TAAL likes big blocks, increases its max to 4GB—and urges others to follow

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4GB blocks are coming to BSV. Enterprise blockchain services provider TAAL Distributed Information Technologies Inc. (CSE:TAAL | FWB:9SQ1 | OTC: TAALF) has completed an upgrade to its infrastructure that anticipates a big increase in data volumes flowing through the BSV network in the near future.

Attn the #BSV community: TAAL is pleased to announce its plans for a significant upgrade to its BSV mining infrastructure, which will double the data capacity and increase the block size limit to 4GB by January 24!

More details below:https://t.co/yy6eOxWGGk pic.twitter.com/SrnDn6acNm

— TaalBlockchain (@TaalBlockchain) January 10, 2022

TAAL’s new “soft cap” limit of 4GB is twice the size of the previous record largest block on BSV, which was processed on August 16, 2021.

BSV has seen a huge uptick in transactions recently. The overwhelming majority of this data has come from FYX Gaming’s CryptoFights, which peaked at 3,121,421 transactions in a single day on January 1, 2022. Other gaming platforms like Peergame and Haste Arcade have also contributed to transactions recorded on the blockchain, while RelayX and TDXP have been the most popular trading platforms.

TAAL anticipates big growth in enterprise demand for data processing in the near future, coming from industries like gaming, financial products, business services and media.

The previous block size limit on BSV was 2GB, set in the “Quasar” protocol upgrade in July 2019. Before that, it as 128MB. This comes less than four years after the Bitcoin network split—the result of a long-running dispute over whether Bitcoin could handle block sizes higher than 1MB. BSV’s restoration of the original Bitcoin protocol removed the limits, while the BTC network still has a maximum 1-4MB “block weight” limit.

TAAL encouraged other miners to follow suit by increasing their own limits to 4GB. Chief Operating Officer Lars Jorgensen said:

“While the core design of the Bitcoin protocol was locked in during the version 1.0 release, BSV is now at a point where its continuous improvement cycles are focused on performance and scale to meet the growing need of enterprise and application development demand. The block size increase is valuable in the sense that any application developer can maintain operating on the same protocol and at the same low fees, but the throughput for data processing and transaction processing capacity has significantly increased.”

For the record, there is no theoretical limit to BSV block sizes in the Bitcoin protocol. However, transaction processors are able to set their own maximum/excessive block size (a “soft cap”) limits and compete against each other according to their operating capacity and kinds of services they provide.

https://twitter.com/BitcoinSVNode/status/1480998651119943683

The Bitcoin SV Node development team sets temporary “hard cap” limits with new releases according to what they say the protocol software can handle comfortably. As demand for more processing power and technology improvements increase over time, they set the hard cap to a higher number. In a statement to BSV Blockchain, Jorgensen said: “The upgrade to 4GB is a breakthrough that will help everyone in the BSV ecosystem. TAAL is here to support the community and to help every BSV transaction processor to mine bigger and bigger blocks. That’s why we’re encouraging all miners to immediately increase their excessive block size limit to 4GB. They’ll be able to take full advantage of the node upgrade to expand their revenues and client base.”

Mining pool GorillaPool’s spokesperson Kurt Wuckert Jr. said the new cap limit signals the BSV industry is growing fast:

“TAAL’s leadership on the 4GB soft block size limit upgrade is welcome and appreciated. Doubling this limit is a strong signal for growth in the BSV economy, and I would love to see minimum transaction and relay fees lowered next!”

“As a voice for GorillaPool, I’d love to see more pools enter the game on this bullish news from TAAL,” he added.

The Bitcoin SV Node team’s fully-rebuilt version of the Bitcoin protocol, called “Teranode” is coming soon—with tests expected to begin in 2022. That version, aimed squarely at the large-data enterprise market, will see another substantial increase in potential block sizes on BSV.

More and larger enterprise-tier users are anticipated to join the BSV network in 2022 and beyond. Bitcoin is, and always has been, capable of processing and securing all the world’s data. Satoshi’s Vision for Bitcoin was much larger than simple payments, and BSV is now working to fulfill that vision.

Watch: CoinGeek New York presentation, TAAL: Leading the Future of Blockchain Transaction Processing