One could argue that the Shannon Entropy in a new block will not in general be proportional to the size of the block, but that doesn't make any sense to me
I fear there's a misunderstanding here. The key point is the relation between the number of transactions and the size of the block (or the associated Shannon Entropy). With mechanisms like IBLT, the quantity of information transmitted on the wire (Shannon Entropy) is constant, whatever the number of transactions in the block.
EDIT: Do you plan to participate in
this event ?
Unfortunately, "kicking the can" is a common pejorative term which can be thrown like mud at any interim solution.
Well, my intention was not to offend anyone with this term. Actually, I felt safe to write it because it was used by Gavin to describe its first proposal (as an interim solution).
I agree with you that there's nothing bad with a temporary solution... as long as the target solution is known beforehand.
And that's one of my problems with the current proposals. For now, there's no target solution which has been proposed and agreed by "everyone".
i agree with this view. the relay network is cutting corners and making risky shortcuts in relaying w/o essentially verifying. it only recently added a node in Beijing within the GFC. i wonder though if it's origins were a means of compensating for the top 5 largest miners being in China?
again, one of my reasons for wanting to increase blocksize is to increase competition in mining outside of China to those who have greater bandwidth. this would help level the playing field.
Imho, it's good that the relay network doesn't verify transactions. These verifications must be done by miners and this is an important part of their job in the decentralized network. Verifications done by the relay network would be a very bad incentive for miners, leading us to a very centralized system.