Blockchain split of 4 July 2015

[BillyBobZorton]

The current delay in the transactions is due to a spammer (attack) on the Bitcoin network, who sends peaks of 150 transactions per seconds on a network that can handle about 7 only.  

One jerk can jam up Bitcoin for the entire world?

What did you expect? and why do you think the blocksize debate is a huge one?
We need to do something about it, 7 tx per second has been a tiny amount for a while. This was meant to happen sooner or later. Better now than later on when more people would be on board. Hopefully this makes people realize we need changes asap.

[turvarya]

The current delay in the transactions is due to a spammer (attack) on the Bitcoin network, who sends peaks of 150 transactions per seconds on a network that can handle about 7 only.  

One jerk can jam up Bitcoin for the entire world?

it's not like it is easy to execute.
There was someone(it is not know, if it was the same person) trying that some weeks ago and he failed pretty hard. Then he tried it again and failed again and now we have this from maybe the same person or a copycat.
So, there is a lot of preparation to that and you need some servers. The whole thing is also not cheap, when it comes to transaction fees.
Also keep in mind, that some people are already working on counter-measures.

[Arnault59]

yes very strange , 59 confirmations but transaction not confirmed yet, never see that.

[SebastianJu]

yes very strange , 59 confirmations but transaction not confirmed yet, never see that.

Confirmations are "confirmed". What do you mean? As long as one confirmation is there then the transaction is confirmed.

[Arnault59]

yes very strange , 59 confirmations but transaction not confirmed yet, never see that.

Confirmations are "confirmed". What do you mean? As long as one confirmation is there then the transaction is confirmed.

Sorry I mean "seen by 59 peers", not confirmed

edit : seen by 91 peers now, not confirmed

[Mikestang]

The current delay in the transactions is due to a spammer (attack) on the Bitcoin network, who sends peaks of 150 transactions per seconds on a network that can handle about 7 only.  

One jerk can jam up Bitcoin for the entire world?

One jerk with a lot of Bitcoin nodes and a lot of money to burn.

If you just send transactions back and forth to yourself the only money that's burning is the tx fee, and that's minimal.

[achow101]

The current delay in the transactions is due to a spammer (attack) on the Bitcoin network, who sends peaks of 150 transactions per seconds on a network that can handle about 7 only.  

One jerk can jam up Bitcoin for the entire world?

One jerk with a lot of Bitcoin nodes and a lot of money to burn.

If you just send transactions back and forth to yourself the only money that's burning is the tx fee, and that's minimal.

It can add up to quite a lot, and it isn't sustainable. Eventually the spammer will run out of money.

[5cMXezpBtm]

The current delay in the transactions is due to a spammer (attack) on the Bitcoin network, who sends peaks of 150 transactions per seconds on a network that can handle about 7 only.  

One jerk can jam up Bitcoin for the entire world?

One jerk with a lot of Bitcoin nodes and a lot of money to burn.

If you just send transactions back and forth to yourself the only money that's burning is the tx fee, and that's minimal.

It can add up to quite a lot, and it isn't sustainable. Eventually the spammer will run out of money.

To be concrete - what is the fee of the spam transactions? If it would be 0.0001 BTC, that would cost in 1 hour with 150 transactions per second
3600 * 150 * 0.0001 = 54 BTC = 14400 USD at current USD rate

[neurotypical]

There should be a way to input a value that would represent the time you want to wait for the confirmation and the wallet automatically suggests the fee depending on the volume of transactions as well.

[tspacepilot]

I hesitate to bring this up because people are mistaken about how, but the forks do in fact contribute to delays.

When you've got 50% of the hashing power working on a bad fork, you've only got 50% of the hashing power working on a good fork.  While this situation is in effect, you can only form about 50% of the "nominal" number of blocks in the good fork.

That leaves only room for 50% of the normal number of transactions and the remainder do in fact start to pile up when they come in faster than the reduced-capacity good block chain can handle.  

You are correct.  However, the bad fork of the "Fork of July" lasted only for 6 blocks.  Another bad fork on July 5th lasted for 3 blocks.  We haven't seen anymore bad fork since.  

The current delay in the transactions is due to a spammer (attack) on the Bitcoin network, who sends peaks of 150 transactions per seconds on a network that can handle about 7 only.  A work around - if you really want to send a bitcoin transaction, is to include a transaction fee of at least 0.0005 BTC per kb of data.  A normal one input, one output transaction is 0.6 kb - so include a minimum of 0.0003 BTC. If you add any more inputs or outputs to your transaction, add more fees. If you stick to 0.0001 BTC per transactions, be ready to wait at least 18 hours before the first confirmation... at the moment.   The miners will include in the next block the highest fees first, then go down the list...  

This situation is similar to a Los Angeles rush hour when there's an accident on the highway, and the 6 lanes traffic is diverted to a 1 lane surface street - with traffic lights... Look at it like an additional fee to be able to ride on the carpool lane - which is clear of the accident, of course!

Is there a dedicated thread somewhere to talk about this (third?) attack?  I've seen several discussions verging towards this topic but I haven't found the official thread on this week's attack (who's funding it now? etc)

[STT]

One jerk can jam up Bitcoin for the entire world?

on a network that can handle about 7 only.

Seems a tad limited, how many transactions does Mastercard process every second.   Im kinda amazed, waiting for the but actually part...
Not sure if such a person could be banned or declined service, restricted in their access or priority over others with reference to their previous (recent) use perhaps.     The natural state of all capitalist systems is be thrown apart and in a way its a positive because it forces a tendency towards competitive useful products, sure this is a fool screwing things up but it has to be anticipated he wont be the last to try or even that it might occur naturally under stress

[birr]

https://gist.github.com/petertodd/8e87c782bdf342ef18fb

[JorgeStolfi]

There was someone(it is not know, if it was the same person) trying that some weeks ago and he failed pretty hard. Then he tried it again and failed again and now we have this from maybe the same person or a copycat.
So, there is a lot of preparation to that and you need some servers. The whole thing is also not cheap, when it comes to transaction fees.
Also keep in mind, that some people are already working on counter-measures.

The first "stress test" was organized informally by a crowd call on /r/bitcoin.  Each volunteer spammed what and when it felt like, during a specified time window.

The second "stress test" was organized by a mysterious entity called "coinwallet.eu".  They said they had ~5000 euros to spend on fees.  that attempt failed after spending ~500 euros because their servers broke under the load. The testalso wasn't effective because they were using low fees. 

This test is their new attempt, with more servers and smarter scripts, paying higer and adaptive fees.  They said that their aim was to get 250 MB of unconfirmed transactions on the queues; which, with 1 MB blocks filled 50%, will take ~10 days to clear after they stop the test.

They are already at 150 MB, still climbing.  Yesterday they managed to drive up the "effective minimum fee" (EMF) that you would need to pay for prompt service, to ~100'000 satoshis/kB, or ~0.4 mBTC (~0.11 USD) for a typical transaction.  (Maybe more, the plots that I am watching broke down at that point.) Now they seem to be using lower fees, because the EMF is less than half of that even though the backlog is much bigger.

[ausbit]

Will online wallets like Mycelium for example automatically adjust the EMF to help push transactions through or is it recommended to up the fee personally to 0.4mBTC?

[abbeytim]

hi I am having issues with my bitcoin core  v 0.10.2

cd44f9b5ae4c5290301adf6228aaace557df5aa5c46b13d21f016934e3655be6-000


6bbba9afdde91a525bdca1ef79387771e4253bb43e9d0f9ce580f49a8fe5ba43-000


these transactions wont confirm  one I made on 7/7/2015

and it still hasn't got one confirm
any idea whats wrong

they show up on the blockchain but no confirms

[Arnault59]

Don't worry, it will be done soon or later. It works for me after 3 days and 114 seen by peers:)

[Kak Ros]

I was make PH $370 to day.... thank you

[abbeytim]

thanks arnalt

[birr]

Will online wallets like Mycelium for example automatically adjust the EMF to help push transactions through or is it recommended to up the fee personally to 0.4mBTC?

In Mycelium you can increase the fee manually.  Tap the miner fee button to make it change from "normal" to "priority," which adds about .0001 to make it .0002, depending on what the normal fee was.  Mycelium calculates the normal fee by tx size.
If you want .0004 you may be out of luck.

[BlackStar-Korea]

What I mean to ... I do not know , who would you tell me ?