Why do we need a MAX_BLOCK_SIZE at all?

Why do we need a MAX_BLOCK_SIZE at all?
2015-06-01 19:02 ` Stephen Morse
  
From: Jim Phillips @ 2015-06-01 18:32 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bitcoin Dev

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Ok, I understand at least some of the reason that blocks have to be kept to
a certain size. I get that blocks which are too big will be hard to
propagate by relays. Miners will have more trouble uploading the large
blocks to the network once they've found a hash. We need block size
constraints to create a fee economy for the miners.

But these all sound to me like issues that affect some, but not others. So
it seems to me like it ought to be a configurable setting. We've already
witnessed with last week's stress test that most miners aren't even
creating 1MB blocks but are still using the software defaults of 730k. If
there are configurable limits, why does there have to be a hard limit?
Can't miners just use the configurable limit to decide what size blocks
they can afford to and are thus willing to create? They could just as
easily use that to create a fee economy. If the miners with the most
hashpower are not willing to mine blocks larger than 1 or 2 megs, then they
are able to slow down confirmations of transactions. It may take several
blocks before a miner willing to include a particular transaction finds a
block. This would actually force miners to compete with each other and find
a block size naturally instead of having it forced on them by the protocol.
Relays would be able to participate in that process by restricting the
miners ability to propagate large blocks. You know, like what happens in a
FREE MARKET economy, without burdensome regulation which can be manipulated
through politics? Isn't that what's really happening right now? Different
political factions with different agendas are fighting over how best to
regulate the Bitcoin protocol.

I know the limit was originally put in place to prevent spamming. But that
was when we were mining with CPUs and just beginning to see the occasional
GPU which could take control over the network and maliciously spam large
blocks. But with ASIC mining now catching up to Moore's Law, that's not
really an issue anymore. No one malicious entity can really just take over
the network now without spending more money than it's worth -- and that's
just going to get truer with time as hashpower continues to grow. And it's
not like the hard limit really does anything anymore to prevent spamming.
If a spammer wants to create thousands or millions of transactions, a hard
limit on the block size isn't going to stop him.. He'll just fill up the
mempool or UTXO database instead of someone's block database.. And block
storage media is generally the cheapest storage.. I mean they could be
written to tape and be just as valid as if they're stored in DRAM. Combine
that with pruning, and block storage costs are almost a non-issue for
anyone who isn't running an archival node.

And can't relay nodes just configure a limit on the size of blocks they
will relay? Sure they'd still need to download a big block occasionally,
but that's not really that big a deal, and they're under no obligation to
propagate it.. Even if it's a 2GB block, it'll get downloaded eventually.
It's only if it gets to the point where the average home connection is too
slow to keep up with the transaction & block flow that there's any real
issue there, and that would happen regardless of how big the blocks are. I
personally would much prefer to see hardware limits act as the bottleneck
than to introduce an artificial bottleneck into the protocol that has to be
adjusted regularly. The software and protocol are TECHNICALLY capable of
scaling to handle the world's entire transaction set. The real issue with
scaling to this size is limitations on hardware, which are regulated by
Moore's Law. Why do we need arbitrary soft limits? Why can't we allow
Bitcoin to grow naturally within the ever increasing limits of our
hardware? Is it because nobody will ever need more than 640k of RAM?

Am I missing something here? Is there some big reason that I'm overlooking
why there has to be some hard-coded limit on the block size that affects
the entire network and creates ongoing issues in the future?

--

*James G. Phillips IV*
<https://plus.google.com/u/0/113107039501292625391/posts>

*"Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals."
-- David Ogilvy*

 *This message was created with 100% recycled electrons. Please think twice
before printing.*

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2015-06-01 18:32 [Bitcoin-development] Why do we need a MAX_BLOCK_SIZE at all? Jim Phillips

  2015-06-01 20:02   ` Jim Phillips
  
From: Stephen Morse @ 2015-06-01 19:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Jim Phillips;  Bitcoin Dev

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This exact question came up on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange once. I gave an
answer here:
http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/37292/whats-the-purpose-of-a-maximum-block-size/37303#37303

On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Jim Phillips <jim@ergophobia•org> wrote:

> Ok, I understand at least some of the reason that blocks have to be kept
> to a certain size. I get that blocks which are too big will be hard to
> propagate by relays. Miners will have more trouble uploading the large
> blocks to the network once they've found a hash. We need block size
> constraints to create a fee economy for the miners.
>
> But these all sound to me like issues that affect some, but not others. So
> it seems to me like it ought to be a configurable setting. We've already
> witnessed with last week's stress test that most miners aren't even
> creating 1MB blocks but are still using the software defaults of 730k. If
> there are configurable limits, why does there have to be a hard limit?
> Can't miners just use the configurable limit to decide what size blocks
> they can afford to and are thus willing to create? They could just as
> easily use that to create a fee economy. If the miners with the most
> hashpower are not willing to mine blocks larger than 1 or 2 megs, then they
> are able to slow down confirmations of transactions. It may take several
> blocks before a miner willing to include a particular transaction finds a
> block. This would actually force miners to compete with each other and find
> a block size naturally instead of having it forced on them by the protocol.
> Relays would be able to participate in that process by restricting the
> miners ability to propagate large blocks. You know, like what happens in a
> FREE MARKET economy, without burdensome regulation which can be manipulated
> through politics? Isn't that what's really happening right now? Different
> political factions with different agendas are fighting over how best to
> regulate the Bitcoin protocol.
>
> I know the limit was originally put in place to prevent spamming. But that
> was when we were mining with CPUs and just beginning to see the occasional
> GPU which could take control over the network and maliciously spam large
> blocks. But with ASIC mining now catching up to Moore's Law, that's not
> really an issue anymore. No one malicious entity can really just take over
> the network now without spending more money than it's worth -- and that's
> just going to get truer with time as hashpower continues to grow. And it's
> not like the hard limit really does anything anymore to prevent spamming.
> If a spammer wants to create thousands or millions of transactions, a hard
> limit on the block size isn't going to stop him.. He'll just fill up the
> mempool or UTXO database instead of someone's block database.. And block
> storage media is generally the cheapest storage.. I mean they could be
> written to tape and be just as valid as if they're stored in DRAM. Combine
> that with pruning, and block storage costs are almost a non-issue for
> anyone who isn't running an archival node.
>
> And can't relay nodes just configure a limit on the size of blocks they
> will relay? Sure they'd still need to download a big block occasionally,
> but that's not really that big a deal, and they're under no obligation to
> propagate it.. Even if it's a 2GB block, it'll get downloaded eventually.
> It's only if it gets to the point where the average home connection is too
> slow to keep up with the transaction & block flow that there's any real
> issue there, and that would happen regardless of how big the blocks are. I
> personally would much prefer to see hardware limits act as the bottleneck
> than to introduce an artificial bottleneck into the protocol that has to be
> adjusted regularly. The software and protocol are TECHNICALLY capable of
> scaling to handle the world's entire transaction set. The real issue with
> scaling to this size is limitations on hardware, which are regulated by
> Moore's Law. Why do we need arbitrary soft limits? Why can't we allow
> Bitcoin to grow naturally within the ever increasing limits of our
> hardware? Is it because nobody will ever need more than 640k of RAM?
>
> Am I missing something here? Is there some big reason that I'm overlooking
> why there has to be some hard-coded limit on the block size that affects
> the entire network and creates ongoing issues in the future?
>
> --
>
> *James G. Phillips IV*
> <https://plus.google.com/u/0/113107039501292625391/posts>
>
> *"Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals."
> -- David Ogilvy*
>
>  *This message was created with 100% recycled electrons. Please think
> twice before printing.*
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Bitcoin-development mailing list
> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>
>

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2015-06-01 19:02 ` Stephen Morse

  2015-06-01 20:18     ` [Bitcoin-development] We are filling most blocks right now - Let's change the max blocksize default Raystonn .
  
From: Jim Phillips @ 2015-06-01 20:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Stephen Morse;  Bitcoin Dev

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>
> 1. To Maintaining Consensus
>


There has to be clearly defined rules about which blocks are valid and
> which are not for the network to agree. Obviously no node will accept a
> block that is 10 million terabytes, it would be near impossible to download
> even if it were valid. So where do you set the limit? And what if one nodes
> sets their limit differently than other nodes on the network? If this were
> to happen, the network would no longer be in consensus about which blocks
> were valid when a block was broadcasted that met some nodes' size limits
> and did not meet others.
> Setting a network limit on the maximum block size ensures that everyone is
> in agreement about which blocks are valid and which are not, so that
> consensus is achieved.


It is as impossible to upload a 10 million terabyte block as it is to
download it. But even on a more realistic scale, of say a 2GB block, there
are other factors that prevent a rogue miner from being able to flood the
network using large blocks -- such as the ability to get that block
propagated before it can be orphaned. A simple solution to these large
blocks is for relays to set configurable limits on the size of blocks that
they will relay. If the rogue miner can't get his megablock propagated
before it is orphaned, his attack will not succeed. It doesn't make the
block invalid, just useless as a DoS tool. And over time, relays can raise
the limits they set on block sizes they will propagate according to what
they can handle. As more and more relays accept larger and larger blocks,
the true maximum block size can grow naturally and not require a hard fork.

2. To Avoid (further) Centralization of Pools



Suppose we remove the 1 MB cap entirely. A large pool says to itself, "I
> wish I had a larger percentage of the network hashrate so I could make more
> profit."
>


Then they realize that since there's no block size limit, they can make a
> block that is 4 GB large by filling it with nonsense. They and a few other
> pools have bandwidth large enough to download a block of this size in a
> reasonable time, but a smaller pool does not. The tiny pool is then stuck
> trying to download a block that is too large, and continuing to mine on
> their previous block until they finish downloading the new block. This
> means the small pool is now wasting their time mining blocks that are
> likely never to be accepted even if they were solved, since they wouldn't
> be in the 'longest' chain. Since their hash power is wasted, the original
> pool operator now has effectively forced smaller pools out of the network,
> and simultaneously increased their percentage of the network hashrate.



Yet another issue that can be addressed by allowing relays to restrict
propagation. Relays are just as impacted by large blocks filled with
nonsense as small miners. If a relay downloads a block and sees that it's
full of junk or comes from a miner notorious for producing bad blocks, he
can refuse to relay it. If a bad block doesn't propagate, it can't hurt
anyone. Large miners also typically have to use static IPs. Anonymizing
networks like TOR aren't geared towards handling that type of traffic. They
can't afford to have the reputation of the IPs they release blocks with
tarnished, so why would they risk getting blacklisted by relays?

> 3. To Make Full Nodes Feasible
>


Essentially, larger blocks means fewer people that can download and verify
> the chain, which results fewer people willing to run full nodes and store
> all of the blockchain data.
>


If there were no block size limit, malicious persons could artificially
> bloat the block with nonsense and increase the server costs for everyone
> running a full node, in addition to making it infeasible for people with
> just home computers to even keep up with the network.
> The goal is to find a block size limit with the right tradeoff between
> resource restrictions (so that someone on their home computer can still run
> a full node), and functional requirements (being able to process X number
> of transactions per second). Eventually, transactions will likely be done
> off-chain using micropayment channels, but no such solution currently
> exists.


This same attack could be achieved simply by sending lots of spam
transactions and bloating the UTXO database or the mempool. In fact, given
that block storage is substantially cheaper than UTXO/mempool storage, I'd
be far more concerned with that type of attack. And this particular attack
vector has already been largely mitigated by pruning and could be further
mitigated by allowing relays to decide which blocks they propagate.


--
*James G. Phillips IV*
<https://plus.google.com/u/0/113107039501292625391/posts>
<http://www.linkedin.com/in/ergophobe>

*"Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of immortals."
-- David Ogilvy*

 *This message was created with 100% recycled electrons. Please think twice
before printing.*

On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Stephen Morse <stephencalebmorse@gmail•com>
wrote:

> This exact question came up on the Bitcoin Stack Exchange once. I gave an
> answer here:
> http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/37292/whats-the-purpose-of-a-maximum-block-size/37303#37303
>
> On Mon, Jun 1, 2015 at 2:32 PM, Jim Phillips <jim@ergophobia•org> wrote:
>
>> Ok, I understand at least some of the reason that blocks have to be kept
>> to a certain size. I get that blocks which are too big will be hard to
>> propagate by relays. Miners will have more trouble uploading the large
>> blocks to the network once they've found a hash. We need block size
>> constraints to create a fee economy for the miners.
>>
>> But these all sound to me like issues that affect some, but not others.
>> So it seems to me like it ought to be a configurable setting. We've already
>> witnessed with last week's stress test that most miners aren't even
>> creating 1MB blocks but are still using the software defaults of 730k. If
>> there are configurable limits, why does there have to be a hard limit?
>> Can't miners just use the configurable limit to decide what size blocks
>> they can afford to and are thus willing to create? They could just as
>> easily use that to create a fee economy. If the miners with the most
>> hashpower are not willing to mine blocks larger than 1 or 2 megs, then they
>> are able to slow down confirmations of transactions. It may take several
>> blocks before a miner willing to include a particular transaction finds a
>> block. This would actually force miners to compete with each other and find
>> a block size naturally instead of having it forced on them by the protocol.
>> Relays would be able to participate in that process by restricting the
>> miners ability to propagate large blocks. You know, like what happens in a
>> FREE MARKET economy, without burdensome regulation which can be manipulated
>> through politics? Isn't that what's really happening right now? Different
>> political factions with different agendas are fighting over how best to
>> regulate the Bitcoin protocol.
>>
>> I know the limit was originally put in place to prevent spamming. But
>> that was when we were mining with CPUs and just beginning to see the
>> occasional GPU which could take control over the network and maliciously
>> spam large blocks. But with ASIC mining now catching up to Moore's Law,
>> that's not really an issue anymore. No one malicious entity can really just
>> take over the network now without spending more money than it's worth --
>> and that's just going to get truer with time as hashpower continues to
>> grow. And it's not like the hard limit really does anything anymore to
>> prevent spamming. If a spammer wants to create thousands or millions of
>> transactions, a hard limit on the block size isn't going to stop him..
>> He'll just fill up the mempool or UTXO database instead of someone's block
>> database.. And block storage media is generally the cheapest storage.. I
>> mean they could be written to tape and be just as valid as if they're
>> stored in DRAM. Combine that with pruning, and block storage costs are
>> almost a non-issue for anyone who isn't running an archival node.
>>
>> And can't relay nodes just configure a limit on the size of blocks they
>> will relay? Sure they'd still need to download a big block occasionally,
>> but that's not really that big a deal, and they're under no obligation to
>> propagate it.. Even if it's a 2GB block, it'll get downloaded eventually.
>> It's only if it gets to the point where the average home connection is too
>> slow to keep up with the transaction & block flow that there's any real
>> issue there, and that would happen regardless of how big the blocks are. I
>> personally would much prefer to see hardware limits act as the bottleneck
>> than to introduce an artificial bottleneck into the protocol that has to be
>> adjusted regularly. The software and protocol are TECHNICALLY capable of
>> scaling to handle the world's entire transaction set. The real issue with
>> scaling to this size is limitations on hardware, which are regulated by
>> Moore's Law. Why do we need arbitrary soft limits? Why can't we allow
>> Bitcoin to grow naturally within the ever increasing limits of our
>> hardware? Is it because nobody will ever need more than 640k of RAM?
>>
>> Am I missing something here? Is there some big reason that I'm
>> overlooking why there has to be some hard-coded limit on the block size
>> that affects the entire network and creates ongoing issues in the future?
>>
>> --
>>
>> *James G. Phillips IV*
>> <https://plus.google.com/u/0/113107039501292625391/posts>
>>
>> *"Don't bunt. Aim out of the ball park. Aim for the company of
>> immortals." -- David Ogilvy*
>>
>>  *This message was created with 100% recycled electrons. Please think
>> twice before printing.*
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Bitcoin-development mailing list
>> Bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
>> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/bitcoin-development
>>
>>
>

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2015-06-01 20:02   ` Jim Phillips

  
From: Raystonn . @ 2015-06-01 20:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bitcoin Dev

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We seem to be experiencing bursts of high transaction rate right now.  https://blockchain.info/ shows nearly all blocks full.  We should increase the default max block size to 1MB to give us more space where we see the 731MB blocks, as we don’t want to be limited by those who don’t bother to change the settings from the default, and thus probably aren’t paying attention to this whole discussion.

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