Re: Why the fuck did Satoshi implement the 1 MB blocksize limit?
I just fell on this gem by Satoshi. It makes me think that Satoshi didn't fully understand his own system.
http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/bitcointalk/188/
"I anticipate there will never be more than 100K nodes, probably less."
Unless Satoshi has a sense of humour and of understatement, and given that he previously wrote:
http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/2/#selection-67.0-75.14
"Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe
for users to use Simplified Payment Verification (section
to check for
double spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or
about 12KB per day. Only people trying to create new coins would need to run
network nodes."
he's anticipating there would be less than 100K mining nodes.
Let us think through what that would mean if there were 100K nodes, each having, in the best of cases, exactly the same hash rate. Given that there will be generated 52000 blocks per year, it means that each node will on average win one block every two years.
Now let us see what that would mean. Given that finding a block is a Poisson process, the probability of not finding a single block in time T will be:
P(T) = exp(-T/(2 years).
It means that the probability that you have been mining for 4 years is 13% ; it means that the probability that you have been mining for 6 years and not one single block, is 5%.
Who could support the costs of mining without revenue over such periods ? Most probably your hardware is obsolete before you had anything!
Can you imagine having started mining in 2013, and still not have a single block ? Not one cent of revenue ?
In reality of course, not all miners will be equal, which makes it even much, much worse for the smaller ones. In reality, one could at most expect a few hundred solo miners. We observed that the market decided upon 10 or something.
http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/posts/bitcointalk/188/
"I anticipate there will never be more than 100K nodes, probably less."
Unless Satoshi has a sense of humour and of understatement, and given that he previously wrote:
http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/emails/cryptography/2/#selection-67.0-75.14
"Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe
for users to use Simplified Payment Verification (section
to check fordouble spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or
about 12KB per day. Only people trying to create new coins would need to run
network nodes."
he's anticipating there would be less than 100K mining nodes.
Let us think through what that would mean if there were 100K nodes, each having, in the best of cases, exactly the same hash rate. Given that there will be generated 52000 blocks per year, it means that each node will on average win one block every two years.
Now let us see what that would mean. Given that finding a block is a Poisson process, the probability of not finding a single block in time T will be:
P(T) = exp(-T/(2 years).
It means that the probability that you have been mining for 4 years is 13% ; it means that the probability that you have been mining for 6 years and not one single block, is 5%.
Who could support the costs of mining without revenue over such periods ? Most probably your hardware is obsolete before you had anything!
Can you imagine having started mining in 2013, and still not have a single block ? Not one cent of revenue ?
In reality of course, not all miners will be equal, which makes it even much, much worse for the smaller ones. In reality, one could at most expect a few hundred solo miners. We observed that the market decided upon 10 or something.