Topic: Adjustable Blocksize Cap: Why not? - page 5. (Read 1392 times)

OP, it isn't that simple. Research the effects of increasing the block size cap on network latency, network security, and how the costs in the network transfers from the miners to the nodes.

The best solution will always go back to off-chain networks.

Storage cost and internet speed are only part of the issue, the other part which is more important is the computation cost, which is the CPU and RAM you need to validate each and every transaction.
With that said I have never been against increasing the block size. Ever since 2017 I've been saying we need to also increase the size alongside everything else we do.

I emphasized on having the cap (having a maximum size for each block) not on the value of it.
This value has to be close to the needed capacity but higher than it, that way it can ensure that if someone decided to spam the network they go over that capacity and end up creating a fee market that costs them a lot of money to sustain the attack.
4 MB weight has been close to that needed capacity but I believe we have surpassed that for some time now, which is why we keep seeing big fee spikes regularly.

I think the problem you're referring to is the centralisation of mining because a miner would need a large portion of the total hashrate to launch this kind of attack and there's not really any system in place to prevent that. And you're actually making my point because I proposed that the block size limit would go up if the average transaction fee goes up which would require more fake transactions to upper the average cost per transaction.


I get it and I think that's fine but since the cost of storage is dimishing and the speed of internet is going up why not increasing the block limit also? And could you explain why a spam attack would magically cost a lot more if the block weight is 4MB or less?

Filling your own block with transactions costs nothing because you are getting the fees of all those transactions in the coinbase transaction of the block they mine (it is like putting money from left pocket into the right one). Not to mention that such an attack could be a collaboration between more than one big miner where they both spam the network to inflate the fees.

Block size hasn't been 1MB for nearly 4 years now. The block weight has been 4 MB which has translated into average size of about 1.5 MB.
This "cap" is not there to reduce spam, it is there to prevent spam attacks that would cost nothing to perform.
We also don't want to just bump the raw size, we aim to increase the capacity without doing that. For example Schnorr signatures already get rid of some of the useless bytes that for years we've put into each signature. There is also aggregate signature that can reduce the size of transactions with more than one key.

That's because they are not used. It is like saying I can speed in this street that nobody else is in but I have to be stuck in traffic in the other street that is the exact copy of this one but it is used by a lot of cars.

Tether is neither quick nor safe. It is a centralized altcoin that is extremely risky to use because it could be shut down at any moment very easily.
If you are happy with centralized tokens pegged to fiat then you can use PayPal. It gives you a token that is also called USD which is pegged with dollar and is fully centralized, fast and as safe as it gets. But the difference is that PayPal is a legitimate company that works within United States and under US law while each PayPal USD token is legitimately backed by USD 1:1 whereas Bitfinex is not.

Ok let's do this


Actually, there is the cost of opportunity because miners don't get paid mining their own transactions. Also, I don't see why a miner would purposely raise his own storage cost...

Fixing btc blocksize is not going to be easy as there are many safe coins to mine and move money.

LTC can move large sums safely and as a bonus  cheaper then Btc.

Doge can move small and medium sums faster and cheaper and safely.

Tether is being used to move wealth quickly and so far safely.

All of them do a decent job.

So btc is much more usable as a store of wealth rather then a quick fast cheaper money mover.

I think that the problem is solved.  Of course btc maximinalist wont agree or be happy with my thoughts.

On the subject.

I merited your post because I think it is good to discuss these types of ideas, even if they are bad. These discussions could potentially lead to good ideas.

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Your suggestion effectively allows the miners to decide the blocksize. It would be trivial and cost-free for the miners to either send many transactions to themselves with an arbitrary transaction fee, or to include fewer transactions than is economically logical. 

Maybe I am but I'm just taking a shot. Btc could go up or down depending on the development of the currency (as any technology I think it must evolve to survive) and I don't see any crypto being used as a collectible item  

I can't understand why we would keep the block size limit to 1MB just to reduce the amount of spams because at the same time we would make the network less efficient for peak periods (huge trade off). Someone will have to come up with a viable solution at some point...

OK I guess I'll be the one bringing new ideas (or maybe not) and we can debate about them..

What if the size limit of the next block would go up if the average transaction fee goes up but down if the amount of transactions goes up. If a miner would try to play the system by filling his block with fake transactions then he would have to mine 2 blocks for the price of one which wouldn't be profitable.

This has been proposed and discussed at the time of scaling debate. Check the following for reference...

1. BIP 105 - Consensus based block size retargeting algorithm

2. BIP 106 - Dynamically Controlled Bitcoin Block Size Max Cap

Why not? Because
1. It requires hard fork
2. How it prevent centralization?
2. Who determine the block size cap? Only miner?

I'm in favor to increase block size, but IMO it's not good way to do it.

I've advocated for this idea in the past.  I used to think it was the way forward, but I've got some pretty big doubts about that now.  It sounds good in theory, but once you get down to the finer details, it starts getting quite messy.  Game theory and consensus are pretty big hurdles to overcome.

Making the block size a variable is already centralizing it since the decision falls to miners and how they can manipulate it to their own benefit and they can easily do it with zero cost using a simple spam attack. They definitely spammed bitcoin in 2017 and the big pools were also rejecting any low fees to prevent the fees from going down. F2Pool is an example that comes to mind.

Firstly, it is a compromise and not a scaling solution.

Secondly, it should be implemented in SegWit instead of manipulating the legacy 1 MB block size, for avoiding a hard fork.

While the question of a block size limit increase has been debated a lot, an ABC algorithm that would be used to increase the miner income could benefit to the whole network. This could be combined with a hard cap so the block size limit would vary from (let's say 0.1MB to 8MB) preventing any form of centralisation.