Should BCH prioritize development of scaling for massive worldwide adoption now?

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Written by
3 years ago
In community: Bitcoin Cash Hub(0cd1)

Can BCH scale to fulfill the dream of Bitcoin this year?

In this post I asked if BCH could scale yet:

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/ppxtz2/can_bch_scale_for_massive_worldwide_adoption/

The answers were yes's and no's. My takeaway from that thread was that BCH can not honestly tell the public we are ready to accept viral adoption and usage growth to world-size yet. Some may disagree and I look forward to the day when they convince me we can tell the public that BCH is ready to fulfill all the world's people's need for P2P cash.

Do we need to develop that ability before we need it?

I believe there is no higher priority than the ability to scale for massive worldwide adoption. Scaling is the only thing keeping us from being able to fulfill the dream of Bitcoin. We do not need it today, but we do need to be able to tell the public we are ready and able to fulfill the dream of Bitcoin.

If we can not claim to be ready to accept sudden viral growth, we will not have that happen. We will continue to grow slowly.

I believe the "wait until there is a need before growing our adoption potential" mindset is a mistake that has captured many of our biggest fans. I was a believer in that approach for years. Now, after years of BCH 'treading water' with slow adoption and price growth, I see that we are not growing adoption at a rate that is likely to allow BCH to be the project that fulfills the dream of Bitcoin.

Maybe I am wrong about all this, but if we don't plan to intentionally get things to the point where we can truthfully tell the public we are ready for viral growth to happen (like people thought could happen with BTC in it's best days), we are planning to wait for slow growth to get us to the dream of Bitcoin many years from now (in crypto years). Not only do I think that is unnecessary, I think it would mean there is a huge chance we would not get there before the public's need for p2p cash is fulfilled by some other service.

I think the public thought BTC would scale back in 2016. It started to go viral and then scaling was blocked. Had BTC raised the blocksize back then, it still could NOT have truly scaled to world-use size yet (like BCH still can't). Because the public had faith in BTC, I believe that it would have grown in value and use so much before BTC hit a real limit (maybe somewhere above 32MB back then?) developers would have solved the scaling issue in time to allow that growth to continue to even greater heights. Maybe developers would have solved scaling completely and it would have gone fully global and fulfilled the dream of Bitcoin.

Anyway, this is attempt 2.0. We don't want to mislead the public into thinking BCH can scale like BTC did since they already got burnt back then and have limited trust on that subject. We need to know how scaling can and will happen, then tell the public we are ready. If the public believes, I think an event will spark viral adoption growth and it is mostly downhill from there. But, we need to be able to handle the viral adoption so we can ask the public to climb aboard. Then we must not hit a ceiling (crash and lose all credibility) if they try to do so.

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Avatar for Big-Bubbler
Written by
3 years ago
In community: Bitcoin Cash Hub(0cd1)

Comments

I share most of the ideals of the Bitcoin Cash community, but I am also a pragmatist when it comes to developments. There are two questions that I've seen being raised in the form of examples by commentators on your Reddit article.

  • Will there be demand?

And will this demand reach this size you express, or at least to an adequate percentage that would mean mass adoption?

  • What will the cost be?

And not only the cost counted in cash, but the cost to keep the network decentralized.

So these two together added will give us the outcome of sustainability. Will the miners/developers/users find profit from this? I'm sure that if mass adoption occurs there will be profit, but there could also be a high-risk undertaking when a network grows at levels of perhaps ten years ahead of its time.

Don't get me wrong, I hope that tomorrow the whole world suddenly changes its mind and just starts using cryptocurrencies and especially Bitcoin Cash. I keep writing and trying to convince anyone I know about crypto for years. Still, we are trying to push merchant adoption for too long but there have only been some clusters and regional initiatives but not huge growth, yet.

I'm sure if there are signs of high adoption levels, there could be a discussion and a plan. Maybe, I would agree with having a plan ready, perhaps with discussion with all sides to reach a consensus without any new problems and apply it, when the time is right.

[Edit]: After reading all the comments at Reddit, it seems that everyone is expressing the same view. Although, I'm not negative, and don't think that mass adoption is overrated as some BTC maximalists were telling earlier last year, I also think that there are steps taken towards this direction and in case mass adoption kicks the door the network will be ready to serve it.

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User's avatar Pantera
3 years ago

in case mass adoption kicks the door the network will be ready to serve it

Not true yet, but I hope it is soon. People are working on it. My theory is that mass adoption will not come before we claim we are ready to handle it. I don't think we are ready to make that claim yet.

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User's avatar Big-Bubbler
3 years ago

"Still, we are trying to push merchant adoption for too long but there have only been some clusters and regional initiatives but not huge growth, yet."

That's exactly the problem this idea is designed to solve. We have to push hard for adoption with promises BCH will be p2p cash for the world years from now. If I am right about the ability to go viral making it likely to happen, we will be trying to keep up with organic adoption instead of pushing it.

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User's avatar Big-Bubbler
3 years ago

Thanks for your support!

"Will there be demand?"

It is true that it would take time to convince the world they want to use E-Cash as money. I am assuming massive viral growth would be driven at first by the desire to gain wealth or customers. Many would disdain this growth based on speculative greed. Of course, that is how most of crypto grew to where it is today. After that they might hold as an investment. Eventually they will want to spend and businesses will be ready for the newly rich. Just like started to happen with BTC.

"What will the cost be?"

I do not know how developers will solve the scaling challenge. I would guess the costs will be high by the time transaction levels have risen to 1,000 times the current level. I am more concerned about sudden growth leading to a lack of decentralization due to the cost of equipment that might be required to run this massive system. That said, I assume the marketcap of BCH would also reach a massive unexpected level before that. The mining farms will be massive, full mining nodes will be popular and the funds available to BCH development should follow suit. Without a "tax" on transactions, I can not be sure development will be funded well enough, but I am hopeful it will be. If there is a decentralization issue at first due to the powerful equipment needed to run nodes, I think over time that issue will resolve due to the worldwide popularity of BCH.

I do not think massive growth in the next couple years would be "ahead of it's time" by much. Developers would have to scramble to keep up, but the growth would attract massive software innovation and a constellation of projects surrounding BCH. Some would be scams, of course. Real progress on wallets and bridges and ... would come fast once BCH grew bigger than BTC and ETH combined.

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User's avatar Big-Bubbler
3 years ago

I was asked on another site: "If you have any shred of idea besides the buzzword "viral" how this would even be possible please share it. "

The answer is long and the other site is deleting what I type. Not sure if it is a memory problem with my PC or what, but I think I will answer here and try to paste it back there...

What would it look like to "go viral"? There are other scenarios, but I will paint one picture... So first you convince the public it is possible. Then a triggering event happens: Could be a market price pump or a "crypto Kitties" type game. Something that the whole world can understand and be a part of if they choose to. With the game everyone starts playing it like they did before ETH was shown to be unable to scale. On BCH the game would not have to stop growing usage and everyone would need to get a wallet to play the game. This would grow world-wide awareness of BCH.

BCH would rise in price due to the pump or game awareness growth. That would attract speculators. That would lead to more price growth and that would attract all crypto holders to FOMO and shift their holding ratios to include more BCH. Many would see this growth is not limited like it is on BTC and the cycle of growth would continue for months building BCH into a mega coin 10 to 100 times larger than BTC.

BTC tried to do this in 2017. It crashed into it's ceiling and the public no longer believes unlimited growth of a Bitcoin is possible. That's what needs to change to let it happen again. We will not need to push adoption and make it happen. We just need to make it possible and be ready to make it go smoothly on the way up.

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User's avatar Big-Bubbler
3 years ago
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