[bitcoin-dev] Adjusted difficulty depending on relative blocksize

["Jakob Rönnbäck" <jakob.ronnback@me.com>]

Greetings,

a thought occurred to me that I would love to hear what some bitcoin experts think about.

What if one were to adjust the difficulty (for individual blocks) depending on the relative size to the average block size of the previous difficulty period? (I apologize if i’m not using the correct terms, I’m not a real programmer, and I’ve only recently started to subscribe to the mailing list)


In practice:

1. calculate average block size for the previous difficulty period (is it 2016-blocks?)
2. when trying to find a new block adjust the difficulty by adding the relative size difference. For instance, if i’m trying to create a block half (or double) the size of the average block size for the previous difficulty period then my difficulty will be 2x the normal one… if I’m trying to make one that is 30% bigger (or smaller) then the difficulty is 1.3 times the normal one


Right now this would force miners to make blocks as close to 1mb as possible (since the block reward >> fees). But unless I’m mistaken sometime in the future the block size should be adjusted to maximize the fees…


Could the concept be useful somehow?

I apologize if it’s been discussed before or if it’s a stupid idea, I would have run it by some other people, but I’m afraid I don’t know anyone that have any interest in bitcoin.

Regards
/jakob