Author: Greg Sanders 2017-01-27 20:47:20
Published on: 2017-01-27T20:47:20+00:00
The research paper in question defines the metric of effective throughput in the overlay network as which blocks propagate within an average block interval period the percentage of nodes to. Based on this metric, the maximum value for the block size that the Bitcoin network can safely handle is conservatively no more than 4MB. However, it is important to note that this conclusion only takes into consideration a subset of possible metrics due to the difficulty in accurately measuring others. As such, this conclusion may be viewed as an upper bound and additional metrics could reveal even stricter limits. The paper does not discuss any mining centralization pressure or DoS attacks and these factors are merely some among many that need to be taken into account when considering the safe block size limit for the Bitcoin network. In response to a statement that other researchers have concluded that the network could handle 4MB blocks today, Russell O'Connor points out that this conclusion is a mischaracterization of the research conclusions. The true safe value for the block size limit is the minimum of all aspects studied, and the 4MB limit only takes into consideration one aspect of the effect of block size on the network at a time. For example, the 4MB limit does not cover the aspect of quadratic hashing for large transactions in large blocks.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T21:16:21.978715+00:00