Bitcoin Forum

everyone is too busy arguing about nonsense about a possible fork in a far away future and lots of FUD in this board alone, that they even missed the fact that the memory pool has been literary empty for the past 48+ hours!

as i am writing this there are 920 unconfirmed transactions in the memory pool and the last 4 blocks are practically empty

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I know i am going to jinx it now :P
update 21/3 I jinxed it ;)

It was 600 unconfirmed a minute ago, also the network is working lightning fast!, i did 3 TX and all of them went through in less than 3 minutes! wow!

what is going on?, I always get suspicious when things works too well, usually the calm before the storm  ;D ;D

Maybe someone sat on a breaker for the spam-o-tron server and it's just rebooting :P

well an spam attack[1] costs money. all these transactions are paying a fee which was also rising high to the miners and when you multiply that by thousands of transaction each hour and then multiply it by many days of the week the amount sums up to be very huge.

and when you create too many inputs, taking the money out to one main address costs a lot too.
this tx[2] that is one of them costed $120

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1776143.0
[2] https://live.blockcypher.com/btc/tx/27b26807821178d6dbc4a08b5ccf9dab4459a967d975b8999b43afe504d44d2e/

There is no "the" mempool. Which website did you use as your source for this information? There are some more shown here: https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/pools?resolution=24h

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My node is also hovering a bit above 1k unconfirmed transactions, at the time of writing. Hopefully you now see *who* might have been doing this to support *certain "urgent" solutions*.

thanks for the addition, i understand that.
i mostly meant as a comparison of numbers. 920ish (seen on https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions which is currently at 2507 also the similar number seen on http://statoshi.info/dashboard/db/memory-pool) versus 10,000 seen on the same sources back when the spam attack was ongoing.

Just goes to show how many people on Bitcointalk are actually running full nodes. Unconfirmed tx's have been creeping slowly down from 10,000 for the past 2 weeks on my node.

Bitcoin network will not need the extra capacity of Bitcoin Unlimited as users began migration to other coins, cheaper to transact networks, you know their names.

So are we getting close to the point where we can say "fork off" and start to invest in Bitcoin?

Please name me a single viable alternative. By viable I mean the following:
1) Doesn't have an instamine / isn't a scam. (See Dash)
2) Isn't highly centralized / doesn't have a high king. (see Ethereum)
3) Doesn't have even worse scalability issues than Bitcoin. (see Monero)

Please indulge me.

I'd say that the number is very low. A lot of people call themselves "Bitcoin enthusiasts", but they don't even have a single node running.

keep dreaming my friend. ;)

yeah i know all their names and i am enjoying the pumps. these altcoins being centralized and having huge premines and big ICO scams can also be beneficial to traders like me to make a huge and quick profit from these and get out.
their lifespan of being relevant is always too short, i have seen this for the past 4 years.

i am also well aware of why they are cheaper and why they are faster and well aware of the many downsides of them being faster and cheaper.

So the next logical step would be to see the transaction fees go down right? Transaction fees in USD will go down since the price dropped, so of course i mean fees in BTC (sat/byte).

That's strange. I have maxmempool set to 4096MB on my node and unconfirmed tx's have dropped to around 2,200. Am I connected mostly to crap nodes that don't relay?

Don't forget this setting:

technically yes.
as soon as people realize this (their wallets see this actually) they start paying less fees. i just checked electrum and the highest fee suggested by the wallet was 100 satoshi per byte which is 54.5% lower than last week's 220 s/b

p.s. it is weird that http://bitcoinfees.21.co/ is still suggesting 220 s/b as fee!!! (i admit i have never checked how they come up with the suggestion yet :D)
although https://live.blockcypher.com/btc/ is suggesting lower

Spammers are resting since they think that they have succeeded in their attempt to bring down the network and the market, also the transaction you posted as being a spam transaction I followed it's tree chart on blockchain.info and my browser literally froze because of too many clusters and too many addresses shown on my screen what does that mean? the tree chart/

I do indeed have the setting at the default 72 hours (I guess I can go a lot more with the mempool config that I have), but comparing apples to apples my node still had more than double the current 2,200 unconfirmed tx's just a few days ago.

I guess that there really is no "the mempool", even to the extent that some nodes might have mempool going up in size at the same time as others are going down.

are you sure you are relaying everything?
i am no expert in this field but there are restriction that you can put on txs that you accept for example minRelayTxFee is one of them you may have had it at a high amount, rejecting most of the transactions out there.
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/48235/what-is-the-minrelaytxfee

Sending spam that actually takes up space in the blockchain requires that the spam pay transaction fees just like everybody else.  Perhaps the spammers just ran out of funds?  Or perhaps the fees got so expensive that the spammers decided it wasn't worth the cost anymore?

it still needs to be addressed but it ain't the life or death emergency so many have claimed (and were paying large amounts to 'prove').

Can anyone think of a very conspicuous poster on this forum who goes on and on about how fees are now too expensive in 3rd world countries ;D

Frankly, one forgets the name of this particular hypocrite :D

Today was great, i noticed it at first when i received a payment with a low amount of satoshi/byte and it was confirmed fast in the next block and then i checked blockchain.info and to my surprise it was showing a small number as the number of unconfirmed transactions :)

i wonder how long this is going to last?

This shows us that there is absolutely no need for Bitcoin Unlimited or I do not know what other scaling solution that is absolutely not needed.

To me, this means the actual number of "real" transactions are still manageable by the 1MB blocksize. We are still far from mainstream adoption.

However, on the other hand, we also can stop people from flooding the mempool by these "stress test"...

It could also mean that part of the recent price drop might have been people deciding to get out of bitcoin.

What happens if all the nodes set their minRelayTxFee at 0.0001? or sat/b equivalent of that amount? you guys talk about spam attacks like miners are forced to include low fee transactions, they simply can ignore the low fee ones.
Any miner intentionally refuse to process transactions as fast as they can even with a relatively enough fee just to force users to include more and higher fees to earn a few hundreds bucks should know that a network being functional and reliable at all times is what people and users really expect from a network such as bitcoin's.

low fee transactions belong to the poor users, the real users with legit transactions paying for something online for example and have their transaction stuck.

majority of the spam attack transactions have high fees (120-220 s/b)

Yep.  Pretty sad.  And as cryptocurrency demand in general grows, new users also will look to other coins that offer plenty of bandwidth, unless Bitcoin offers
a scalability solution pretty soon.

Also, maybe, some folks are sitting tight on their wallets in case there is a fork.  No one wants to miss out on double coins.

This proves 90%+ of the transactions in the mem-pool are spam from the major mining pools to prop up transaction fees and push a false narrative. The Truth is that we don't need to increase block size.

For all I know there are actually coins which solve most of these problems, but the problem is that pretty dodgy or weak coins tend to be the best at getting pumped and the owners best at profiteering, especially with coins like DASH which have a large instamine but can appeal to newbies who know less about that.

Monero has no block limits.  Yes, the transactions are bigger in bytes ( I think 3 or 4 times bigger), but there's no hard limit. Blocks adapt.  Only limited by network capacity and disk size, so following Moore's law.

Problem with monero is that it is not very user friendly.  But it doesn't have built-in capacity limits.

Count me out of that hunt:
"Double coins" == Both types worth almost nothing compared to the recent highs.

funny thing is, both sides believe that if their coin wins, there will be a price boom.

core folks:  finally the BU debacle will be over, we can get back to bitcoin, confidence will soar, BU will become a forgotten alt
BU folks:  finally bitcoin can scale again, confidence will soar. good riddance to core/blockstream.

Oh I disagree. There is going to be a looooooooooooong bear market if we have a contentious hard fork. I have a feeling there will be some long term "games" played and the winner won't be known for several years. After that, recovering trust will be another long road.

If anything, this entire debacle shows how mining pools are extremely unhealthy for the network and it's unfortunate a method to promote solo mining hasn't been invented (maybe it's impossible?).

Perhaps, or perhaps they temporarily paused as they think they are "winning".

Nobody in their right mind uses DASH besides pump & dump-ing to increase their Bitcoin.

Also following "Jihan's law of centralization". ::)

The primary reason that the price isn't much higher is the fear of a potential HF.

Lauda and Holliday you just both proved my point.

Wrong. I have mentioned neither client, neither solution nor anything. If you were deeply involved in trading, you'd know what is up. Investors don't give a single damn about rising TX fees, they care about risks, one of which is a contentious HF. ::)

no one will win in the case of a contentious fork. it doesn't matter if it's unlimited, UASF, a PoW change. it'll all go up in smoke.

Lots of alt-coins have been cheaper and faster over the last 4 years, still are.

An old saying
"It is not about the return on your money, it is about the return of your money."

Bitcoin is more than just speed, I would advise new investors to go and read some of Satoshi's posts.

Besides, I personally am glad more bagholders are leaving Bitcoin, for every one bagholder that exits come 10 new excited, interest, entrepreneurial investors ready to take Bitcoin and business to the next stage. And one less pump and dumper.

Central bankers fight price corrections, Bitcoiners must embrace them. They clean the pipes like a good plumber.

Quite the opposite, it shows us there is a need because it demonstrates quite clearly that the limited block size creates an attack vector that works.

I withdrew my bitcoins from the exchange today and i couldn't believe my eyes. They arrived in 30 mins or so. There were times i waited more than a day. I don't know what happened but may be it is related to recent 60$ flash pump.

No. Exchanges in general add poor fees that are not pointed at how the network situation is by the time you request a cashout. In this case, mempools are not suffering from a heavy spam attack anymore, and thus people don't have to outbid each other with higher transaction fees to get included in the next block(s). Generally, the fee you need to include right now to attract attention from pools is significantly lower, and thus explains why your current cashout got confirmed sooner than the previous ones.

I always thought that so many unconfirmed transaction due to all time high price when people in rush to buy, send or sell bitcoin which overwhelm the network. I'm wondering if that's true, that some people did spam attack.
However, those numbers of unconfirmed transaction are great and proven we do not need unlimited block size for now, SegWit is more than enough, great solution from devs team.

"no HF" synonymous with "no network split" , synonymous with "core continues status quo.

this cheapness and fastness always comes with a cost. the only thing people usually see is the price of those altcoins that is volatile but that is only one of the risks and it is not even the biggest one!
one of the biggest threats is always an unsecure network and that happens when there aren't enough full nodes running. we have all heard people bitch and moan about bitcoin blockchain be big and them having hard time running a full node.
now think what happens when the blockchain of these "faster" altcoins reaches 500 GB! how many nodes do you think will remain running a cheap altcoin?
and with their numbers falling the network of that altcoin would crumble and all hell will break lose.


I disagree.
I don't think anyone is leaving bitcoin. nobody who has "bags of bitcoin" and invested money in it, is not foolish enough to leave with FUD. those who panic are newbies who don't even have enough bitcoin in wallets to call it a "bag" :D

Yes, I think you need to find some excuse why bitcoin is wasting 400 million dollars a year :)

Even ETC wasn't attacked seriously when it split off ETH as a small minority chain.  No major altcoin ever suffered a serious block chain break down.  Not more than bitcoin in the past, when it was much smaller than those altcoins are right now.

And no, nodes don't count for shit in "maintaining the security of the network" in a proof of work system (PoS is different...)

Keep telling yourself that only bitcoin is secure, and that you need to waste 400 million dollars a year to maintain essentially 10 miners serving the bitcoin block chain, because it is the nodes on the PC of amateurs like me that "maintain the security".  And then ponder why proof of work would actually be needed, if nodes maintain the security of the network.  And then ponder why altcoins, much bigger than bitcoin a few years ago, would fail when bitcoin didn't.

And then ask yourself honestly if the story makes sense.

You mean, the people with nodes, like me :)

I weight for 1/4000 in the "voting", but I can really assure you that my weight is NOT 1/4000 of the market cap ;)
Even if you square that number, you're far off.  I only have bitcoin if I need something to buy with it.  Rarely.

LOL,   :D

BTU Unlimited gains the upper hand, and all of a sudden the spamming of transactions stop cold.

You do realize the implications of what you are saying ,
Directly Points to BlockStream/segwit/LN Supporters as the Ones behind the Spam attacks trying to force it's adoption.
Now that it is apparent they have lost to BTU, they drop the attack hoping that BTU does not receive the few 15% more it needs to fix BTC FOREVER.


 8)

We hope it will stay thus quicker and confirm faster like it used to be. I think there was too much spam in the network that accounted for the undue delays but I'm happy we've started seeing positive signs of quicker confirmations.

It seems like i have indeed jinxed it. the good times only lasted about 2 days and spam attack has started again!
https://i.imgur.com/C3dehgi.jpg

and we are back to 10K to 20K with a steady rate of injecting transactions into the network:
https://i.imgur.com/CV7vPw1.jpg
i mean c'mon at least make the effort of hiding it ;D

I'm gonna have a stab at this and say that it wasn't spam.

When you reach capacity at any club, and people keep turning up, the queue starts to grow pretty quickly. That's what's happening.

Whenever Bitcoin is 'Raging' - in all the papers, price going up, optimism flying high, the TXN/s simply increase, by a noticeable factor (2x?). And since we are 'almost' at capacity, it only takes a small push for the mempool to start growing.

Now that things have chilled out again, we're back to normal..

That's my take on it.

You want to tell me that the tens of thousands transactions in the following format: Address A -> Address A
Are real financial transactions? ::) It is most certainly spam.

ah.. lol.. ok.. That is pretty obvious..

They might not be real financial transactions, but they may be transactions that utilise the blockchain to store immutable data. That may or may not be spam depending on your viewpoint.

also do you see in the second picture, the second red arrow with an exclamation mark in it.
an straight line with a fixed-rate-increase of number of transactions is not normal. and this is just a small scale, if you look at precious times you can see the bigger ones ;)


although, it is hard to believe about some of these txs but i agree. we can never easily brand transactions as spam, but most of the time when you see someone is sending multiple (100-1000) transactions to same address with 10 seconds intervals, that can not be normal behavior.

yeah, so do we:

A) increase the blocksize so the spammers have to do WAY more transactions, making it more expensive for the spammers, while simultaneously increasing bandwidth for everyone

or

B) keep the blocksize and just increase the fees so its more expensive for everyone to transaction, while not increasing bandwidth for anyone

Answer should be pretty clear.

In reality they are not.  The arguments about Bitcoins are related to it not being scalable.  Just because an altcoin with next to no usage compared to Bitcoin is doing okay, doesn't mean it would actually be okay with the same level of usage.

LTC, PPC , NMC.

well, maybe i was paying too much but all of my transactions absolutely flew today.



this one's a really interesting one. it's bizarre that it's semi forgotten when it's been so innovative.

first of all you are just trying to make this topic into another one of "those" topics :D
also the answer is apparently not clear or we have switched already ;)

but seriously, how much are you going to increase the size. 500 byte? 1000? 5000? and what will you do when fees came down and spam attack became easier? fees are 220ish s/b if it goes down to say 50 that means 1 spam tx turns into 4-5 txs and you successfully quadrippled the spam attack with the fork

nobody is more mad of the high fees than i and i am all for a block size increase though, i think 1 MB is reaching (not reached) its end but it can not be done without a proper plan. so far this spam is being used as a weapon to pretend we need fork(s).


we have been going back and forth with the spam size.

there's nothing i can say at this point that hasn't been said before.  Problem and solution is obvious.

Is this legit?
The timing for the attack with the current events happening right now like the hardfork and BU nodes crashing seems perfect lol
Perhaps this was payback from those guys who got there codes exploited from the recent BU network attack. So why did the spam stop already?

have you been sleeping for the past year! this is not new. spam attack has been around for a rather long time. started with them calling it "stress test" back in 2015 (or maybe it was even older and i missed it) and has been coming and going ever since.

see some examples of them here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1776143.0

So, the problem is that more on-chain transaction capacity is needed (which is highly debatable, considering there's good evidence it's all spam driven)


So the obvious solution is to make the transactions and their signatures smaller, so that we can have more capacity per block.

I think their users died whist waiting for their peercoin to mint.

:)  Souvenirs :)

Back then I thought this was a killer coin.  I never understood why it didn't take off.  Probably too advanced too soon, while "bitcoin was god".

It is spam. End of discussion.

Segwit is an block size increase. Quit your whining.

Those are good examples, but the interest for them seems to be lacking nowadays. Everyone wants to profit from the ETH & DASH scam coins.

Ironically the people who stated that they care about the *user experience* are the ones who made it worse by introducing extreme volatility with their HF propaganda.

my response:

And each one of them has been around for a long time, a huge hashpower behind it, and could replace Bitcoin immediately.

Yes it seems that today it is all about being fashionable  :(