<oembed><type>rich</type><version>1.0</version><author_name>npub1lupuse8cysuanxcpq8h4d32359xxzedzjj83rmwv4yr9qxfmhtzqghjqch</author_name><author_url>https://nostr.ae/npub1lupuse8cysuanxcpq8h4d32359xxzedzjj83rmwv4yr9qxfmhtzqghjqch</author_url><provider_name>njump</provider_name><provider_url>https://nostr.ae</provider_url><html>📅 Original date posted:2016-12-11&#xA;📝 Original message:On Sun, Dec 11, 2016 at 12:11 PM, s7r &lt;s7r at sky-ip.org&gt; wrote:&#xA;&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; This is an incentive, if few miners agree to create a large conglomerate&#xA;&gt; that will ultimately control the network.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; You miss something obvious that makes this attack actually free of cost.&#xA;&gt; Nothing will &#34;cost them more in transaction fees&#34;. A miner can create&#xA;&gt; thousands of transactions paying to himself, and not broadcast them to&#xA;&gt; the network, but hold them and include them in the blocks he mines. The&#xA;&gt; fees are collected by him because transactions are included in a block&#xA;&gt; that he mined and the left amount is in another wallet of the same&#xA;&gt; person. Repeat this continuously to fill blocks.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;No, that wasn&#39;t overlooked. Miners could indeed stuff their own blocks for&#xA;free, but they can&#39;t stuff blocks mined by others for free.&#xA;&#xA;In the hypothetical scenario where there is a single mining pool which&#xA;mines most (if not all) of the blocks, we would have much larger problems&#xA;than their ability to raise the max block size gradually. Even if they were&#xA;able to fill 100% of the blocks for an entire year, the max block size for&#xA;that 2016 block period would be 7.25MB (not accounting for SegWit). After&#xA;the whole year they would have made no extra profit vs doing nothing. And&#xA;as soon as they stopped this scheme, block size would spring back to it&#39;s&#xA;natural level.&#xA;&#xA;The good news is, this scenario has never happened and even when we&#39;ve come&#xA;remotely close (when ASICs first shipped), the situation was temporary. The&#xA;odds of this happening in the future and persisting long enough to have any&#xA;major effect with Block75 are very close to zero.&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; Topology and bandwidth speed / hash rate of the network cannot be&#xA;&gt; controlled - if we make assumptions about these it might have terrible&#xA;&gt; consequences.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; Even if we take in consideration that bandwidth will only grow and disk&#xA;&gt; space will only cost less (which is not something we can safely assume,&#xA;&gt; by the way) the hard limit max. block size cannot grow to unlimited&#xA;&gt; value (even if the growth happens over time). There is also a validation&#xA;&gt; cost in time for each block, for the health of the network any node&#xA;&gt; should be able to download _and_ validate a block, before next block&#xA;&gt; gets mined.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&gt; You said in another post that a permanent solution is preferred, rather&#xA;&gt; than kicking the can down the road. I fully agree, as well as many&#xA;&gt; others reading this list, but the permanent solution doesn&#39;t necessarily&#xA;&gt; have to be increasing the max block size dynamically.&#xA;&gt;&#xA;&#xA;Increasing *and* decreasing max block size dynamically. Block75 is&#xA;self-correcting, whereas any solution with hardcoded limits can&#39;t correct&#xA;without human intervention and would rely on our ability to predict the&#xA;future (which as you pointed out, we can&#39;t do). Therefore, any solution&#xA;that&#39;s not dynamic cannot be permanent.&#xA;&#xA;Additionally, the frequent and gradual changes in max block size would&#xA;allow us to see any consequences well in advance (years probably).&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;&gt; If you think about it the other way around, dynamically growing the max&#xA;&gt; block size is also kicking the can down the road ... just without having&#xA;&gt; to touch it and get dust on the boot ;)&#xA;&#xA;&#xA;Not having to touch it again = permanent solution. ;)&#xA;&#xA;It would be helpful if some others would run the numbers on how Block75&#xA;would adjust the block size over time:&#xA;&#xA;new max block size = 1000kb + (average block size over last 2016 blocks -&#xA;750kb)&#xA;&#xA;-t.k.&#xA;-------------- next part --------------&#xA;An HTML attachment was scrubbed...&#xA;URL: &lt;http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20161211/cb598cfa/attachment.html&gt;</html></oembed>