Bitcoin Forum

Other => Beginners & Help => Topic started by: risebtc on January 16, 2015, 07:26:58 AM



Title: Delayed transactions because of block size?
Post by: risebtc on January 16, 2015, 07:26:58 AM
I was looking at the block #339174 on blockchain.info "unconfirmed-transactions" there were over 3350 unconfirmed transactions.

It took 49 minutes to solve this block & the size was over 1700kb. The block size after solved was 487.27KB & 1549 transactions were confirmed.

What happens to the other 1800 unconfirmed transactions? Do they have to wait until the next block or even longer? It seems the large block size is delaying transactions more and more right?

https://i.imgur.com/02ERS9W.png


Title: Re: Delayed transactions because of block size?
Post by: DeathAndTaxes on January 16, 2015, 07:32:53 AM
The max block size is 1MB.   It doesn't take any longer to solve a block with 10,000 txns as it does to solve one with 1 txn.  Well it take a few miliseconds longer if that but the point is the bulk of the work is in finding the "magic nonce" and that has no bearing on the number of txns.   The average time between blocks is 10 minutes but on individual blocks there is an element of luck.  If could me 1 minute or 60 minutes.

Also the block size wasn't "over 1700 KB" that would be impossible as the block size limit is 1MB


Title: Re: Delayed transactions because of block size?
Post by: risebtc on January 16, 2015, 08:02:05 AM
Yes I see they always stay under 1MB the last one was 976KB so some transactions get delayed? Wouldn't it be better to make the block size unlimited so confirmations are faster?

https://i.imgur.com/97d7jdf.png


Title: Re: Delayed transactions because of block size?
Post by: Simon8x on January 16, 2015, 08:38:08 AM

Yup some transactions take longer time to be confirmed but the main reason is that they have a too low tx fee attached.
Increasing the block size limit isn't that simple as it will cause a fork.


Title: Re: Delayed transactions because of block size?
Post by: odolvlobo on January 16, 2015, 09:01:13 AM
I was looking at the block #339174 on blockchain.info "unconfirmed-transactions" there were over 3350 unconfirmed transactions.

It took 49 minutes to solve this block & the size was over 1700kb. The block size after solved was 487.27KB & 1549 transactions were confirmed.

What happens to the other 1800 unconfirmed transactions? Do they have to wait until the next block or even longer? It seems the large block size is delaying transactions more and more right?

Each miner/mining pool decides which transactions go into the block they are trying to solve. Transactions that are not included in a block are available to be included in the next block. Again, whether or not they are included in the next block is up to each miner/mining pool.

As has already been stated, the size of the block does not determine how long it takes to solve, though longer times between blocks generally result in bigger blocks.


Title: Re: Delayed transactions because of block size?
Post by: DannyHamilton on January 18, 2015, 12:43:24 AM
Miners get to keep the transaction fees of the transactions that they include in their block.

Therefore, if you don't want your transaction to have to wait very many blocks before it is confirmed, then you can pay a transaction fee that is a little bit higher than most other people.  This will provide the miner an incentive to include your transaction first so that they can get your transaction fee.

Transactions that pay very little fees (or none at all) don't provide incentive to the miner, so their transactions end up waiting the longest until a generous miner charitably includes those free transactions in a block.