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neonachronism

The overhead involved in block size has interesting parallels with a classic scaling argument in biology. Cells need to take in nutrients, export waste, and communicate with other cells by excreting chemical signals. This requires a high surface-area-to-volume ratio; because volume grows with the cube of diameter and surface area grows with the square, many small cells is more efficient than fewer, larger ones.

Of course, here we would rather limit the perimeter-to-area ratio, and naturally, there are other factors to account for.