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

[bananas]

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.

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 fees as incentive were a suggestion . not the convention and were not originally part of Bitcoin. If you search this very board you will find very old posts about it, when fees were added. It was all about spam. I will try to find them if i have the time.

[Quantus]

bananas you are simply wrong in every way. I will not waste time trying to argue with you tho because your clearly mentally challenged.

[Kprawn]

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.

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 fees as incentive were a suggestion . not the convention and were not originally part of Bitcoin. If you search this very board you will find very old posts about it, when fees were added. It was all about spam. I will try to find them if i have the time.

I also want to see some evidence that fee's was not part of the original design. Please feel free to post it here. 

According to my research, it was part of the original design to substitute the block rewards. So according to you...What will secure the network when the block reward runs out?

In the end, it does not matter... The fee's lubricate the Bitcoin gears in my opinion... and if it helps to stop spam, it's beneficial to the whole network. 

[favdesu]

Stress test still going?  took 10 hours yesterday to clear a simple tx for me. I think it's time to add a higher tx fee for the moment

[turvarya]

Can someone give me a headsup?
Is it still going on?
Looking at https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions there is still a backlog of 16 MB.
at https://tradeblock.com/blockchain it is even 49 MB.

[Quantus]

Its not a stress test its an attack. And its only costing a few hundred dollars a day to carry out.
Within 24 hours there will be over 400k unconfirmed transactions in the mempool within a week it will be over 1 million and anyone who tries to run a full node won't have enough RAM and the whole network will fall. Any computer that tries to load all those unconfirmed transactions (because the mempool has no overflow) will crash. Even if we could get consensus for a 2mb block it would only delay the inevitable collapse of the network.  Bitcoin will be dead in 30 days. Bitcoin transactions will slow down far worse then it is now.

Edit: you guys know I"m fucking with you right?

[favdesu]

Its not a stress test its an attack. And its only costing a few hundred dollars a day to carry out.
Within 24 hours there will be over 400k unconfirmed transactions in the mempool within a week it will be over 1 million and anyone who tries to run a full node won't have enough RAM and the whole network will fall. Any computer that tries to load all those unconfirmed transactions (because the mempool has no overflow) will crash. Even if we could get consensus for a 2mb block it would only delay the inevitable collapse of the network.  Bitcoin will be dead in 30 days. Bitcoin transactions will slow down far worse then it is now.

yeah, but it's not that grim in my opinion. micro transaction services will move to dogecoin or other altcoins to prevent days of waiting time, if this continues. correct me if I'm wrong, but we will always be able to send decent value with a little higher fee in a timely fashion?

[Quantus]

Yeah the real numbers are much lower around 20k in the mempool but the number is growing. This is not a stress test.

[johnbrainless]

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!!

.


agreed

[sturle]

1)  Ban / not recognize transactions under BTC0.001
2)  Ban / not recognize miner's fees under BTC0.0002

An easier remedy using two options, mainly for miners:
Reserve 1/5th of each block for high priority/low fee transactions.  The spam has very low priority, and won't be helped by it.  Transactions using older inputs and having decent sized outputs will get high priority:

-blockprioritysize=200000  # Default is 50000

Set minimum fee for relaying a transaction to 0.0003 BTC.  This is more than the current spam.  Transactions with lower fees will still confirm as long as the priority (see above) is sufficient:

-minrelaytxfee=0.0003   # Default is 0.00001

The last option will reduce mempool for everyone running full nodes, and will make it harder for the spam to propagate through the network.  If you mine, please consider pushing your pool to do this, or switch to a more bitcoin friendly pool.

[tspacepilot]

An easier remedy using two options, mainly for miners:
Reserve 1/5th of each block for high priority/low fee transactions.  The spam has very low priority, and won't be helped by it.  Transactions using older inputs and having decent sized outputs will get high priority:

-blockprioritysize=200000  # Default is 50000

Set minimum fee for relaying a transaction to 0.0003 BTC.  This is more than the current spam.  Transactions with lower fees will still confirm as long as the priority (see above) is sufficient:

-minrelaytxfee=0.0003   # Default is 0.00001

The last option will reduce mempool for everyone running full nodes, and will make it harder for the spam to propagate through the network.  If you mine, please consider pushing your pool to do this, or switch to a more bitcoin friendly pool.

This last one is new to me.  Is the idea that you dno't even relay transactions that are othewise valid unless they include a fee?  I didn't realize that anyone had already implemented such a policy.

[RodeoX]

I think banning any low fee Tx is a reasonable countermeasure. Remember the so called "test" costs money to launch. I do not support asking them to stop, I support bleeding them dry if they want to continue DDOSing the blockchain.

[spazzdla]

Perhaps we tie the fees to unconfirmed tx.. The more there are the higher the cost.  Want to spam the network when it's got 100k uncofirmed, $10 bucks a transaction, 200k, $50, 500k, $100.

Break the bastards by making miners rich.

[readysalted89]

Can someone give me a headsup?
Is it still going on?
Looking at https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions there is still a backlog of 16 MB.
at https://tradeblock.com/blockchain it is even 49 MB.

Yes I think it's still going on. I checked the amount of unconfirmed transactions on blockchain.info hours ago and it was over 15000. Now it's almost 20000. Someone has to be spamming the network for the unconfirmed transactions to increase that quickly. I've been waiting for a transaction to be confirmed for 20 hours now, and I've not had one confirmation yet.

[cakir]

Stress tests my ass.

Gavin's Bitcoin-XT lovers are f*cking the network, I've been waiting for confirmation since yesterday and now there're over 20MB tx which is not confirmed.

Hey Gavin, is that you? F*cking the network to force everyone for bigger blocks?

[dothebeats]

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!!

I wish that telling them to stop is easy. This is not a stress test, people. This is an attack. If this is a stress testing, some people will claim that they are behind this, seeing whether the network could sustain this spams until it wouldn't work anymore to come up with a possible solution. Turns out, it isn't. People who posted that we've reached the peak of transactions don't understand what really is happening.

[readysalted89]

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!!

I wish that telling them to stop is easy. This is not a stress test, people. This is an attack. If this is a stress testing, some people will claim that they are behind this, seeing whether the network could sustain this spams until it wouldn't work anymore to come up with a possible solution. Turns out, it isn't. People who posted that we've reached the peak of transactions don't understand what really is happening.

I think it's looking like an attack the longer it goes on. KingAfurah, the person who started the stress testing, said he wanted to study what effect increasing the mempool size to >150MB was in one of his last posts. He's been silent for over a week, but i think it's him doing the spamming.

So what's the point of this now that you know it won't actually delay legit transactions?

The point is to study the effects of a mempool size of >150MB which was never reached so far.

[dothebeats]

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!!

I wish that telling them to stop is easy. This is not a stress test, people. This is an attack. If this is a stress testing, some people will claim that they are behind this, seeing whether the network could sustain this spams until it wouldn't work anymore to come up with a possible solution. Turns out, it isn't. People who posted that we've reached the peak of transactions don't understand what really is happening.

I think it's looking like an attack the longer it goes on. KingAfurah, the person who started the stress testing, said he wanted to study what effect increasing the mempool size to >150MB was in one of his last posts. He's been silent for over a week, but i think it's him doing the spamming.

So what's the point of this now that you know it won't actually delay legit transactions?

The point is to study the effects of a mempool size of >150MB which was never reached so far.

Hmm maybe he is still busy studying the effects of it. Well, it's already exhibiting in the network. I made a transaction 5 hours ago with sufficient fees and until now, 0 confirmations. This is quite annoying, because I need those bitcoins in an hour. If he is up for study, then he must come up also with a plausible and possible solution to end this madness if ever this happened again.

[SISAR]

1)  Ban / not recognize transactions under BTC0.001

+1

If you must move low amounts of BTC exchange to exchange just use altcoins. There are many of them with high enough liquidity that converting BTC to altcoin, sending altcoin to destination exchange and converting altcoin back to BTC should not be an issue in terms of losing much money (you might actualy make money, e.g. exchange arbitrage). Depending on altcoin, the whole deal can be completed in under few minutes which is mostly not the case with sending BTC.

[bitcreditscc]

20MB blocks would solve this