Quote Originally Posted by Avoidy View Post
That being said, I'm genuinely curious why they've been able to add new wards before, but now people want to act like it's an impossibility when it's brought up. I sure hope in their next live letter, the 2 billion dollar company talks about this so random fanboys can stop speaking on their behalf about their technical limitations.
Their ability to add new wards is contingent on not only acquiring new custom hardware but also having their own blessed team of operations acolytes install it.

Pre-COVID this was already a challenge because they insisted on a specific flavor of hardware and only let their specifically trained people perform the installations. COVID triggered both supply-chain issues and a massive worker shortage. The semi-conductor industry has been particularly hard hit by both. As much money as Square has at its disposal it does not require the volume of chips that the automotive industry does. Since supply is short the one or two remaining chip fabs in the world have dedicated the bulk of their production facilities to the industry that can actually pay them billions.

The accepted theory is that the ward system is hideously inefficient. The SWAG is that the same server racks that mange the wards could handle far more housing if they were instanced.