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Will mining in China become more centralized if block sizes are increased?

Sun Jan 03, 2016 2:48 am

Someone wrote on reddit:
Mining is currently happening almost only in China.

If mining is centralized in china. Increasing the block size will further centralize mining in china because miners outside of china will have their bigger blocks orphaned as they try to broadcast them through the GFC.
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The comment above came up in another post, and I commented there on it saying:
I don't really get the argument that increasing the blocksize will lead to further mining centralization in China.

The mining race has always been won with those who have the most hashing power. The GFW of China is just an imaginary line when it comes to Bitcoin. Whether your in China, UK, or the US, whoever has more hashing power will be able to mine more valid blocks.

Take for example the current state of affairs. You have 1mb blocks which China mostly mines. If a block that was mined outside of China with less hashing power starts to compete with a Chinese miner more than likely the Chinese miner hashing power will win and the non-Chinese miners block will orphan (I'm speaking generally here).

By increasing the block size all you are doing is increasing the likelihood of orphan rates (not centralization). I don't know if anyone has done research on orphan rates but I can't imagine a quick jump to 2mb will do anything but double the orphan rates which are low now anyways.

So the question may be at what point does the orphan rate become a problem (51% attack vector) in combination with X-block size.

Edit: I found some good points on this issue here http://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3y ... is/cyc4r4c
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I'm just curious what others think about it?

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Re: Will mining in China become more centralized if block sizes are increased?

Sun Jan 03, 2016 3:33 am

I actually feel that mining will decentralise out of China with biggerblocks because then you have 3 market feedback loops. The price of btc, the price of electricity and the price of bandwidth.
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Re: Will mining in China become more centralized if block sizes are increased?

Sun Jan 03, 2016 6:40 am

I actually feel that mining will decentralise out of China with biggerblocks because then you have 3 market feedback loops. The price of btc, the price of electricity and the price of bandwidth.
I definitely feel like it would promote decentralization because it would put non-Chinese miners at an advantage. But if the hashing power is higher in the Chinese mines it won't matter at the end of the day.

The thing with miners is they are going to go where all the conditions are favorable to the best outcome for profitable mining.

* Cheap electricity
* Cheap hardware
* Cold temps
* Permissive regulations
* etc

Right now that is China AFAIK. There may be other places in the world with similar conditions but I'm not sure why China has become the spot over any other except for all the conditions being perfect for the mining race.

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