Author: Chun Wang 2015-08-25 09:19:28
Published on: 2015-08-25T09:19:28+00:00
The proposed BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Proposal) suggests replacing the fixed one-megabyte maximum block size with a dynamically controlled maximum block size that may increase or decrease with difficulty change depending on various network factors. The proposal aims to handle the increased adoption and transaction volume on the Bitcoin network which is bound to grow. There are two proposals in the BIP, the first proposal depends only on previous block size calculation, whereas the second proposal depends on both previous block size calculation and previous Tx fee collected by miners.The rationale behind these proposals is to derive a maximum block size more rationally based on transaction volume and keep the maximum block size flexible to changing network demand. Proposal 1 increases and decreases the maximum block size just like difficulty, while Proposal 2 takes care of stable mining subsidy and creates Tx fee pressure on the market if required. The proposals have been derived after discussion on BitcoinTalk and bitcoin-dev mailing list. The compatibility of the proposals is a hard-forking change to the Bitcoin protocol, and anyone running code that fully validates blocks must upgrade before the activation time; otherwise, they will risk rejecting a chain containing larger-than-one-megabyte blocks. Other solutions like Making Decentralized Economic Policy by Jeff Garzik, Elastic block cap with rollover penalties by Meni Rosenfeld, Increase maximum block size by Gavin Andresen, Block size following technological growth by Pieter Wuille, and The Bitcoin Lightning Network: Scalable Off-Chain Instant Payments by Joseph Poon & Thaddeus Dryja have also been considered. If consensus is achieved, deployment can be made at a future block number at which difficulty will change.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T21:03:41.971337+00:00