Robinhood head seeks conditions for conversion of Dogecoin to “Internet currency”

For Dogecoin (DOGE) to become the “future currency of the Internet and people”, the project developers need to increase the block size to 1 GB, or even up to 10 GB. This was stated by the founder and CEO of online broker Robinhood Vlad Tenev.

can #doge Will it really be the future currency of the internet and people? I was thinking about what that would mean when we added DOGE send/receive to Robinhood.

— VLAD (@vladtenev) 14 April 2022

“Can DOGE really be the future currency of the internet and people? I thought what would happen when we added the ability to send and receive DOGE to Robinhood,” he wrote.

According to Tenev, there are several aspects by which one can decide whether a cryptocurrency is eligible for mass adoption:

• network fees;
• the speed of recording transactions on the blockchain;
• the number of transactions the network can process per second (TPS);
• inflation.

The head of Robinhood stated that a very low commission is charged for transferring funds on the Dogecoin network. According to BitIfnoCharts, average blockchain fees have rarely exceeded $0.3 in the past three months.

First, transaction fees should be minimal to none. We are already there. As of last November’s 1.14.5 update, typical transaction fees have been ~$0.003 – which you can experience. @robinhoodapp — compared to 1-3% network fees charged by major card networks. pic.twitter.com/KHk83nDaek

— VLAD (@vladtenev) 14 April 2022

“First, the transaction fees should be extremely low. We are already seeing this. Since the 1.14.5 update last November, typical transaction fees are around $0.003 – you can see this on Robinhood – compared to the 1-3% fees charged by major card payment systems,” he said.

Tenev stated that the block production rate should be lower than the payment time at the trading terminal. But if blocks are produced too quickly, this will lead to miners creating competing chains and expending too much energy to reach consensus.

Doge’s current block time is 1 minute. That’s a bit of a long time for payments – a block time of ten seconds would be more appropriate as it would be less than the typical time it takes to complete a debit card transaction.

— VLAD (@vladtenev) 14 April 2022

“The DOGE block time is now 1 minute. For payments, that’s too long—10 seconds was a more appropriate value, because that’s less than people spend on debit card processing,” explained Robinhood president.

Tenev emphasized that with the current block time (1 minute) and size (1 MB), the network bandwidth is only 40 TPS. In contrast, Visa can theoretically process up to 65,000 TPS. According to the entrepreneur, this problem is easy to fix – you just need to increase the block size limit.

Moving to the 1GB (and later 10GB) block size limit will provide all the throughput a global currency will need for the foreseeable future. L2 solutions are not required to solve this problem.

— VLAD (@vladtenev) 14 April 2022

“Moving to the 1GB (and later 10GB) size limit will provide the bandwidth needed by the global currency in the near future. “Layer 2 networks are not needed to solve this problem,” he said.

The head of the online broker admitted that the increase in block size has made it impossible to run full-fledged nodes at home on devices like the Raspberry Pi. However, Tenev described it as a “fair compromise”.

According to him, fears about the eternal emission of DOGE are unfounded. He announced that about 5 billion DOGE are mined annually, and the total supply of cryptocurrencies is at the level of 132 billion coins.

“As a result, the current inflation rate does not exceed 5% – less than US dollars! Moreover, the constant emissions mean that this figure actually decreases over time and will drop to less than 2% in a few decades,” he said.

Tenev advised Dogecoin developers to consider the process of expanding the block size. He also asked for his ideas about his suggestions.

In May 2021, Elon Musk stated that Dogecoin could outperform Bitcoin if developers increase the block production speed and reduce fees.

Recall that in December, the non-profit organization Dogecoin Foundation announced that it was collaborating with Vitalik Buterin on developing a mechanism for staking the mem-cryptocurrency.