Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Capacity increases for the Bitcoin system.

From: Gregory Maxwell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 9 Dec 2015 00:23:27 +0000

On Tue, Dec 8, 2015 at 11:48 PM, Jonathan Toomim <[email-masked]> wrote:
> I understood that SegWit would allow about 1.75 MB of data in the average
> case while also allowing up to 4 MB of data in the worst case. This means
> that the mining and block distribution network would need a larger safety
> factor to deal with worst-case situations, right? If you want to make sure

By contrast it does not reduce the safety factor for the UTXO set at
all; which most hold as a much greater concern in general; and that
isn't something you can say for a block size increase.

With respect to witness safety factor; it's only needed in the case of
strategic or malicious behavior by miners-- both concerns which
several people promoting large block size increases have not only
disregarded but portrayed as unrealistic fear-mongering. Are you
concerned about it?  In any case-- the other improvements described in
my post give me reason to believe that risks created by that
possibility will be addressable.