But don't you see the same trade-off in the end there? You're still propagating the same amount of data over the same amount of time, so unless I misunderstand, the costs of such a move should be approximately the same, just in different areas. The risks as I understand are as follows:

20MB:

  1. Longer per-block propagation (eventually)
  2. Longer processing time (eventually)
  3. Longer sync time
1 Minute:
  1. Weaker individual confirmations (approx. equal per confirmation*time)
  2. Higher orphan rate (immediately)
  3. Longer sync time
That risk-set makes me want a middle-ground approach. Something where the immediate consequences aren't all that strong, and where we have some idea of what to do in the future. Is there any chance we can get decent network simulations at various configurations (5MB/4min, etc)? Perhaps re-appropriate the testnet?

On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 10:30 PM, Thy Shizzle <thyshizzle@outlook.com> wrote:
Nah don't make blocks 20mb, then you are slowing down block propagation and blowing out conf tikes as a result. Just decrease the time it takes to make a 1mb block, then you still see the same propagation times today and just increase the transaction throughput.
From: Jim Phillips
Sent: ‎26/‎05/‎2015 12:27 PM
To: Mike Hearn
Cc: Bitcoin Dev
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] No Bitcoin For You


On Mon, May 25, 2015 at 1:36 PM, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net> wrote:

This meme about datacenter-sized nodes has to die. The Bitcoin wiki is down right now, but I showed years ago that you could keep up with VISA on a single well specced server with today's technology. Only people living in a dreamworld think that Bitcoin might actually have to match that level of transaction demand with today's hardware. As noted previously, "too many users" is simply not a problem Bitcoin has .... and may never have!


... And will certainly NEVER have if we can't solve the capacity problem SOON. 

In a former life, I was a capacity planner for Bank of America's mid-range server group. We had one hard and fast rule. When you are typically exceeding 75% of capacity on a given metric, it's time to expand capacity. Period. You don't do silly things like adjusting the business model to disincentivize use. Unless there's some flaw in the system and it's leaking resources, if usage has increased to the point where you are at or near the limits of capacity, you expand capacity. It's as simple as that, and I've found that same rule fits quite well in a number of systems. 

In Bitcoin, we're not leaking resources. There's no flaw. The system is performing as intended. Usage is increasing because it works so well, and there is huge potential for future growth as we identify more uses and attract more users. There might be a few technical things we can do to reduce consumption, but the metric we're concerned with right now is how many transactions we can fit in a block. We've broken through the 75% marker and are regularly bumping up against the 100% limit.

It is time to stop debating this and take action to expand capacity. The only questions that should remain are how much capacity do we add, and how soon can we do it. Given that most existing computer systems and networks can easily handle 20MB blocks every 10 minutes, and given that that will increase capacity 20-fold, I can't think of a single reason why we can't go to 20MB as soon as humanly possible. And in a few years, when the average block size is over 15MB, we bump it up again to as high as we can go then without pushing typical computers or networks beyond their capacity. We can worry about ways to slow down growth without affecting the usefulness of Bitcoin as we get closer to the hard technical limits on our capacity.

And you know what else? If miners need higher fees to accommodate the costs of bigger blocks, they can configure their nodes to only mine transactions with higher fees.. Let the miners decide how to charge enough to pay for their costs. We don't need to cripple the network just for them.

--
James G. Phillips IV  
"Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals." -- David Ogilvy

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