Blockchain Scalability with Peter Ullrich

There are two factors that limit the rate at which transactions are accepted into the Bitcoin blockchain: block time and block size. Block time defines how often a new block is appended onto the blockchain. Block size defines how many transactions fit into a new block.

As of March 2018, the current block time and block size allow for about 7 transactions per second to be accepted into the Bitcoin blockchain. In today’s episode, we discuss the technical limitations of the Bitcoin blockchain and some potential solutions to scalability: SegWit and lightning network.

Today’s guest is Peter Ullrich, the host of Explain Blockchain. Explain Blockchain is a podcast I have found tremendously useful as I have started to learn about blockchains. He provides thorough, technical explanations of complicated topics, and I recommend subscribing to his show, and listening to the episodes multiple times because there is a lot of content condensed into a short amount of time.

Over the next month, we will be exploring a variety of blockchain-based technologies. Some interviews will be high-level conversations that assume only a familiarity with cryptocurrencies. Some of them will be deeply technical and assume a strong understanding of Bitcoin and Ethereum. And some episodes, like today’s episode, will be aimed at the developer who is in the process of “going down the rabbit hole.”

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Transcript

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