Author: Michael Gronager 2013-11-07 14:11:39
Published on: 2013-11-07T14:11:39+00:00
A recent mining sybil trick has prompted a re-reading of an article on block propagation by Decker et al. The article was used to estimate transaction fee size and optimal block size, as the propagation of a block is roughly proportional to its size and the slower a block propagates, the higher the risk of a fork. The minimal transaction fee and optimal block size are dictated by this balance between the risk of a fork and the opportunity for including more transactions and hence also obtaining those fees. Equations were created to calculate expected earnings, which led to the conclusion that the current transaction fee is too small and that there is no need to keep a maximum block size, as the fork probability will automatically provide an incentive to not let block grows into infinity. Furthermore, it was suggested that two ways forward would be to raise the minimum fee or make transactions smaller.
Updated on: 2023-06-07T19:54:45.207043+00:00