Talk:Scalability

2011-04-01T17:29:19Z

Randomproof:

There is one major point that the page overlooks: the limitation on block
creation.

Block creation is limited to an average of one block every ten minutes.
Furthermore, block size (which includes the transactions in the block) is limited to 1,000,000 bytes.

Each transaction requires 10 bytes, plus approximately 106 bytes for every
input and approximately 69 bytes for every output. The exact size depends
on the size of the public key, which I have not been able to confirm, but
the keys in my wallet.dat seem to be about 65 bytes each.

If we assume that transactions average two inputs and two outputs, then
the average transaction size will be about 350 bytes ''(note that the main page assumes an average of 1KB per transaction)''. If we further assume
that the block size will, in practice, be limited to 500,000 bytes because
the transaction fees increase as the block size increases, then that means
there will be, on average, approximately 1430 transactions per block. That
works out to an average of 2.5 transactions per second - '''well''' below
the stated goal of at least 4,000 transactions per second.

Even if we assume only one input and one output per transaction, and that
each block will contain the full 1,000,000 bytes, that still works out to only 5,405
transactions per block, or 9 transactions per second.

Unfortunately, this is '''not''' a limitation that can be overcome by
simply increasing memory, or switching to a different ISP with more
bandwidth. It is a built-in limitation, designed to '''deliberately'''
slow down block creation. One solution is to somehow allow blocks to be freely created, while still keeping the rate of coin creation constant.

The bottom line is that, ''as it sits'', this system is not scalable.
:MAX_BLOCK_SIZE has always been planned to increase as needed. That limitation should be ignored. [[User:Theymos|theymos]] 17:15, 4 March 2011 (GMT)
:What Theymos said. Increasing MAX_BLOCK_SIZE will be done when "lightweight, header-only" client mode is done. Until then, block size has to be kept under control.--[[User:Gavinandresen|Gavin Andresen]] 00:19, 5 March 2011 (GMT)
:I've updated the page with more discussion of this topic. --[[User:Mike|Mike]] March 5 2011

The thing with VISA or and credit card company is that there wouldn't be that many actual transactions. When I buy stuff with my credit card the vender doesn't get paid instantly. I pay my bill once a month and the vender gets all his transactions lumped into one payment from VISA (once a week, I think). Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the number of real transfers of money would be much smaller. --[[User:Randomproof|Randomproof]] 17:29, 1 April 2011 (GMT)

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Talk:Scalability