What can positively affect the performance of an IBM Blockchain Platform?

Increasing the pool of endorsing peers can positively affect the performance of an IBM Blockchain Platform because it enhances the robustness and security of the network. More endorsing peers provide additional resources for processing transactions, as they can share the workload and ensure that more nodes are available to validate and endorse transactions. This redundancy can lead to improved throughput and faster consensus, as there are more participants to verify and agree on the state of the ledger.

Furthermore, when there is a larger pool of endorsing peers, the network can better handle failures or drops in performance from individual nodes, maintaining the overall reliability of the blockchain. This distributed architecture allows for greater scalability, which is beneficial in environments with varying transaction loads.

In contrast, reducing the number of endorsing peers or decreasing network size could lead to bottlenecks and diminished redundancy, potentially impacting the performance negatively. Implementing a fixed number of channels may also limit flexibility and innovation in managing data flow and access, which can hinder overall performance. Thus, having a larger pool of endorsing peers is essential for optimizing the network capabilities of the IBM Blockchain Platform.