Crypto Kitties Proves Ethereum Scaling Has A Long Way To Go.
Scaling is an issue for all cryptocurrencies, not just Bitcoin.
Recently the hottest sensation sweeping the Ethereum blockchain is cryptographic cats. They’re pretty cool, and it’s a decent game concept. They also illustrate a few things in a few different subjects:
- People that pay money for in-game purchases are crazy.
- Crypto users are the craziest people that will pay for in-game purchases.
- Ethererum still has a long way to go for scaling.
Two out of three of those last statements were opinions. Unfortunately that last one is totally true though. Ethereum can only handle approximately 15 transactions per second as it stands right now, and there have times where it has been a sluggish 4–5 per second. Bitcoin has been going through growing pains, and technically dying pains as we evolved past the original Bitcoin on August 1st. Regardless, the Bitcoin ecosystem is growing through the competitive implementation of different scaling solutions.
Ethereum really needs to address scaling, and it needs to do it soon if it is going to continue to grow. At this point in the game, any reasonably popular application on Ethereum could completely clutter the mempool. Of all things to finally prove this it had to be cryptographic cats that did. The mempool is actually a memepool right now. We’re a few steps away from it being a cesspool of stagnant transactions, but we’re not quite there yet.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Ethereum and the vision of the project. I was actually at BTC Miami back in January 2014 for the big announcement. But that doesn’t stop me from seeing the obvious flaws in the path. Just like Bitcoin, the biggest flaw to overcome is the scaling issue. One of the commonly cited use cases for Ethereum is provably fair gambling and prediction markets. If there was a broad user-base right now, that use case alone would be enough to totally fill the Ethereum blockchain into the foreseeable future and bloat the mempool into the hundreds of thousands of transactions. I am not kidding on that. Gambling is a pretty big market worldwide, and if Ethereum was supporting the world’s largest online casino that is all that it would really be doing right now.
Ethereum is revolutionary technology. There is no doubt about that. However, it is still a very early stage technology as far as its growth and what it will require.There are a lot more people that have gone into a lot more depth on this issue than me, and I suggest you do some reading in that direction. There is still time to address scaling, and I hope it happens. Until then, enjoy the mempool being a memepool.
If you like this article, follow for more no-nonsense and no-hype cryptocurrency content. Thanks for reading. — Zach (https://1za.ch)
