Next level Bitcoin stress test -- June 29-30 13:00 GMT 2015

[johnyj]

Blocking any transactions is the thin end of the wedge. If it starts for any reason it will snowball until international governments start ordering pools to block a regularly updated list of transactions. What if the pools were ordered to stop processing transactions from Greece?

Greek people will use VPN instead 

Actually I don't know if you can specifically broadcast your transactions to one pool that you prefer. If pools have different policies when it comes to transaction priority, then maybe 0 fee transactions could still be done with some pools (They block spam transactions intentionally). And overtime, more and more spam transactions will be queued in the memory pool due to more and more pools are blocking them

Then we have an interesting situation that although there are 200MB queued transactions in memory pool, most of them are spam transactions

[1713270069]

1713270069

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Few people are having issue about blockchain tx. confirming, how long will this take?

I've got 0.18 & 0.095 BTC incoming transactions lost in the wilderness somewhere. They're both coming to the same address. Blockchain.info explorer shows them in said address but my Bitcoin Core client (wallet) shows nothing, not even pending.
They're both unconfirmed transactions after several hours, both the medium, recommended fee. They're payment for a signature & avatar campaign I participate in.

I understand they're not confirmed transactions but a little worried they're not even in my core wallet as pending.

Finally got my BTC. What a nightmare, I'm glad it was only a relatively small amount, I would have been really anxious if I was waiting on 10+ BTC. Last night was the first time I've ever had a transaction going through when there was a stress test. I'm not a tech expert so what did they actually learn from spamming the network & making lots of people worry about non confirmed transactions.
I checked bc.info & at one point there were over 11,000 unconfirmed transactions. Was it really necessary for that many?

[sturle]

I have to completely agree with Kano here..
A valid TXN is a VALID txn. Full stop. End of story. NO POLITICS.
If someone starts to show that it is possible to 'edit' which transactions go through the system, then I think it sets a very bad precedent.

You should stop using Bitcoin Core then, or any P2P based coin with users or miners.

Bitcoin Core refuses to make, forward or mine most valid transactions.  The set of valid transactions it accepts by default is only a fraction of all valid transactions.  It won't make, forward or mine transactions with dust outputs, for example.  This is a very effective measure against spam, and against DoS by exploding the UTXO set.  All users can change this policy if they want to, and even set it to accept all valid transactions if they have enough RAM and CPU to accept all the junk transactions which is never going to get mined.  You could even keep them in your mempool and rebroadcast them forever.  My definition of dust is 10 times larger than the default definition.  This saves space in my mempool, and fortunately you can't force me to waste my resources on your junk transactions.  This is my choice when I choose to spend my resources on running a full node.  You are free to make your own choices.

Miners can decide which transactions to put in their blocks.  This is true for all coins which use distributed mining.  Some pools use stricter than default settings.  Most use the default settings.  Some, particularly Eligius, accept most valid transactions which other pools will refuse to mine.  Eligius demands a fee for that kind of transactions, which is their choice.  Some, e.g. Eligius, will let you add a fee to a transaction by sending the change output with a higher fee, considering the fees and sizes of both the parent and the child when prioritizing transactions.  Most pools will only consider the fee of the parent transaction.  This is entirely up to them.

[spartacusrex]

Dust txn. Fine (to block).

No fee txn. Fine (I don't think zero fee txns should be allowed at all actually).

'Spam' in all it's varied forms. Fine.. (Well, until some size fix solution is found. Then if you pay, and there's room, you should be allowed through.)

But a normal valid txn that pays the standard fee. That should be allowed through.

Miners should LOVE to mine txns that pay fees. As Luke himself said, these are numbers, not people. There should be NO POLITICS involved. Otherwise, it's a very slippery slope.

[sturle]

What if the pools were ordered to stop processing transactions from Greece?

How on earth are you going to accomplish that, even if you were all the governments on Earth?  You could give all the orders you want.  It would be impossible to separate transactions from Greece from the rest.  Bitcoin doesn't know geographical boundaries.

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

Few people are having issue about blockchain tx. confirming, how long will this take?

I've got 0.18 & 0.095 BTC incoming transactions lost in the wilderness somewhere. They're both coming to the same address. Blockchain.info explorer shows them in said address but my Bitcoin Core client (wallet) shows nothing, not even pending.
They're both unconfirmed transactions after several hours, both the medium, recommended fee. They're payment for a signature & avatar campaign I participate in.

I understand they're not confirmed transactions but a little worried they're not even in my core wallet as pending.

Finally got my BTC. What a nightmare, I'm glad it was only a relatively small amount, I would have been really anxious if I was waiting on 10+ BTC. Last night was the first time I've ever had a transaction going through when there was a stress test. I'm not a tech expert so what did they actually learn from spamming the network & making lots of people worry about non confirmed transactions.
I checked bc.info & at one point there were over 11,000 unconfirmed transactions. Was it really necessary for that many?

Unconfirmed transactions left, right and center. If this isn't proof that we need a blocksize increment then I dont know what the hell it is. LN is not a solution long term.

[sturle]

Dust txn. Fine (to block).
No fee txn. Fine (I don't think zero fee txns should be allowed at all actually).
'Spam' in all it's varied forms. Fine.. (Well, until some size fix solution is found. Then if you pay, and there's room, you should be allowed through.)

Wow!  That was quite a change from

A valid TXN is a VALID txn. Full stop. End of story. NO POLITICS.

But a normal valid txn that pays the standard fee. That should be allowed through.

You are of course entitled to your own opinion on mining policy, just as all the miners, users and even non-users.  I don't think any pools or solo miners block normal valid transactions that pays a fee.  Most allow no fee transactions as well, as long as there is room in the block and the priority is high enough.

If I had the hashrate to make a difference, I would give a high priority to transactions which reduce the UTXO set significantly, e.g. by combining a lot of dust outputs to one or two more sensible sized coins.  I would mine those transactions for free if the gain was high enough, since it saves resources, and therefore reduces cost, in the long run.

[spartacusrex]

Dust txn. Fine (to block).
No fee txn. Fine (I don't think zero fee txns should be allowed at all actually).
'Spam' in all it's varied forms. Fine.. (Well, until some size fix solution is found. Then if you pay, and there's room, you should be allowed through.)

Wow!  That was quite a change from

A valid TXN is a VALID txn. Full stop. End of story. NO POLITICS.

But a normal valid txn that pays the standard fee. That should be allowed through.

You are of course entitled to your own opinion on mining policy, just as all the miners, users and even non-users.  I don't think any pools or solo miners block normal valid transactions that pays a fee.  Most allow no fee transactions as well, as long as there is room in the block and the priority is high enough.

If I had the hashrate to make a difference, I would give a high priority to transactions which reduce the UTXO set significantly, e.g. by combining a lot of dust outputs to one or two more sensible sized coins.  I would mine those transactions for free if the gain was high enough, since it saves resources, and therefore reduces cost, in the long run.

Well, I was loose with my terminology..  Dust and No fee I don't consider valid.

The point is that normal fee paying transactions were blocked.

[tspacepilot]

It's amazing to me how many of the posts in this thread are just shouting "Luke shouldn't be doing this!!!".  As if what they shout somehow matters.  People need to listen to the miners who are dropping facts on you.  They keep tellling you "I am a miner and I decide what to do with my hashrate.  I decide what to try to process and what to ignore".  The point of this setup is that everyone is free to implement their own mining policy and see how it goes for them.  For people claiming that no-fee transactions should be blocked: consider that as long there's a block reward I can set up my miner to only hash no-fee transactions, as long as I find a block I get the block reward and that far-outweighs the fees associated with a given block (on average, nowadays).

I, personally, think it was very noble of Eligius pool to ignore "stress-test" transactions, this was an example of a mining pool putting the interests of the regular, everyday, bitcoin users above their own profit interests.  This is very interesting because miners and users are often seen as having opposing interests.

Anyway, consider please, folks, shouting about what miners should do won't change the fact that they are free to do as they please.  This is the nature of a trustless, distributed, decentralized system.  The system provides conditions under which everyone, while working for their own interest, can secure the network for all.  If you work against your own interest (ie, say, you spend 20BTC just to spam for fun) you are free to do that.  Along the same lines miners are free to ignore higher-fee transactions of said spammer. 

Them's the facts!

[ChetnotAtkins]

So has the mempool ever before been as large as it was yesterday (21Mb) ?

I really enjoyed observing how the network reacted to this increased 'stress'

jbreher, I hope you will perform a test as well. These are very important, to find weaknesses in BTC companies' implementations, etc

[knowhow]

well i dont get why soo several things to be done to improve blockhain instead of it someone is testing it spped? Camon just do something better for bitcoin then some kind of test

[tspacepilot]

well i dont get why soo several things to be done to improve blockhain instead of it someone is testing it spped? Camon just do something better for bitcoin then some kind of test

I can't understand what you are saying which makes me think that you are just posting this to get paid for your signature ad.

Maybe if you slow down and used spellcheck it would help, but I can't guarantee it.


@ChetAtkins I'm pretty sure that was the record, but every node has it's own mempool so it'd be hard to say overall what the largest mempool ever was.  However, I imagine a public tracker like blockchain.info would be a reasonable stand-in, and it seems like it was a record on BCI.

[Xialla]

testing is still running or what? 1600TX per block and I'm waiting 20 minutes for first confirmation, even I paid recommended fee..

edit: 4.7k unconfirmed and still growing:( https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

[franky1]

blocking a tx just because you think it is spam.. is bad.

i get the idea of blocking tx's that have values of less than a penny.. but blocking a tx due to data bloat needs careful consideration..

imagine a company wanted to pay its 10,000 staff in bitcoin. and it sent out tx's as such.. luke jr would block the tx.

the problem is not that tx's need blocking. the problem is that the test is showing that even a small handfull of tx's can cause such controversy. if the blocks were 20mb, there would be no controversy as all tx's would fit happily with no bottleneck..

 

[Xialla]

if the blocks were 20mb, there would be no controversy as all tx's would fit happily with no bottleneck..

yeah. I really think, that we need some change with this block magic asap, because now waiting almost hour for FIRST confirmation, even I paid fee. we should be lucky, that bitcoin is not massively adopted yet, because this is like waiting 1h for email delivery..

[tspacepilot]

testing is still running or what? 1600TX per block and I'm waiting 20 minutes for first confirmation, even I paid recommended fee..

edit: 4.7k unconfirmed and still growing:( https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Yes, now at 6.5K.  I was unaware of any "test" going on today but I'm also waiting over 1.5 hours now on a tx with a standard fee.  I didn't check the backlog status yesterday evening to see if things cleared out and this is a new wave of spam or if it's just ripple effects from yesterday's event.

[Xialla]

testing is still running or what? 1600TX per block and I'm waiting 20 minutes for first confirmation, even I paid recommended fee..

edit: 4.7k unconfirmed and still growing:( https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Yes, now at 6.5K.  I was unaware of any "test" going on today but I'm also waiting over 1.5 hours now on a tx with a standard fee.  I didn't check the backlog status yesterday evening to see if things cleared out and this is a new wave of spam or if it's just ripple effects from yesterday's event.

otherwise, it is simply harming new bitcoin users..they all knows, that TX is almost free and takes something about 10 minutes and their first experience with default setup of wallet in non-reversible enviroment may be 2 hours (I'm actually waiting 2 hours now with default electrum fee paid)

[RealMalatesta]

The "test" more and more turns into a ddos...

[Luke-Jr]

imagine a company wanted to pay its 10,000 staff in bitcoin. and it sent out tx's as such.. luke jr would block the tx.

Hard to take you seriously when you just blatantly lie and slander me...

if the blocks were 20mb, there would be no controversy as all tx's would fit happily with no bottleneck..

No, if blocks were 20 MB, the damage would be 20 times worse and literally destroy Bitcoin.
No matter what the limit is, or how big blocks are, spam should never be mined, and can never be supported (it would literally require infinite block sizes).

[tspacepilot]

imagine a company wanted to pay its 10,000 staff in bitcoin. and it sent out tx's as such.. luke jr would block the tx.

Hard to take you seriously when you just blatantly lie and slander me...

if the blocks were 20mb, there would be no controversy as all tx's would fit happily with no bottleneck..

No, if blocks were 20 MB, the damage would be 20 times worse and literally destroy Bitcoin.
No matter what the limit is, or how big blocks are, spam should never be mined, and can never be supported (it would literally require infinite block sizes).

Since this is a technically minded discussion, I have to say that your suggestion that mining all spam would require infinite block sizes is clearly hyperbole.  Any amount of observable spam is finite.  No block-size limite would be something like a limit of infinity on block sizes, but since any observable amount of spam is finite we can go ahead and assume that all spam can fit into a finite block ('specially since you can't hope to mine an infinitely sized block anyway).

In any case, I really respect that you stood up for normal bitcoin users yesterday potentially at cost to yourself given the fees the spammers were paying.