On his personal blog, Vitalik Buterin indicates why Elon Musk’s plan is fundamentally flawed. Here’s the details!
Tesla founder Elon Musk believes that a 1000% increase in Dogecoin‘s block size will make DOGE the leader of the group. But, Vitalik Buterin, you do not agree. In fact, he criticizes Elon Musk’s plan.
Specifically, in a post on his personal blog, Vitalik Buterin disagreed with Elon Musk’s claim that a massive increase in the size of Dogecoin would scale the network to a winning level.
In fact, the article comes in response to Elon Musk’s May 15 Tweet, which states that Dogecoin will emerge as the leading chain if it moves to increase its block size by 900%.
“Ideally, DOGE speeds up lock time 10 times, increases block size 10 times, and reduces fee 100 times. Then he wins hands down”.
Why is Elon Musk’s plan fundamentally flawed?
Indeed, according to Vitalik, Musk’s ideas about increasing the size of the blocks do not address the so-called “Blockchain Trilemma”. That is, the inevitable compromise between scalability, security and centralization in Blockchain networks.
“How far can the scalability of a Blockchain be promoted? Really, how do you want Elon Musk, to speed up the block time 10 times, increase the block size 10 times, and remove the fee 100 times. Without carrying out extreme centralization?”.
According to Vitalik Buterin, the answer is no: resulting in increased scalability in a network is almost impossible to achieve without carrying out extreme centralization. And, compromise the fundamental properties that make a Blockchain what it is.
Furthermore, Vitalik argued that increasing the block size may make it impossible for the vast majority of Dogecoin holders to run full nodes. Which is a factor that could lead to extreme centralization.
“For a Blockchain to be decentralized, it is vitally important that regular users can run a node. And having a culture where running nodes is a common activity”.
Limitations for the capacity of a full node
In a way, there are three key limitations to a full node’s ability to process a large number of transactions.
- Computing power
- Bandwidth
- Storage
In this regard, Vitalik Buterin argues that in any full node only 5-10% of the CPU power can be spent on block verification.
In other words, the full node operators must have much more CPU than is actually used to verify transactions.
Also, the bandwidth and digital storage requirements required to confirm massive blocks of transaction data would make it very difficult and expensive to run full nodes.
Therefore, Vitalik described, increasing the block size could lead to centralization. And it could leave a Blockchain network much more vulnerable to attack.
“We don’t know what the exact threshold is at which herd immunity against coordinated attacks kicks in. But, one thing is absolutely clear: more good nodes, fewer bad nodes, and we definitely need more than a few dozen”.
In closing, Vitalik Buterin noted:
“Unfortunately, there are many subtle reasons why Elon Musk’s plan is fundamentally flawed”.
Do you agree with this position of Buterin? Leave your opinion in the comment box.
I say goodbye with this phrase from Alan Lakein: “Planning is bringing the future to the present, so that you can do something about it now“.
