I understand the block limit is an anti spam measure,
but why can't miners just form their own consensus of
how big a block is acceptable? If more than 51% of the
mining power agrees a block is too big, they will ignore
it and build a longer chain.
but why can't miners just form their own consensus of
how big a block is acceptable? If more than 51% of the
mining power agrees a block is too big, they will ignore
it and build a longer chain.
Ask Mike Hearn why he thinks checkpoints might be necessary, just in case this happens.
I fail to see what Mike Hearn or checkpoints has to do with this conversation. Please stay on topic.
@ Peter R,
thanks for the comments. Yes the longest chain "will" decide. The hardcoding of a blocksize
is part of consensus just as they are running the same codebase overall. I question the wisdom
of making that part of the code at all. However, it seems that having no limit could be problematic,
and as Panther pointed out, miners do want some predictability, which is why I'm liking Bip100 more.
Do you know if Jeff Garzik ever considered making it a 51% vote?