How big will the blockchain become? I have not read much about Ethereum and not a deep understanding of every technical aspect regarding blockchains, however I understand that most applications just are not practical with endlessly growing blockchains. Does Ethereum a solution for that?
They are calling this the 'scalability problem' and are researching it as well. I think the general idea is to divide the blockchain into shards with some links in between.
The payment aspect is what ensures that a big distributed network will actually store and serve your tweets.
Any single given application on Ethereum (except straight-up value transfer as seen in Bitcoin) isn't compelling enough to have its own network, but together they are.
Yes, sure, having to pay for each tweet is a drawback compared to the commercial version of Twitter.
Please note there's a donation mechanism [1].
If others like what you write, there's a chance you can get back some of the money you spent on tweeting ;)
Still, using blockchain technology has positive aspects, like some kind of censorship resistance. That is, if some country is going to block access to Twitter again: who knows, can this be an alternative? Not saying access to the ethereum network can't be blocked at all, though.
I would love to see Twitter adopt this. Any tweet with an external link - you must pay 1/3 cent. Let's see which tweets you really deem important to tweet!
