On Thu, May 28, 2015 at 1:05 PM, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net> wrote:

Isn't that a step backwards, then? I see no reason for fee pressure to exist at the moment. All it's doing is turning away users for no purpose: mining isn't supported by fees, and the tiny fees we use right now seem to be good enough to stop penny flooding.

Why not set the max size to be 20x the average size? Why 2x, given you just pointed out that'd result in blocks shrinking rather than growing.

Twenty is scary.

And two is a very neutral number: if 50% of hashpower want the max size to grow as fast as possible and 50% are dead-set opposed to any increase in max size, then half produce blocks 2 times as big, half produce empty blocks, and the max size doesn't change. If it was 20, then a small minority of miners could force a max size increase. (if it is less than 2, then a minority of minors can force the block size down)

As for whether there "should" be fee pressure now or not: I have no opinion, besides "we should make block propagation faster so there is no technical reason for miners to produce tiny blocks." I don't think us developers should be deciding things like whether or not fees are too high, too low, .....

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Gavin Andresen