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But wouldn't we always want block space to be at least a little bit of a bidding war? After all anything I add to the blockchain is stored permanently and massi

But wouldn't we always want block space to be at least a little bit of a bidding war? After all anything I add to the blockchain is stored permanently and massively georeplicated. Miners don't have to store the full chain, end users don't need to store the full chain, but somebody has to store it. Seems like those people, the people running full nodes, should have the final say on how big the blocks are and therefore what the throughput of the network is. I guess in reality, they do, since they decide which fork to run. Right?

ddtaylor 6y ago
> But wouldn't we always want block space to be at least a little bit of a bidding war Once we get to the point where everyone can do 10 TXs per day without a bidding war, then maybe. But also consider that we can currently store every single bit of communication in the 1980's on a chip about the size of my finger. History seems to tell us that what we think is a large amount of data becomes commonplace in a few decades. Probably another way to look at it is that people regularly open their mobile phone or browser and view a few minutes of video and transfer 300MB - 1GB of data to do so. During that same time the transactions of the entire world economy could have been transferred. Well they also decide what to put in the blocks they mine. Nobody forces anyone to put something in a block. And, yes, they also can decide which fork to run.
riprowan 6y ago
Block space is always a little bit of a bidding war, even with zero fees. That's because each additional byte added to a block increases the time it takes to propagate the block by just a little bit. When miners find a block, they race to get it published as quickly as possible to as many nodes as possible. If A finds a block, and stuffs it full of transactions; and shortly thereafter B finds a block, and includes no transactions, B might actually "win" the race because B can propagate his tiny block much faster than A. So each txn added incurs a tiny penalty just by virtue of adding to the payload. > they decide which fork to run In reality most hashpower is pooled and pools autoswitch between forks depending on which is more popular in the moment. So most people running miners are mining all forks.

ddtaylor 6y ago

> But wouldn't we always want block space to be at least a little bit of a bidding war Once we get to the point where everyone can do 10 TXs per day without a bidding war, then maybe. But also consider that we can currently store every single bit of communication in the 1980's on a chip about the size of my finger. History seems to tell us that what we think is a large amount of data becomes commonplace in a few decades. Probably another way to look at it is that people regularly open their mobile phone or browser and view a few minutes of video and transfer 300MB - 1GB of data to do so. During that same time the transactions of the entire world economy could have been transferred. Well they also decide what to put in the blocks they mine. Nobody forces anyone to put something in a block. And, yes, they also can decide which fork to run.

riprowan 6y ago

Block space is always a little bit of a bidding war, even with zero fees. That's because each additional byte added to a block increases the time it takes to propagate the block by just a little bit. When miners find a block, they race to get it published as quickly as possible to as many nodes as possible. If A finds a block, and stuffs it full of transactions; and shortly thereafter B finds a block, and includes no transactions, B might actually "win" the race because B can propagate his tiny block much faster than A. So each txn added incurs a tiny penalty just by virtue of adding to the payload. > they decide which fork to run In reality most hashpower is pooled and pools autoswitch between forks depending on which is more popular in the moment. So most people running miners are mining all forks.