Quote from: niko on March 12, 2013, 02:19:57 AM

Quote from: Mike Hearn on March 06, 2013, 09:44:20 AM

By default Bitcoin will not created blocks larger than 250kb even though it could do so without a hard fork. We have now reached this limit. Transactions are stacking up in the memory pool and not getting cleared fast enough.

What this means is, you need to take a decision and do one of these things:

Start your node with the -blockmaxsize flag set to something higher than 250kb, for example -blockmaxsize=1023000. This will mean you create larger blocks that confirm more transactions. You can also adjust the size of the area in your blocks that is reserved for free transactions with the -blockprioritysize flag.
Change your nodes code to de-prioritize or ignore transactions you don't care about, for example, Luke-Jr excludes SatoshiDice transactions which makes way for other users.
Do nothing.

If everyone does nothing, then people will start having to attach higher and higher fees to get into blocks until Bitcoin fees end up being uncompetitive with competing services like PayPal.

If you mine on a pool, ask your pool operator what their policy will be on this, and if you don't like it, switch to a different pool.

Ahem. How much thought and work has gone into offering the first option in this list?

Don't blame this option, blame the lack of testing all Bitcoin versions have gone through. If a chain-splitting bug was present since 2009, and only resolved "by accident", you can hardly blame the advice banking on there being no such bug.