According to a post published by one researcher, Arthur Gervais, there is a simple way for Elon Musk to help the scaling of the Dogecoin network – without the need for any significant changes to the core protocol. Gervais believes that Starlink is the key to achieving this.
Musk is already a known fan of the Doge and has already made plans to take the meme coin to extraterrestrial heights, however, Gervais theory – if Musk and the Doge network agreed to using it – would result in a significant increase in the network’s transaction speeds.
According to Gervais – who’s research focuses on privacy, security and the “financial aspects” of blockchain technology – internet speed and communication latency between miners was “technical bottleneck” to scaling Proof-of-Work (PoW) blockchain networks that if scarcely ever considered.
“One of the most often overlooked bottlenecks is the communication latency and Internet speed between miners. The slower the Internet between the miners is, the less synchronized they become, and the more the blockchain security degrades.” Gervais wrote
Gervais’ model suggests that using Starlink’s satellite array could “very well scale its transaction throughput by orders of magnitude,”. To support this, Gervais points to the difference in communication latency between Starlink’s network and existing fibre optic infrastructure. In its current state, Starlinks network is able to achieve a round trip time (RTT) of 108ms between London and Singapore, while fiber optic cable connections achieve 156ms over the same measured distance.
However, nothing is without its own set of risks. Gervais admits that using his approach would mean that one company would have complete control over the network’s relay nodes. That said, the idea received positive commentary from those who read it.
“I’d totally run some relay nodes on satellites instead of my current terrestrial ones… that would be awesome.” Read one comment.
