Lowering the limit afterward wouldn't be a soft-forking change if the majority of mining power was creating too-large blocks, which seems possible.
When I say "soft-fork" I mean "a majority of miners upgrade and force all the rest of the miners to go along (but merchants and other fully-validating, non-mining nodes do not have to upgrade)."
Note that individual miners (or sub-majority cartels) can unilaterally create smaller blocks containing just higher-fee transactions, if they think it is in their long-term interest to put upward pressure on transaction fees.
I think that a really conservative automatic increase would be OK, but 50% yearly sounds too high to me. If this happens to exceed some residential ISP's actual bandwidth growth, then eventually that ISP's customers will be unable to be full nodes unless they pay for a much more expensive Internet connection. The idea of this sort of situation really concerns me, especially since the loss of full nodes would likely be gradual and easy to ignore until after it becomes very difficult to correct.
As I mentioned on Reddit, I'm also not 100% sure that I agree with your proposed starting point of 50% of a hobbyist-level Internet connection. This seems somewhat burdensome for individuals. It's entirely possible that Bitcoin can be secure without a lot of individuals running full nodes, but I'm not sure about this.
As I mentioned on Reddit, I'm also not 100% sure that I agree with your proposed starting point of 50% of a hobbyist-level Internet connection. This seems somewhat burdensome for individuals. It's entirely possible that Bitcoin can be secure without a lot of individuals running full nodes, but I'm not sure about this.
Would 40% initial size and growth make you support the proposal?
Determining the best/safest way to choose the max block size isn't really a technical problem; it has more to do with economics and game theory. I'd really like to see some research/opinions on this issue from economists and other people who specialize in this sort of problem.
Anybody know economists who specialize in this sort of problem? Judging by what I know about economics and economists, I suspect if we ask eleven of them we'll get seven different opinions for the best thing to do. Five of which will miss the point of Bitcoin entirely. ("...elect a Board of Blocksize Governors that decides on an Optimal Size based on market supply and demand conditions as measured by an independent Bureau of Blocksize Research....")