&gt; ... anyone who wants to enlarge its available message space ...<p>Bear in mind that the proof-of-work algorithm actually aims to reduce chatter on the network. Every ten minutes, a single Bitcoin full node broadcasts: &quot;Hey, this is the latest state of the ledger, and you can trust it because [insert proof-of-work that was calculated out-of-band].&quot; So, as the network&#x27;s processing power scales up, the computation difficulty is also scaled up, so that the &quot;message space&quot; required for consensus remains <i>constant</i>.<p>&gt; That seems rather limited for a growing population&#x27;s needs for communications around an increasingly valuable resource base.<p>While the way distributed consensus is achieved (see &quot;Byzantine Generals&#x27; Problem&quot;) consumes most of the network&#x27;s processing power, it&#x27;s what makes the resource valuable. However, since this is done <i>in parallel</i>, it hardly consumes any of the network&#x27;s bandwidth, freeing up that &quot;message space&quot; for important things like sending&#x2F;receiving&#x2F;propagating transactions, which are much less demanding computationally. All that is required there is some elliptic curve cryptography (ie. a valid public&#x2F;private key pair + any low-powered device with correct software and an internet connection.)