Question 1
The article “The promise of blockchain” addresses the challenge of scaling blockchain technology:
The technology’s consensus-based validation mechanism, its continuous replication, and the ever-growing amount of stored data means that the larger the blockchain grows, the greater become the requirements for storage, bandwidth, and computational power. That leads to a risk of centralization if the blockchain becomes so large that only a few nodes are able to process a block.
(Higginson et al. 2017)
Drawing on what you have learned about consensus algorithms and Bitcoin transactions, as well as the issues with scaling covered so far in this unit, write a clear and coherent report in which you address the following two questions:
1. Would a centralized blockchain undermine the technology’s purpose as a shared public ledger? And if so, why?
2. How could blockchain technology achieve scale while remaining decentralized?
