Quote from: Richy_T on January 18, 2016, 09:16:58 PM

In summary, averages are tricky when it comes to interpretation and divining meaning. Which is why I included the per-block indicator dots.

https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?timespan=30days&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

Avg seems to be at around 0.63 - 0.65mb right now.

This means the protocol can accommodate an increase of an extra 53-58% in txs (and that includes dust and spam txs like the ones we have now).

The real question is why miners aren't mining these transactions to get to the limit. Why are they issuing empty blocks, why don't they even care to change the 750kb parameter to 1mb etc etc. The obvious answer is because the fee incentives are too low, so why should they?

So, one could argue that while the free market partially works regarding miners and transaction mining (some miners don't care to mine everything), an increase in block size is in effect a valve-relief / bypass of the free market.

1.The protocol allows 1mb
2. Miners mine up to 0.65mb because some don't feel incentivized enough and want to mine empty or 750kb blocks - so due to the lack of fee incentives, the extra 53-58% capacity is unrealized
3. The solution would be a free market one (people pay more fees / miners start mining transactions until we reach 950-980kb on avg), instead some developers create a free market bypass-valve, increasing block size to 3x our current level of txs.

I wonder how much this rationale can "scale" if miners start rejecting more and more transactions for mining due to low tx fees. Can the solution be "ah yeah, fuck the 90% of the network that doesn't even mine, we'll simply raise the block size for the rest of the 10% of the miners who actually mines transactions"? I guess we'll find out.

On the other hand, if, say, Chinese miners have an extra incentive to mine large blocks because they have like 60-70% hashrates and the slow propagation to the rest of the world would put them into a superior position, they might even have an incentive to mine all kind of junk for free and then emit full blocks which get insta-verified through the Chinese "intranet" but make all other irrelevant because they are too slow to catch up. Thus you get a bloating incentive Roll Eyes

I've read a counterargument, like the one Hearn says, about China not wanting big blocks due to the great firewall etc - but most of them more or less signed up for classic, didn't they? So I guess if they are confident due to their supermajority and that intra-Chinese propagation will be a peace of cake, then why worry about block sizes? It's the rest of the world that would have to worry about them. And I'm not sure I even understand 5% of the depth of the problem in all its angles and dimensions.