Author: Tom Harding 2015-06-30 22:56:04
Published on: 2015-06-30T22:56:04+00:00
In an email dated June 30, 2015, Adam Back discussed the interests and incentives of miners in relation to a plan to increase block size limits. He noted that miners play an important part in the ecosystem and while it's true they could collectively keep blocks smaller, someone can break ranks and take any fee regardless of how small if there is a huge excess of space relative to current demand, driving fees to zero for a few years. He also mentioned that wallet defaults are a significant factor in preserving fees. In late 2012, nobody had ever violated the soft limit of 500KB/block, and fees were right where they are today. The rising economic value of the block reward since then covers the effect of the halving. There is far less reason today to worry on miners' behalf about fees than there was in 2012.Back said he was not sure if anyone has a clear picture of what limits are imposed by hash-rate even today. From the all-blocksizes plot, it's clear visually that the 750K soft limit, and another less common soft limit at 900K, are being imposed but broken more and more frequently as demand outpaces them. These soft limits serve no purpose other than to delay transactions. A 750KB block is followed by another 750KB or larger block just as frequently as you would expect from the actual block time distribution, which recently had a rate of a full 1MB block being needed every 104 minutes.
Updated on: 2023-06-10T01:49:53.217357+00:00