# Gavin Andresen
# 2011-05-18 00:29:52
# https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=8689.msg126444#msg126444

@s{quotedtext}
@s{quotedtext}
People keep saying that, but it is simply not true. @p{par}

With a given number of "front-end" CPUs checking ECDSA transaction signatures, miners will be able to process at most N transactions per second. @p{par}

If there are more transactions than that going over the network, then miners will drop the least-profitable transactions and only process the most-profitable N. @p{par}

Mining involves two distinct tasks:  checking transactions and gathering them into a block (which is inexpensive right now because there aren't gazillions of transactions).  And then hashing (which will always be expensive). @p{par}

 @p{brk}
Miner operators will keep track of the transactions they're dropping, and will do some math to figure out if it would be profitable for them to invest in MORE front-end CPUs to process more than N transactions per second. @p{brk}