Author: Ross Nicoll 2015-07-19 22:51:07
Published on: 2015-07-19T22:51:07+00:00
In a message to the bitcoin-dev mailing list, Ross Nicoll stated that he had realized that using contextual information (block height) for increasing block size complicates block validation. He noted that it would be impossible to tell if a block is too big without having all previous blocks first. Instead, he suggested that block time is a better option for this purpose. Earlier in the same thread, Jeff Garzik proposed a BIP that could serve as a minimum viable alternative plan to his preferred BIP 100. The proposed BIP seeks to increase block size conservatively and permits some added growth while the community gathers data on how an increased block size impacts privacy, security, centralization, transaction throughput, and other metrics. It suggests a hard fork to implement the change, which would require another hard fork down the road. Ross Nicoll also backed the proposal if no permanent solution was found. He expressed concerns about block size being too small for the network to search for an equilibrium between volume and pricing without risking becoming essentially unusable. He recommended switching over by block height rather than time, and suggested a six-month target with block 390k as the initial target.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T02:51:12.039781+00:00