What do people here think of this academic's take on the limits of Bitcoin scalability?
They have no take on Bitcoin scalability (ability to support much higher tx rates), only on its security.
Scaling bitcoin is an open problem, tho.
I went through the article too. It is a good read, I believe. One can spot a few plausible points, the most inportant one is where it criticizes bitcoin PoW generated trust for being timeless, i.e., should be renewed ever and ever with live 'work' instead of relying on 'stocked' trust like what is custom in other (centralized) institutions. According to the article it involves high security costs and makes bitcoin a bad candidate for being widely adopted by the global economy.
Although I'm a believer in PoW, actually an enthusiast, I encourage reading it because:
1- We can not avoid criticism by cancelling it.
2- Criticism, done fairly and thoughtfully, helps us to spot weaknesses and to have a vision for future improvements.
3- PoW is not under attack only from outside, the obvious leaning toward pure cryptography (in its pure, traditional, pre-bitcoin sense) along with the fact that most of the prominent figures in bitcoin do not contribute to minining related problems, and the trend which downplays PoW role in bitcoin security proves how important it is to have PoW this brilliant innovation, the most brilliant one in recent history, I believe, been seriously reviewed and discussed.
I'm trying to write a brief review on this article, will share when done.
