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

[OROBTC]

...

This latest "Stress Test", or whatever is going on, is really starting to bother me.  I am waiting on a small payment (with a close to $0.00 miner's fee) to be confirmed from 11 and 1/2 hours ago.

 

I did make a small transaction a little while ago (30 mins or so), included a miner's fee of 0.0006 BTC ($0.16), and it was confirmed by the next two blocks.

So, maybe the Stress Test only affects tiny transactions that the miners (understandably here) do not want to confirm (no fees).

Nonetheless, these attackers are clogging the system with their garbage.  It is an attack upon all of us users.  It is inconvenient and abusive.  

And they should not be allowed to get away with it.

I have little technical knowledge of the Bitcoin Ecosystem, but this problem WILL come back.  Maybe ISIS would love to take down the Infidels...

So, what can be done?  Well, I am not competent to really know.  But for the purposes of this thread, why don't I suggest a remedy or two to get the conversation started:

1)  Ban / not recognize transactions under BTC0.001

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

3)  I read somewhere here at bitcointalk that skilled and determined hackers can track payments by ISP location...

I understand the above would go against the idea of BTC being a system which could support "micropayments", but it looks like having micropayments invites this kind of abuse...

Comments?

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[Quantus]

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.

[OROBTC]

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Quantus

Hey, could be that the miner's might be behind the attack.  But that would require, as you wrote, three of them (the biggest, else even more).

One thing I learned when I worked at .gov is that sexy secrets are very hard to keep...

Maybe if they were Chinese miners and kept their mouths shut.

"Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead."
 - Mark Twain

[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.

What percentage of their income currently comes from block rewards versus transaction fees?

[tspacepilot]

Was there really another stress test today?  I didn't hear any lead up to this one, but that may be because of the "fork of july" incident covered up any coverage of it.  I do see 11K unconfirmed tx at the time of this writing, which seems rather high.

I imagine someone has this handy: a chart over time of the number of unconfirmed transactions according to some well known nodes.  I keep popping in on blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions but that only shows you the situation in a single moment.  I'd write a script to build my own chart but it's something that I assume is already out there.  Who's got the right place to look on that?

[Quantus]

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.

What percentage of their income currently comes from block rewards versus transaction fees?

for the top pools its 100%

[pooya87]

who is going to ban / or not recognize these kinds of transactions? miners?
the thing is, they are more than happy to receive these kinds of transaction since there is a lot of fees involved and that means more income for the miners.
i don't see any reason why they should stop receiving these transactions.

[Pony789]

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.

What percentage of their income currently comes from block rewards versus transaction fees?

From the chart on https://btc.blockr.io/charts, the average block fee is around 0.1 btc to 0.2 btc. With a 25 btc block reward, the tx fee is just 0.4% to 0.8% in average.

[Quantus]

Maybe I'm wrong because even if they forced everyone to pay 5 cents (100,000 transactions a day) that's still a drop in the bucket compared to what they make now.

[NorrisK]

Maybe I'm wrong because even if they forced everyone to pay 5 cents (100,000 transactions a day) that's still a drop in the bucket compared to what they make now.

But those values could become much better for the miners if the value of bitcoin increases further and the usage increases..

[Kprawn]

$0.00 miner's fee transactions naturaly will not get confirmed quicker. If you were a miner, and you had to chose to accept a transactions with zero fees or a transaction with some fees, what would you choose?

The "Stress Tests" is not a attack on the system... It's just a opportunity for miners to make more money from increased miners fees within the system. If it's raining money, you will have to be in the right place, wiith the biggest bucket. {Do not waste mining resources on transactions with zero fees}

The result of these tests will provide benefits for the whole community.   

 

[arallmuus]

1)  Ban / not recognize transactions under BTC0.001

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

#1 Definitely no, this ismore likely into banning micropayment which is not the best thing to do because it is like putting up a limitation for the small guy and definitely a discrimination. BTC supposed to be useable for any kind of transaction, micro to huge amount. BTC take its pride into providing every single payment and this is definitely a bad option

#2 Miners fee had nothing to do with this btw and it has become "standard" to use 0.0001 BTC per transaction but definitely this can change in the future. Not recoqnizing miners fee under X BTC is the same as option 1, discrimanation and limitation of BTC usage which is not healthy for its growth

Was there really another stress test today? 

There is none "announced" stress test ongoing right now. I consider this to be most likely this is more like an attack to the network and highly likely from those who are behind supporting the increasing of this blocksize. 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

[S4VV4S]

$0.00 miner's fee transactions naturaly will not get confirmed quicker. If you were a miner, and you had to chose to accept a transactions with zero fees or a transaction with some fees, what would you choose?

The "Stress Tests" is not a attack on the system... It's just a opportunity for miners to make more money from increased miners fees within the system. If it's raining money, you will have to be in the right place, wiith the biggest bucket. {Do not waste mining resources on transactions with zero fees}

The result of these tests will provide benefits for the whole community.   

 

That is true.
If you don't put something to the test, then you do not know what it can handle or not and how it will perform.
None the less, the testers did inform the community about the upcoming test.
What if it was an actual attack by a malicious party with NO warning/announcement of what's coming?

[monsanto]

That is true.
If you don't put something to the test, then you do not know what it can handle or not and how it will perform.
None the less, the testers did inform the community about the upcoming test.
What if it was an actual attack by a malicious party with NO warning/announcement of what's coming?

If an attacker had a large enough short position, it could be profitable for the attacker to fund a prolonged attack.

[bananas]

Fees don't work well and should be eliminated, but some other solution must take place - a solution that actually works and that can't be used as an extortion instrument by miners like the fees

[Amph]

Was there really another stress test today?  I didn't hear any lead up to this one, but that may be because of the "fork of july" incident covered up any coverage of it.  I do see 11K unconfirmed tx at the time of this writing, which seems rather high.

I imagine someone has this handy: a chart over time of the number of unconfirmed transactions according to some well known nodes.  I keep popping in on blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions but that only shows you the situation in a single moment.  I'd write a script to build my own chart but it's something that I assume is already out there.  Who's got the right place to look on that?

yeah there was apparently the network was try to handle 150 TX per second, which is obvious too much for it, and tiny amount have lower priority overall

Maybe I'm wrong because even if they forced everyone to pay 5 cents (100,000 transactions a day) that's still a drop in the bucket compared to what they make now.

But those values could become much better for the miners if the value of bitcoin increases further and the usage increases..

then what's the point of doing it now?, they can always do it later, with the same fee

Fees don't work well and should be eliminated, but some other solution must take place - a solution that actually works and that can't be used as an extortion instrument by miners like the fees

what is your suggestion? because it is to say "we need to remove this and remove that"; but if none can offer a better solution, we cannot move ahead

i think for the time being, i'll not bother with it, even in the case that you need to pay 100k satoshi per TX this is not even a problem, we are talking about few cents, camo on, with visa and mastercard fee are far beyond this

[bananas]

Fees don't work well and should be eliminated, but some other solution must take place - a solution that actually works and that can't be used as an extortion instrument by miners like the fees

what is your suggestion? because it is to say "we need to remove this and remove that"; but if none can offer a better solution, we cannot move ahead

i think for the time being, i'll not bother with it, even in the case that you need to pay 100k satoshi per TX this is not even a problem, we are talking about few cents, camo on, with visa and mastercard fee are far beyond this

First eliminate the fees.

Then there are several ways to avoid spam thru' Atificial Intelligence, Rate Limiting and more. Other systems avoid spam and DoS-like behaviour successfully without charging anything for system access. I could suggest several methods but i'm sure the bitcoin developers can come up with much better and appropriate IF they want to.

[arallmuus]

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

[bananas]

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.

[DooMAD]

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?

these attackers are clogging the system with their garbage.  It is an attack upon all of us users.  It is inconvenient and abusive. 

And they should not be allowed to get away with it.

I have little technical knowledge of the Bitcoin Ecosystem, but this problem WILL come back.  Maybe ISIS would love to take down the Infidels...

So, what can be done?  Well, I am not competent to really know.  But for the purposes of this thread, why don't I suggest a remedy or two to get the conversation started:

1)  Ban / not recognize transactions under BTC0.001

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

3)  I read somewhere here at bitcointalk that skilled and determined hackers can track payments by ISP location...

For 1 and 2, your only solution is to release a client that imposes those limits and see if the users securing the network choose to run that code or not.  For 3, what's your plan when you find their origin?  A sternly worded email?