"Stress Tests", Spammers, Attacks: Burning My Butt. Very Bad.

[arallmuus]

BTC is a POW coin which means that it will always need miners to mine blocks for confirmation and the fees are incentive for the miners to work after the block reward goes to 0. Without fees at all, miners will have no incentive to mine anymore . This may only happen in after 100+ years however eliminating fees is not the answer for this.
As for the rate limiting are you actually meant limiting transaction that below X BTC or so? This is also not an option because BTC suppose to give the ability to send micropayment as well . Limitation to the transaction isnt healthy for BTC because it is merely discrimation to some transaction

You got it wrong.

1- Fees are NOT an incentive for miners, it is an incentive for individuals to not spam.

2 - No, i don't mean that. You are refering to a simple value limit, anyway fee is a lazy solution that does not work well and virtually blocks ALL transactions that don't pay the toll. Any solution regardless of the type or the mix of them will be somewhat complex but far less complex than the blockchain itself.

Depends on what your point of view is. I see the miner's fee as the incentive to keep the miners to secure the network even after there isnt any block reward anymore. Given the fact that no one will be mining for loss, then this fee will keep the network running .

Fees has never been an issue, blocksize will be an issue in my point of view . It may be an "attack" for the network now or some people consider it as a spam however I see it from my own point of view that this will be how the network looks like once we have more people to use BTC .
Some people may just say to increase the miners fee and your problem will be gone however increasing the miners fee to push your transaction is merely eliminating micropayment which is hindering the growth of BTC I would say. There should no and never be any limitation about micropayment or so because BTC wasnt created to support large amount of transaction only

Nope, arallmuus is quite correct.  Fees might not be a huge incentive for miners just yet, but they will be in future.  Unless your solution involves altering the block reward

People are afraid of a small fork to the blocksize, let alone the block reward then it will be a chaos here. I think he is looking it in the shorter term and didnt put into account of 100+ years later that the block reward will be gone though. Cant blame them, each people has their own opinion anyway

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[ajareselde]

I have a feeling the miners are behind this. If they can create a large backlog of transactions people who wish to use the network will be forced to pay more.
Remember in just 55 weeks they will lose 50% of their income on block_halfing day. http://bitcoinclock.com/


If the top 3 mining pools joined forces (in secret) they could control the fees.

I understand the point you are trying to make, but judging by current fee included in blocks, which is on average about 0,25 btc - 1% of the block reward, they either are not
behind this, or are not successful in making themselves profit.

I find two things more probable:

- The people who are promoting the increase in clock size are making sort of a statement/proof with this spam.
- Since litecoin is being obviously pumped right now beyond any logic (from 1,xx to 5,xx currently), maybe the same people pumping it are trashing bitcoin in efforts to
  convince bitcoin investors into switching/investing into it.

Whatever the case is, it is obvious that developers and community should join efforts and find and implement a solution to this spam, because it is making
bitcoin look bad in a way, is delaying transactions users make, is forcing users to increase the transaction fee, and is generally pissing people off, myself included.

cheers

[Herbert2020]

it is not possible to ignore small transactions like 0.001 BTC because there is a lot of micro transactions being done with bitcoin and banning those transactions is just not possible.

[galbros]

Even stress test is a joke because we have a testnet for someone to try it out without interfering with the live network. The number of the unconfirmed transaction is increasing rapidly

I think this is the key point.  There is no legitimate need for this.  If you want to test you can do so for free on testnet, that is what it is there for.  So it seems that "stress test" is just a way to spin a network attack or some other sort of self serving behavior.

Sorry that space pilot has not gotten his script yet.

Good Luck!

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

I've had no problems whatsoever with my confirmation times, transactions going on normally. In any case deal with it. We better solve a way to not be affected by this if we want mainstream volume being viable.

[zetaray]

Even stress test is a joke because we have a testnet for someone to try it out without interfering with the live network. The number of the unconfirmed transaction is increasing rapidly

I think this is the key point.  There is no legitimate need for this.  If you want to test you can do so for free on testnet, that is what it is there for.  So it seems that "stress test" is just a way to spin a network attack or some other sort of self serving behavior.

Stress testers can test what they want on testnet. They are bloating the blockchain and interferring with real transactions. Miners can increase the transaction fee temporarily to stop this spamming. They don't want to because they want more fees.

[big ears]

Some defense against this sort of attack needs building into Bitcoin. It cost me money waiting for my transaction to go through. I wanted to sell some of my Bitcoins at the top, and by the time my transaction got through the price had gone down, and I had to sell for less.

[turvarya]

One of the funny things about these threads is, that people think, when they write often enough, that a stress test is "not allowed" on the main-chain, people will stop doing them.
It's not even like this stress tester have used a bug or something. There is no "not allowed", no court to decide, that what they did is bad.
People who are whining on forums are not the judges. Everything the stress testers did/do is according to the (coded) rules of Bitcoin.
These stress tests are a reminder to the devs, that there are still unsolved problems. Problems that could really hurt Bitcoin, not just if somebody wants to do so, but also when Bitcoin goes mainstream(and nobody knows, when that will happen).

[BillyBobZorton]

BTC is a POW coin which means that it will always need miners to mine blocks for confirmation and the fees are incentive for the miners to work after the block reward goes to 0. Without fees at all, miners will have no incentive to mine anymore . This may only happen in after 100+ years however eliminating fees is not the answer for this.
As for the rate limiting are you actually meant limiting transaction that below X BTC or so? This is also not an option because BTC suppose to give the ability to send micropayment as well . Limitation to the transaction isnt healthy for BTC because it is merely discrimation to some transaction

You got it wrong.

1- Fees are NOT an incentive for miners, it is an incentive for individuals to not spam.

2 - No, i don't mean that. You are refering to a simple value limit, anyway fee is a lazy solution that does not work well and virtually blocks ALL transactions that don't pay the toll. Any solution regardless of the type or the mix of them will be somewhat complex but far less complex than the blockchain itself.

Depends on what your point of view is. I see the miner's fee as the incentive to keep the miners to secure the network even after there isnt any block reward anymore. Given the fact that no one will be mining for loss, then this fee will keep the network running .

Fees has never been an issue, blocksize will be an issue in my point of view . It may be an "attack" for the network now or some people consider it as a spam however I see it from my own point of view that this will be how the network looks like once we have more people to use BTC .
Some people may just say to increase the miners fee and your problem will be gone however increasing the miners fee to push your transaction is merely eliminating micropayment which is hindering the growth of BTC I would say. There should no and never be any limitation about micropayment or so because BTC wasnt created to support large amount of transaction only

Nope, arallmuus is quite correct.  Fees might not be a huge incentive for miners just yet, but they will be in future.  Unless your solution involves altering the block reward

People are afraid of a small fork to the blocksize, let alone the block reward then it will be a chaos here. I think he is looking it in the shorter term and didnt put into account of 100+ years later that the block reward will be gone though. Cant blame them, each people has their own opinion anyway

The question is, was BTC designed to become a worldwide payment system that could deal with microtransactions as well "as it"? or did satoshi predict the blocksize problem and the usage of a LN type of solution to deal with the volume?

[Coinshot]

Some defense against this sort of attack needs building into Bitcoin. It cost me money waiting for my transaction to go through. I wanted to sell some of my Bitcoins at the top, and by the time my transaction got through the price had gone down, and I had to sell for less.

you solve this my increasing the fee bro, or by leaving your bitcoin into the exchange
it's a good strategy tha many do when they trade daily

it is not possible to ignore small transactions like 0.001 BTC because there is a lot of micro transactions being done with bitcoin and banning those transactions is just not possible.

this is one of strengh of bitcoin, microtransaction with visa and mastercard are not really possible
and they would cost you a fortune, here microtransaction can be free if someone want

[tspacepilot]

One of the funny things about these threads is, that people think, when they write often enough, that a stress test is "not allowed" on the main-chain, people will stop doing them.
It's not even like this stress tester have used a bug or something. There is no "not allowed", no court to decide, that what they did is bad.
People who are whining on forums are not the judges. Everything the stress testers did/do is according to the (coded) rules of Bitcoin.
These stress tests are a reminder to the devs, that there are still unsolved problems. Problems that could really hurt Bitcoin, not just if somebody wants to do so, but also when Bitcoin goes mainstream(and nobody knows, when that will happen).

What turvarya said is completely right here.  Shouting to stop is obviously not going to stop them.  They have the right to send transactions and to waste their money on it as they see fit.

1)  Ban / not recognize transactions under BTC0.001

2)  Ban / not recognize miner's fees under BTC0.0002

These ideas from OROBTC are, IMO, completely crazy.  If you dedice to "ban" transactions under 0.001BTC then you are effectively doing away with the Satoshi and making 0.001 the smallest unit of bitcoin.  But there's clearly a lot of use for a unit smaller than that.  Already bitcoin has hit price points where 0.001 was equal to 1 USD.  Surely you can see the utility of sending less than 1$ sometimes.

(2) is even more crazy because it doesn't recognize that the cost/benefit of mining a transaction isn't in only its fee but in the relation of its fee size to its size in bytes.  There's a cap on the number of bytes in a block, not the number of transactions.  If a miner can squeeze in 5K transactions with just a small fee each (say 1KSat) that's better than 500 transactions with fees of (2Ksat).  Also, as long as there's a coinbase block reward, fees aren't the only motivating factor in the block race.

[monsanto]

I have a feeling the miners are behind this. If they can create a large backlog of transactions people who wish to use the network will be forced to pay more.
Remember in just 55 weeks they will lose 50% of their income on block_halfing day. http://bitcoinclock.com/


If the top 3 mining pools joined forces (in secret) they could control the fees.

I understand the point you are trying to make, but judging by current fee included in blocks, which is on average about 0,25 btc - 1% of the block reward, they either are not
behind this, or are not successful in making themselves profit.

I find two things more probable:

- The people who are promoting the increase in clock size are making sort of a statement/proof with this spam.
- Since litecoin is being obviously pumped right now beyond any logic (from 1,xx to 5,xx currently), maybe the same people pumping it are trashing bitcoin in efforts to
  convince bitcoin investors into switching/investing into it.

Whatever the case is, it is obvious that developers and community should join efforts and find and implement a solution to this spam, because it is making
bitcoin look bad in a way, is delaying transactions users make, is forcing users to increase the transaction fee, and is generally pissing people off, myself included.

cheers

Your litecoin theory is very interesting. It sounds a little crazy (and is) but if (big if) someone was doing that we could be witnessing the first shot of a new age of crypto wars. Instead of just trashing each others coins with FUD, this could be the opening salvo of active attacks in order to boost the price of an alternative currency.  Imagine if there were no laws protecting Visa or Mastercard.  Supporters/investors of each credit card could strategically attack the others payment system in a series of ongoing actions. If a small number of decentralized cryptocurrencies, say three or four, emerged as the primary competitors with each other I could see this kind of cryptowar emerging.

Reminds me a little of when the record companies tried to flood some of the p2p music sharing networks with fake music files.

[bananas]

You are wrong, do your research. In case you are correct the bitcoin developers lied to everyone about it, sou you saying they are all liars?

First eliminate the fees.
-snip-
Rate Limiting

BTC is a POW coin which means that it will always need miners to mine blocks for confirmation and the fees are incentive for the miners to work after the block reward goes to 0. Without fees at all, miners will have no incentive to mine anymore . This may only happen in after 100+ years however eliminating fees is not the answer for this.
As for the rate limiting are you actually meant limiting transaction that below X BTC or so? This is also not an option because BTC suppose to give the ability to send micropayment as well . Limitation to the transaction isnt healthy for BTC because it is merely discrimation to some transaction

You got it wrong.

1- Fees are NOT an incentive for miners, it is an incentive for individuals to not spam.

2 - No, i don't mean that. You are refering to a simple value limit, anyway fee is a lazy solution that does not work well and virtually blocks ALL transactions that don't pay the toll. Any solution regardless of the type or the mix of them will be somewhat complex but far less complex than the blockchain itself.

Nope, arallmuus is quite correct.  Fees might not be a huge incentive for miners just yet, but they will be in future.  Unless your solution involves altering the block reward, which in turn alters inflation and the subsequent value of each coin (so no one in their right mind would agree to changing it), then the fees will become the primary incentive for miners as the reward diminishes over time.  Or were you working under the assumption that miners are going to keep securing the network forever for free?

[arallmuus]

-snip-

The question is, was BTC designed to become a worldwide payment system that could deal with microtransactions as well "as it"? or did satoshi predict the blocksize problem and the usage of a LN type of solution to deal with the volume?

I do believe that no one could predict the future but atleast he had foreseen this problem and that is why he leave this all to the hands of what we call as the "BTC developer".
The main point is that BTC was designed and created to be a decentralized currency and there is no denying that it should support micropayment as well. Leaving that aside, few years back the community was so proud that with BTC you could have a micropayment which is not available for visa I believe and now some people are ditching this block issue by saying "just increase your miners fee" which is killing the micropayment

You are wrong, do your research. In case you are correct the bitcoin developers lied to everyone about it, sou you saying they are all liars?

Ever thought of the possiblity that both are correct? Both of the option have a valid point about this I believe. After there is no block reward , then this miners fee will be the incentive for miners to keep on mining otherwise if there is no incentives than no one will sacrifice their electricity cost just for the sake of finding block I believe

[bananas]

Ever thought of the possiblity that both are correct? Both of the option have a valid point about this I believe. After there is no block reward , then this miners fee will be the incentive for miners to keep on mining otherwise if there is no incentives than no one will sacrifice their electricity cost just for the sake of finding block I believe

Yes, both are valid points, it is an incentive to miners but it is a side effect it is not the intention.  Original implementation was not supposed to have any fees, then fees were  lazily created to avoid spam. And that is what fees are for, to prevent spam,  if they are not serving the purpose fees should be eliminated and an actual solution should be created.

[DooMAD]

it is an incentive to miners but it is a side effect it is not the intention.  Original implementation was not supposed to have any fees, then fees were  lazily created to avoid spam. And that is what fees are for, to prevent spam,  if they are not serving the purpose fees should be eliminated and an actual solution should be created.

Erm... no.  Fees always have been and always will be part of the plan.  Quoting from the Bitcoin whitepaper:

6. Incentive
By convention, the first transaction in a block is a special transaction that starts a new coin owned
by the creator of the block. This adds an incentive for nodes to support the network, and provides
a way to initially distribute coins into circulation, since there is no central authority to issue them.
The steady addition of a constant of amount of new coins is analogous to gold miners expending
resources to add gold to circulation. In our case, it is CPU time and electricity that is expended.
The incentive can also be funded with transaction fees. If the output value of a transaction is
less than its input value, the difference is a transaction fee that is added to the incentive value of
the  block  containing the  transaction.   Once a predetermined  number  of coins  have  entered
circulation, the incentive can transition entirely to transaction fees and be completely inflation
free.

So again, once the block reward diminishes, fees will play a vital role in securing the network.

You are wrong, do your research. In case you are correct the bitcoin developers lied to everyone about it, sou you saying they are all liars?

No one lied about anything, there just seems to have been a misunderstanding here.  I don't know where you got this idea from that fees aren't an integral part of the design, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't one of the developers.

[Quantus]

Yes fees are vital to bitcoin miners as incentive and vital to the network to stop spam attacks.
Because of this Micro transactions will have to be forced off the block chain. As of right now 99.4% of the incentive to mine bitcoin
comes from block rewards and only 0.6% from transaction fees.

People need to understand that no change in the protocol can force miners to include more transactions into each block. They are the gate keepers and they hold all the keys.

If we want a secured network, at its current size, without block rewards, we would have to pay 5 USD per transaction (right now) that's the reality of the situation.
It costs 5 USD per transaction to secure the network right now. In the future that cost will have to be paid in full with transaction fees.


Your options are this. Higher fees and a secure network  OR  Micro transactions/low fees and virtually no security.

[nextblast]

Yep it's very bad. Yesterday it took around 20 hours to confirm a tx sent to me.
But if someone has paid the miners' fee, he/she has the right to get the ride.
Though there's no convenient way to solve it, some improvement is urgently required.

On the one hand, a raised block size is desirable. We simply cannot just rely on waiting for sidechain or lightning to come up with a solution on this.
On the other hand is the floating tx fee. It should be set to default in every wallet software, especially the SPV clients. At least a prompt to alert the users who want to send any coins when such attacks are going on. The latest Bitcoin core has already got this nice little feature.

[Soros Shorts]

Your options are this. Higher fees and a secure network  OR  Micro transactions/low fees and virtually no security.

But people want a very secure network and zero fees!

(as well as 1GB blocks and instant confirmations)

[saddambitcoin]

Stop the damn stress tests I say. I'd like to move money around like it used to be, with low fees and fast confirmations.

End the madness!!