Block size

[alizay]

Can anybody explain this sentence? What's the block size exactly? Is the point of getting it bigger is that it can register/verify more transactions more quickly?

"Both Bitcoin cash and the version known as SegWit2x have larger block size than bitcoin"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/bitcoin-jesus-praises-new-coin-as-7-million-wager-falls-through

Thanks

[pooya87]

when you send/receive bitcoin you are sending/receiving a transaction. these transactions are stored in what we call a "block". each block can only contain a limited number of transactions, this limit is set by the size of a block in Bytes. in bitcoin block size is limited to 1 MB based on consensus.

this limit sets the number of transactions that bitcoin can process in an interval. for example the average per second. also known as scaling.

the 3 year debate which led to activation of Segregated Witness on bitcoin and creation of the altcoin known as bitcoin cash (with 8 MB blocks) was exactly about this limit.

there are lots and lots of arguments for and against increasing this limit.
for example increasing the block size increases the number of transactions that bitcoin can handle (helps with the scaling) but it comes at the cost of making it harder to run a full node. the blockchain will grow more rapidly, the nodes have to download and verify a lot more data per day and that requires more resources (CPU power for instance).

[monkeydominicorobin]

Can anybody explain this sentence? What's the block size exactly? Is the point of getting it bigger is that it can register/verify more transactions more quickly?

"Both Bitcoin cash and the version known as SegWit2x have larger block size than bitcoin"

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-10/bitcoin-jesus-praises-new-coin-as-7-million-wager-falls-through

Thanks

The block is the public ledger itself. It contains the transactions that occur in the bitcoin network. A block is created every 10 minutes and the size issue in the fake news media is just a fake issue. That is why the segregated witness was implemented a few months ago. That way we reduce the size of blocks instead of increasing the size of it. The purpose is to finally declog the system.

[dothebeats]

Block size refers to the amount of data a block can store on itself. For bitcoin, it is currently set @ 1MB and on average, a transaction is sized @ 250kB. So to speak, a typical block can carry 4000 tx on average. Several propositions for the block to be changed into larger sizes have been made to ensure that bitcoin would scale, and that is rhe advent of big block bitcoin (Segwit2x and BCH)