I’m not interested in spending a ton of time on this, but I did go and watch this short interview with him about scaling misconceptions.
Wasn’t convincing at all. For one, the guy comes across as kind of dishonest. Not scammer-level dishonest, but more like a politician. The main thing though is that he’s just a big-blocker, which is just a total dead end. Having everyone store every single transaction that was ever made until the end of time is just not realistic.
You should not be investing money in something based on this level of understanding, and you *definitely* should not be advocating it to others. Scaling is an existential problem for cryptocurrencies. Their utility is based on their monetary value, and their monetary value is based on investor assessment of their future utility. Without the ability to scale, there will be no growth in utility, which means no investment other than temporary dumb money, which becomes a vicious cycle.
While I personally agree that we should not store all transactions for all time, our storage capability is going to get exponentially better. We are able to store data in 3D discs with lasers now and can store petabytes in a single disc the size of your typical old CD-ROM and even store data in DNA if we wish. These obviously aren’t going to be included in your desktop computer anytime in the near future, but they do currently exist and show that storage will not be a problem for a very very long time.
Scalability isn’t quite as simple as “how much data can a well-off enthusiast from a developed country store”. You need to consider the behavior of your lowest common denominator users.
You want as many users as possible to run fully-verifying nodes, rather than SPV (“simplified payment verification”) nodes that can be tricked by a malicious miner. The more transactions are being done through SPV nodes, the more potential payoff there is for an attacker, and the more resources they can dedicate to an attack.
Further, if your number of full nodes gets low enough, it becomes feasible for state actors to track down and compromise the remaining node operators. At that point, you may as well just be using a centralized, government approved payment system instead.
I’m not interested in spending a ton of time on this, but I did go and watch this short interview with him about scaling misconceptions.
Wasn’t convincing at all. For one, the guy comes across as kind of dishonest. Not scammer-level dishonest, but more like a politician. The main thing though is that he’s just a big-blocker, which is just a total dead end. Having everyone store every single transaction that was ever made until the end of time is just not realistic.
In order to scale to any globally significant number of users, a cryptocurrency needs a second layer to aggregate transactions, such as Lightning. Monero seems to have nothing in this regard beyond “However, academic and industry research is ongoing and promising in this area.”
You should not be investing money in something based on this level of understanding, and you *definitely* should not be advocating it to others. Scaling is an existential problem for cryptocurrencies. Their utility is based on their monetary value, and their monetary value is based on investor assessment of their future utility. Without the ability to scale, there will be no growth in utility, which means no investment other than temporary dumb money, which becomes a vicious cycle.
While I personally agree that we should not store all transactions for all time, our storage capability is going to get exponentially better. We are able to store data in 3D discs with lasers now and can store petabytes in a single disc the size of your typical old CD-ROM and even store data in DNA if we wish. These obviously aren’t going to be included in your desktop computer anytime in the near future, but they do currently exist and show that storage will not be a problem for a very very long time.
Scalability isn’t quite as simple as “how much data can a well-off enthusiast from a developed country store”. You need to consider the behavior of your lowest common denominator users.
You want as many users as possible to run fully-verifying nodes, rather than SPV (“simplified payment verification”) nodes that can be tricked by a malicious miner. The more transactions are being done through SPV nodes, the more potential payoff there is for an attacker, and the more resources they can dedicate to an attack.
Further, if your number of full nodes gets low enough, it becomes feasible for state actors to track down and compromise the remaining node operators. At that point, you may as well just be using a centralized, government approved payment system instead.