Blockstream co-founder Luke Dashjr has suggested that the block size for Bitcoin should be reduced to 300kb from 1 MB. Unsurprisingly, this has caused a stir in the community.
2 MB is extreme. 300k is just simply reasonable at this point.
— Luke Dashjr (@LukeDashjr) February 13, 2019
A reduction in block size would affect scalability, but Dashjr says that this would be in the interest of miners. Dashjr, however, only recommends a temporary reduction in block size.
Interestingly, this proposal is already available on GitHub and the expected period for this soft fork is from August 1 to December 31, 2019.
Blockstream develops products for the blockchain space, including Liquid, an inter-exchange settlement network, and Blockstream satellite, which broadcasts the Bitcoin blockchain across the world, letting users use Bitcoin without an internet connection.
While a majority of individuals oppose a reduction in block size, it does point to a long-discussed question: how does Bitcoin scale?
The Lightning Network has been doing remarkably well in recent times, but the question remains: if Bitcoin is to grow in adoption in the next few years, some reliable mechanism must be thought of to support seamless and efficient transaction processing.
In any case, however it is that Bitcoin developers will scale the network, Dashjr’s colleague and CEO of Blockstream Bobby Lee feels that there is no going anywhere but up for Bitcoin, believing that Bitcoin could become $500K when it “flips” gold.
