Scalability Principle

Scalability is the proportional increase in some aspect of performance as more hardware is employed. Bitcoin transaction throughput is perfectly non-scalable as no amount of hardware increases it.

The block size limit consensus rule establishes the arbitrary trade-off between utility and system security. Increased block size increases, the resource cost of transaction validation (i.e. processing, storage, and bandwidth). As the cost of validation increases economic security is adversely affected by increased centralization risk. As the trade-off is arbitrary, there is no ideal value.

At any block size the system remains non-scalable due to the necessity of confirmation finality. In other words, a finite set of transactions must be selected, which implies that others may be excluded, necessitating a competitive market for inclusion. This market also finances confirmation security in proportion to demand for the money.

Effective transaction carrying capacity, and therefore aggregate demand, can be increased through the use of layering. This represents a local and time-limited security compromise, in contrast to the system-wide and persistent security compromise of increasing block size. Either compromise lowers but does not eliminate the utility threshold, which implies stability is preserved.

Therefore stability and non-scalability exist at any block size and level of layering.