Will unlimited use of blockchain resources lead to its demise?

In the real world, the use of economic resources is subject to legislative and regulatory restrictions. Excessive use of economic resources can lead to depletion or even destruction. So, will the unlimited use of blockchain resources lead to its demise?

Blockchain Overuse

The average block size of the Bitcoin blockchain has increased from 0.37MB in February 2015 to 0.74MB in 2016, doubling capacity utilization. When asked about the increase in complaints against Blockchain.info, CEO Peter Smith tweeted:

"However, as I said in my post, this is an early sign of trouble to come. We should plan for future success."

Peter Smith

In the real world, overuse of a resource often leads to higher costs and more restrictions on the use of that resource. In the digital decentralized world, similar mechanisms exist to protect resources. Mining regulations have been used to prevent dust transactions (very small and uneconomical transactions). Transaction fees are also levied as a cost to users of blockchains. These methods generally prevent abuse of blockchains.

Technological advancement

As we see with every use of natural resources, a reduction in the total amount of resources usually promotes technological progress to protect resources and extract the maximum amount of resources. For Bitcoin, there is currently a debate about the block size. Increasing the block size will lead to an increase in the number of transactions in each block, which can effectively increase the capacity of the blockchain.

The size of the blockchain also has an impact on running a full node on the blockchain. Although the increase in the number of blocks has caused the blockchain size to exceed 60G, the corresponding progress in hardware development (hard disk size, processor speed) does not make it possible for ordinary users to run a full node. As long as Moore's Law applies, blockchain size is not expected to be a problem. In addition, even if the blockchain becomes unwieldy for ordinary users, it can be achieved through blockchain compression or using truncated blockchains.

Original article: http://cointelegraph.com/news/can-unrestricted-use-of-blockchain-lead-to-its-demise
Author: Jacob J
Compiled by: Kyle
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/unrestricted-use-blockchain-demise)