SatoshiDICE is taking advantage of the early stage of Bitcoin, at a time when transaction volume is too low to fill the blocks and bring fees up to a level that would make up for the drop in subsidy. If Bitcoin was fully mature, it will not be vulnerable to this type of transaction spam and no one would be talking about it let alone suggest patches, because fees would make the dust spam un-economical.
The problem is that we do not have a mature network, and we're in the bootstrapping phase. SatoshiDICE is consuming the "startup capital" (current state of low fees, high subsidy, and lots of free space in blocks) to profit without bringing a corresponding increase in growth of Bitcoin adoption. The simple fact is that a relatively small handful of gambling addicts and bots are flooding the block chain with 70%+ of its transactions.
This is not good.
Ah. Nice being in agreement on this. You are exactly right! Applying the patch today, will report back!
Unfortunately, the patch is not much more effective than turning the radio up to drown out a strange noise from the car. |
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As an aside, roughly, what is the total number of unspent transaction outputs at the moment?
It would also be interesting to know what percentage are <COIN_DUST. |
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Would it be okay if SD eliminated low-value bets, thus making gamblers play less often and place higher bets?
No. That still leaves those pesky 1 satoshi transactions. Agreed. But, no voluntary action by SD will really help, because another site can pick up on SD's lost business... As I suggested earlier, there needs to be an improvement to the spam-filtering which keeps SD type messaging to a controlled percentage (20%?,30%?, whatever%) of the current throughput capacity. |
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Bitcent is intuitive and would attract new users.
I like Bitcent. It is something the public would take-up faster, and provide meaningful amounts for common products... e.g. 12 bitcents for a glass of wine. |
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SatoshiDice is wasting bitcoin network resources and making gambler's pay for it. They've stress tested enough now and done enough damage, it about time they start using the system correctly, ...
They need to put a proper deposit/withdrawal system in place, not only will they save A LOT!! on fees, they'll save network resources and have a lesser impact on the environment.
Blazr, this is no good. Yes SD can be asked nicely to internalize everything like Mt. Gox and other big sites, but it won't stop SD2, SD3 and SD4 emerging, owned by persons unknown who will be just as capable of bringing Bitcoin to its knees. There needs to be an improvement to the spam-filtering which keeps SD type messaging to a controlled percentage (20%?,30%?, whatever%) of the current throughput capacity. |
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I think satoshiDICE is providing a valuable service. If one little gambling website can bring Bitcoin to it's knees (hyperbole), then Bitcoin is clearly not ready for the levels of adoption some, including myself, hope for.
satoshiDICE - stress testing Bitcoin since April 2012.
Exactly. My view 100%. I am dismayed that SD has found a flaw in Bitcoin such that 50% of its volume is from an intrinsic or newly enabled source, not by displacing previous real-world fiat/paypal/mc transaction flow. This is compounded because, potentially, SD could absorb 100% of Bitcoin's capacity within a year. The benefit is that this has occurred within the Bitcoin community user-base. So lessons can be learned from it and improvements made. SD does not have to be killed off, just tamed  |
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Arguably, the Bitcoin blockchain (taken logically as a single data-set, now 5.5Gb) is the single most information-dense object in the known universe.
Remarkably, it is really easy to copy, so there are thousands of copies around the world. At the same time ridiculously hard to counterfeit, for practical purposes - nearly impossible, to make a new one of comparable size, especially as it keeps growing!
Satoshi Nakamoto, take a bow. I want to see the day he gets a Nobel prize (Economic Sciences) for this invention. Maybe he'll turn up for it?
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The Crash Continues!  Adam, are you trying to uncrash it? Because it's working... |
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I've been calling these transaction dead-puppies due to a incomprehensible made on IRC.
This is interesting, but can you just clarify the term again, please? |
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So, despite the block reward being >$1000, and not due for halving until 3.75 years time, fees are forced to do a moonshot.
That "moonshot" is because someone created a single transaction with 94BTC in fees: 13dffdaef097881acfe9bdb5e6338192242d80161ffec264ee61cf23bc9a1164Fees are rising, but they haven't spiked like you think they have. Thanks retep for this finding. I really did not consider that one transaction could be responsible. Someone "accidentally" paid $4000 to execute a payment. Ouch! What a coincidence that the world's most expensive payment transfer happened just when bitcoin traffic was so busy... My concern still stands, that using higher fees as a lever against SatoshiDice-like spam is counterproductive. Just as an overdose of chemotherapy hurts the patient much more than the cancer itself. There has to be a more intelligent way to rein in abuse of Bitcoin as a messaging system. |
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In New York they have a saying " You're building a rocket-ship to go to Staten Island!" The OP describes such a rocket-ship to overcome the problem of scaling the blockchain. Block propagation delays could be largely mitigated through sharing headers: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144895.msg1566307#msg1566307Unspent TxOut verification can be achieved through a merge-mined alt-chain 1/1000th the size of the main blockchain. (Or two parallel alt-chains which eliminates SatoshiDice-like bitdust spam as well). https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.0Yes, there is work involved, but these powerful solutions exist within the Bitcoin domain to create a truly world-beating currency & payment system. Why are people talking about building whole new 3rd-party systems when Bitcoin has so much untapped potential? |
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And yes, the 250Kb artificial constraint seemingly has had an immediate effect upon fees! So, despite the block reward being >$1000, and not due for halving until 3.75 years time, fees are forced to do a moonshot. Is there now to be an arm-wrestle between the bitcoin-happy public and dice gamblers as to who can tolerate the highest fees? It has been noted how thick-skinned gamblers are to fees. Will we see the whole network exist solely to support dice gamblers? Is that the future for Bitcoin?  http://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees-usd |
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...
My theory is if the bears want to succeed, they need to pull off another wave of selloff in about a few hours, pretty much any crash consists of two waves of massive selloffs with one dead cat bounce sandwiched in between, the time window is quickly closing for them.
This is what is fascinating about markets, the schizophrenia of the bulls and bears. Anyone bullish wants the lowest price possible so they can load up, and when fully bought they want the highest price possible for when they might sell. Anyone bearish wants the highest prices for selling, and then when sold, wants the lowest prices for when they decide to buy. So the heart of the matter is: are the bulls fully bought (bear market imminent) or are the bears sold out (bull market imminent)? Something visually similar ...  |
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Excellent thread. Some centralization is inevitable while Bitcoin growth outpaces Moore's Law, meaning that individuals will be much more likely to require lightweight nodes of the type presented here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=88208.0Perhaps Moore's Law will catch up when Bitcoin market saturation occurs (in a couple of decades?) so that an individual can easily have a full node again. But why some people want to choke off its long-term potential for short-term ideological purity - is beyond me. |
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I F**KING TOLD YOU THIS WAS A PUMP AND DUMP!!  Check out this dump... BTC is crashing!! Kudos BTC to this address please: 1FU1EX4xCEt26rezoNaEZ1rhbqA4VVP8pq Meh, it's just another bear trap. We will be back over 50 in the next couple hours. Doubt that very much. Rather, I think we finally saw the top of this crazy bubble. Oh no! Another leg up. I am putting my sell orders in at $67 for this one... |
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question for Jeff Garzik or misterbigg, or any defenders of artificially constrained blocks... is this considered to be of no real concern? 3000+ transactions waiting $100 in fees alone to be mined (Incentive not yet enough?) Pending size of 2.37Mb = 90 minutes at 250Kb blocks!  http://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions |
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Block size limit should be removed entirely and replaced with a "prefer-small-block" system.
Yes! Concisely put. |
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