Title: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: tranthidung on August 08, 2020, 05:44:31 AM I saw the thread Zero Transaction Fees: What's the catch? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5267336.0) which looks interesting but it is for altcoin. Therefore I run a simple analysis for bitcoin transaction and here you go:
Data:
Results:
Plots: Raw results: Code: Blocks | Empty blocks Code: year | Freq. Percent Cum. Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: Charles-Tim on August 08, 2020, 06:49:25 AM Zero fee blocks is possible but gone are the days, I do not even think there are wallets that can allow donor not to pay zero fee for their transactions. I really like this topic as it contain details about zero fee blocks.
With the level of adoption of bitcoin, zero fee blocks is impossible again as it has become the thing of the past because such transactions can no even have 1 confirmation and can not be mined into recepient's address. Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: nc50lc on August 08, 2020, 09:40:53 AM So, there were two non-empty-zero-fee blocks in 2020, can you specify the height of those blocks?
I'm a bit curious on the included transactions (just a bit). TIA Zero fee blocks is possible but gone are the days, I do not even think there are wallets that can allow donor not to pay zero fee for their transactions. AFAIK, some clients will let you set tx fee to '0' or lower than 1sat/B like Electrum... but most nodes wont relay it (including the servers) because of BitcoinCore's later version's default "minimum transaction relay fee".0 fee isn't invalid and the relay setting is configurable so, it's possible to send a <1 or 0 sat/B TX by sending it directly to a "friend" solo miner or pool. Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: tranthidung on August 08, 2020, 10:04:44 AM So, there were two non-empty-zero-fee blocks in 2020, can you specify the height of those blocks? Here you go. I gave you zero-free blocks since 2016. Within two years 2017, and 2018, there is no zero-fee blocks.I'm a bit curious on the included transactions (just a bit). TIA Links to two zero-fee blocks have been surprisingly found in 2020, and one block was found in 2019:
Code: +------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: nc50lc on August 08, 2020, 10:16:55 AM
Seems like it's done to prove that it's possible, an example or something like a publicity stunt. The two zero-fee transactions were included by them obviously. I thought those are like full blocks where the miner didn't claim the transaction fees (I'm a bit disappointed, just a bit :D). Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: tranthidung on August 08, 2020, 10:22:20 AM Seems like it's done to prove that it's possible, an example or something a publicity stunt. The two zero-fee transactions were included by them obviously. I have BTC empty blocks (2009 - 5 May 2020): miners, size, daily, monthly,yearly stats (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5245684.0). According to this (data is up to 5 May 2020 only), Poolin has not yet found 8+ empty blocks from 2011 to 5 May 2020. I will include miners for the analysis and will update it when I use the computer where I store data again. ;)I thought those are like full blocks where the miner didn't claim the transaction fees (I'm a bit disappointed, just a bit ;D). Edit: Update is here (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5267378.msg54955514#msg54955514). Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: pooya87 on August 09, 2020, 03:10:44 AM you can't find zero fee transactions by only looking at the blocks' total fee though. there can be a couple of thousands of transactions in a block and very early on the "default" behavior changed to setting fee for every transaction and as a result majority of transactions started paying a fee even though it was possible to send 0 fee transactions and get them confirmed. i personally have sent transactions with 0 fee in 2017 which were mined in blocks containing all non-zero-fee transactions.
you can also find many 0-fee transactions today which mainly belong to mining pools paying their miners in a self-made self-mined transaction which makes no sense to have a fee. Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: LoyceV on August 09, 2020, 05:43:48 PM you can't find zero fee transactions by only looking at the blocks' total fee though. Correct. If you're looking for all zero-fee transactions, you should use data from https://gz.blockchair.com/bitcoin/transactions/. I estimate it's about 40 GB to download.I checked one day's data, and I'm surprised that most transactions paid a fee in 2014. That wasn't necessary! Quote i personally have sent transactions with 0 fee I remember the days that transactions with Medium priority could be sent without fee, as long as they were no more than 1000 bytes and at least one of the inputs wasn't dust (I don't remember the exact details). I often used that to consolidate small inputs without losing a part, all I needed was to wait for enough coin days to be destroyed to get high enough priority. Those were the days :DTitle: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: pooya87 on August 10, 2020, 01:50:27 AM Quote i personally have sent transactions with 0 fee I remember the days that transactions with Medium priority could be sent without fee, as long as they were no more than 1000 bytes and at least one of the inputs wasn't dust (I don't remember the exact details). I often used that to consolidate small inputs without losing a part, all I needed was to wait for enough coin days to be destroyed to get high enough priority. Those were the days :Dyou are thinking of standard behavior that the "wallets" let you do. i used to create my own zero fee transactions with any size to consolidate outputs and then sign them with Electrum and broadcast it there (Electrum standard behavior prevents you from setting fee to zero but it signs it fine). last one i had is surprisingly on November 2017 and was around 1.4 kB. Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: LoyceV on August 10, 2020, 04:58:22 AM you are thinking of standard behavior that the "wallets" let you do. I was thinking about those, but I'm aware about the current cases which are most likely pushed by miners. I've seen a transactions that looks like mining pools paying their miners with zero fee. I'm kinda curious now how often that happens, and I kinda want to download all transaction data (https://gz.blockchair.com/bitcoin/transactions/) again. I can't really make a 100 GB CSV-file though, and I'm running low on VPS disk space.It would be a waste to download all this data just to check the fees. Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: pooya87 on August 11, 2020, 04:47:46 AM you are thinking of standard behavior that the "wallets" let you do. I was thinking about those, but I'm aware about the current cases which are most likely pushed by miners. I've seen a transactions that looks like mining pools paying their miners with zero fee. I'm kinda curious now how often that happens, and I kinda want to download all transaction data (https://gz.blockchair.com/bitcoin/transactions/) again. I can't really make a 100 GB CSV-file though, and I'm running low on VPS disk space.It would be a waste to download all this data just to check the fees. i don't know what the blockchain API limitations are but you could always use their API to fetch the data you need with some effort. for example all zero fee transactions (excluding coinbase txs) from start to today are fetched like this: Code: https://api.blockchair.com/bitcoin/transactions?q=fee(0),is_coinbase(false) Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: LoyceV on August 11, 2020, 05:15:59 AM i don't know what the blockchain API limitations are It only shows 10 results at a time, the data dumps are much easier to use.Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: pooya87 on August 11, 2020, 05:51:29 AM i don't know what the blockchain API limitations are It only shows 10 results at a time, the data dumps are much easier to use.you can always play around with the "limit" and it seems to be maxed at 100 for transaction endpoint which that much better Code: https://api.blockchair.com/bitcoin/transactions?q=fee(0),is_coinbase(false)&limit=100 Code: https://api.blockchair.com/bitcoin/transactions?q=fee(0),is_coinbase(false)&fields=id,hash&export=csv for example the following link will you then umber of zero fee transactions on each date in tiny a .csv file Code: https://api.blockchair.com/bitcoin/transactions?q=fee(0),is_coinbase(false)&a=date,count()&export=csv https://i.imgur.com/tLQ1pW8.jpg Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: LoyceV on August 11, 2020, 06:02:02 AM Code: https://api.blockchair.com/bitcoin/transactions?q=fee(0),is_coinbase(false)&a=date,count()&export=csv Quote the result looks interesting though: It looks like a spam flood on 2015-08-01 with 26429 zero-fee transactions instead of (about) 1000 per day on other days.https://i.imgur.com/tLQ1pW8.jpg I'm also surprised to see the number of zero-fee transactions drop for about 3 years. I remember my mobile wallet at the time had a minimum fee of 1000 satoshi, while Bitcoin Core could make zero-fee transactions. So I'm guessing this is caused by wallet software default settings. Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: tranthidung on August 11, 2020, 10:01:13 AM < ... > Thank you for sharing some API skills here and the chart. Your chart demonstrates that there are more non-empty zero-fee transactions and proves that my approach is not correct.The zero-fee transactions time-series chart somewhat looks similar to empty blocks charts (daily, monthly basis). They have all been in a long downward trend. Title: Re: Zero fee for bitcoin transaction [Historical data] Post by: pooya87 on August 12, 2020, 03:40:23 AM The zero-fee transactions time-series chart somewhat looks similar to empty blocks charts (daily, monthly basis). They have all been in a long downward trend. i think the situation with empty blocks is a lot more complicated than zero fee transactions though. the tx situation is part fuller mempool and part default behavior of 90% of the nodes being minrelayfee>0. but when it comes to empty blocks the reasons are: - more usage which translates into more transactions in mempool for miners to pick up (eg. compared to 2009 with no one using bitcoin) - little to no spy mining or at least a hugely improved way of doing it to avoid having an empty block - increasing price which means even 1s/b fee transactions in a full block could be worth at least $350 or it could be a lot higher for example a block found an hour ago (643308) had $13,995.60 total fee. - improved connections and internet speed and lower latency of mining pool nodes - much smaller data to download from a new block thanks to BIP-152 (node basically downloads the header alone not the transactions since it already has them in its mempool). |