Increasing block capacity is not a long-term solution! ChainLinkGod comments: BSC, Polygon becoming more and more unreliable.

Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and Polygon have recently attracted a large number of users and funds with their fast and low-cost features. However, whether these two networks have a promising future remains a controversial topic in the cryptocurrency community.

BSC, Polygon, and Ethereum

Chainlink's well-known KOL, ChainLinkGod, compared Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Polygon, and Ethereum on Twitter today. He pointed out that Polygon's transaction processing speed is over ten times faster than Ethereum's, and it is also ten times cheaper than Ethereum; while BSC is 20 times faster and 20 times cheaper than Ethereum.

Polygon is about 10x faster than Ethereum & yet TXs are more than 10x cheaper

BSC is about 20x faster than Ethereum & yet transactions are more than 20x cheaper

You can't just look at supply (of blockspace) alone, you need to look at demand (for blockspace)

Same goes for S2F

— ChainLinkGod.eth (@ChainLinkGod) June 18, 2021

However, ChainLinkGod stated that the reason why Polygon and BSC perform better than Ethereum is not due to any technological breakthrough or innovation, but simply because their block Gas limits are higher than Ethereum's, and they produce blocks faster (the higher the Gas limit, the larger the block, and the more transactions it can accommodate).

• Ethereum: Block Gas limit 12.5M, produces a block every 12.5 seconds, 1M gas/second
• Polygon: Block Gas limit 20M, produces a block every 2 seconds, 10M gas/second
• BSC: Block Gas limit 60M, produces a block every 3 seconds, 20M gas/second

ChainLinkGod believes that this approach does not truly enhance scalability but only increases the network's burden and hardware requirements for nodes. While initially Polygon and BSC may have better performance than Ethereum, they will eventually face bottlenecks.

Bottlenecks of Large Block Capacity

ChainLinkGod pointed out that Ethereum's block space utilization has consistently been close to 100% over the past year, while BSC has recently seen a decrease in utilization, mainly because the network doubled the block limit. Polygon is also gradually approaching 100%, which may force Polygon to follow the path of BSC by increasing the Gas limit.

Demand for Ethereum blockspace has been pegged at nearly 100% for a year now

It's why gas prices are > 1 Gwei

BSC usage appears to decrease but that's because they raised the gas limit by 2x

Demand for Polygon blockspace reaching its limits (gas limit increase coming?) pic.twitter.com/PqE5eQop8K

— ChainLinkGod.eth (@ChainLinkGod) June 18, 2021

Although increasing the Gas limit can improve blockchain performance, it is not without drawbacks. Increasing the Gas limit will increase the hardware and bandwidth requirements for network nodes. Furthermore, raising the Gas limit is not a long-term solution; once transaction volume increases again, block space utilization will approach 100% once more, prompting the decision of whether to increase the Gas limit again.

On the other hand, the combination of "large block capacity" and "fast block production speed" will lead to more block uncle rates, more frequent temporary forks, and a higher likelihood of node and network asynchronization, which is why BSC and Polygon networks can sometimes be unstable. In conclusion, ChainLinkGod stated:

"Due to higher hardware and bandwidth demands, Polygon and BSC networks are becoming increasingly unreliable compared to Ethereum. Simply adjusting parameters is only a temporary measure; a truly reliable long-term expansion is a second-layer solution (off-chain computation)."