BUIP056: Increase the Block Size Limit at a Support Threshold
Proposer: Tomas van der Wansem
Sponsor: Zangelbert Bingledack
Submitted on: 2017-05-12
Status: draft
This proposal allows nodes to be configured to change their block size
limit when a support threshold is reached.
As outlined in the motivation for BUIP055,
the EB/AD configuration currently lacks a mechanism for miners to
coordinate changes to the max_block_size.
BUIP055 solves this by allowing miners to preannounce a change to their
max_block_size at a certain height. A drawback of that approach is
that miners cannot predict whether there is enough support among miners
for the change at the specified height.
This BUIP offers a way to change the max_block_size setting based on
support for the new value among miners. By choosing a support threshold
percentage, they can trigger a change of the block size limit guarded by
what is for them the most relevant parameter for allowing the change.
To determine the max_block_size used to verify a target block, a
node will use the variables:
current_limit is the current size limit.
new_limit is the new size limit that will be activated when the
threshold is reached.
threshold is the minimum percentage of supporting blocks in a
difficulty period to trigger activation.
new_limit must be larger then current_limit and threshold must
be a multiple of 5 between 50 and 100 inclusive.
For our calculation, we define a block set as a set of blocks in a
single difficulty period at least 5 difficulty periods in the past; that
is, a set of blocks before the target block with heights between y *
2016 and (y * 2016) + 2015 inclusive, for any non-negative
integer y such that the height of the target block is larger than
(y * 2016) + 2015 + 10080.
Given a target block, let X,N be a number pair with the following
conditions:
If no number pair X,N exists, current_limit is used as
max_block_size for the target block. Otherwise the highest value of
X from all X,N pairs is used as the max_block_size for the target
block.
If max_block_size>1,000,000 is used for the target block and
max_block_size>1,000,000 is not used for any ancestor of the target
block and the size of the block is less then or equal to 1,000,000 then
the block must be rejected.
The maximum signature operations and transaction size are consistent
with BUIP040 and BIP100:
max_block_sigops = 20000*((max_block_size-1)/1000000 + 1)
max_tx_size = 1000000
Building on the format specified in BUIP005, the relevant variables are
signalled in the coinbase transaction as
"/EB<current_limit_MB>/FE<new_limit_MB>@%/..."
and in the user-agent string as
"(EB<current_limit_MB>;FE<new_limit_MB>@%...)/"
The variables are related as:
current_limit = current_limit_MB * 1,000,000
new_limit = new_limit_MB * 1,000,000