I have heard that the maximum block size means that the Bitcoin network has a maximum throughput. What is this maximum?
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2 Answers
The current block size limit is 1MB, but this is likely to be changed in the future.
Transactions are about 500B, so the current limit is 2000 transactions per block, or about 3 per second.
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2Wow, that's slow. If Bitcoin keeps growing, they'll definitely have to increase the block size– CasebashJun 13, 2012 at 12:08
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1Is this actually a current limitation regardless of the client implementation? Do you have a reference for that assertion?– barrymacSep 27, 2013 at 0:00
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1IMO it's not so certain that the max block size will be increased in the near future. There's likely to be a lot of controversy about it. See keepbitcoinfree.org– theymosSep 27, 2013 at 1:43
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@theymos We found the same thing from via different paths! +1 for linking to the line of code responsible!– barrymacSep 27, 2013 at 11:03
From the Scalability on the wiki page
Today the Bitcoin network is restricted to a sustained rate of 7 tps by some artificial limits. These were put in place to stop people from ballooning the size of the block chain before the network and community was ready for it. Once those limits are lifted, the maximum transaction rate will go up significantly.
I also found this talk by Peter Todd from keepbitcoinfree.org on using off blockchain transactions to avoid hitting the main block chain with the full transaction load which was followed by good Q&A
There's also some charts comparing to other payment networks
