On Sat, Aug 06, 2016 at 07:15:22AM -0700, Chris Priest via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> If the blocksize limit is to be changed to a block output limit, the
> number the limit is set to should be roughly the amount of outputs
> that are found in 1MB blocks today. This way, the change should be

The largest output on testnet is a bit under 1MB, and encodes a certain
well-known love song...

In many circumstances(1) miners have an incentive to create larger blocks that
take their competitors longer to receive and validate, so protocol-level block
limits need to take all these potential DoS vectors into account; serialized
size is one of the most fundemental things that needs to be limited.

> considered non-controversial. I think its silly that some people think
> its a good thing to keep usage restricted, but again, it is what it
> is.

As mentioned above, and explained in detail in my recent blog post(1),
restrictions are needed to keep a level playing field between all miners.

1) https://petertodd.org/2016/block-publication-incentives-for-miners

-- 
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org