Updated witness parameter "maximum block size" to 131072. Encourage other witnesses to do the same.
Over the past 24 hours, I have been discussing with many people in the community about the issue surrounding new accounts not having sufficient bandwidth to fully interact with the blockchain. There is a full discussion in this post.
Based on the discussion and feedback, I have decided to update my witness parameter maximum_block_size to 131072.
Changing the max block size from 65536 to 131072 will double the amount of bandwidth that users are given. This should allow all accounts that are created with the current account creation fee (6 STEEM) to fully interact with the blockchain without running into bandwidth limitations (assuming they are not using the system excessively).
My main concern over increasing it to 131072 was that it could allow the size of the blockchain to grow significantly faster. According to @roadscape the current blocks are not that large, so he does not expect it to have much of an impact based on the current usage. @liberosist also pointed out that prior to hardfork 16, 131072was the default value set by the witnesses - so it has been this high before.
I know that there are people smarter than me regarding this, so if anyone raises serious concerns about having this set to 131072, I will reconsider my policy. Based on all of the feedback I have been given though, this seems like the best choice.
I encourage the other witnesses to update their values to 131072 as well, so that the median maximum_block_size is updated to reflect the change.
Reminder to vote for witnesses!
The Steem witnesses are the elected leaders of the community that power the blockchain. Everybody should learn about the Steem witnesses and vote on who they think is best. If you don't know much about witnesses or aren't sure who to vote for, you can check out this Witness Voting Guide. If you think @timcliff is doing a great job, please consider voting for him as witness! You can vote for witnesses here: https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Yea! Let's show that Steem is way better than Bitcoin in that we can increase our block size with ease! That alone should be a good news point.
Edit:
Witness is updated.
Great points man. You are such a good whale and so on top of things.
Thumbs up to you.
And I know you like....
I have also updated to
131072, but it won't matter much :)It matters!
Yes, this is definitely the right move. Thank you, Tim!
To resolve the problem that prompted this, we (Steemit Inc) have completed the task of re-delegating 10 SP to all accounts which were previously lowered to 5 SP. Everyone should now have 15 SP delegated to them (unless they've already exceeded this amount themselves). We don't want any new users to have a negative user experience on Steemit due to bandwidth limitations. As far as increasing the block size, there shouldn't be any negative consequences as a result but I also think it's unnecessary to do so at this time. Most of the voting issues were due to the "vote dust threshold" which is a fixed amount not related to block size. We have some additional ideas in the works for a better solution to the bandwidth limitation problem as a whole, we'll address this soon.
I agree. Update away.
Really informing post.
Thanks for sharing.
I appreciate your effort for newcomers Thank you!
this article has been referenced in: down the rabit hole -
the case of the bandwidth bug
Thanks for writing!