I was digging into why it takes so long to get a new bitcoin client synchronized when I came across a shocking fact.
Mt. Gox pays no fees on their transactions! Look here, where they have moved over 5 500 000 BTC in 35 500 transactions and never paid a fee.
https://blockchain.info/address/1LNWw6yCxkUmkhArb2Nf2MPw6vG7u5WG7q?filter=1Why do the pool operators tolerate this? I read here recently that Gox is making $3M / month. They could clear afford a few mBTC for transaction fees. And paying a fee would give them an incentive to use the blockchain efficiently.
There is an easy fix. Blockprioritysize could be set in bitcoin.conf to a lower level forcing free transactions to wait several blocks.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_feesI have also commissioned Jon Steffensen to add a set of tools to Bitcoin-qt that will allow fee rules to easily set by pools and solo miners. The branch is on git hub here.
https://github.com/jonls/bitcoin/tree/mining-tx-filtersBlockprioritysize needs to be exceeded before these rules are applied.
I don't want to get into the debate about whether transactions fees are too low or too high. I am just saying free transactions are clearly being abused and action should be taken to make sure that free transactions have a cost in time to validation.
