Time to roll out bigger blocks
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Time to roll out bigger blocks
By Gavin Andresen
Posted May 4, 2015
Iβm going to submit a pull request to the 0.11 release of Bitcoin Core that will allow miners to create blocks bigger than one megabyte, starting a little less than a year from now.
I will be writing a series of blog posts, each addressing one argument against raising the maximum block size, or against scheduling a raise right now. These are the objections I plan on writing about; please send me an email (gavinandresen@gmail.com) if I am missing any arguments for why one megabyte is the best size for Bitcoin blocks over the next few years.
- βThere is no need to raise the maximum block size right now, the average block size is only about 400,000 bytes.β
- βThere is no need to raise the maximum block size because the Lightning Network / Sidechains / ChainDB / Treechains / Factom will solve the scaling problem.β
- βThe network will be more secure with one megabyte blocks, because there will be more competition among transactions, and, therefore, higher transaction fees for miners.β
- βMore transactions means more bandwidth and CPU and storage cost, and more cost means increased centralization because fewer people will be able to afford that cost.β
- βMore transactions makes it more difficult to keep Bitcoin activity private from oppressive governments.β
- βLarger-than-one-megabyte blocks have had insufficient testing and/or insufficient research into economic implications and/or insufficient security review of the risks versus benefits.β
- βAny change that requires a hard fork will open up Pandoraβs Box and destroy the confidence people have in the stability of Bitcoin; if the one megabyte maximum block size limit can be changed, why not the total number of bitcoins issued?β
- βI agree the max block limit must change, but why not do it THIS way instead?β
If I am being unfair in how I am stating any of the above objections, please let me know via email.