What is the effect of changing the bitcoin MAX_BLOCK_SIZE
?
To support this new block size, the following constraints must be viable for all full nodes:
Constraint | Condition | Value | Units | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Bandwidth | must be at least |
|
Mbps
A megabit is 1000 × 1000 bits.
|
||||
Data Cap | must be at least |
?
1 MB block ×
(1 ÷
600) blocks per second ×
60 × 60 × 24 × 365 seconds per year
÷ 12 months per year
÷ 1024 megabytes per gigabyte ×
8 peers
=
? GB per month
=1*(1/600)*(60*60*24*365)/12/1024*8 |
GB
per
A gigabyte is 1024 × 1024 × 1024 bytes.
month
The duration of a month is calculated as 365 days ÷ 12 months.
|
||||
Supplied Disk Capacity | must be at least |
?
1 MB block ×
(1 ÷
600) blocks per second ×
60 × 60 × 24 × 365 seconds per year
÷ 1024 megabytes per gigabyte
=
? GB per year
=1*(1/600)*(60*60*24*365)/1024 |
GB per
year
A year is 365 days.
|
||||
Transaction processing | must be at least |
?
1 MB block ×
1024 × 1024 bytes per megabyte ×
(1 ÷
600) blocks per second ÷
226 bytes per tx ×
4 hops
=
? tx per second
=1*1024*1024*(1/600)/226*4 This assumes the smallest transaction size, since it results in the highest (worst-case) tx/s. However, the computation to process a transaction varies non-linearly, so even if you can process ? simple transactions per second, you may not be able to process one large complex ? MB transaction quickly enough. |
transactions per second |
How does this affect the ability of the bitcoin network to achieve the requirements?
A full node operator must be able to meet the following ongoing costs whilst still remaining incentivized:
Constraint | Price | Info | Annual Cost | % Cost |
---|---|---|---|---|
Bandwidth |
|
+
Costs are proportional because this tool evaluates 'the cost of bitcoin' not 'the bill you get'.
|
$? |
|
Supplied Disk Capacity |
TB drive for $ |
$? |
||
Transaction Processing |
$ lifetime cost for computer to process tx/s |
+ |
$? |
|
Labor |
hours per year at a rate of $ per hour |
+
Including research, setup, maintenance, etc
|
$? |
|
Initial Block Download |
If block size changed today, it would consume ? GB and take ? hours to download the blockchain from scratch on |
|||
TOTAL: $?
per year |
This is an extremely complex topic with subtlety and nuance.
Without a full understanding of these complexities, there may be risk to changing the bitcoin max block size.
This project is on github - https://github.com/iancoleman/blocksize_calculator