How was the average size of blk*.data chosen?

I notice that the Bitcoin database is stored sequentially in blk*.dat files, with an average size between 128 to 134MB. I would like to know how this average size is determined and if there are any tests that demonstrate this size is the most efficient.

On Mon, May 06, 2024 at 06:23:47PM -0700, Juan David Peña Melo wrote:

> I notice that the Bitcoin database is stored sequentially in blk*.dat
> files, with an average size between 128 to 134MB. I would like to know how
> this average size is determined and if there are any tests that demonstrate
> this size is the most efficient.

Most likely someone just picked a number at random. For things like this, there is a very wide range of values that are probably fine. The main limiting factor at the high end, is some older file systems still don't support files >4GB, so you'd want to pick a value below that; Monero all block data in a single file, and that occasionally leads to issues when, eg, copying that file from one place to another. At the low end, having tens of thousands of files in one directory tends to cause problems.