Ruben Somsen: Only Completely-Filled BTC Blockchain Blocks Are The Way For Bitcoin To Remain Trustless

Ruben Somsen Claims Full Blocks Are The Only Way For BTC To Remain Trustless

Over the course of the past few months, many analysts and experts have been saying that in the near future a majority of Bitcoin blocks will ultimately fill up — thereby leading to a sharp increase in network fees.

In this regard, it should be pointed out that earlier today, Seoul BTC Meetup convenor Reuben Somsen posted a barrage of tweets claiming that even though the BTC ecosystem might be faced with the prospect of rising fees, such changes were “part and parcel” of the flagship asset’s eventual evolution.

On the subject, Somsen was quoted as saying:

“Blocks WILL be full sooner or later. We’re not making smart use of block space, so we’re likely to experience a bumpy fee ride until people adjust their behavior. …It costs miners virtually nothing to add a transaction. Block space is given to the highest bidder – if nobody bids, it’s practically free. If you think mass replicated immutable blockchain data is at least worth something, then it logically follows that blocks WILL be full.”

More On The Matter

As many of our regular readers may remember, the issue of BTC TX Fees has once again come to the forefront ever since the premier digital currency’s value shot up drastically over the course of the past week or so.

At press time, Bitcoin is currently trading for just over $5,220. However, as mentioned earlier, this recent network activity spike has resulted in the currency’s native transaction fees rising quite a bit. Also, it is worth pointing out that Somsen along with many other specialists agree that a host of Bitcoin wallet solutions today are increasing the tokens network load by still making use of archaic operational practices.

“Fee estimates aim for the next block by default. The result? A bidding war. Better to use Replace-By-Fee (RBF) + under-bidding and automated fee bumps to get a cheaper confirmation within a user-defined time limit. This smooths out the fees.”

Are Off-Chain Solutions The Key To BTC’s Problems?

When talking about some of the latest technologies available in the market today (such as Schnorr signatures, Taproot, MAST, etc), Somsen added that while they could definitely help in controlling native fee rates, these technologies were still a fair bit away from being rolled out in their final forms.

https://twitter.com/SomsenRuben/status/1115920077482680320

Similarly, when commenting on the usefulness of off-chain scaling solutions — something which many crypto enthusiasts believe will help curb rising BTC fee rates — Somsen stated unequivocally that while such offerings were useful to some degree, they did not make any blockchain system immune to on-chain fees.

He then went on to add:

“When there are issues, people have to go back on-chain. If you can’t afford to pay the fee, you are stuck and won’t be able to exit from misbehavior. There’s simply no other way for Bitcoin to stay trustless. If you personally don’t need trustlessness, you can always transact cheaply off-chain via third parties. But if we sacrifice trustlessness on the base layer, it’ll be gone forever.”

Final Take

In closing out this piece, it should be pointed that the Lightning Network is still a very nascent technology — even though many people from within the global crypto community claim that the offering is ready for widespread adoption.

Last but not least, as things stand, the LN has the capacity to process just under 1100 BTC ($5.79 million) worth of monetary transactions — a number that has increased by a whopping 40% over the course of the past 30 days.