I’ve been trying not to follow the Great Blocksize Debate raging on reddit. However, the lack of any concrete numbers has kind of irked me, so let me add one for now.

If we assume bandwidth is the main problem with running nodes, let’s look at average connection growth rates since 2008. Google lead me to NetMetrics (who seem to charge), and Akamai’s State Of The Internet (who don’t). So I used the latter, of course:

I tried to pick a range of countries, and here are the results:

Country % Growth Over 7 years Per Annum Australia 348 19.5% Brazil 349 19.5% China 481 25.2% Philippines 258 14.5% UK 333 18.8% US 304 17.2%

Countries which had best bandwidth grew about 17% a year, so I think that’s the best model for future growth patterns (China is now where the US was 7 years ago, for example).

If bandwidth is the main centralization concern, you’ll want block growth below 15%. That implies we could jump the cap to 3MB next year, and 15% thereafter. Or if you’re less conservative, 3.5MB next year, and 17% there after.