By the way, I'm seeing rising interest of a flex cap which only raises the block size when fee collected in each block is higher than block reward
interesting idea. but to up the 1MB limit, we need fees at ~0.0125BTC ( ~2.5$ ) if you assume 2000tx (~1MB worth) per block.
that a pretty high fee! so much for "virtual free transactions."
and at that point a shit load of TX wouldnt happen on the network, this method would very quickly make bitcoin no able to handle micropayments.
maybe if fee where >1BTC the limit would be pushed up would be more reasonable.
Ok then maybe 0.1 block reward is better. Block reward will cut by half next year, so eventually fee will rise pass block reward, it is just a matter of time.
Another concern: Block reward halving every 4 years is very drastic. When the block reward get enough small, more and more miners will be shut down, since it does not give miners enough incentive to mine when majority of coins were mined. Since early days of mining, many miners were incentivized to acquire a big enough pie of the total coin supply. But after mining reward cut by half several times, this incentive will not hold, so it is important to have decent fee income to keep the miners on board. I guess at 6.25 btc block reward the fee could be getting close to block reward
its not so much the amount of BTC the block reward has that is the incentive to mine as it is the $ value that BTC amount represents. so we'd need to see price double every 4 years to keep miners happy i guess. sounds resnable.
for miners to get the most out of the fee's, they should try and target a fee where 80% of current transactions would be willing to pay. you dont want fee's to high, and you don't want them too low, a fee where 80% of poeple agree with ensures the "price is right". so take the avg TX size ( i guess this would be like 0.1BTC??? ) assume 80% of people are willing to pay no more than 1%, and you get a fee of 0.001BTC ~23cents.
sounds about right.
full 1MB blocks would give them 2BTC
full 8MB blocks would give them 16BTC
conclusion,
the flex cap should only raise the block size when fee collected in each block is higher than :
(avg_TX_size_BTC * 0.01 * num_max_tx_pre_block)BTC