A Formulation of the Trilemma in Proof of Work Blockchain

Re:A Formulation of the Trilemma in Proof of Work Blockchain by ProllyInfamous on Tuesday July 23, 2024 @01:59AM (#41042952)

Background: I was around for August 2017 hard-fork, running one of (then) ~2000 worldwide verification nodes (i.e. not mining, rule-setting): I can assure you the lack of offchain usage was predictable.

For the diehard technologists, it's interesting to note that Satoshi's original whitepaper called for a much larger blocksize (32MB, verse 1MB pre-SegWit/Lightning); myself, I ran BitcoinUnlimited with 16MB block acceptance well into 2018 (I'm anti anti anti SegWit/Lightning).

For some reason, years of BIPs have claimed that "1MB is necessary due to bandwidth limitations..." which even in 2017 was horseshit... but now it's 2024 and I can get 300mbps fiber for $57.99/month (with a ping <3ms).

HODL.

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Re:A Formulation of the Trilemma in Proof of Work Blockchain by api on Tuesday July 23, 2024 @10:32AM (#41046374)

My understanding is that miners wanted small blocks and have hobbled the protocol for them.

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Re:A Formulation of the Trilemma in Proof of Work Blockchain by ProllyInfamous on Wednesday July 24, 2024 @07:04PM (#41063137)

I'm not sure what caused your belief, but:

Miners are (and always have been) allowed to mine blocks containing zero transactions (i.e. ~0kB, not including necessities). It's us nodes that choose to reject/accept (of course there is Venn overlap).

This was common until block congestion actually started encouraging senders to include transaction fees; these [still!-]voluntarily fees represent a healthy addition to the blockreward, so most miners incur the minimal overhead for much-greater profit.

Yet zero-transaction blocks continue to be mined (albeit less-frequently).

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