# Pathfinders, step limits and transfer limitations in practice

**URL:** <https://forum.aboutcircles.com/t/pathfinders-step-limits-and-transfer-limitations-in-practice/400>\
**Category:** Uncategorized\
**Created:** [May 27, 2021, 6:24pm UTC](https://forum.aboutcircles.com/t/pathfinders-step-limits-and-transfer-limitations-in-practice/400 "2021-05-27T18:24:44Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ouie](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex013/user_avatar/forum.aboutcircles.com/ouie/32/191_2.png) [@ouie](https://forum.aboutcircles.com/u/ouie)\
**Post date:** [May 27, 2021, 6:24pm UTC](https://forum.aboutcircles.com/t/pathfinders-step-limits-and-transfer-limitations-in-practice/400/1 "2021-05-27T18:24:44Z")

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As blocksizes are not infinite we need a step limit for transitive transactions if we want them to fit in the same block.

I made a small investigation into what is a good maximum number of steps. But this also led me to investigate the amount of CRC that can be transferred to a remote node in the trust graph, in a single transaction. It includes an analysis of how many steps are needed for different amounts of circles.

You can read about it in the circles hand book:

> **[The limitation of transitive transactions in practice | Circles UBI | Handbook](https://handbook.joincircles.net/docs/developers/transitive-transactions/transfer-limitations-in-practice/)**
>
> Author 2021-05-27

It has beautiful diagrams 😉

It turns out the pathfinding used in the circles-api performs quite bad in terms of reaching a large number of steps fast for remote transactions.  
We in the circles dev team are currently working on a new pathfinding services with more accurate trust indexing in a new repo called “slimemold” (named so after this organism’s ability to find paths)

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**Author:** ![martin\_koeppelmann](https://dub1.discourse-cdn.com/flex013/user_avatar/forum.aboutcircles.com/martin_koeppelmann/32/313_2.png) [@martin\_koeppelmann](https://forum.aboutcircles.com/u/martin_koeppelmann)\
**Post date:** [June 15, 2021, 10:58am UTC](https://forum.aboutcircles.com/t/pathfinders-step-limits-and-transfer-limitations-in-practice/400/2 "2021-06-15T10:58:10Z")

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Thanks for this write up!