My post was based on my belief that an SPV miner doesn't verify transactions, but relies on the fact that "full" miners and full nodes do the job for him. This is what I meant by "cheating" the system.
You are mistaken.
The "V" in "SPV" stands for the word "Verification". SPV is an acronym for "
Simple
Payment
Verification" as can be seen in the original bitcoin whitepaper in section 8:
https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdfHave I misunderstood the system.
Probably.
As blocks become harder to find, they will need to increase in size as traffic increases.
I think you have the cause and effect mixed up there. Blocks only become harder to find if more hashing power is added to the network. They continue to be found at an average rate of 1 every 10 minutes.
If traffic increases, blocks could remain the same size. This could result in higher transaction fees to get a transaction added to a block quickly, or it could result in off-chain payment systems, or it could result in some other solution.
It is also possible that traffic stops increasing if the transaction fees get high enough, or that blocks become easier to find if the hash power decreases.
I was suggesting that an alternative way to reward those checking transactions could be beneficial.
It would be difficult to create a system that would make it possible to reward every full node just for verifying and relaying transactions. You'd probably run into some pretty serious problems with sybil attacks. You might be able to prevent sybil attacks by instituting a proof-of-work requirement to earn the payment, but that's what mining already does so you'd just be re-inventing mining.
Without block discovery, it may not be possible though.
More importantly it would probably be difficulty (if not impossible) without some sort of proof-of-work.