[Poll] If Bitcoins blocks were 10x larger, would the miners be earning 10x?

[BayAreaCoins]

I'm just curious about speculation.

[1714759945]

1714759945

[1714759945]

1714759945

[1714759945]

1714759945

[1714759945]

1714759945

[1714759945]

1714759945

[thecodebear]

only when the blocks got filled up. Right now there would be plenty of empty space so fees would still be almost nothing so miners would likely be making less. But eventually as adoption increases blocks would fill up no matter what size they are and yes miners would be earning roughly 10x, well probably not quite 10x but close to it.

[Don Pedro Dinero]

I doubt the equation is as simple as if space is increased by 10, they will multiply their profits by 10. As thecodebear says I think especially in the beginning it would mean that there would be empty space in the blocks, and if there is empty space it means that people could send transactions with the minimum fee and get a confirmation in the next block. Hypothetically, if the blocks were filled consistently the fees would go up but how much the miners would charge in fees per block would depend on a lot of things, like whether there were still suckers filling the blockchain with spam.

[pooya87]

Although I already voted but it is not a simple yes no question.

It depends on whether Bitcoin is going to continue to survive like that. We are talking about 40 MB blocks every 10 minutes which nodes have to download and fully verify and a blockchain that grows 5.76 GB per day.

The effects of it will first show up as the number of full nodes drastically drop in short term and eventually we move to more centralization and more full nodes that are run on cloud services (another form of centralization).
The effects could also include more stale blocks and even some mining pools going back to the terrible spy/spv mining methods where they mine empty blocks because they're waiting for the last block be verified and can not include new txs in their next block yet.

This could all translate into bitcoin price dropping and the miners' revenue significantly decreasing in terms of fiat as the exchange rate would be much lower.

[adaseb]

No, they would most likely earn less.

The only reason why fees are high now and people are paying high fees is because only 2500 or so transactions can fit in a block. So if they increased it by 10x the mempool wouldn’t be clogged and people would pay the min 1 sat byte fee and miners would end up actually making less money.

And we would also lose nodes due to the bandwidth and space requirements for such large blocks.

[franky1]

whomever keep suggesting miners need/deserve/should have 10 more fee's does not understand the market dynamics/economics..
miners were not starving when btc was $17k, they are not starving now its $43k

This could all translate into bitcoin price dropping and the miners' revenue significantly decreasing in terms of fiat as the exchange rate would be much lower.

nodes on the network do not translate to market price effects
most nodes on the network do not even fully validate or archive any more
(see: backward compatibility, witness validation bypass, archive data pruning)

..
also 10x blocks may not equal 10x transactions. and wont equate to 10x fees
 if they just expanded the metadata/witness area and not redefine the base block size
it would be a possibility of bloat filling the 39mb witness but still not effect the transaction count

..
however if they re define the base vs witness to be EG 10mb base 30mb witness
it will allow 10x tx. by which users can pay 10x less in fees individually but then have 10x more transactions per block which would allow pools to still get the same fee total bonus

..
however even before doing a 10x of blocksize under current design, we can EASILY undo some cludgy code to then allow the current 4mb block to actually utilise the full allocation of 4mb for tx data(lean fully validated transactions again) to gain more transactions per block before even doing say 3x .. where by then when doing a 3x would result in more transactions paying less but totalling more in fees bonus for pools than the current block design 10x'd

think about it
if 1mb base had a lean tx count potential of 4200tx a block(calculated by satoshi himself in 2010)
having a lean fully utilised 4mb has potential of 16,800tx. which 3x the block then would be 50,400tx .. using just 12mb blocks

however current design 4mb only averages 4200tx which 10x would only be 42,000 using 40mb blocks

..
the math. if current tx fee is $25
under the current 25% base 75% witness/metadata model of 40mb the transactions could become $2.50 individually totalling the same $105k
under the 100% utilised block model of 12mb the transactions could become $2.50 individually totalling $126k
under the 100% utilised block model of 12mb the transactions could become $2.10 individually totalling the same $105k

common sense, logic shows uncludging the blocks. make tx lean and then scale up by just 3x can allow better then 10x fee less per transactor without taking amounts away from pools and without needing to LEAP to 10x blocks of junk

[BenCodie]

I'm just curious about speculation.

I'm curious about your curiosity...Do you know something we don't?

I would think that the block reward would still be the same, in line with how it works currently. The difference in what miners earn is an interesting topic. The amount of fees that a miner could accumulate, yes, would amount to more potentially...I say potentially as the fee may be lower due to the block size able to fit more transactions, though the increased amount of transactions may mean that they make more...it really depends on the activity of the network and if these blocks are being filled, and if premiums are still being paid in order to be able to be included in the next block.

My vote is no, because I don't think it would result in 10x earnings.

[Text]

No, miners would not necessarily earn 10x more per block if Bitcoin blocks were 10x larger. Transaction fees do contribute to a miner’s earnings, the larger the block, and the more transactions in it, the larger the fee for the miner. However, this doesn’t mean that a 10x larger block would contain 10x more transactions or yield 10x more in fees. It would depend on the number and types of transactions that are included in the block. So, while larger blocks could potentially contain more transactions and thus higher transaction fees, they wouldn’t directly lead to miners earning 10x more per block.

[Plaguedeath]

Bigger blocks may cost smaller miners: small miners and poorly-connected miners are at a disadvantage if larger blocks are produced, and even large and well-connected miners may find that large blocks reduce their profit percentage if the cost of bandwidth rises too high or their stale rate increases.

Hello. I am from F2Pool. We are currently mining the biggest blocks on the network. So far top 100 biggest bitcoin blocks are all from us. We do support bigger blocks and sooner rather than later. But we cannot handle 20 MB blocks right now. I know most blocks would not be 20 MB over night. But only if a small fraction of blocks more than 10 MB, it could dramatically increase of our orphan rate, result of higher fee to miners. Bad miners could attack us and the network with artificial big blocks. As yhou know, other Chinese pools, AntPool, BW, they produces ASIC chips and mining mostly with their own machines. They do not care about a few percent of orphan increase as much as we do. They would continue their zero fee policy. We would be the biggest loser. As the exchanges had taught us, zero fee is not health to the network. Also we have to redevelop our block broadcast logic. Server bandwidth is a lot more expensive in China. And the Internet is slow. Currently China has more than 50% of mining power, if block size increases, I bet European and American pools could suffer more than us. We think the max block size should be increased, but must be increased smoothly, 2 MB first, and then after one or two years 4 MB, then 8 MB, and so on. Thanks.

Based on the above information, only big miners that have cheap mining rigs, cheap electricity cost and fast internet connection are make money, while the others aren't especially the small miners.

Bigger blocks would decrease transaction fees, but big blocks might trigger Bitcoin's security, it's better to choose good security with expensive fees instead of low security with cheaper fees.

[Shishir99]

I do not understand those technical things. But I understand a few simple things. The block reward will same but the fees they earn from each transaction could increase according to the number of transactions. But there are other possibilities too. If there are always fewer transactions, the mempool will remain empty and the transaction fee will be cheap as heck. So, Imagine a single block containing more than 35K transactions but all of them used less than 5 sat/vB fee. So, If I am not wrong, the miners won't make much money. We don't have to increase the block size to 10x at this moment. All it could be 2x max. It will help balance the network.

[LoyceV]

My take: short-term, miners will earn less because currently fees are high because of full blocks. But long-term, a higher transaction volume will lead to more paying users and can lead to more earnings.

[UchihaSarada]

Bitcoin miners solve math and find Bitcoin blocks to get income from block subsidy and transaction fees.

How easy or hard it is for finding block will depend on Bitcoin network difficulty, total hash rate and hash rate of that miners, mining farm.

I understand like if block size is x10 or x100 than now, will it cause network difficulty higher at the same rate of x10 or x100. With my knowledge, they don't have such correlation.

Because of no correlation, miners don't need to get x10 or x100 earning because of block size increase.

[ABCbits]

Bigger blocks may cost smaller miners: small miners and poorly-connected miners are at a disadvantage if larger blocks are produced, and even large and well-connected miners may find that large blocks reduce their profit percentage if the cost of bandwidth rises too high or their stale rate increases.

Hello. I am from F2Pool. We are currently mining the biggest blocks on the network. So far top 100 biggest bitcoin blocks are all from us. We do support bigger blocks and sooner rather than later. But we cannot handle 20 MB blocks right now. I know most blocks would not be 20 MB over night. But only if a small fraction of blocks more than 10 MB, it could dramatically increase of our orphan rate, result of higher fee to miners. Bad miners could attack us and the network with artificial big blocks. As yhou know, other Chinese pools, AntPool, BW, they produces ASIC chips and mining mostly with their own machines. They do not care about a few percent of orphan increase as much as we do. They would continue their zero fee policy. We would be the biggest loser. As the exchanges had taught us, zero fee is not health to the network. Also we have to redevelop our block broadcast logic. Server bandwidth is a lot more expensive in China. And the Internet is slow. Currently China has more than 50% of mining power, if block size increases, I bet European and American pools could suffer more than us. We think the max block size should be increased, but must be increased smoothly, 2 MB first, and then after one or two years 4 MB, then 8 MB, and so on. Thanks.

Based on the above information, only big miners that have cheap mining rigs, cheap electricity cost and fast internet connection are make money, while the others aren't especially the small miners.

Bigger blocks would decrease transaction fees, but big blocks might trigger Bitcoin's security, it's better to choose good security with expensive fees instead of low security with cheaper fees.

But it's been many years since those points mentioned. Most miner/pool would have better hardware and internet at this point and various technology (such as company) allows faster block verification and propagation. And as miners will depend more on TX fee as their income, they're less likely to mine empty block.

[Blitzboy]

Larger blocks mean more transactions per block, but fees may not increase. Larger blocks reduce transaction space competition, lowering transaction fees. Miners may process more transactions at reduced fees.

Larger blocks present additional complications. Since fewer miners can afford the higher processing power and storage expenses, centralization may result. This centralization violates Bitcoin's decentralization.

Larger blocks may enhance throughput, but they dont necessarily increase miners' revenue. Block size affects miner profitability depending on market conditions and technology. Due to reduced urgency and competition for block space, a 10x block size increase may minimize transaction fees.

[NotATether]

Of course not. That's why increasing the block size is a headless idea.

On the other hand, if blocks are not filled up, fees will collapse to 1 sat/byte and all of the miners will be put out of business. That will lead to lower hashrate, which means the price will start collapsing too.

[LoyceV]

if blocks are not filled up, fees will collapse to 1 sat/byte and all of the miners will be put out of business. That will lead to lower hashrate, which means the price will start collapsing too.

So you're saying 36 million dollars per day isn't enough for miners?

[NotATether]

if blocks are not filled up, fees will collapse to 1 sat/byte and all of the miners will be put out of business. That will lead to lower hashrate, which means the price will start collapsing too.

So you're saying 36 million dollars per day isn't enough for miners?

Where did you get that figure from if I may ask?

If this is from the current exchange rate, then what you need to know is that while I don't know what the average transaction size is (which would greatly help doing this calculation), I do know there are only between 5k-20k transactions in a block most of the time.

If I be optimistic and guess the average is 500 sats/vbyte (including Ordinals), and that there are about 20k transactions, that's 10 million sats per block or 1BTC in fees.

Whether this will be enough to support an operation depends on the particular miner. For now, most miners would not be affected by such a change because of the coinbase fee, but what if the BTC price becomes flat in the future and the coinbase is no longer enough to support miners?

Many miners have huge loans open lines of credit, so in this case since fees are also stable and not increasing, then many of them would be forced to close shop.

Edit: to reach $36m a day at these prices, you'd have to find nearly 100 blocks a day. That will take about 1000 minutes or 16 hours and 40 mins, but that is impossible for a single miner since that means they'd have to have way over 50% of the global hashrate. Something like $10m per day is more likely, but only for the largest miners.

[LoyceV]

So you're saying 36 million dollars per day isn't enough for miners?

Where did you get that figure from if I may ask?

It's 6.25BTC block reward, 6 times per hour and 24 times per day.

Back in 2017, I read someone saying the "fee wars" shouldn't start for a few decades. The block reward should be more than enough to pay for miners for a long time to come.

[Kelward]

I doubt the equation is as simple as if space is increased by 10, they will multiply their profits by 10. As thecodebear says I think especially in the beginning it would mean that there would be empty space in the blocks, and if there is empty space it means that people could send transactions with the minimum fee and get a confirmation in the next block. Hypothetically, if the blocks were filled consistently the fees would go up but how much the miners would charge in fees per block would depend on a lot of things, like whether there were still suckers filling the blockchain with spam.

From my level of knowledge I'd say that it'll depend if Bitcoin adoption will increase by 10×, if it does then miners can maybe earn up to that number, if not then the blocks increasing by 10× will automatically mean a reduction in miners earnings. My calculations are based on simple mathematical reasoning, but as there's more analysis to it, then I'm good to learning from more experienced members that have been doing justice to the topic so far.

[stompix]

Tthe answer to the question is obviously no!
There are only 1vMB of transactions willing to pay over 150sat/vb and you need to go to 100sat/vb to fill a 10vMB block, so pretty simple!
It's just like an auction, you will find a guy paying 20 million for a rare Ferrari, you will have troubles finding 100!

Will they make more than currently, probably yes, but by how much  that's crystal globe magic!

So you're saying 36 million dollars per day isn't enough for miners?

Both hashrate and the reward in $ are a bit meaningless if out of context.
We have 500 exahash, is the network a million times more secure than in 2013?
Miners are earning 36 million does that make the network how much secure compared to previous years?

It's all a question of how much you're protecting an with how much you're defending, are $36 million a day enough for miners to build a wall against somebody wanting to attacks bitcoin now? Maybe! Assuming Bitcoin goes to 400k and the chain holds 8 trillions in value, does that value still project the same security, of course not.

The exact math you did tells you the situation pretty well, you're getting paid 6.25 BTC per block to guard 19 millions BTC
Then you will get  3.12 BTC a block to guard 19 million BTC. Then...you get the picture.

Of course not. That's why increasing the block size is a headless idea.
On the other hand, if blocks are not filled up, fees will collapse to 1 sat/byte and all of the miners will be put out of business. That will lead to lower hashrate, which means the price will start collapsing too.

If people won't be making enough transactions to fill a 10vMB block even at 1sat/vb 5 years from now then we have others things of concerned.
Btw, if we would just take the marketshare from doge and LTC we would be already be at over 4 MB