Erlay is a new relay protocol that seeks to minimize the bandwidth usage required to connect Bitcoin full nodes.

This is an opinion editorial by Kudzai Kutukwa, a passionate financial inclusion advocate who was recognized by Fast Company magazine as one of South Africa’s top-20 young entrepreneurs under 30.

Satoshi Nakamoto brilliantly

The paper further states that; “By allowing more connections at a small cost, Erlay improves the security of the Bitcoin network. And, as we demonstrate, Erlay also hardens the network against attacks that attempt to learn the origin node of a transaction.” In other words Erlay significantly improves bandwidth efficiency by reducing bandwidth used for transaction relay as well as scalability of connections between peers thus making the network more resistant to partitioning attacks and fortifies single nodes against eclipse attacks. While Erlay protocol support signaling has successfully merged into Bitcoin core, this was a development that took three and a half years to materialize, given the extensive review and testing that had to be done beforehand, because stability and security at the base layer are everything.

While Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough in creating a trustless and decentralized monetary system with superior monetary properties, its success is not guaranteed unless we the users remain committed to defending the principles upon which it is anchored. The victory by the small blockers in the blocksize war wasn’t handed to them on a silver platter but it came about through relentless commitment to the goal of separation of money and state. It was all or nothing. Many more attempts to control Bitcoin at the protocol level will be launched, however they will be doomed to fail if we remain resolute and unwavering in preserving the network’s core tenets; of which decentralization is chief among them, in my humble opinion. By keeping the costs of running a node as low as possible,more individual users from around the world are able to participate in validating the network, this is what Erlay represents. It’s a defense against centralization of the network by larger players thus preserving Bitcoin’s identity as a fully decentralized, permissionless and trustless peer-to-peer monetary system.

This is a guest post by Kudzai Kutukwa. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc. or Bitcoin Magazine.