Author: Peter R 2016-11-26 23:35:49
Published on: 2016-11-26T23:35:49+00:00
The conversation between Sergio and Tom discusses how miners setting their block size limits (BSL) above or below the "effective BSL" can disadvantage them. The "effective BSL" is defined as the largest block size that no less than half the hash power will accept. If a block is smaller than the "effective BSL," all hash power with BSLs between BSL_min and Q will be forked from the longest chain, wasting the miners' hash power. On the other hand, if a block is mined with a size Q that is greater than the effective BSL, all hash power with BSLs between Q and BSL_max will temporarily be on a "destined to be orphaned" chain, again wasting these miners' hash power. Therefore, it is in the best interest of miners to all set the same block size limit and signal it reliably in their coinbase TX, which Bitcoin Unlimited (BU) miners do. Empirical evidence supports this behavior, as no major miner has ever set their block size limit less than 1 MB, even those who think it's too big like Luke-Jr. After switching to BU, ViaBTC and Bitcoin.com pool temporarily set their BSLs to 2 MB and 16 MB, respectively, but quickly reduced them back to 1 MB when they realized the potential for losing money in an attack scenario.The article's follow-up is about how BU's "node-scale" behavior facilitates the emergence of a fluid and organic block size limit at the network scale.
Updated on: 2023-06-11T20:40:43.570897+00:00