Bitcoin Forum

I believe 1 satoshi/byte is the lowest fee/unit to use. If that's indeed the case and we didn't even reach reach 20% SegWit transactions - according to SegWit.party, transactions are currently going with 1sat/byte (after a few blocks). If we ever go to 100% (or anything near it) and fees reach their minimum, why there would be any need for Schnorr, Bulletproofs or any other proposal that could decrease transactions size?

Because it won't stay that way and the transaction count that needs to be handled is only going to grow.

Even with off-chain 2nd layer scaling solutions in place we need to utilize what little blockchain space we have as best as we can. Apart from improving Bitcoin's scalability both approaches would also help improve Bitcoin's privacy -- Schnorr signatures are beneficial for CoinJoin and Bulletproofs allows sending hidden transaction amounts.

Why would there be any need is based on the assumption that the transactional volume wouldn't increase in future. If right now, Bitcoin network had the transactional demand as in December and with 20% Segwit adoption, the fees wouldn't be anywhere near 1 Sat/byte. Segwit is just the first step towards implementing a lot of scalability innovations. Schnorr signatures is a scability implementation while confidential transactions/Bulletproofs is privacy-centric.

Transaction size is also a major factor contributing towards transaction fees. With multiple inputs and outputs in a single transaction, the transaction obviously shoots up in size, and if optimal fees would be like it was a month ago, (>500 satoshis/byte) problematic times of long confirmation times would come back sooner or later. Since nobody wishes to live those nightmares again, proposals to decrease transaction size should be considered even amidst presence of Segwit and Lightning Network.

I agree, I also believe 1 satoshi/byte is the least transactions fees possible. But situations might not go that far.

I think instead of coming up with the negatives we must think about positives. With fees going down to 1sat/byte I think the scaling problems will almost disappear for once. I think its quite an achievement if you see that despite of such a huge network load bitcoin has been able to cope up with the load. With fees the transaction time has also fallen down. Needless to say that it cannot be reduced than 10 minutes due to its inherent problem but still 10 minutes is very much usable. With more and more adoption will surely will see some new advancements coming our way.

well we used to be able to send with 0 fee ;D but those days is over, I think all miners only accept min 1s/B fee now.

the scaling problems will never disappear as easy as that.
I agree with HeRetiK the transaction counts will only grow with time
it just that in time like this, for whatever reasons there are only small number of transactions being made
the more users joining the network, the more bitcoin adoptions, the more frequent users make payments and so on
thus more transactions will be made... therefore the scaling problems will always exist when bitcoin usage increases

"If we ever go to 100% (or anything near it) and fees reach their minimum"
when we are at 100% segwit txs, min fees reached and low tx counts, that means the network is at lowest level of scaling problems
what happen if 100% segwit transactions but the number of transactions multiplied 10x times
because there 5x new users and each make 2 transactions constantly every day? network load will increase drastically!
then there will be competition for transactions inclusion in block followed by increase of transaction fee
you need to take in the # of transactions and bitcoin popularity when talking about scaling problems

If Lightning will be implemented, the fees will be extremely low. Even lower than it is now.

Last week someone got a 0.65 sat/byte fee transaction confirm in the first block. And it's absolutely possible to even send 0 fees transactions, but no miner will include that transaction.

off chain transactions will help with the fees but they aren't a viable option to transact huge amount, AFAIK a lighting channel has a limit of maximum BTC as well as a transaction also has a maximum limit for now. 
Because of this larger amounts of BTC will still be transacted on chain and eventually the fess can increase.

One sat/byte is not the minimum. Whole numbers are a concept that the blockchain doesn't really approve of.

can you tell me the txid? I want to know which node/miner mined that tx.
If it accepts <1 s/B might as well try with 0 fee, we could try push 0 fee tx to that node :D
if the tx pushed successfully, most likely it will be queued and included in the next block by that node
nothing wrong with trying it, eh? we won't lose our bitcoin :P

I think jtipt read it mistakenly, he read 0.65 sat/wu instead of 0.65 sat/byte. Let's look into this for example: https://blockchain.info/tx-index/328997526
If I am wrong, please post transaction. I have no idea if someone used less than 1 sat/byte these days/months. Those days when we could send transaction with 0 fee has gone.

Before this could be possible but right now its impossible to happen. Before when i was new in bitcoin honestly i tried not to pay the miners fee using electrum before i think almost 2 years ago but the transaction sent and confirmed. But right now even these days the fees drop a lot i think miners always set their miner to accept higher miner fees.
More likely your transaction can be stuck or rejected by mempool. That's why they are doing double spend or "Child Pays For Parent"
And increase the miners fee just to confirm your first stuck transaction..  So i think there's no miners fee these days..  unless if you are the miner and confirm your own transaction..

Hey, but why don't we think about the negatives instead of the positives?

Negative transaction fees!

Just think - miners pay users! What a wonderful world that would be.

Just think it out logically. Fees going down is good. So, fees going down a lot more is good. Therefore, negative fees are the best!

<<<satire>>>

10 minutes is actually pretty quick. It takes 3 days/72 hours minimum in my country for a credit card/debit card transaction to get confirmed (for fraud protection purposes). I think international ones would take even longer. 
So an hour for a transaction to go through is actually pretty good!

It'd definitely make bitcoins adoption increase if every week, a big pool gave 1 bitcoin to a random address in a lottery (or maybe a chance to enter to get your total transaction fees paid back to you). It's obviously not going to happen since the large miners are too intent on centralising the Bitcoins network (and take over the world! - or at least pump dump it until they get bored of getting money).

No, I'm pretty sure it was 0.65 sat/byte. I saw the transaction in a post on r/Bitcoin, can't seem to find it now :l

Edit:
Found it! https://blockchain.info/en/tx/748a9298545c0e120b99abafcdb0ac149dba4c637000926ab6493cabcdf05af0

thanks for the info, saved my time searching it ;D
that block was mined by AntPool and has dust output 0.00001752 BTC (no dust amount restriction?)
too bad there is no web interface to directly push tx to AntPool node. anyone know how?
or has anyone succeeded pushing/broadcasting 0 fee tx recently (to any node)?

Last time i used it it was about 0.84$ since i was new to this forum i only had like 8$ maybe when bitcoin rises the fee may lower a bit

if you was use to buying a glass of water at $0.05 a cup but then the sun came out and the price went to $50.00 per cup then
would you ever forget ?

This is the problem the miners face now they have proven not to be trustworthy and since those crazy days the price
of the coin has been on a downwards slope ever since because the damage has been done and is far from forgotten.

As of now for each transaction you need 8sat/byte and moreover you need to know that mem pool is almost empty so transaction fee will into be issue in this time. However, keep the mentioned of mine would be right option for you to transaction confirmed.

Your transaction need to complete with in 2 blocks at least if you do not have 8 sat also in your transaction for byte it will not confirmed with in 1 hour too.

This is a complex issue for setting a fee. It has to take into account a whole series of issues such as: quantity of daily transactions, maintenance cost per day and cost to exchange continue to work (cost of technology and labor). If there is someone financing everything back, it may not have a fee. However, the smaller the exchange, the more likely its rate is, or it will not be able to sustain itself.

Doesn't this all create perverse incentives for the miners?

it's not  good idea to set low transaction fee,, you can wait long time to receive money.

The fees can go as low as the miners will allow, if there's a reduction in competition then miners will start accepting low fees, the absolute minimum would be 1sat/byte, but I do believe it is possible to send a transaction without a fee, though I doubt it would be confirmed as there is no benefit for the miners. Once the lightning network starts on the main net, we will start seeing fees approach the minimum even for high size transactions.

Actually the mempool is kind of 'empty' at the moment. You can view it here: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,24h (https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,24h).
Currently transactions with a fee as low as 10 sat/B get confirmed in the next block.

Even fees with a fee of 1 sat/B are getting confirmed within a few hours max currently.




The fee is usually measured in [sat/B] (satoshi per byte).
The actual fee for a transaction is then dependend on the size. But the fee rate (sat/B) is the same for small and big transactions.

To be honestly, i don't think fees can go much lower than currently. With the LN getting developed and also used/accepted we will see a growth of bitcoin usage in general.
Together with the LN i think fees will kinda stay at the same level. In the long term, of course, fees should rise again. Even with closing channels only once per week (or month).
The increased adoption will drive the fees higher again.. but i don't think we should reach the fee level of a few months ago (1000+ sat/B) again.
At least not if there is no spam attack. SegWit + LN are awesome regarding short-/midterm scaling.

with the low fee, it could take weeks

Transaction fees could reach as low as 0.5sat/byte but who will accept it and include them in block. If a miner doesn't get any incentive for the work he does, then why should he include your transaction in the block. Once if LN strikes, fees could get lower as the transactions could occur off-chain.

Very few people or only people connected with crypto know about the segwits and their uses, how does it work etc, which indicates that people just uses ordinary address and pays for the fees unless these segwits become so popular and ordinary people adopt to segwit.
Fees will never become lower unless people adopt themselves to segwits, LN and other new technologies which takes place in the btc world.

I beleive that depends on miners are how far, or better to say low, are they willing to go.
Remember that not so long ago we almost had some kind of war between users and miners because of extremly high fees.
Also, the number of transactions is important to calculate fees.
At the moment transactions fees are realy low and I don't think there is much space for further reduction.

This was the case last month when the bitcoin unconfirmed transaction where huge and where continuously rising . thus if you set a low rate means for days or even for a weeks the transaction would have remained unconfirmed. But now this case is not more as many have started using the segwit address and thus the pressure has reduced a lot on blockchain too. So now you just have to pay very minimum fee for transfer.