Look into increase max block size

With all the problems that are happening in bitcoin at the moment one cannot help but wonder if peercoin will one day face the same problem. Sure at the moment the blocks are only a few KB but if exponential growth happens in the coming years (which history suggests it will, take note of bitcoin transaction volume of 2012/2013) peercoin will not be able to cope and this will leave a very bad impression on users. I would suggest the community consider lifting the maximum block size to at least 5MB, what do you think about this? Is this something that should be taken care of now or left till later until it becomes a problem therefore crippling peercoin as a whole?

[quote=“mably, post:5, topic:3535”][quote=“pillow, post:4, topic:3535”][quote=“Nagalim, post:3, topic:3535”]We are still down near 1KB blocks. Ppc has a minimum fee, so we are unlikely to have the problems btc is having.
If we max the block size and put out something like 10 tx/s, literally all ppc will be eaten by fees in approx 7 years. This is not a flaw, it is a feature.[/quote]

I never did the math. Very interesting! It certainly ties into the discussion we’re having over here https://www.peercointalk.org/index.php?topic=4142.msg39564#msg39564 about the “backbone argument”.[/quote]

[tt]365 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 10 * 0.01 = 3,153,600 PPC[/tt]

More than 3 millions PPC would be burnt each year at such a tx rate, amazing![/quote]

There ya go, there’s your awesome answer. We are not bitcoin :slight_smile:

Thats assuming the 0.01PPC fee per KB is kept, in the future if peercoin hits $100+ that fee will probably have to be lowered to allow day to day use. If the fee is lowered much less ppc will be burnt and higher size blocks will result. Also the effect of technologies that might be built on top of peercoin should also be taken into account, things like a counterparty implementation for peercoin and peermessage could further contribute to blockchain bloat. If you look at bitcoins blockchain there was more growth between september 2012 - september 2013 than there was in 2009, 2010 and 2011 combined. My point is that if growth is going to happen it will most likely be exponential hence it would make sense to prepare measures beforehand. Better to have something and not need it rather then need something and not have it. Just my opinion. :slight_smile:

Thats assuming the 0.01PPC fee per KB is kept, in the future if peercoin hits $100+ that fee will probably have to be lowered to allow day to day use. If the fee is lowered much less ppc will be burnt and higher size blocks will result. Also the effect of technologies that might be built on top of peercoin should also be taken into account, things like a counterparty implementation for peercoin and peermessage could further contribute to blockchain bloat. If you look at bitcoins blockchain there was more growth between september 2012 - september 2013 than there was in 2009, 2010 and 2011 combined. My point is that if growth is going to happen it will most likely be exponential hence it would make sense to prepare measures beforehand. Better to have something and not need it rather then need something and not have it. Just my opinion. :)[/quote]

If the Peercoin fee is ever lowered to a Bitcoin equivalent level some day, I guess we’ll copy what would have been done and tested by the Bitcoin community for the block size.

I feel like such fee lowering won’t happen anytime soon though.

As I understand it, Sunny expects the fee to remain in place to prevent bloat and that off-chain networks will mainly be used for day to day microtransactions. The Peercoin blockchain itself would be used mainly as a settlement network and as a way to securely store your money. The blockchain is not designed to be a microtransaction platform as Bitcoin is trying to be. It works best as a settlement network and a store of value as Peercoin is trying to be. The majority of transactions should be handled off-chain. This is only my opinion though.

Agree! Look at the 30GB stupid BTC blockchain, I will never run a complete BTC node.

Interesting there seems to be general disagreement on this, having a small blockchain is good and all but it should be noted that the blockchain will only bloat if people start to max out blocks which is unlikely. Even if block size is lifted blocks in the near future will only be a few KB, increasing the block size now would be easier then later as can be seen with bitcoin right now which is pretty much owned by chinese miners at the moment. If bitcoin had increased its max block size back in 2010/2011 it would not be having this problem right now.

[ul]Due to Peercoin’s design, I expect the block size never to become a problem.
Peercoin is just not made for handling big amounts of transactions. There’s a (strong) incentive not to transfer PPC due to the required fee.

If the PPC price level would ever become so high that the current fee of 0.01 PPC/kB seems unreasonably high, a variable tx fee might help:

[quote=“masterOfDisaster, post:20, topic:1103”][…]
If you were in a PPC world with a variable transaction fee you could save transaction fees by waiting for a period with smaller transaction fees if the current ones were to high for your taste.
One drawback might be: the variable transaction fees can stay high or even rise if lots of transactions need to be done and are postponed until they can’t be postponed any longer; eventually they might begin to swamp the network despite the high fees.
But thinking twice this is quite similar to paying high fees for BTC transactions if you are in a hurry:
the miners (I imply the majority being PoS miners) that work (energy efficiently) on the transaction do not only get a PoS reward, but by destroying the (relatively) high fees, their share of issued PPC rises. It’s quite similar to earning high fees for processing urgent BTC transactions.

That would kind of resemble BTC’s dependency between the point of time you think about executing a transaction and the point of time you want to have it done:
BTC: individually eligible transaction fees incentivize miners to include the transaction to the next block. You pay extra if you are in a hurry.
PPC: variable and determined by the network transaction fees incentivize people to execute a transaction in a time with low fees (caused by low transaction rates). Once again, you (might) pay extra if you are in a hurry.[/li][/ul]

[…][/quote]