Thorchain AMA Recap

The primary limit to how large committee sizes can be is that of TSS key-generation speeds. The network grows its TSS committee sizes for its primary vault as new nodes join. At some point, a new tss key gen ceremony will hit a pre-designated time-limit. The committee size at this point is the limit for the primary vault, and the network then chooses to shard the primary vault into two partitions, and continue growing them until they time-out again. This is continued until the network hits either the block consensus limit or the economic limit. 

Since the network uses tendermint consensus, there is a block consensus limit. Large committee sizes with inefficient connections with each other result in block timeouts, increased block times and poor network performance. Increased block-times reduce the block-based revenue for nodes and should reduce node count until back below an equilibrium. The network targets block-production speeds of around five seconds.  With a minimum bond limit, as well as a fixed-supply asset, there is an absolute maximum of the number of nodes that can participate, known as the economic limit. 

The network can scale to handle a significant number of connected chains, and a practically unlimited number of assets. Connected chains have a resource burden on the network, but this can be alleviated since light nodes that have been fast-synced are more than sufficient to function as chain connections. There is an asset listing cycle of a few days which ensures that only in-demand assets are listed and throttles how quickly new assets are added. Assets are listed in order of how much capital is staked towards them.