Bitcoin Forum

Since I woke up this morning , I've seen several topics and people complaining about their transactions not getting confirmed ? Is it a coincidence or there is something going on ? Spam attack or something similar ?

don't know about spam attack but there's an unusually high number of unconfirmed transaction right now. lots of them sends 1-10 satoshi per byte as fee. and the number of txes paying high fee are also a bit higher than usual.

maybe just a busy day.

Only around 25k unconfirmed transactions (https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions).
Being cheap and sending with low fees will result in your transactions traveling through confirmation-limbo for some time.

and how much exactly It should be to know if it's a spam attack or not ? or you can't know for sure unless someone admits that he is doing the attack ?

https://bitcoinfees.21.co/
Just look at the mere part of the unconfirmed transactions being sent with very little/close to none fees.

If you have  payment on wait "medium priority" for confirmation ? How long you must wait until confirm?
I never had experience with less than "high priority" and even then you must wait sometimes for almost hour.

They may take up to 6 blocks to get confirmed or more depending on the network load and since the network seems a little bloated today, it may take upto 1.5 Hrs for a tx of a medium priority to get confirmed.

Yes it is really difficult to identify whether it is a spam attack or not because we don't have any clue until and unless the other person accepts it. Best way to avoid these late transactions is just pay a bit more for transaction and it will be real quick.

4 btc as tx fees are a good amount!
I remember in december 2015 last attack only 0,20 btc as tx fees...
maybe it's not an "attack" but more people are using it?!?
And even if it's an attack who are the protagonists?

Are you serious ? :D

Yea it sucks i just observed this a few days ago, need to put 20k satoshi as fee now, or wait many hours.

Crap, hurry with the segwit devs! :D

Standard anwsers, pick one you like:
1. Fee too low
2. These transactions are spam
3. They depend on previous unconfirmed/spam/low-fee transactions.

Ive sent a number of small transactions today myself and have had no problems at all???  i think its usually a fee issue with some people.

Maybe it's because your transaction is big, i don't know though. Sometimes the confirmation take to long and slow, but i never experienced that issue.

Most likely we are experiencing some forms of stress tests these few days. My transaction in Coinbase has been pending since yesterday. No worry, it will be over, hopefully soon.

Pay the fees ... http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img913/8247/EVgr3z.gif

Nope, it does not look to be any stress testing:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/48awq1/is_there_a_stress_test_going_on_right_now/

Fuck I`m waiting here for 4-5 hours for a transaction to complete.

It had many inputs and I was lazy to pay the bigger fee, oh well, next time i will pay more.

I have to pay attention on the input count, it does increase the tx size.

https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

WTF more than 31.500 transaction unconfirmed , if bitcoin price rising and no people want to "lost" his some satosi , the unconfirmed transaction can reach 100.000 ::)

It could just be a busy day, but I have a feeling that is a spam attack. There are so many unconfirmed transactions with low fees. I hope these spammers stop.

They will not stop until their money runs out, or they feel they have proven some point. We will have to take this nonsense until the block size is increased, but even then there are no guarantee that this will stop. People with hidden agendas will take any opportunity to attack Bitcoin, it is just part of the role of being at the top.

Just bump your fee's until this has blown over.

They are pretty much never going to run out of money unless they are really poor. They will only stop when they want to. I really hope that they stop!!

Yesterday I sent 0.004 BTC with 0.0001 BTC fee (medium priority), but even after 24 hours it is still unconfirmed, https://blockchain.info/tx/a3eeb4299e87a7783d454b4c85e58898e1a618f25ef0e5869bb0caae2f4c358f

Might be a spam attack

because for not proper fee, and because the 1mb limit is shit since years already, but we are on track to change this at least

and remember that even if you issued a proper fee if another "attached" tx has less fee than your it will still be delayed

I have been sending my transactions with 4x the minimal fee for a while and they seem to be confirming kinda faster.
What is your usual fee guys that you like to use? Do you use the high to medium fees or lower?

Well the transactions, are taking to long because of the fact the bitcoin transactions need to get confirmed, how higher the fee is how quicker you will receive your transactions.
I think they really need to change it because it also gets people away from bitcoin because its a bit weird if I'm honest.

I think there is a spam attack or "test" taking place now, I too was annoyed by it as usual, This should be modified in someway IMO to avoid these slowing attacks.

it must be a transaction fees issue..  many people send transactions with too low fees actualy.

Ignore most of these posters because they clearly haven't done any research themselves. It is most certainly an on-going attack. There are too many threads about this already and you might run into false information.

https://i.imgur.com/efEIJ61.png

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Please don't post if you don't have correct information. It is not just about fees.

Correct. If you spend some time to analyze the situation you will draw to this conclusion pretty quickly.

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Update: Corrections and additions.

check cointape.com, you will know the mem pool is filled up with low fees tx. The tx should include appropriate amount of fees to make the tx included in the next block.

  just have a look there , please   .. before being agressive ;) peace man

https://bitcoinfees.21.co/ (https://bitcoinfees.21.co/)

Thank you Blockstream.

It is not "people" (which would imply natural growth); it is an attack, therefore your statement isn't correct. People should be fine if they include 50-60 satoshis per byte. The website is useful, but unfortunately a lot of people don't use it.

This has nothing to do with Blockstream. This is an attack and it is likely that it is some 'fork supporter'; thank them.

The longest time i was waiting for confirmations was 72hours.
It was during a stress test of the grid, last year.
This must be some sort of attack as to no official info of any tests.
You think that is will affect the price?

Agree.That is just an attempt to heat up the actual situation inside the community.
Pretty lame but that's how it is.
I pay 60-65 satoshi/byte per transaction which is around 6-7 cents and never had any problems!

Maybe most people are not experts and once they send transaction with low fee, they get stuck now. But it is not their fault, because these fees worked in the past so you can not expect average person to choose adequate fee for his required confirmation time.

And unless you choose the highest priority option to send transaction, the wallet adaptive fees estimation does not work best in scenario when backlog and average fees keep increasing...

Mostly you will not have problems but some times it will take a lot of time before its really has been confirmed, I had it also one time but mostly its going really fast if you ask me, and its also that its also still faster than most banks.

I think its a just a matter of time before this get fixed and it will be a lot faster.

I dont know if its an attack or just high demand, but its true there is a high number of TX waiting for a confirmation. People will have to step up on fees if they want to avoid waiting.


https://i.imgur.com/Z6EvjjO.png

Segwit would not relieve this situation, only an increase in the blocksize limit would. If you did not know already, Core wants the blocks to be continuously full, this is part of their radical plan to fundamentally change the economic policy of Bitcoin. If you do not want this I would recommend either supporting Bitcoin Classic or Bitcoin Unlimited instead.

Bravo for being one great FUD shill. And why would you gentleman think Core would risk its own position as the leading client ?

I have high prio and waiting since 21 hours now. I never had this. It will be my last bitcoin transaction. Seems to be outdated this stuff. Walking and bring money in cash seems to be the faster way these days!

Feel free to walk across several countries when you send an international payment  ;) and good luck without bitcoin. Good riddance I must say

Because Classic doesnt want SegWit and BTC U has their own solution? Maybe keep the propaganda out of this thread and lets try to help those with stuck TX as much as possible.


Certainly depends on the distance. It sounds like you rely on blockchain.info for the "priority" estimate. Wana share your TX ID so we can take a look at it?

The transaction delay is based upon the service you have chosen. There are few types of services based on pricing such as free, paid and immediate transfer.

What in the world are you talking about? It does make sense if I think of you as an intelligible individual, free= 0 BTC fee , paid= 0.0001 BTC fee and immediate=0.001 fee or off-chain transaction, but I'm pretty sure thats not what you meant

Well on Sunday I send a transaction, and I thought I added the fee.
But I somehow didn't, and I send the transaction at 8:30 in the evening.
I think I was awake until 2'o clock at night, maybe even later, and the transaction still wasn't through.

The next morning I woke up and it got through, but i checked and it had around 9k-11k unconfirmed transactions.
So probably when you send it now as a medium priority, it will take maybe 2 days :D

Never had a problem, just pay the required fees. The only problem that may arise is when you are trying to withdraw funds from an exchange, and since the exchanges sometimes don't let you choose a fee, or don't have in-built "perfect fee" calculator like the Core wallet, so you can screw up on there and send the incorrect fee.

i have been waiting for over a day on my deposit in exchanger and now the opportunities of buying has passed :(

And when we can expect this to be resolved?
If you already expecting confirmation more than 20 h?
I'm not panicking just curious can this happen again tomorrow or some other day?

For the people that are saying just to pay higher fees, that is not a solution to this problem. There is not enough space for everyone to transact regardless of the fee that is payed. If everyone did start paying higher fees everyone would then need to pay even higher fees until enough people become priced out. Not to mention that such a hyper competitive fee market translates into a horrible user experience. It would be much better for adoption and the protocol as a whole if we just increased the block size limit to two megabytes instead.

No FUD here I am speaking facts whether you like it or not. Core is indeed risking its own position as the leading client by doing this. I think Core should cease being the leading client for exactly this reason.

It will be resolved when the blocksize limit is increased, otherwise expect this to be the new norm while Bitcoin is overtaken by alternative cryptocurrencies that are willing to scale directly.

You can't expect this to be resolved.

This can happen for as long as bitcoin can't handle this kind of usage, that will be for long time.

The question is, will people dump en mass when realizing bitcoin doesn't scale and 7 transactions per second in summer 2017 is still shit?

The real shame is that Bitcoin can handle this kind of usage, it is just being artificially restricted because of the politics of Core and Block Stream.

Stop posting false information; people are tired of the FUD. Both Segwit and a 2 MB block size limit would temporarily "fix" the situation. I recommend staying away from both Classic and BU because of the obvious manipulation attempt.

Most of the transactions are in the 1-10 satoshi per byte range. This can't be a coincidence. It is highly improbable that the 'high demand' would result in everyone including the same (low) fee in transactions.

Yes it can as this is not natural growth.

Since you don't want to read, listen and learn and just want to complain leave the system and join the altcoins already.

Seens fair enough, looks like a religion war
"Convert to my religion or get killed, you choose", where in this case get killed = DDoS

The only way an increase in the blocksize would relieve this situation is if the spam transactions made it into blocks.

That would allow attackers to cause a rapid growth in the size of the blockchain resulting in more resources needed to run a full-node without legitimate transactions increasing to justify the increased resources.

Even if we had 16 MB blocks my hope is the miners would not be including these junk transactions in blocks.

Including them in blocks serves no useful purpose to the bitcoin community.

I think fee per transaction should be adjusted as per price of bitcoin so that everybody will be willing to pay enough fee for smooth transaction. It will be intresting what will miners do after halving if price doesn't get increased. We may see even more number of unconfirmed transactions.

including "spam" in blocks, forces "spammers" to pay fees until they run out of funds. This also allows miners to clear the memory pool to avoid confirmation delays. At greater scale this would work very well, since it would make it very expensive to overload the network in this way.

It is mostly impossible to differentiate between "spam" and what most people would consider "legitimate" transactions.

This highly depends on the current recommended fee in that case. Depending on how large the fee is they could fill up the network for days without spending too much money. Also if look at the days destroyed  (https://blockchain.info/charts/bitcoin-days-destroyed)chart then you would see that somebody is moving the same coins constantly (example (https://i.imgur.com/XFxLy3s.png)). There is probably more going on-

That's only what someone with insufficient knowledge would say.

Transaction are taking long when you are sending with a low fee, because the confirmations will take a lot longer because of the low fee, I really hate that part from the bitcoin.
If that would be better the bitcoin would be perfect and ready for a take over at the world.

The bitcoin network is becoming overloaded. As bitcoin is becoming isncreasingly mainstream more and more transactions are done every day and the network is not supporting it. It is reaching the network full capacity, and that is why there is an urgent need for a block size increase. To avoid transactions taking too long, you will need to pay higher fees.

With the fees they are including, $10 would go a long way.

Please stop talking about spam transactions, because legitimate transactions in range 12 Satoshi per Byte are not confirmed for over 24 hours. For example Secondtrade weekly signature campaign payment has been sent yesterday with 0.0008 Bitcoin fee for 6791 bytes but not confirmed up to now. Definitively not spam transaction with minimum fees. Here:
https://blockchain.info/tx/b5bc9629e26345c88a65308dd6b4d24f9572369ff4eec301fdbf319984d842b4


This waiting really hurt Bitcoin creditibility in normal user eyes. If it is supposed to be a norm this way, then we can say goodbye further Bitcoin adoption and price increase...

Bitcoin fees need to stay competitive if we want Bitcoin to remain the dominant cryptocurrency of the world. It is basic economics really, not to mention that this situation also makes Bitcoin less reliable. Not good for adoption at all, there are many people complaining presently, I do not see how this is preferable to just increasing the blocksize to two megabytes.

http://forums.prohashing.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=762 (http://forums.prohashing.com/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=762)

Paying ~ 35 cents USD on an almost 1 BTC transaction with a long list of outputs - um, you are correct that it is not spam - but it still is being incredibly cheap.

The recommended fee is 60 Satoshi per Byte and you blame Bitcoin for your unconfirmed transactions? ::) Please stop posting nonsense and start looking at charts. The majority of these transactions (now 56k on https://bitcoinfees.21.co/) are in the 1-10 Satoshi per byte range (6 times lower than recommended in addition to this being sudden, ergo spam).

It won't solve this problem.

No. The blocks aren't naturally full yet.

Because people were used to these fees as working in the past. What I meant these are not spam attack transactions, but normal people transactions that got stuck because people are not experts and expect Bitcoin can work even when they send transaction with not priority speed.

Don't quote random people from other threads when they've been corrected several times in the meantime. A 2 MB block size limit would solve nothing; actually it could make things worse if the attacker was persistent.

This is not the case. Please stop posting and start reading.

I use bitcoinfees as well, and at the time the transaction was sent 12 Satoshi per byte indicated enought for one hour confirmation time which is enough for most cases. But since then the one hour confirmation time obviously went up in requirements for higher fees which the sender could not anticipate. These unconfirmed transactions are 12+ Satoshi per byte meaning it is not spam attack, but not enough transaction capacity instead. I mean when you describe spam as malicious attack by individual with minimum fees which is not this case.

Did you even open the website at all? It clearly indicates that the transactions are in the 1-10 satoshi per byte range, ergo spam. There is enough transaction capacity at the moment.

https://i.imgur.com/C0zmMXX.png

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I have to remind you again:

Did you ever check the transaction
https://blockchain.info/tx/b5bc9629e26345c88a65308dd6b4d24f9572369ff4eec301fdbf319984d842b4

It has 80000 Satoshi for 6791 bytes, or about 12 Satoshi per byte and is not confirmed for over 24 hours. This mean unconfirmed transactions are indeed around 12+ Satoshi per byte which is hardly defined as a spam when these were sent at a time when bitcoinfees indicated 12 Satoshi per byte is enought for one hour confirmation time.

Why you dont listen to people and pretend everything is working fine ??? Remember not everyone is supposed to send with fees for 12 minute requirement, some are fine with around 1 hour as indicated by bitcoinfees site.

I did. You've based your claim that there is no spam attack on the premise of your transaction having ~12 satoshi per byte fee. This is a false conclusion.

There are ~11k transactions in that range, far lower than the current backlog (in the 1-10 range), ergo spam attack.

Because everything is working fine. The recommended fee is 60 satoshis per byte; don't blame Bitcoin when you include a fee that is 5 times lower.

Yes what will happen to this transaction?
Everything was fine before (transaction from campaign, even with lower fee),
 how come suddenly we have such problem?

The point is ~11k transactions in that range are legit transactions which are not confirmed so not influenced by any spam attack in 1-10 range backlog (if there is ever spam attack and not just normal people sending with fees they were sending recently as working  ;))

And it is Secondstrade transaction, I heard similar problem has/had Slush pool with daily payments with usual 10 Satoshi fee / byte. You cant expect from normal people who use Bitcoin to be more knowledgeable than these bigger business operators with good technical knowledge but still getting their transactions stuck.

I wonder how much longer the 1MB blocksize can hold up?  http://images.memes.com/meme/170877

We are approaching the economic change event. As Jeff Garzick has already warned us about.

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011973.html (https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011973.html)

We may already be there.

1048 bytes for 2 weeks 95% full.

It doesn't matter in this case. You've claimed that there is no spam attack, which is false. Besides, you don't realize what priority of transactions mean and the fees. There is no guarantee that yours will be included as it has a 5x lower fee than recommended.

No blocksize limit will save the network from this problem.

Because of spam. I've just sent out a transaction that confirmed within 1 minute (there was luck in play with the block timing, however it shows that experienced users aren't affected by this backlog).

See what happened there, your transaction just became spam ATguy. If this continues I suppose all of my transactions will be spam as well and I will just stop using Bitcoin, Ethereum is certainly profiting from this situation.

If the problem is that the network is reaching capacity then increasing the networks capacity certainly would help with this problem, it is puzzling that you are even trying to deny this. It is a very basic logic really.

The problem with adoption is not with experienced users, it is with new users who happen to be having a terrible user experience right now, regardless of what you say.

Fees are good ... eventually.  I'd much rather sacrifice some fees for now until adoption is more widespread.

I will continue to run a full node (despite the lack of any payment at all); often with 100+ connections and 100's of GB/month.

Which is better for Bitcoin in the long run?  More fees now or more adoption now?  Hmm?

More adoption now will lead to more fees later, the block subsidy is meant to bootstrap adoption. The Bitcoin network is meant to be a high volume low cost network, not a low volume high cost network.

Big blocks would let the spammers burn through their resources faster.

That's not what happened. However, you can't blame Bitcoin for including inadequate fees. Try processing a bank transfer and include a fee 5 times lower than needed and get back to me.

It is not reaching capacity yet because this is an on-going spam attack. A block size limit increase would not solve this problem.

That's not my problem and I never said that it was.

Not necessarily.

for now use fee high, the higher the better.
I accept bitcoin for a fee of 0.0008 is already 24 hours has not been confirmed.  :-\

wtf! fee 0.0008 satoshi ? is too high man ?
how many hours it took to be confirmed?

in my country, with a 20 euros annual fees for a bank account (poor "offer"), i can spend only ... 3000 euros per month (blocked).

in my country, with a 80 euros annual fees for a bank account (normal offer), i can spend only ... well, 3400 euros per month ... and i MUST CALL my bank if i want speend more ... everytime i want do this.








with bitcoin, i can spend http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img911/2938/evk2FQ.gif ... with a 0,4 euros of fees.










it's ridiculous cheap.
i love bitcoin network with fees to destroy SPAM !

http://imagizer.imageshack.us/a/img905/5429/28wY08.gif

Hmm, training the unwashed masses to include enough fees to make spamming costly *is* a good idea.  I hadn't thought of it that way.  Thank you.

Can I configure my full node to combat spamming?  For example, configure my firewall to prohibit known bad IPs?  Configure my Bitcoin application to not forward known bad Bitcoin addresses?

How about the other way; can I configure my Bitcoin application to forward known good Bitcoin addresses before all others?

As a non-mining full node operator, pay me and I will forward your transactions.  Don't pay me and I won't.

Just brainstorming.

Suppose a half-difficulty, no-reward block were allowed if it only included no-fee transactions once a day?  I think I might be willing to contribute toward that sort of cause.  How many no-fee transactions are waiting typically?  Would a 1MB block clear them pretty well?

How to keep crap transactions out?; that's the question.

Spammers:  behave!  If you ruin Bitcoin then how is this good news?

Many people keep complaining about how long they wait for confirmation. I heard that, if you transaction into another address in blockchain, the confirmation is fast. and if to another address which is not blockchain, it's take so long to wait the confirmation.

An incoming transaction did take almost 24 hours to confirm on my end. Not a big deal since I don't intend to spend it right away, so I didn't sit around twiddling my thumbs waiting for it, but it is interesting that so many people still seem to think that Bitcoin is suitable for microtransactions. It's not just lack of adoption that's holding me back from buying a cup of coffee using Bitcoin at my local cafe. It's what would happen if even a small percentage of all the java junkies in the world decided to do that on any given day.

if it's scamming, the person who did it will not make a thread and say "I do spam attack"

maybe it happened because there are too many transactions while the fee is cheap. so the miner will process the transactions later

You'd be surprised, a lot of people that carry out attacks of any kind enjoy taking credit for their work, and aren't afraid of making posts saying they did x attack or y action.

I don't think it was a cheap transaction fee, or someone was making far too many transactions in a short period of time. Maybe someone trying to move their money quickly and (almost) inconspicuously?

explainations are here:  https://tradeblock.com/bitcoin/ (https://tradeblock.com/bitcoin/)

just have a look to the actual mempool ...  ;)

https://i.imgur.com/N1A6nL5.gif

http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/03/01/transaction-fees-increase-bitcoin-blocks-get-full/ (http://www.newsbtc.com/2016/03/01/transaction-fees-increase-bitcoin-blocks-get-full/)

You can do whatever you want.

No.

This doesn't make sense.

Someone made a small video  (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJSMmqOPZUk&feature=youtu.be)in regards to the attack.

You should assume that the number of TX's at a fee of 0 are infinite.

No.

For now everything turned to normal I guess.

The main conclusion does not lead to the fact that we need a block size increase.
If anyone analyses on Tradeblock you will notice most blocks mined by popular pools are not filling up the blocks with sufficient transactions.

Even some blocks go fully empty with only the coinbase transaction.


OMG! That is a huge chain :o

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According to me SegWit is the ultimate conclusion to solve this kind of problems.

i also feel that in this evening,witdraw bitcoins from my exchange to my wallet,and its take more than 10 minutes,i dont know why transaction more long than last years,i also wondering and searching some good answer here.

yeah ...  and  the blocks size too ..  ;)  , we need bigger blocks. ( that's not a big news . )

last few days their were lot of small  bulk transaction tool which were zero transaction fees due to that their was a problem in blcok. with the exchanges. now i think it is solved.

Show us your transaction and we can tell you the fee you paid was too low.

I always use very low fees, less than a medium anyway, and the interesting part is my transactions always go pretty fast: from 5 mins to 30 mins max, but most of them take less than 10 mins. So it really surprises me when I see people who pay high fees complain about slow transactions.

looks like people are paying a higher fee now. this is good (IMO).
many third party services are still paying a fixed fee of .0001 or .0002 for every transaction though. and their tx usually have multiple inputs.

Neither Segwit nor a 2 MB block size limit (ignore the false propaganda by the shills) are any kind of solution to this problem. What they essentially do, when you look at it from this perspective, is delay the problem a bit. Currently the only known way to avoid this and have instant transactions would be the Lightning Network (still in development).

Bitcoin is not organic, therefore it can't get sick.

This is the result of an attack on the network.

https://i.imgur.com/MGxkWrS.png

Miners still arnt switching to classic.  So they either don't care that the blocks are full or don't trust classic.

There isn't a single valid reason to switch to Classic. Don't start this debate in yet another thread please.

Classic doesn't solve the problem that was caused by the attack. Please read the whole topic before posting.

I'll read and post whatever I want.  Thanks.

I think a majority of miners just want to keep going with the flow and not make any drastic changes yet, if there are major issues related to the block size being too small I think there would be more of a push for miners to change to the classic chain. In the meantime, however, there is no need for them to change, as they are still making enough money.

What is going on guys is there a big backlog of transactions again? I have had some TX delayed even though the fees were reasonable.

They may try to fix this problem on btc but it will keep happening. its a limitation in itself.

Cool; you've convinced me; I might be thick but I am not infinitely so.  I am switching from Classic to Core.  Thank you for your patience.  The easiest/best/only? way to fight spam is by making it expensive for them.  So far the only answer appears to be increasing fees.  Attempting to increase adoption with unrealistic low/zero fees is misleading.

One day we will need to increase the block size in order to accommodate non-spam traffic; we just aren't there yet.  How much non-spam traffic is flowing through these days?

I think you are mistaken, the problem is that there is not enough network capacity. Increasing the networks capacity solves the problem of congestion now. You need to think about this more long term, now is not the time to restrict the throughput of the network. If we have twice the network throughput it will be twice as expensive with the same fees to attack the network. This property increases as we increase the blocksize. Bitcoin will not be able to compete with the alternative cryptocurrencies when they can just increase the blocksize, this was always the intention with the original design of Bitcoin as well. In the long term we might have more expensive fees but I think that should be up to the free market to decide, not enforced through an economic policy tool like the blocksize limit. With an increased blocksize over the long term it will be much more expensive to attack the network in this way. Making Bitcoin more unreliable and expensive will simply just lead to its obsoletion, we can already see how Ethereum is rising in response to this crisis. Most altcoins already have a TPS in the hundreds, the 3-7 TPS of Bitcoin is just a bad joke there is no chance that Bitcoin will remain the dominant cryptocurrency if that remains the case.

Spammers; bring it until you are broke; you are literally helping improve Bitcoin.

Legit users; quit your whining; pay reasonable fees during these spam attacks.

Developers; continue to help legit users pay reasonable fees.  Be on the lookout for the time when a bigger block size is needed to move legit traffic at reasonable fees.

Governance; i.e. the community at-large, this debate had to take as long as it did due to a variety of reasons (and I sincerely doubt we've heard the last of it).  Do not lose heart.  Bitcoin is a keeper technology.  Embrace reasonable fees; the early days of low/zero fees are behind us now; remember them like we remember floppy diskettes, etc.

I hope you realize what it means in terms of governance to run Core. I am strongly opposed to their conception of Bitcoin governance regardless of the blocksize issue.

Unfortunately even a 32MB blocksize (or even larger) can't be the answer.  Spammers could just load 'em up with crap low/zero fee transactions.

How much legit traffic is there right now?

In that case miners could put the spam into blocks making them pay for it, zero fee transactions will just get dropped. While also avoiding any confirmation dellays in the proccess. In the example that you mention, with a standard low transaction fee of 0.0001. It would cost approximately 6.4 Bitcoins per block to attack the network. At the current Bitcoin price it would cost approximately four hundred thousand dollars per day to attack the Bitcoin network with a thirty megabyte blocksize limit. I would argue that this is a much better defense against a spam attack compared to restricting the blocksize, while very importantly not sacrificing the utility of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a permisionless network, I do not think there even is such a thing as spam unless you can prove the malicious intentions of the spammers, which is sometimes the case. I do think that what we are seeing now is the network simply reaching capacity, which is why its capacity must be increased or Bitcoin risks being out competed and obsolesced by alternative cryptocurrencies and fiat.

Everyone please inform your self. :)

http://konradsgraf.com/blog1/tag/block-size-debate (http://konradsgraf.com/blog1/tag/block-size-debate)
https://medium.com/@riprowan/the-entire-debate-transcends-block-sizes-and-gets-to-the-fundamental-principles-of-bitcoin-as-c7f7bc1a493#.e6tlubrv7 (https://medium.com/@riprowan/the-entire-debate-transcends-block-sizes-and-gets-to-the-fundamental-principles-of-bitcoin-as-c7f7bc1a493#.e6tlubrv7)
http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011973.html (http://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011973.html)
https://medium.com/@jgarzik/bitcoin-is-being-hot-wired-for-settlement-a5beb1df223a#.7ek47hakx (https://medium.com/@jgarzik/bitcoin-is-being-hot-wired-for-settlement-a5beb1df223a#.7ek47hakx)

I too am terribly uneasy about such a small number of people holding the keys; they are vulnerable to coercion and/or simple misguidance.  I would be ok with the Classic guys taking the keys but they are vulnerable to the same things.  I don't have an answer.  Polarizing on the blocksize is not healthy.  Depolarizing is going to be the way forward for sure.  Would someone please point me at a site that reveals the current and historic legit traffic?

Miners have a stake in the health of Bitcoin; it makes no sense for them to undermine :P it.

Hmm, I too thought about how large blocks let the spammers go broke faster *but* the larger blocksize also encourages lower fees.  Has anyone done the math (or simulation) to see how the two forces play out?

There is a solution, giving any one group the keys is problematic, the key to solving this problem is distributing this power just like Bitcoin has done for many other things. Multiple competing implementations distributes this power and avoids any singular developer team gaining to much power. This is how the governance of Bitcoin should work.

Like I said before, Bitcoin is a permisionless network. I consider all traffic legitimate unless the persons are malicious in their motivations, which can not always be proven or discovered.

I agree, they would be doing this for the good of the network.

Low fees at this stage of Bitcoins development is a good thing and should be the desired state for maximizing adoption, adoption also being key to increased security and decentralization, a virtues cycle if you will. Bitcoin was always meant to be a high volume low cost network. Not a low volume high cost network, which is what Core is attempting to turn Bitcoin into, diverging from Satoshi's original vision.

I see both sides.  Compromise.  Increase the blocksize to 1.1MB just to see how it goes; nothing like a little practice; who ever said doubling it was the only way forward?  Get SegWit out the door as soon as it is really ready.

If I were king (you could make a worse choice) then I would set the blocksize to 32MB (or whatever maximum value is workable right now) and then get to work on overcoming that maximum via block segmentation, etc.  Despite that I would do what I could to facilitate legit users paying reasonable fees.  The free lunch of zero-cost transactions is over.

So, maybe I wasted my time deinstalling Classic and installing Core.  *sigh*  Do I really have to break open the code and make my own version?

I read through all of it; thank you.

What I see is a need to make burdensome things cost more.  Things like transactions that deliberately make pruning less effective.

I would encourage anyone creating their own versions. ;)

Good to keep in mind that two megabytes is already a compromise. The first proposal was twenty megabytes, second proposal was eight megabytes. Classic represents the third proposal at two megabytes. If anything I think it is time for the other side to compromise. So far they have not moved an inch. I would even welcome a hard fork to 1.1 megabytes just to prove a point, that it can be done and to decrease all of the unnecessary fear mongering that surrounds such a change, at least then we would have a precedent.

There are two ways to "pay"; 1) fees to miners, 2) send Bitcoins to an inaccessible address.  Paying miners is great and well worth it.  Sending Bitcoins to an inaccessible address "pays" all holders.  Perhaps we can make truly burdensome transactions costly by requiring they pay the latter.  Yeah, yeah, which transactions are so burdensome?

Fees are important over the long term, the block subsidy is meant to bootstrap adoption, however at some point fees are meant to replace the block reward entirely. I do not expect this to happen for several decades at least, though it is important to keep this in mind for the long term vision of Bitcoin.

Miners provide security to the network, so the fee is actually paying for a service, if the fee was burned that would not be the case. It is also good to keep in mind that any changes to Bitcoin need to be very conservative in order for them to have any chance to be implemented, just look at the blocksize limit, which was always meant to be increased and was just a temporary anti spam limit when first implemented. If it was easier to make changes to Bitcoin I would suggest incentivized full nodes and a self funding blockchain, fortunately there are some good sides to this conservatism as well. :)

Personally I don't agree with that point, yet anyways, as anything that we get rid of doesn't have a noticeable impact on the value of Bitcoin.

Once Bitcoin becomes increasingly scarce, then Bitcoin that has been made inaccessible will finally show some value, but until then, Bitcoin being generated currently outweighs a majority of the Bitcoin being discarded.

Agree with the problem of which are burdensome,it would be hard to sort or cap with out being restrictive in nature.
Will read the links now and catch up on this aspect before I spout off. :)

Ok, fine.  What do I do?  Offer to pay a bounty for my version?  How much is this going to cost me?  Literally dust off my coding skills?  Geesh, I did download the Git software a while ago and goofed around with it.  I am an old VMS cli kind of guy so this is out of my comfort zone.

Its cool, I was just playing around, it is the principle that is important. Anyone should be able to create their own implementation and run it on the network. We do have a few choices now fortunately. I like Bitcoin Unlimited myself which is also compatible with any of the changes in Bitcoin Classic, which has the best chance of reaching "consensus". There are now five major implementations of Bitcoin, Core, Classic, Unlimited, BTCD and LibBitcoin. There are more obscure ones out there as well that individuals have created according to their own tastes. Bitpay has an implementation of Bitcoin with an adaptive blocksize which is what Classic will be moving towards in the future as well. :)

Hey, Core development guys; listen up; C.O.M.P.R.O.M.I.S.E. already.  Would 1.1MB really kill ya?  You are getting a bad reputation out here.  If 1.1MB is a waste of time in your eyes then, ok, 2MB; whatever, it is more about appearances than anything.  You don't think you can ride 1MB forever, right?  Give us a clue; when do you think a blocksize increase will be appropriate?

Sorry to break it to ya but the core devs would hardly be having a look at this site, let alone in one of the specific thread where one random individual has made a suggestion. Github, the place for Bitcoin geeks is the only place  :P

With a little bit of blockchain analysis you can do this; this is what happened yesterday. I'd also put dust into this category.

Step 1) Ignore the manipulation attempts. An increased block size limit does not solve this problem.
Step 2) Wait for Segwit and LN.

Even if we had a 2MB block size limit/Segwit this could still happen any day (as it was an attack). This doesn't solve the problem. Something that could be considered a 'solution' with instant transactions is the Lightning Network (you might want to read up on it).

According to the roundtable (a 'unnamed' expert said) that blocks are 40% full right now (IIRC) and that the rest was spam.

Oh; thanks.  Um, shoot; how does one post to Github effectively?

If you did post such a concept on any one of the main Core channels they would just ban and censor you, I would be very surprised if that did not happen. This is part of why many prominent developers have moved to alternative implementations where these issues can be discussed and implemented.

Hey, VeritaSapere; please stop manipulating me.

Perhaps a larger block size doesn't solve "this" but it certainly wouldn't hurt, right?

My son and I run an informal side chain in our brains; not terribly precise but it gets the job done.  We keep track of how much we owe each other (I paid for the ski lift ticket; he bought lunch, etc.) and when it gets big enough we settle in Bitcoin (or sometimes in US dollars; whichever is handy).  I think LN is like this but fancier and clearly way more precise/reliable.  If my son tries to screw me he's out of the will.

Fine; I will deinstall Core and install, um, which one?  BU?  That will teach those darn Core guys; ignoring/banning me wasn't very nice.  If they aren't nice to enough people then they will lose control.

I am not manipulating you, if anyone is it is the person telling you that I am. Manipulation has a very specific meaning. I mean what I say, and I am not appealing to irrationality and emotion. If you do not believe me regarding the censorship you are welcome to test that out for yourself. I just want to see Bitcoin thrive and I earnestly believe that increasing the blocksize is the best way to do this.

If by "wouldn't hurt" you mean it would waste unnecessary resources and add more cost to node operators, then yes. This does not however mean that the block size limit will never be increased. The issue is much more complex.

Regardless of how many times you repeat the lie, it won't make it true. What you hope for is not possible in that way.

This does not happen.

If by "prominent" you mean random developers who haven't contributed much to Bitcoin (if at all), then yes.

Their was a rumor that some of the users attacked the block by creating small heavy transaction without giving transaction fees which made exchanges not to accept the transaction and for that which ever transaction was done with high transaction fees got cleared.

Oops, my bad; I was joking; I should have added a smiley.  For the record, I never felt manipulated.

I am pretty sure most folks involved are indeed earnestly believing in their espoused positions; it is possible there are disruptors in here, deliberately flaming discontent.

I believe the following two positions are both true at the same time;

1) the block size should be increased for the expansion of Bitcoin
       this does come at a cost; bigger bandwidth, etc.
2) reasonable fees are good for the health of Bitcoin
       naturally the tricky part is figuring out what reasonable is

Folks that believe only one of these are the real source of trouble.  Lauda did show eventual support for 1).  It is unlikely he is a disruptor; just passionate.  VeritasSapere too showed willingness to compromise even though 2MB is already a big one; unlike a disruptor.  The proof is in the pudding.  As a show of good faith, the Core guys ought to boost the block size if nothing else to 1.1MB; even though they don't think it is required or it even hurts a little.  Sticking to the wait for SegWit (no matter how great it is) exclusively is not the smart move politically.

I highly suggest depolarizing.  Recruiting folks into one camp or the other is polarizing; stop it.  Compromise (even a little beyond reason) goes a very long way to improving the external image/brand.

 in regard of this : thanx to finaly recognize it ..  ;)

Thanks David Rabahy, I am sorry, I am a bit sensitive when it comes to that word. I like to pride myself in at least taking a high ground in these discussions, whether I am right or wrong. :)

High ground?  As in the dryer place?  The tactical advantage?  Or the morally superior position?  :) :) :)  Can't a guy make a joke around here?  :)

I sincerely understand; you mean you don't use unseemly tactics, e.g. manipulation.  You argue points on their merit that the rational mind will see for itself from first principles.  Me too.

Lauda, the ball is in your court.  Do you see the opportunity for compromise here?  1.1MB (or 2MB) *and* SegWit?  Or will you stand firmly on the SegWit only approach?

I'd say that intentionally feeding you false information is manipulating, but suit yourself.

Exactly why would anyone want to do a HF right now (these are not easy to do and definitely not the preference of many) because of additional 100 kB? It is pointless at the moment and some patience is necessary. Segwit is just around the corner. and a HF proposal should be presented between April and July as well.

---

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However, keep in mind that this is not the right place to discuss this. We are moving away from the original topic. On-topic: Currently there are 17.5k unconfirmed transactions (according to blockchain.info) and the number seems to be going down for now.

Hmm, there's no connection between the transaction commit time and block size?

A hard fork would be a show of good faith; especially if it isn't needed at the moment.  The willingness to compromise is key to being viewed as reasonable and inclusive.  Resisting compromise rankles against common sense; it undermines the trust and faith folks will put in you.

Do you truly believe in the SegWit-only approach so much that you're willing to give up the advantages of embracing a compromise?

At a minimum, help me understand when a block size increase would be entertained.  What reports do we watch?

Either send me a direct PM or open up another thread/post in relevant one. This thread is not about Core vs. Classic; Segwit vs. 2 MB block size limit or any of that. I'd be willing to discuss in such.
However, this thread is about transaction delays and the recent attack.

Just learn how fees work and act accordingly! The network is doing fine! Bunch of whiners!

I would say that the blocksize limit has much to do with the present confirmation delays. Furthermore that a discussion of blocksize is also very much relevant to the debate between Core and Classic. I would not consider this discussion to be off topic for this thread at all.

I have noticed that people are adding significant higher fees in the hope their transaction gets confirmed within a normal time frame. Now more and more people are doing this it will have less effect. It will only push the transaction fee higher and higher as people want their transaction to be included in the next block.

That is correct, fees are going to continue to go up until enough people are pushed out. That is the way such a "fee market" works. There is simply not enough capacity for everyone to transact regardless of the fee that is payed.

I think good move could be fee for running nodes.
This will cost electricity, good amount of hdd and you can't rely on certain number
of supporters who runs nodes as believers in bitcoin.
I don't know is this possible but sound good  ;).

Can this help with this problem, i mean with more nodes, confirmation will be faster?

No, although it partially affects the confirmation time.If you have Bitcoin core, it should rebroadcast your transaction every half an hour or so, hence not much use for more nodes. Its the mining difficulty that causes the 'limit' AFAIK

The 'limit' is not "caused" by the mining difficulty, if anything you could say that the failure to increase the limit is caused by Core. Miners could easily produce two megabytes blocks and I am still confident that they will. It is just a matter of time, though I suppose we should not have expected the first real experiment in decentralized governance to be easy. ;)

That's why they produce empty blocks, some even above 10% of their total blocks, right? I'm certain that this would get worse or they'd impose their soft limits again. My transaction last night got 3 confirmations in 6 minutes (block interval was short), albeit this confirms that the network is functioning properly. The number of unconfirmed transactions is going down even though the recommended fee is a bit higher.

I'm certain that you've heard this a lot of times; fork off already.

 my biggest mistake in bitcoin is that i bought bitcoin when the price is at the $400 dollar last year, in the withdrawal transactions not much, just delays when withdrawing btc in some site other than that nothing really.

I've been really frustrated by the slow confirmation times too.  I really hope the devs figure out something soon that will solve this problem.  Hopefully something that will allow fast confirmations times and still be relatively cheap.

An ideal solution would be a printed version of Bitcoin. It's easy to use and there are literally no fees.

They have, at least the core devs. Core has a well working fee estimate for quite some time now. The most recent addition was the option to increase the fee of a unconfirmed transaction (opt-in replace by fee),but its not part of the GUI yet.

My twi transactions got confirmed after 24 hours and when I transferred them to another account via xapo, it took less than an hour. I don't know if there's an issue only with blockchain or with all wallets but now it seems we need to add a higher fee to get our transactions confirmed soon.

an interesting article here :  http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-capacity-nightmare-fees-reality/?utm_source=CoinDesk+subscribers&utm_campaign=ac8f007b46-EMAIL_RSS_CAMPAIGNT2&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_74abb9e6ab-ac8f007b46-72116193 (http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-capacity-nightmare-fees-reality/?utm_source=CoinDesk+subscribers&utm_campaign=ac8f007b46-EMAIL_RSS_CAMPAIGNT2&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_74abb9e6ab-ac8f007b46-72116193)

I recently made a transaction before a week but I haven't experience much time to get the confirmations.
I gat my confirmations within 40 minutes. I transferred from my blockchain wallet.

Its simple.  Crippled coins don't run as fast as healthy coins.  Bitcoin has had its legs broken by Blockstream/Core.  What did you expect?  I mean seriously.... are you people really that stupid that you can't even figure out something this simple?

The problematic part is the full node internet bandwith is going up significally when transactions get rebroadcasted en masse with such replace by fee feature. And internet bandwith is the last argument why dont increase onchain blocksize, because hard disk space or CPU is not such issue.

Well yes but just remember the average user don't care about technical terms. They want a fast and reliable  paymetn method.
And this waiting time is juts not gooed.

The waiting time issue also does not exist. Bitcoin is reliable and fast now.

its rarely happen,and i just know it s block mistake or connection problem,last day my transaction also delayed almost a day,and its feel like shit. i need that bitcoin,and i get it so long to come to my wallet,this totally rare happen to me.

I had not happen it but i saw the amount of transactions is stacking up. I really hope the developers will start soon with the blocksize increasement.
Right now it's like we are ignoring a very big problem.

It was an attack.

The only thing being ignored is all of the posts, by you.

Delays don't happen because of the reasons that you've listed.

That is not a solution. All that does is cause more network traffic (from people rebroadcasting new RBF transactions), making transactions more expensive for everyone, and *maybe* making "stress test"-like "attacks" more expensive. Raising fees is not going to allow more transactions to fit in a single block.

Well yes, the underlying question is whether we assume that all "legit" transactions still fit into a 1 MB block or if the network is under attack (again). Judging from the analysis a few people posted, the vast majority of the transactions causing the hold up currently pay a 2 satoshi per byte fee. RBF (when implemented into the GUI) can help to retroactively increase the fee of a "stuck" transaction. It is just a band aid solution, bigger blocks will be needed regardless.

It is definitely not just a busy day, it is a spam attack. People are sending very low amounts of satoshis and are filling up the blocks.

I would consider it a deflection when the current backlog of transactions are not "legit" transactions.

The Bitcoin protocol considers any transaction with a valid signature (for that specific transaction), and that only spends outputs that have not yet been spent in a previously confirmed transaction to be "legit" (valid).

The nodes will generally be a little bit more restrictive in that they will often not relay transactions that are "non-standard" (but will rely blocks that contain non-standard transactions) -- e.g.: contain outputs that are all below a certain threshold in size, contain a "high" "k" value signature, double spends another unconfirmed transaction in a node's mempool (this would not fit the definition of 'non-standard'), among other reasons.

When the backlog of transactions will get high (as it was recently), the blockstream core devs, and their fanboys, will claim that transactions when one entity sends BTC to itself that the transaction is not "legit" (and they will assume that the backlog is due to these transactions, yet do not provide proof, or even evidence that the backlog of transactions is due to one or more entities sending a large number of transactions to themselves). However there may be a number of business reasons that a reasonable person may find reasonable that an entity may send a large number of transactions to itself.

Lots of opinion but few facts.   On blockchain info has a chart depicting the number of transactions per day and fees in dolars per day and by dividing you can get an average.   I suppose this does not include those excluded from the block so if you pay the average fee calculated by dividing the vales in the charts. the fee should be enough.

A full node should have enough knowledge to determine what the minimum fee was among the transactions accepted.   Then the software can recommend to the user to pay some value just above that minimum


sdp

There are a couple of problems with this solution:

1) this is not currently written into the software of Bitcoin core. Full nodes (and lightweight clients) do however have software that can estimate the fee required to get a transaction confirmed quickly using some amount of variables.

2) different pools have different policies regarding which transactions to include in the blocks they find and the transaction you are attempting to create may require a higher or lower fee then previous transactions that have been recently confirmed.

3) pools will sometimes include transactions that pay out their miners in the blocks they find and these transactions will not need to pay any TX fee, distorting the average fee paid.

4) if there are more transactions every 10 minutes then the network can handle then the above estimate will be inaccurate because the fee required to get a TX confirmed will be increasing

Thank you for posting this explanation. Delayed happens from time to time.

I experience it also last 3 days ago and it took 3 days to confirmed.

Most of the time its because of multiple unconfirmed transactions, sometimes it takes lot of time to confirm the transactions and it delays the overall transaction.

Because sometimes blockchain having some problems so sometimes transaction taking long time sometimes you need to wait 8-12 hours before transaction finish but its normal cause i think that's the time they having a maintenance or some if you want a sure answer you can send an question to blockchain to know the real reason why they have slow transaction sometime, that will help you and they will answer you and that answer is sure.And all transactions is undergoing to blockchain so dont expect fast and instant transactions cause there are millions of transactions being confirmed by blockchain.