Author: James Hilliard 2017-05-09 14:33:34
Published on: 2017-05-09T14:33:34+00:00
The SegWit softfork discount is aimed at reducing UTXO bloat and minimizing witness spam. The discount brings transaction fees in line with actual network costs, and a miner's 4MB witness block would have little impact on the UTXO size compared to a 1MB non-witness block. Since full nodes can't prune the UTXO set, UTXO size is a bigger issue than blockchain size.The current 75% discount doesn't affect future hard forks, as it could be adjusted later on if necessary as part of a hard fork. According to Sergio Demian Lerner, the current 75% discount only makes worst-case block sizes worse, increasing them to 4MB when they should be 2.7MB. He suggests that using a 50% witness discount would be better, as it would make scaling less risky by keeping the worst-case block size at 5.4MB instead of 8MB.Lerner processed 1000 blocks starting from Block #461653 and computed several metrics, including the supposed size of witness and non-witness data. He found that the 75% discount is not the best option to prevent witness spam in a 4MB block. Instead, a 50% witness discount would be more appropriate, as the non-witness data weight factor should be 2.35 instead of 4.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T00:42:02.411624+00:00