Bitcoin’s Solution Revisited

Bitcoin’s Solution Revisited

Not all that long ago, many news outlets started to discuss a new solution that aimed to address one of Bitcoin’s biggest issues, scalability. Here’s a little recap for you:

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?

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One important thing to note:

“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.”

So, now we ask, is this really the future for Bitcoin, a more scalable network? Well, first of all we need to understand why Bitcoin needs to increase its scalability and why it’s important, because as it stands, Bitcoin looks like it’s already on top of it’s game, so why should it improve? If Bitcoin wants to become a truly globally adopted cryptocurrency (which is an end goal really) then we simply have to see Bitcoin become more scalable, in order to be able to handle the vast number of transactions that would occur on the network if Bitcoin saw mainstream adoption, so, yes, the solution to Bitcoin’s problem, in the sense of it not yet being adopted, is improving scalability. Indeed, as it stands, Dryja’s design could be one of the many answers to this call.

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