at the moment the economics of value
is that mining a block(6.25btc) costs (at todays 186exa)
$229,883.12 - $ 541,292.21(per block of 6.25) depending on regional costs of electric
36,781.30 - 86606.75(ber btc)
if there were no more rewards, and completely reliant of fee's
just to maintain the cost of the same $230k-$540k difficulty to mine
each blocks fee total would need to expense this expense
if transactions were physically real data bytes of say 250bytes average
then we can assume a few things
cost of fee: $16 $8 $4 $2
blocksize: 3.6-8.5mb 7.2-16.9mb 14.4-33.8mb 28.8-67.6mb
so if you want to hope for a $2 max fee per transactions blocks need to be upto 68mb a block.
now why should people care about the cost of mining.
well if it only cost $10 to mine. the network can be attacked CHEAP where by malicious people would go back and edit old blocks and then catch up by spending $20 worth of costs to be faster then the network. causing lots of chain reorganisations and making pre-confirmed transactions unconfirm
so its important to make sure its not cheap to mess with the block data history
after all if it costs the networks say $230k to make a block, someone that wants to undo their just confirmed transaction to double spend
needs to work on that just confirmed block. to make a new same height block without the tx, and then because the network is already by this time 1 block ahead. the malicious guy has to then catch up. if it takes him 6 blocks to catch up he needs to afford $1.38m upfront to cover costs just to overtake and get his version set as the latest height and chain to follow to orphan off the 6 blocks that still contained his spend he doesnt want spent
now, adding in some considerations. if we deem value of $1.4m is 6 confirm safe. we can even calculate that down
using the $2/tx number.
value deemed 6 confirm safe: $1.4m $700k $350k
blocksize: 28.8-67.6mb 14.4-33.8mb 7.2-16.9mb
meaning if people want to stay at a 17mb block size limit in many decades. and think $2/tx is a good average fee
they have to adjust their thinking about how much of a spend is not worth unspending.
whereby people would wait
~ an hour(6blocks) for $350k value protection before its not worth the sender trying to unspend (block re-org)
~ 2hour(12blocks) for $700k value protection
~ 4hour(24blocks) for $1.4m value protection
if people wanted to stay at a lower blocksize with $2 fee
3.6-8.5mb: 1hour $175k value protection
so now you have all the variable considerations of how it can affect many things. decisions over the next few year/decades will need to be made.
lower the value protection of 6 confirms to keep blocksize from increasing 30x
increase the blocksize to prevent the fee $ cost from increasing ?x
assumptions can be made. like would people use any payment system that cost $2 per use (people hate paypals 20cent fee after all)
EG if your countries min wage was $8/hour. would you want to pay 2 hours of labour to use a payment system($16).. big no no