Bitcoin Forum

I just checked my bitcoin wallet and I see that I received 0.00000001 BTC from some random bitcoin address. So I go an check that address and I see this.

https://blockchain.info/address/1BSmartoUnHz32AAdPKcc7cGGC3DiA4RSh

Now as you can see the address is sending small amounts to a bunch of different addresses. I would like to know why someone is doing this. An explanation would be great.

It's spam.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=799713.0

It's just spam advertising and I guess it works since you're now talking about it and giving them even more advertising for free  :D. It's nothing to worry about so just ignore it.

this may affect the blockchain if many companies do this ?

This is madness

It is transaction spam.

There are a few topics about it around the forum

It may have minor implications and cause bloat, but if people sending transactions was truly a problem then bitcoin wouldn't be a very good money transmitting service would it? Bitcoin can handle it.

That is the evolution of the SPAM...

In a few years you may be able to buy a coffee with it...  ;D

lol, we know to send 1sat we need to pay fee... i dont think we can buy a coffee with 1satoshi when the fee its 10k satoshis.

damn he's advertising nutella too

Spam.
Transaction costs are a method to minimize this.
Doesn't seem to be working at present.

This is the future of advertising.
Just by sending 1 satoshi to everyone, you could advertise something.
We will see more and more of such spam transaction in future.

Its spam i also got it.

These spam advertisers haven't just been sending out 1 satoshi payments though, some people got 0.001 many times... I've seen someone recieve 0.01 total from them so that will certainly get you a coffee now.

Blockchain bloat is an issue at the moment as it may affect the default tx fee on spends if most inputs are micro, but one would expect this to be sorted out in time

It is because the fee is way too low for such spamming transaction.

Take 0dd3c35d3fe71effcf638bc49d15e076c6262e356eeba4368f9ea6eef2dd74b8 as an example.
The spammer sent 1 satoshi to 70 different addresses and paid 0.0004 btc as transaction fee.
So, the ad to 70 different addresses just cost him 0.0004007 btc (or equivalently $0.16).

If the situation is worsen to a point that many users are having lots of dust outputs in their wallet, the need for wallet clients with coin control function will shoot up. :)

Just ignore the small transaction amount. It is known as blockchain spam and is often used to advertise.

I saw this was scared, i browsed in Google and found this forum, nice to see its just a dumbass spaming.

Hehe, even with a standard fee attached, a lot of the spamming transactions are not getting any confirmation. It looks like the miners are doing well there.
https://blockchain.info/address/1BSmartoUnHz32AAdPKcc7cGGC3DiA4RSh?filter=7

This is the future of spam ! I  have seen lot of similar threads lately !

I still don't get how this is like advertising. You only get to see the address from which they are sending you the money nothing else.

Some idiot is sending 0.001 BTC with a message that says "Child Porn is awesome!"? What the fuck is this? seriously. Imagine you are running a business and you are spammed with this shit. Well, thanks for that 0.001 I guess... fucking weirdos out there lol.

you can set limits on minimum transaction in your wallet,no??

You didn't see the Enjoy Sochi addresses some months ago? xD

Lol, what address?

I just got this same small amount of bitcoin.. i thought I got hacked..  ::)

I received that 1 Satoshi transaction in the deposit address from some gambling site, and got emailed about the deposit of 10^-8 BTC.


They managed to spam my email via blockchain spam.

Such annoyingness

which gambling site? lol.

There was a tag "BitSmart" on that address on blockchain.info, together with a link to their website. Not sure what happened but the tag is now gone.

On the positive side, at least it costs the spammers something to spam. Email spam has much lower costs.

another spamming method
or you can call it cheap advertising

But then the cost is clearly not high enough to stop the site owner from advertising his site with transaction spams.

Yes, for sure. We need to come up with other ways to increase their costs and lower their effectiveness.

Well since the "ad" works only on blockchain.info, it would be great if we have more alternative sites providing block explorer and wallet service. We have a few other block explorers but none of them offers a hosted wallet service.

Can we stop this "1 satoshi spammer" somehow?

Why do you want to stop him? He's just given out free money! xD
And most people will probably ignore the transactions anyway lol.

That 0.00000001 btc or 1 satoshi is a spam advertising online services in the blockchain. Don't be bothered though. Think of it as someone is trying to catch your attention using a dust. ^_^

Seems like an annoying form of advertising to me, spamming their way in the blockchain hoping that someone will notice their advertisement. >.<

If we stop getting worried with those dusts, stop checking the sender of those transactions on blockchain.info, and stop making this kind of threads after receiving a dust, I am sure we will have less and less of spam. :)

its called spam, I got that amount the other day as well.

why do people even do it?  ::)

I cannot explain it but when qoinpro.com send me 1 satoshi daily, I love it. And when this spammer does the same, I hate it.
It is ridiculous, but it is true:)  

Well your first example is offchain transaction that doesn't bloat the blockchain or fill your wallet with useless 1-satoshi outputs, the second one is different.

I transacted this dust together with an old amount of coins on the address back to the same address for 0.00 fee. This way the dust doesn't bloat future transactions and it really was "free coins".

all HIDE its bitcoin spammer!!!
he kknows your wallet , he soon be in your house molesting your dog!
SERIOUSLY,what is wrong with 1 extra satoshi in the wallet :)

Advertising  :)

well,just ignore it
I never even buy products advertised through spam,even if its mega 1000% discount :)

talking about advertising for the cost of 0.00000001 BTC.

that is why satoshi said to use an address for a transaction then discart it. That way, no spam and you will be fine

Oh crap.  I knew it was an effort to track users, but today I was elbows-deep in the source code and I just figured out exactly how it works.  

Somebody is using this to figure out who (which IP address) owns (or once owned, since the wallet doesn't throw away old addresses) what txOuts.

Here's what's going on.  

• First, they send a tiny txOut to the address on the block chain whose owner (or former owner) they want to know.
• Second, they connect to a bunch of different nodes and send them bogus transactions that spend that txOut without fees.  Repeatedly.
• They don't know the address's private key, so they can't provide a good signature for that tx.  But they don't need to.
          
  • If they've connected to a machine that has the wallet containing the original txOut whose owner they're trying to find, that node will disconnect them as a misbehaving node, because the keys provided don't match.
  • If they've connected to a machine that doesn't have the wallet containing the original txOut, That node will just reject the transaction due to penny-flooding prevention and no fees.
     
• Because they can tell which thing happened, they can tell whether the node at this IP address owns the original txOut.

and THAT , I'm pretty sure, would be why Satoshi said to use an address once and discard it.