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What stands in the way of increasing the number of consensus nodes from 20?

I believe that parameter would need to be included in a hard-fork, which requires a consensus vote from 17 of the top 20 witnesses.

@theycallmedan has discussed this at various times on their CTT podcasts (@cttpodcast). As Dan has eloquently stated in the past, the number needs to be small enough that people can vote for witnesses they actually have some knowledge about, but large enough that collusion and/or hostile takeover are difficult to accomplish.

Twenty seems to be a pretty good number at present. As the ecosystem grows, I could see that number being increased to 30, maybe 40. Any more than that and an individual's ability to keep track of witness reputations begins to wane.

Thank you for your answer. That's fair enough. I struggle to have any real idea what the witnesses are up to so I understand completely. More decentralization is better in my humble opinion, but there's obviously limits to what can be realistically achieved