Author: Alphonse Pace 2017-03-28 17:23:31
Published on: 2017-03-28T17:23:31+00:00
Wang Chun has proposed a hard fork approach to remove the block size limit of 1MB, but not activate it until far in the future. The proposal is to remove the 1MB limit at the next block halving in spring 2020, only limit the block size to 32MiB which is the maximum size the current p2p protocol allows. This patch must be in the immediate next release of Bitcoin Core. With this patch in core's next release, Bitcoin works just as before, no fork will ever occur, until spring 2020. But everyone knows there will be a fork scheduled. The proposal was rejected by the coredevs after being presented last year in Hong Kong Consensus. However, it seems that lots of people haven't heard of it. Despite spam tx on the network, the block capacity is approaching its limit, and we must think ahead. Hard fork proposals, with this patch already in Core's release, become soft fork and there will be enough time to discuss all these proposals and decide which one to go. Removing the limit but relying on the p2p protocol is not really a true 32MiB limit, but a limit of whatever transport methods provide. 32MB in less than 3 years appears to be far beyond limits of safety which are known to exist far sooner. It also seems like it would be much better to wait until SegWit activates in order to truly measure the effects on the network from this increased capacity before committing to any additional increases. This has the possibility (and even likelihood) of removing many participants from the network, including many small miners.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T22:47:51.013096+00:00