When is non-trivial estimation possible for graphons and stochastic block models?

Block graphons (also called stochastic block models) are an important and widely studied class of models for random networks. We provide a lower bound on the accuracy of estimators for block graphons with a large number of blocks. We show that, given only the number $k$ of blocks and an upper bound $\rho$ on the values (connection probabilities) of the graphon, every estimator incurs error ${\it{\Omega}}\left(\min\left(\rho, \sqrt{\frac{\rho k^2}{n^2}}\right)\right)$ in the $\delta_2$ metric with constant probability for at least some graphons. In particular, our bound rules out any non-trivial estimation (that is, with $\delta_2$ error substantially less than $\rho$) when $k\geq n\sqrt{\rho}$. Combined with previous upper and lower bounds, our results characterize, up to logarithmic terms, the accuracy of graphon estimation in the $\delta_2$ metric. A similar lower bound to ours was obtained independently by Klopp et al.