being. It is a bit strange at least, as the same persons who talk about Satoshi being a he, state that they know what he ment with the Whitpaper. Now, I do not know what Bitcoin Whitepaper that is supposed to be, but the one I read is written in a plural form, as we 'Nakamoto Satoshi'.
But the biggest laugh of all, is the biggest claim of them all: Bitcoin is the alternative to the financial system, it will replace it. Where some do add that it is supposed to be The Peoples Money. Again, this shows that those who make these huge claims do not understand how Bitcoin works and/ or they have not read, nor understood the Whitepaper. As Bitcoin was a proposal to aid the financial system, by replacing the need of a human intermediate with the science of math. And that was ment for a specific kind of digital financial transactions. This created the blockchain technology, that was an innovation on the work of Adam Back, who created HashCash in 1997. Now he is involved with the Bitcoin Core developement. Key issues here being innovation, progression and MIT Free and Open Source licensed. No matter what Bitcoin purists and maximalists on either side belief. It is all in the code...
This needs to be solved Core!
How is it even possible that the Bitcoin, BTC, blockchain can be spammed, even to a point where the mempool starts to choke. That is not only because there is not enough transaction capacity in the blocks. Zero to low fee transactions can be used to cause a SPAM attack, flooding the Bitcoin, BTC, network. Does it even matter who does it? There might be Bcash, BCH, fanatics that might consider this to be an ideal way to bring Bitcoin, BTC, down. Yet, the most scary part of that is that anybody could do this. One reason Adam Back created HashCash was to prevent email SPAM floods from being financially interesting. Every email to be send first needed to do a Proof Of Work {POW} mining proces. The receiver could the check the nonce to see if this was truly an email that took some POW before it could be send. Pure genius, HashCash never got adopted, but it was a great idea. That lead to the creation of the Blockchain technology and the second Crypto: Bitcoin, the first Altcoin, as HashCash was the first ever Crypto.
Now this makes it even more weird that the Core developement team makes Spam Attacking the Bitcoin, BTC, blockchain possible. Do not know if Bcash, BCH, has secured theirs against to the zero to low fee blockchain SPAM attacks though, and how that is with other Cryptos out there. But seems like a severe threat to the survival of at least a few Cryptos out there. One, Bitcoin, already having its mempool filled up to flooding levels. This is no joke, this is a full choke and the Bitcoin Core developement needs to come up with a hardfork, fast. Now, I am not talking to those who are in some self chosen battle here, them self acclaimed purists and maximalists that became almost like religious fanatics. No, I am calling out to the wise, those who actually know how it works and what needs to be done.
Make Bitcoin, BTC, hard like diamond.
My proposal to solve this for the time being is containing two major changes to Bitcoin, BTC. Again, I am done with those silly Bitcoin discussions with those who clearly just are without a clou about what 400 billion financial transactions per year means. That means at least 12'675 transactions per seconds. Please do not bugger me with claims that 3 or even 24 or 60 transactions per second is the same! Bitcoin and Ethereum combined lose that game to Bitshares and Steem already, those can do over 3333 transactions per second. They already could take over the debit- and creditcard financial transactions, not Bitcoin. So if some blockchain technology is close to becoming the peoples money than it will be Steem and SMTs, BTS or EOS. But Bitcoin, BTC, does need an upgrade fast. Before SegWit, Lightning Network and Sidechains can even be used to get to those 12'675 transactions per second and more.
First, rip the zero to low fee transactions out. These kind of transactions can always be done in a later stage on a Sidechain, that is called BitTips or something. Next set the maximum blocksize to 24 MegaByte, real binary MBs. Yes, that is huge and if the blocks would be filled constantly that would be quite a strain on the Bitcoin, BTC, Peer to Peer network. But, part of this vertical scaling solution is to clear out the mempool as fast as possible. And maybe it could be constructed as a temporary blocksize, or a dynamic one, with a smart compressor-limiter of 24. That is what I leave the clever Core developers with to solve. Yet I think it is time that the Core developers got real and look at the state where their innovations are at. Is Lightning Network stable and ready to go live?
Let's do this!
In the meantime there is this real thing, a mempool filling up rapidly with useless transactions, that are not realisticly to be handled by a blockchain that could only do between 3 and 72 transactions per second. With maybe some more now and then about just above a 100. It just can not do it, right now, nor tomorrow. Bcash can not do it, Bitcoin can not do it. But there seems to be an urgent matter that has to be taken care of. From my point of view at least. Now, I also dare to predict that when the Core developement handle these challenges and fix them fast, then the price of BTC will blast through the next ceiling. Where 10'000 USD is only the beginning. Because what Bitcoin BTC has become is what it is about in the here and now, that is a storage of high value. That can do without tens of thousands of transactions per second. (That would need 4 Giga Byte sized blocks, at least, by the way...)
And looking at the capital that already is invested in Bitcoin, BTC, it might be a jolly good idea to make sure that is secured, for now, and for future use. That means something needs to be done, action needs to be taken. Even Bitcoins SegWit 2X already gave hope to a lot. No wonder that after that got cancelled panic broke out and a lot move, temporarily, to Bcash, BCH, but that is no solution either. Yet, no matter who is doing those SPAM transaction attacks, it needs to be taken care of. And that is simple, but it needs a hardfork for Bitcoin BTC. No more zero to low fee transactions and a (dynamic) blocksize with a 24 MB limit. (As that is probably what the current state of hardware and network technology can handle.) This will have that overfilled mempool cleared out at no time.
If the Core developers refuse to take the needed action then the community could always create Diamond Bitcoin, enough talent out there to make it happen. If that is what it takes, than so be it... What ticker shall we take: BCD?
Bitcoin, it can be hard as diamond.
Image CC0 licensed by @oaldamster.