Cornell University Research: 4MB Expansion Does Not Affect Bitcoin’s Decentralization

A new study from Cornell University’s Institute for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts (IC3) found that if the current block size of Bitcoin were increased to 4MB, it would not affect the decentralization of Bitcoin. The research members include Christian Decker, Ittay Eyal, Andrew Miller and Emin Gün Sirer.

According to a recently released report, the research team tested 4,000 Bitcoin nodes and measured the bandwidth performance of each node. The study found that 90% of the nodes (4,656 Bitcoin nodes) can continue to operate under 4MB blocks, which means that they can support about 27 transactions per second, far exceeding the current average of 2.5 transactions per second.

Research shows that 50% of Bitcoin nodes (about 2,500 nodes) will not be affected even at 40MB blocks, and can support 250 transactions per second, or about 10 million transactions per day. In addition, 10% of Bitcoin network nodes (about 500 nodes) can continue to operate even at a block size of 200MB. At this scale, the Bitcoin network can reach the level of the VISA payment network.

Over the past year, Bitcoin’s scalability has become a hot topic, sparking divisions within the Bitcoin community. The debate began even before the Bitcoin genesis block was created, when Satoshi Nakamoto announced the Bitcoin project on the cypherpunk mailing list, and some people responded that the system could not scale. In response to these criticisms, Satoshi Nakamoto responded:

“A typical transaction is about 400 bytes in size… Visa processes an average of 100 million transactions per day. That would require 100GB of bandwidth, which is about the size of 12 DVDs or 2 HD movies, or about $18 in cost.

If the Internet can reach this scale, which will take years, by then, sending 2 high-definition movies over the Internet will probably not be a hassle.
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However, this expansion idea has not gained consensus among everyone. James A. Donald (seems to be a pseudonym) is very much looking forward to the expansion of the Lightning Network.

However, the Lightning Network has been criticized by researchers at Cornell University, who concluded in their study:

“This (Lightning Network) represents a trade-off between performance and centralization of payment networks, with a centralized hub-and-spoke topology that simplifies the problems inherent in centralized routing hubs, such as privacy leaks. Such designs for efficient, scalable, privacy-preserving payment networks are an area of ​​ongoing research: but they are still a long way from surpassing the Bitcoin network and its consensus layer.”

The scaling debate continues, but research provided by Cornell University may help the two camps in the Bitcoin community bridge the gap between them and find consensus.

Original article: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/cornell-study-recommends-4mb-blocksize-bitcoin/
By Andrew Quentson
Compilation: Overnight porridge
Source (translation): Babbitt Information (http://www.8btc.com/4mb-blocksize-bitcoin)