ELI5 Why Do We Need A Block Size Limit? Can miners choose for themselves instead?

[QuantumAGI]

Follow up questions:

1) Do blocks have to be loaded into memory atomically to be validated or can they be validated in a streamed fashion?
2) What are the latest proposals aimed at removing the incentive not to validate blocks? Is this something that can self-correct when an equilibrium point is reached - i.e. when it starts making zero sense not to validate previous blocks before expending mining effort on the next block?
3) What are the economies of scale surrounding big blocks? Is it really a big deal?

[LiteCoinGuy]

iam not a technical expert but i would see a problem if miners could choose/vote on blocksize. i would not like to give them even more power than they already have.

instead i would like to have a smooth increase over time based on technological progress.

maybe start with 4 mb blocks, after two years go to 8 mb and then increase 20% per year.

[rogerver]

There was a GREAT presentation in one of the videos from the recent Scaling Bitcoin conference that made an interesting argument for not needing any block size limit at all.

The basic argument was that the bigger the blocks, the higher the likely hood of having an orphaned block, and the miner losing the 25 BTC reward, but at the same time, the miner also wants to earn the mining fees though, which means they want bigger blocks so there is room for more transactions with fees.

Since the miner is incentivized to limit the block size to minimize the orphaned block rate, while at the same time maximizing miner fees, an equilibrium will be found between these two incentives, and the blocks will gravitate towards that size without the need for any software imposed hard limit.

I found the argument very interesting.
Sorry I don't know which of these videos it was in though:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmwaDu ... 8FOSQTKqMg

Maybe someone can find it and post the exact clip.

[LiteCoinGuy]

there it is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad0Pjj_ms2k

In this presentation, Peter R presents arguments and data from his whitepaper, "A Transaction Fee Market Exists Without a Block Size Limit"

[Melbustus]

Q: "Why Do We Need A Block Size Limit?"
ELI5 Answer: We don't actually need a blocksize limit, because....(see next question)

Q: "Can miners choose for themselves instead?"
ELI5 Answer: Yes.