Foundations of Blockchain

Block size improvements

A block of transactions is the basic component of any decentralized blockchain-based application. Every blockchain-based implementation will define its own structure of blocks. The Bitcoin block has a header and body section with a set of fields defined. Few of the fields have a fixed limit, and so does the block size. Bitcoin's block size is 1 MB, which was introduced in 2010. This restricts the number of transactions that can be included in a block.

As the amount of activity in the Bitcoin network increased due to its popularity, more transactions were created in each block. Figure 9.5 shows how the average number of transactions per block has grown over the years. From last year, most Bitcoin blocks reached their ...