Author: Tom Zander 2017-01-02 22:33:16
Published on: 2017-01-02T22:33:16+00:00
The discussion revolves around the Bitcoin protocol and its block size limit. The writer argues that the block size limit is set by miners and not math, despite everything in Bitcoin being math-based. They suggest a proposal where the maximum block size continues to be set by miners as a secondary effect of them choosing the block size. The other person suggests that a simple policy set by node operators could solve this issue. However, the writer disagrees and believes it would be an epic disaster since there's no such thing as a "simple policy" when humans are involved. The writer mentions that miners have always been the ones to decide on the block size, and they have always done this in a coordinated fashion. This is due to the economic design of Bitcoin, where miners earn more fee-based income when they produce bigger blocks, but also take more risk of their blocks being orphaned with bigger blocks. Additionally, miners want to avoid emptying the memory pool every block as that removes a total need for users to pay fees and ensure that the mempool does not become backlogged because users who do not see their transactions confirmed will get disappointed and find other means to do payments, which hurts the price and in effect hurts the miners' income.Overall, the discussion highlights the importance of miners in determining the block size limit in Bitcoin and how their behavior is influenced by economics.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T20:59:50.935589+00:00