Could This Be Bitcoin’s Solution?

Reports out this week have surfaced discussing a new research paper that has been published, written by one of the co-creators of the original lightning network paper - discussing the architecture for the Bitcoin that we know and love today.

Tadge Dryja is the researcher in question and is one of the people who first created Bitcoins experimental payment solution, lightning network. In Dryja’s latest paper, new ideas for scaling solutions are discussed in a piece of research that aims to improve the way Bitcoin scales transactions. One of the big issues with Bitcoin at the moment is that it can often take a while for the network to handle transactions. Sadly, the Bitcoin network is very close, especially when compared to it’s more efficient rivals. In order to ensure Bitcoin’s technology has a future, it needs to improve it’s scalability, this is where Dryja comes in, perhaps in this research, Bitcoin finally has a solution?

According to CoinDesk:

“Released Monday, Utreexo would make the part of bitcoin full nodes called the state (also known as the UTXO set) smaller and easier to run with the help of cryptographic proofs. Though the idea has been around since before CoinDesk first covered the idea in January, this paper describes the idea in greater technical detail.”

Furthermore:

“The paper outlines a way that nodes could use cryptographic proofs to store less data without compromising on security. Nodes using the accumulator need only store a logarithmically sized representation of the UTXO set, greatly reducing storage space and disk seek times, the paper states. The paper also reveals the results of simulations Dryja has run showing the benefits of the scheme.”

In essence, the research suggests a way for Bitcoin to still operate within a secure network but without the need to store huge amounts of data in order to process transactions. It is this massive data backlog that causes issues with scaling on the network. By removing the need to store vast amounts of data in one space, the network is essentially loosened up and as a result, can operate far more efficiently.

Dryja has added a few points about UTXO:

”Since January I’ve implemented more code and made the code public on GitHub, and gotten performance numbers for bitcoin mainnet download sizes. In our simulations of downloading Bitcoin’s blockchain up to early 2019 with 500MB of RAM allocated for caching, the proofs only add approximately 25% to the amount otherwise downloaded.”

Could this really be the future for a more scalable and more efficient Bitcoin network?