Back in 2010, even Satoshi Nakamoto wrote that: “Free transactions would take longer to get into a block”.
Well, you see the difference between "take longer" and "would not get into a block"?
Keep rebroadcasting with no fees. It's entirely possible it will be relayed someday.
Not anymore. If you did not make it into a block after 3 days then the new node versions are designed to drop that transaction from mempool.
Hence "rebroadcast"
I actually did not try to send a free transaction in a long time since it only means trouble nowadays. I did so for a long time and it was fine since fees were not a big part of the miners reward anyway.
And with subsidy being halved again (with more to come), fees need to replace subsidy. I've never once sent a free transaction. Just pay the damn fee, .00005-.0002, a few cents, geez.
It really is important that bitcoin transactions work with a low fee. Bitcoin really has not a alot of advantages over other payment systems. So losing that means losing part of adoption...
Personally I don't care about cheap transactions. I am quite sure they will exist, preferably on things like LN. I certainly don't want to give up any security so people can have their cake and eat it too. You either pay for the damn security, or the system goes to shit.
Well, one of the problems of bitcoin is that it is way too secure. Way more than needed. Which in turn makes it an environmental nightmare. I wish I would find the links again where a study was made. The bitcoin network was 100 times more secure than needed. And one normal bitcoin transaction would eat the energy that 1.75 average US households need per day. Bigger transactions even more.
So the solution for me is that we need miners to go out of bitcoin. I don't have a problem when the block halving leads to 50% of the hashrate going out of the network. We would still be safe way way more than needed. Though it would mean on the other side that the remaining miners would earn the same they earned before they block halving. In fact more than that because the fees did not halve.
Why rebroadcast? If a transaction does not make it into the chain in 3 days then how usefull will that transaction be at all? Would you wait a week or a month for a transaction? No, you would pay the higher fee. And there we are. At around $0.10 per normal transaction now, I think. You realize that we soon weel be beaten by paypal? The average user on the street is already hard to convince of bitcoin. "And why should I use bitcoin?" Well... because it is cool and somewhat anonymous but you have to pay more than a paypal transaction. Surely not many will bother to check out bitcoin anymore.
That's the way to kill bitcoin. Security is surely not our problem. Mining is so rewarding that the market decided we can be 100 times more safe than needed. Market will find a new decision like satoshi predicted with his wise move of block halving...
