CoinWallet says Bitcoin stress test in September will create 30-day backlog

[neochiny]

  i read this in ibtimes last day, i dont really understand about the backlog.will this affect our online wallets????it says,:
            "UK-based mining service CoinWallet is gearing up to conduct a stress test of the Bitcoin network in early September, which it said will likely render most standard wallet software "worthless" and create "nearly a 30-day backlog".

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[Cryddit]

  i read this in ibtimes last day, i dont really understand about the backlog.will this affect our online wallets????it says,:
            "UK-based mining service CoinWallet is gearing up to conduct a stress test of the Bitcoin network in early September, which it said will likely render most standard wallet software "worthless" and create "nearly a 30-day backlog".

Interesting.  Things are not as they seem, nor as they are claimed to be.

Hint:  They are spending far too much money on it for this to be a "stress test."  Figure out who profits.  Figure out whether the profit is enough to justify the expense.  Then you will understand what is really happening.  "Mining service" my ass.

As to the claim that it will render most standard wallet software worthless?  I know for sure that it won't bother wallets that run on full nodes.  So-called SPV clients?  I dunno, there's a bunch of them and I haven't reviewed all that code.  Web wallets?  There's no way of knowing at all; most don't even make it clear what code they're even running. 

The effect on transactions will be to extort slightly higher fees out of the users.  Pay a tiny increment in fees over what the backlog bids for block space, and your transactions will go through rapidly and get immediately into a block as usual.

[RustyNomad]

Last time round when they did this I was not affected as I just used higher transactions fees. All transactions still went into the next 1 or 2 blocks so no delays were experienced.

I think the important thing to remember when this 'test' is happening is to check your transactions fees. Most wallets now, like Electrum, has a suggested fee which should be fine to still get your transaction through quickly enough. Problem comes when you enter very low fees. Your transaction is then bound to get stuck together with the 'spam' they plan to release.

[neochiny]

  i read this in ibtimes last day, i dont really understand about the backlog.will this affect our online wallets????it says,:
            "UK-based mining service CoinWallet is gearing up to conduct a stress test of the Bitcoin network in early September, which it said will likely render most standard wallet software "worthless" and create "nearly a 30-day backlog".

Interesting.  Things are not as they seem, nor as they are claimed to be.

Hint:  They are spending far too much money on it for this to be a "stress test."  Figure out who profits.  Figure out whether the profit is enough to justify the expense.  Then you will understand what is really happening.  "Mining service" my ass.

As to the claim that it will render most standard wallet software worthless?  I know for sure that it won't bother wallets that run on full nodes.  So-called SPV clients?  I dunno, there's a bunch of them and I haven't reviewed all that code.  Web wallets?  There's no way of knowing at all; most don't even make it clear what code they're even running. 

The effect on transactions will be to extort slightly higher fees out of the users.  Pay a tiny increment in fees over what the backlog bids for block space, and your transactions will go through rapidly and get immediately into a block as usual.

oh you mention about higher fees. i remember this also they said in one of the paragraph..

""Of course, this won't cripple Bitcoin entirely. Those who are smart enough to increase their fees will still manage to push transactions through. However, it will make it prohibitively expensive, and will likely render most standard wallet software, ranging from Multibit, to Mycellium, Blockchain.info and others completely worthless"

[Cryddit]

Blockchain.io is a web wallet, and besides was already known to be completely worthless.  

The other two they mention are among the SPV clients I mentioned; I don't know whether they're robust to a backlog volume or not, but they will certainly require more bandwidth to be convinced they're "synchronized" with the network under high-backlog conditions.

[Kprawn]

This is not a test, it's called sabotage. They want to push people to pay higher transaction fee's and that has no benefit for the Bitcoin users.

The last "test" cost +/- $5000 per day, so they should in theory make more than that to break even.

The problem with these "attacks" is that other people would piggyback onto this and then achieve a much better result with their hostile attack, than what they would have achieved, when they did it alone. It would

become much cheaper to bring down the network.

[ABitNut]

This is an inherit part of the transaction economy. The amount of transactions in a specific time is limited. The miners will determine what transactions to include and they can do so arbitrarily. Obviously most will pick those transactions that bring them the highest revenue (highest transaction fees / size of the transaction).

If a single party wishes to "purchase" all available space they could do so by offering high fees on low size transactions. It will cost a bit but if they can make a profit out if it then why shouldn't they just do it?

[Kazimir]

Hearsay. Whatever. Don't care about this FUD. For most transactions it doesn't matter, and otherwise I will add 0.0002 BTC instead of 0.0001 BTC when I really need something to confirm fast.

[Gimpeline]

What on earth is the point of the stress tests? Sending more transactions than normally will be created the next few months is no test, its just spam

[neochiny]

so in general,you guys telling that it will really not affect us if we just pay higher price than before?  because something like this test happen also before and nothing was affected?

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Great news (not). This is just what we need after a 50 USD crash during the last month or so. Do they really need to start another stress test? Sometimes I feel like headbutting a wall reading some of the stuff supposed advocates of bitcoin propose. In all seriousness these stress tests are not needed now. I thought everything that needed to be learnt has already been documented after the last time?

[Yeah?]

  i read this in ibtimes last day, i dont really understand about the backlog.will this affect our online wallets????it says,:
            "UK-based mining service CoinWallet is gearing up to conduct a stress test of the Bitcoin network in early September, which it said will likely render most standard wallet software "worthless" and create "nearly a 30-day backlog".

Interesting.  Things are not as they seem, nor as they are claimed to be.

Hint:  They are spending far too much money on it for this to be a "stress test."  Figure out who profits.  Figure out whether the profit is enough to justify the expense.  Then you will understand what is really happening.  "Mining service" my ass.

How much are they spending? and wont they just be sending money from their own wallets to another wallet? So probably not costing them that much in fees if they're paying them at all that is. I don't buy the bullshit about them rendering wallets useless. All that'll happen at most is a backlog and probably not as long as they're claiming. Probably just fud.

[kelsey]

  i read this in ibtimes last day, i dont really understand about the backlog.will this affect our online wallets????it says,:
            "UK-based mining service CoinWallet is gearing up to conduct a stress test of the Bitcoin network in early September, which it said will likely render most standard wallet software "worthless" and create "nearly a 30-day backlog".

Interesting.  Things are not as they seem, nor as they are claimed to be.

Hint:  They are spending far too much money on it for this to be a "stress test."  Figure out who profits.  Figure out whether the profit is enough to justify the expense.  Then you will understand what is really happening.  "Mining service" my ass.

How much are they spending? and wont they just be sending money from their own wallets to another wallet? So probably not costing them that much in fees if they're paying them at all that is. I don't buy the bullshit about them rendering wallets useless. All that'll happen at most is a backlog and probably not as long as they're claiming. Probably just fud.

i think they are spending about 40k USD in fees all up to spam the network.

[ebliever]

It's not a "test" at this point, but rather an operation with a purpose. I suppose it is geared to  highlight the capacity bottleneck currently facing bitcoin and raise awareness of the need for a solution.

But I would have assumed that at this point the average bitcoin user is fairly aware of the whole block size debate. Perhaps not though, especially among certain sectors of users and the business community.

[gentlemand]

We already know what the issues are. I don't see the point of them wasting money and making lives more difficult than they need to be. Perhaps we should club together and stress test their wonderful service that'll save us all until it becomes unusable.

[BillyBobZorton]

We still have no idea who is being the coinwallet.eu website or enterprise, no real names or anything to be found, this leads me to believe that given the timing of the XT fork, it's an obvious plan to scare people away into pushing the agenda of moving to the XT fork. This is a genius plan to take over Bitcoin in my book.

[ljudotina]

We still have no idea who is being the coinwallet.eu website or enterprise, no real names or anything to be found, this leads me to believe that given the timing of the XT fork, it's an obvious plan to scare people away into pushing the agenda of moving to the XT fork. This is a genius plan to take over Bitcoin in my book.

This.

They are doing this just to show everyone: "This would not be possible if we had XT upgrade". What will everyone do? Well they will switch.
Instead of consensus they are forcing ppl to accept changes.

This is like mafia "protection". First you slap poor bastard hard and than you offer him "protection" from slapping.

"Who" is behind this "stress test"? Same ppl that have something to gain if everyone switched to XT.

[zeroday]

CoinWallet.eu is shady anonymous individual appeared recently just to advertise himself and XT fork.
Just ignore this crap. Slightly raising mining fees during attack will make his efforts useless.

[Dissonance]

who cares.  If bitcoin can't stand a stress test then it will never make it as a global payments protocol.

[valiz]

If we encounter problems with the size of the mempools for our nodes during the attack, then we can look in the release notes:

At the time of this release, the P2P network is being flooded with low-fee
transactions. This causes a ballooning of the mempool size.

If this growth of the mempool causes problematic memory use on your node, it is
possible to change a few configuration options to work around this. The growth
of the mempool can be monitored with the RPC command `getmempoolinfo`.

One is to increase the minimum transaction relay fee `minrelaytxfee`, which
defaults to 0.00001. This will cause transactions with fewer BTC/kB fee to be
rejected, and thus fewer transactions entering the mempool.

So we need to see whatever meager fee the attacker is paying, and set this minrelaytxfee slightly above and thus we make the attack ineffective.

[CohibAA]

So we need to see whatever meager fee the attacker is paying, and set this minrelaytxfee slightly above and thus we make the attack ineffective.

If I remember correctly, at some point during the last "test" they began to increase the fees on the dust transactions to ensure they would continue to propagate.

[ChetnotAtkins]

Yes I think I remember they even used standard fees, at least for some tx

[neochiny]

So we need to see whatever meager fee the attacker is paying, and set this minrelaytxfee slightly above and thus we make the attack ineffective.

If I remember correctly, at some point during the last "test" they began to increase the fees on the dust transactions to ensure they would continue to propagate.

so that means that we dont have to worry anything if we just pay that... thats the conclusion of all of this?

[Cryddit]

This "stress test" is, IMO, probably being done by a coalition of mining pools.  It exists for the plain and simple purpose of increasing mining profits by forcing users to pay higher fees.

Assuming they are X% of the hashing power, they are getting X% of the fees they put into it back when they get blocks.  So the expense is less than it appears to be.  They make a profit to cover the (100 - X)% because they ALSO get X% of the increased fees that users are putting in to cut ahead of their spam flood.

If we assume that legitimate users will pay increased fees for half the block space, and that the coalition represents more than 38% of the mining power, then spamming the network to keep blocks half full of spam (leaving the other half available for increased fee prices) is more profitable to them than not doing so.  

In practice it's even more profitable than that (or becomes profitable even for a coalition smaller than 38%) because (a) users outbidding them for block space are setting their fees to a nontrivial amount *above* the fee level of the spam rather than just equal to it, and (b) lots of users leave their fee settings higher even when the spammers spend a few weeks not supporting the increased cost of the "stress test".

I'm betting the people doing it DON'T want a switch to Bitcoin-XT; with the larger block size of Bitcoin-XT, legitimate traffic willing to pay the premium to cut ahead of the spam would be less than 1/2 the maximum block size and it wouldn't be profitable any more.

[ChetnotAtkins]

You are wrong. Unsurprisingly the Coinwallet spam is conducted by XT shills:

“We feel that our tests might prove to be the catalyst that propels the core devs and miners to implement the required hard fork that is desperately needed,” CoinWallet mentioned.

Link: http://www.newsbtc.com/2015/08/19/coinwallet-september-bitcoin-stress-test-could-create-backlog/


Just one of the ugly strategies involved in this coordinated attack against Bitcoin. I don't care about Blockstream either but we have to stop XT

[Cryddit]

You are wrong. Unsurprisingly the Coinwallet spam is conducted by XT shills:

“We feel that our tests might prove to be the catalyst that propels the core devs and miners to implement the required hard fork that is desperately needed,” CoinWallet mentioned.

And you expect that they're being honest about why they're doing it.  I think that makes you what the cons used to call an "all-day sucker."

[Carlton Banks]

This "stress test" is, IMO, probably being done by a coalition of mining pools.  It exists for the plain and simple purpose of increasing mining profits by forcing users to pay higher fees.

I'm betting the people doing it DON'T want a switch to Bitcoin-XT; with the larger block size of Bitcoin-XT, legitimate traffic willing to pay the premium to cut ahead of the spam would be less than 1/2 the maximum block size and it wouldn't be profitable any more.

Why would it be any more plausible that pro-Core miners are planning this than that pro-XT miners are? Both stand to gain equally from doing so, and both also stand to gain from firstly conducting the attack, then secondly blaming the other party to discredit them.

[MoorChael]

Bitcoin is quite popular and it may not change a lot for that.

[Cryddit]

Why would it be any more plausible that pro-Core miners are planning this than that pro-XT miners are? Both stand to gain equally from doing so, and both also stand to gain from firstly conducting the attack, then secondly blaming the other party to discredit them.

Ding!  It's all about the profit motive.  Regardless of whether the miners claim tobe Pro-XT or Pro-Core, some coalition of them is making money by doing these "stress tests" that won't work under XT. 

[Carlton Banks]

Why would it be any more plausible that pro-Core miners are planning this than that pro-XT miners are? Both stand to gain equally from doing so, and both also stand to gain from firstly conducting the attack, then secondly blaming the other party to discredit them.

Ding!  It's all about the profit motive.  Regardless of whether the miners claim tobe Pro-XT or Pro-Core, some coalition of them is making money by doing these "stress tests" that won't work under XT.  

No, that's incorrect.

XT miners have the same opportunities to collect fees as 1 MB miners, given a transaction rate that fills an equivalent proportion of a given block size. Is that not what this debate is about, increasing the carrying capacity?

You cannot make both arguments simultaneously; that tx rates will remain at present day levels post-fork and the miners will lose profitability, and yet also that transaction rates are set to soar which you suggest is not motivating miners at all? Are you making an honest argument Ray Dillinger, or did you just overlook that particular glaring contradiction?

[hdbuck]

This is not a test, it's called sabotage. They want to push people to pay higher transaction fee's and that has no benefit for the Bitcoin users.

The last "test" cost +/- $5000 per day, so they should in theory make more than that to break even.

The problem with these "attacks" is that other people would piggyback onto this and then achieve a much better result with their hostile attack, than what they would have achieved, when they did it alone. It would

become much cheaper to bring down the network.

it is to push to block increase agenda.

[Mickeyb]

who cares.  If bitcoin can't stand a stress test then it will never make it as a global payments protocol.

Well that's why we need bigger blocks. I bet that stress tests that were going on lately have been and the future ones as well are here only to show us that the bigger blocks are the necessity.

The thing is also that we can't prevent these stress tests. People can be doing them as much as they want, all they need is some cash. And whole Bitcoin ecosystem is suffering during these stress tests.

[Carlton Banks]

The thing is also that we can't prevent these stress tests. People can be doing them as much as they want, all they need is some cash. And whole Bitcoin ecosystem is suffering during these stress tests.

Wrong. Core team have been working on a solution/mitigator to these attacks for several weeks already. It will make it into version 0.11.1 or 0.12, depending on how Wladimir decides to do it.  

[Mickeyb]

The thing is also that we can't prevent these stress tests. People can be doing them as much as they want, all they need is some cash. And whole Bitcoin ecosystem is suffering during these stress tests.

Wrong. Core team have been working on a solution/mitigator to these attacks for several weeks already. It will make it into version 0.11.1 or 0.12, depending on how Wladimir decides to do it.  

Oh ok, I didn't know that! Can I get a link to learn more about it.
Thanks!

[Carlton Banks]

The thing is also that we can't prevent these stress tests. People can be doing them as much as they want, all they need is some cash. And whole Bitcoin ecosystem is suffering during these stress tests.

Wrong. Core team have been working on a solution/mitigator to these attacks for several weeks already. It will make it into version 0.11.1 or 0.12, depending on how Wladimir decides to do it.  

Oh ok, I didn't know that! Can I get a link to learn more about it.
Thanks!

It's all code and discussions about the code at this point, but here's what I saw: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/6557

Check out the pull request referenced in the first post, I think that's the original design that gained acceptance.

[valiz]

+    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-maxmempool=<n>", strprintf(_("Keep the transaction memory pool below <n> megabytes (default: %u)"), DEFAULT_MAX_MEMPOOL_SIZE));
+    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-mempoolexpiry=<n>", strprintf(_("Do not keep transactions in the mempool longer than <n> hours (default: %u)"), DEFAULT_MEMPOOL_EXPIRY));
+    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-limitancestorcount=<n>", strprintf(_("Do not accept transactions if number of in-mempool ancestors is <n> or more (default: %u)"), DEFAULT_ANCESTOR_LIMIT));
+    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-limitancestorsize=<n>", strprintf(_("Do not accept transactions whose size with all in-mempool ancestors exceeds <n> kilobytes (default: %u)"), DEFAULT_ANCESTOR_SIZE_LIMIT));
+    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-limitdescendantcount=<n>", strprintf(_("Do not accept transactions if any ancestor would have <n> or more in-mempool descendants (default: %u)"), DEFAULT_DESCENDANT_LIMIT));
+    strUsage += HelpMessageOpt("-limitdescendantsize=<n>", _("Do not accept transactions if any ancestor would have more than <n> kilobytes of in-mempool descendants (default: -maxmempool*1000/200). Increases to this value should be made by increasing the value passed to -maxmempool"));

+/** Default for -maxmempool, maximum megabytes of mempool memory usage */
+static const unsigned int DEFAULT_MAX_MEMPOOL_SIZE = 500;
+/** Default for -mempoolexpiry, expiration time for mempool transactions in hours */
+static const unsigned int DEFAULT_MEMPOOL_EXPIRY = 168;
+/** Default for -limitancestorcount, max number of in-mempool ancestors */
+static const unsigned int DEFAULT_ANCESTOR_LIMIT = 100;
+/** Default for -limitancestorsize, maximum kilobytes of tx + all in-mempool ancestors */
+static const unsigned int DEFAULT_ANCESTOR_SIZE_LIMIT = 1000;
+/** Default for -limitdescendantcount, max number of in-mempool descendants */
+static const unsigned int DEFAULT_DESCENDANT_LIMIT = 1000;

Down with stress tests spam attacks! 

[ChetnotAtkins]

You are wrong. Unsurprisingly the Coinwallet spam is conducted by XT shills:

“We feel that our tests might prove to be the catalyst that propels the core devs and miners to implement the required hard fork that is desperately needed,” CoinWallet mentioned.

And you expect that they're being honest about why they're doing it.  I think that makes you what the cons used to call an "all-day sucker."

Do you also believe Gavin and Mike are lying or are you dishonestly opportunistic with your assessment?

Surprisingly another XT shill that resorts to evasiveness when confronted with factual statements.



So why don't you tell us all here, why you are pushing vehemently for a damaging hardfork to occur? What are your motives?

Edit: found his motive for XT shilling, he is an altcoin developer. How surprising!

[galbros]

Assuming they are X% of the hashing power, they are getting X% of the fees they put into it back when they get blocks.  So the expense is less than it appears to be.  They make a profit to cover the (100 - X)% because they ALSO get X% of the increased fees that users are putting in to cut ahead of their spam flood.

I think this is a great point.  The cost to them is partially offset. 

Kind of sad that some segments of the bitcoin community would act so opportunistically against the group as a whole.  Normally, I am a fan of freedom and self interest but this seems counter productive in the long term as it reduces the attractiveness of using bitcoin and risks segmenting the community as we see with the XT-Core feud.

[Carlton Banks]

Kind of sad that some segments of the bitcoin community would act so opportunistically against the group as a whole. 

That implies you know that miners are responsible for the attack, which is not true. There exists no evidence that indicates the perpetrator of the spam attacks; none. Everything is speculation at this point.

[Cryddit]

Ding!  It's all about the profit motive.  Regardless of whether the miners claim tobe Pro-XT or Pro-Core, some coalition of them is making money by doing these "stress tests" that won't work under XT.  

No, that's incorrect.

XT miners have the same opportunities to collect fees as 1 MB miners, given a transaction rate that fills an equivalent proportion of a given block size. Is that not what this debate is about, increasing the carrying capacity?

You cannot make both arguments simultaneously; that tx rates will remain at present day levels post-fork and the miners will lose profitability, and yet also that transaction rates are set to soar which you suggest is not motivating miners at all? Are you making an honest argument Ray Dillinger, or did you just overlook that particular glaring contradiction?

The "stress test" ceases to be profitable to a mining coalition if it costs them more to drive fees up than they get in increased fees.

Increasing the block size doesn't affect the opportunity to collect fees; it does however affect the amount of tx volume a coalition would have to pay fees for before it would have the effect of driving up costs for users and fee revenue for miners.

It increases the expense of the attack.

[Cryddit]

Edit: found his motive for XT shilling, he is an altcoin developer. How surprising!

Nope.  Got altcoin code ready to go, but then had a good long look at the market and use cases, and it's a fucking cesspool out there.  There's essentially no way to launch an alt without being used for some scam by somebody.  So I didn't.

Also, I don't really give much of a crap about XT vs. not XT at this point; when I did the math behind these "stress tests" and realized that someone is making a profit and so these stress tests will never ever stop, and saw that the community is effectively paralyzed on making the decision that is necessary to stop it, I gave up on you guys and sold all my bitcoins.  Hey, I made my 1500%.  Why get greedy? 

I don't have anything against the bitcoin community.  I just have no confidence at this point that you'll do what you need to do in time.   The issue is technical. All the responses to it are social and therefore meaningless.  There is too much arguing and denial and accusations and recriminations and FUD and calling each other FUDsters and so on, and not enough decisive action.   You don't have to hate New Orleans to see that they're not doing what they need to do about flood preparation, right?  And if people in New Orleans hate you for thinking they're not doing enough about flood preparation, that has absolutely no effect on  whether it's true or not. 

So, I no longer have a horse in the race.  Nobody's paying me, I'm not holding out for a price rise or fall, I don't have an alt in the market, nothing.  Sure, I'm disappointed.  I'd like to see Bitcoin succeed.  But when the block size decision got this political, it became very likely IMO that it won't.  The politics have become more important to the community than the underlying technical facts.

I'm still following along because I'm interested in it as a technology and as an example of how community dynamics and technology interact.  But in terms of input, all I'm doing is pointing out the facts.

The mathematical fact is that as long as the maximum block size is smaller than twice the number of "real" transactions that people will pay increased fees for, it costs less for a mining coalition to drive fees up by making bogus transactions, than the coalition can reap in increased fees.  (assuming the coalition is at least 38% of the mining power)  You don't have to take my word for it;  Do the math.

[hdbuck]

fork off cryddit.

go cry over at reddit

[Cryddit]

fork off cryddit.

Already did.  It makes me sad, but yes, I'm out of the market. 

[Hopalong]

CoinWallet.eu is shady anonymous individual ...

This is the true bitcoin spirit of anonymity and hiding from everyone when you do your shady business....

[MoorChael]

Maybe just false information.

[neochiny]

wew!!! i am the one who put this topic up.. but in the end i cant follow the conversation anymore.. i cant understand more of the things your talking about guys. can someone generalize to me what is really happening concerning about this? im just new in here.. and i think more of you here understand about this.. someone help me understand it?just a little bit.

[favdesu]

  i read this in ibtimes last day, i dont really understand about the backlog.will this affect our online wallets????it says,:
            "UK-based mining service CoinWallet is gearing up to conduct a stress test of the Bitcoin network in early September, which it said will likely render most standard wallet software "worthless" and create "nearly a 30-day backlog".

just use a little higher tx fee and you're fine. also, I hope no one starts using this coinwallet service.

[BornBlazed]

I bet the BTC Price is going lower, have your money ready to buy on the dip.

[Carlton Banks]

  i read this in ibtimes last day, i dont really understand about the backlog.will this affect our online wallets????it says,:
            "UK-based mining service CoinWallet is gearing up to conduct a stress test of the Bitcoin network in early September, which it said will likely render most standard wallet software "worthless" and create "nearly a 30-day backlog".

just use a little higher tx fee and you're fine. also, I hope no one starts using this coinwallet service.

The core developers have developed a patch to mitigate these attacks automatically. It will be available in Bitcoin Core 0.11.1 or 0.12, all being well.

[frenulum]

So is this "stress testing" going ahead in the coming days?

How will it affect Bitcoin price, if it causes disruption?

How will it affect the XT fork debate, if it causes disruption?

[RealMalatesta]

I'm wondering who ibtimes was really talking to. coinwallet is a fake "company". I tried numerous times to open an account with them - no e-mail was answered, no support, nothing. There are some leads to Russia, though, but this could be a coincidence...

[CohibAA]

I'm wondering who ibtimes was really talking to. coinwallet is a fake "company". I tried numerous times to open an account with them - no e-mail was answered, no support, nothing. There are some leads to Russia, though, but this could be a coincidence...

I was able to create an account, but there is no way I'm giving them any personal information.  I can login and view the wallet and stuff, though (referral link).  Do you mean you tried to go through their verification and didn't get a response?

[PolarPoint]

It's September soon, CoinWallet.eu is gearing up for "attack". Spokesperson said they will create 75000 transactions like this:
https://blockchain.info/tx/ce9abd5e1128631893b06e5bf705832cad6c103135463bddaa572c869fd4b11c

If so, we have nothing to fear. They are nearly 3k in size paying 0.0001btc fee, effective fee is 0.000033 btc/kb. We need to pay a "standard" 0.0001btc fee and our tx will go through. What does CoinWallet want to prove? They are burning their btc for nothing.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/coinwallet-plans-bitcoin-dust-attack-september-create-30-day-transaction-backlog-1515981

"Each of these transactions is for a total amount of 0.0002 BTC (including miner fees), meaning that with my 150 btc that is currently in this state, I will be crafting 750000 transactions, or 2321 blocks, or a 16 day backlog."

[ArticMine]

...

The mathematical fact is that as long as the maximum block size is smaller than twice the number of "real" transactions that people will pay increased fees for, it costs less for a mining coalition to drive fees up by making bogus transactions, than the coalition can reap in increased fees.  (assuming the coalition is at least 38% of the mining power)  You don't have to take my word for it;  Do the math.

This is a simple but revealing analysis. In fact this attack is favored even more as the ratio of "real" transactions to the fixed block limit increases.

[RealMalatesta]

I'm wondering who ibtimes was really talking to. coinwallet is a fake "company". I tried numerous times to open an account with them - no e-mail was answered, no support, nothing. There are some leads to Russia, though, but this could be a coincidence...

I was able to create an account, but there is no way I'm giving them any personal information.  I can login and view the wallet and stuff, though (referral link).  Do you mean you tried to go through their verification and didn't get a response?

Right. I was able to open several accounts. They offer to send them money through a bank wire. When I asked for the details: No response. With another account the same result. So yes, you can open an account, from then one, nothing more happens.

[ArticMine]

We already know what the issues are. I don't see the point of them wasting money and making lives more difficult than they need to be. Perhaps we should club together and stress test their wonderful service that'll save us all until it becomes unusable.

It is not that simple. Whether this attack is profitable or not depends on the ratio of real transactions to the blocksize limit and what percentage of the hashpower the attacker controls. Cryddit is on to something here.

[Cryddit]

The mathematical fact is that as long as the maximum block size is smaller than twice the number of "real" transactions that people will pay increased fees for, it costs less for a mining coalition to drive fees up by making bogus transactions, than the coalition can reap in increased fees.  (assuming the coalition is at least 38% of the mining power)  You don't have to take my word for it;  Do the math.

This is a simple but revealing analysis. In fact this attack is favored even more as the ratio of "real" transactions to the fixed block limit increases.

It's true that the expenses for mounting such an attack are smaller (hence reward greater) as real transactions become more numerous. 

Sadly, it is also true that the mining coalition can make more money than that by driving up fee prices to the point where people only fill half a block.

[ArticMine]

...

It's true that the expenses for mounting such an attack are smaller (hence reward greater) as real transactions become more numerous.  

Sadly, it is also true that the mining coalition can make more money than that by driving up fee prices to the point where people only fill half a block.

It may actually be a lot worse, since it would be profitable for other smaller miners to join the attack creating positive feedback. One would have to run simulations to get a proper handle on this. My instinct is that this could potentially spiral out of control where "fake" transactions dominate the mined blocks and only the most price resistant "real" transactions remain.

[Liquid71]

Lets call this "stress test" what it is, an attack on Bitcoin to promote an agenda.

In my case it backfired, I was all for bigger blocks without understanding what was really going on. When the newest attack was announced by "coinwallet" I read enough to see this was about more than bigger blocks and have changed my position.

If you need to resort to fear mongering like political hacks to prove your point then you already lost the debate.

[Liquid71]

Why would it be any more plausible that pro-Core miners are planning this than that pro-XT miners are? Both stand to gain equally from doing so, and both also stand to gain from firstly conducting the attack, then secondly blaming the other party to discredit them.

Ding!  It's all about the profit motive.  Regardless of whether the miners claim tobe Pro-XT or Pro-Core, some coalition of them is making money by doing these "stress tests" that won't work under XT. 

The fees only rise temporarily so their isn't an economic incentive for miners to attack the blockchain with spam

[ArticMine]

...
The fees only rise temporarily so their isn't an economic incentive for miners to attack the blockchain with spam

Cryddit has already identified a scenario where there is an economic incentive.  I suspect that if proper simulations are run one can show this scenario is just the tip of the iceberg.

[gentlemand]

If you need to resort to fear mongering like political hacks to prove your point then you already lost the debate.

If it can be done, chances are some misanthrope is going to do it. I agree that it's shit but BTC isn't going to go anywhere if it can be torpedoed in such a piffling manner.

[Panthers52]

Does anyone know if having larger maximum block sizes would make these kinds of stress tests/attacks less effective?

[ArticMine]

Does anyone know if having larger maximum block sizes would make these kinds of stress tests/attacks less effective?

Yes because the attacks need a certain minimum percentage of the block to be filled with "real" transactions. Take Cryddit's example: In order for the attack to work the percentage of "real" transactions in the block has to be 50% or higher. Now, if one increases the size of the block by say a factor of eight while keeping the real transactions approximately constant then the economics of the attack will fall apart, since 50% has now become 6.25%.  

The way to answer this question is to run numerical simulations of this attack, for various "real" transaction block fill ratios and percentage hashrate controlled by the attacker.

[Panthers52]

Does anyone know if having larger maximum block sizes would make these kinds of stress tests/attacks less effective?

Yes because the attacks need a certain minimum percentage of the block to be filled with "real" transactions. Take Cryddit's example: In order for the attack to work the percentage of "real" transactions in the block has to be 50% or higher. Now, if one increases the size of the block by say a factor of eight while keeping the real transactions approximately constant then the economics of the attack will fall apart, since 50% has now become 6.25%.  

The way to answer this question is to run numerical simulations of this attack, for various "real" transaction block fill ratios and percentage hashrate controlled by the attacker.

Hmmm, it is almost as if it might be a good idea to raise the maximum block size.

Does anyone know why the core developers who work for blockstream are so opposed to raising the maximum block size? They don't want to profit from smaller blocks do they?

[Jeremycoin]

Is this a serious problem, 30 days is a long time tho.
But however we have to keep running

[Carlton Banks]

Does anyone know if having larger maximum block sizes would make these kinds of stress tests/attacks less effective?

Yes because the attacks need a certain minimum percentage of the block to be filled with "real" transactions. Take Cryddit's example: In order for the attack to work the percentage of "real" transactions in the block has to be 50% or higher. Now, if one increases the size of the block by say a factor of eight while keeping the real transactions approximately constant then the economics of the attack will fall apart, since 50% has now become 6.25%.  

The way to answer this question is to run numerical simulations of this attack, for various "real" transaction block fill ratios and percentage hashrate controlled by the attacker.

Hmmm, it is almost as if it might be a good idea to raise the maximum block size.

Does anyone know why the core developers who work for blockstream are so opposed to raising the maximum block size? They don't want to profit from smaller blocks do they?

They don't. Side chains require bigger blocks, hence the "chain" part. You can't store the information in thin air.

Does anyone know why people keep repeating this untrue statement?

[Xialla]

Lets call this "stress test" what it is, an attack on Bitcoin to promote an agenda.

really? I would say, it is testing beyond borders, which is somebody doing for free and without charging anybody. literally dozens times bigger tests can be done by any gov. or bitcoin competitors and without single announcement, anytime and indefinitely.

I don't want XT and I want dev. core team to react..sadly this seems like only way how to speed up decisions and change priorities.

[frenulum]

How will we know when it's happening? Will smaller transactions slow to a halt?

[ArticMine]

Does anyone know if having larger maximum block sizes would make these kinds of stress tests/attacks less effective?

Yes because the attacks need a certain minimum percentage of the block to be filled with "real" transactions. Take Cryddit's example: In order for the attack to work the percentage of "real" transactions in the block has to be 50% or higher. Now, if one increases the size of the block by say a factor of eight while keeping the real transactions approximately constant then the economics of the attack will fall apart, since 50% has now become 6.25%.  

The way to answer this question is to run numerical simulations of this attack, for various "real" transaction block fill ratios and percentage hashrate controlled by the attacker.

Hmmm, it is almost as if it might be a good idea to raise the maximum block size.

Does anyone know why the core developers who work for blockstream are so opposed to raising the maximum block size? They don't want to profit from smaller blocks do they?

They don't. Side chains require bigger blocks, hence the "chain" part. You can't store the information in thin air.

Does anyone know why people keep repeating this untrue statement?

The choice of the 20th percentile over the median in BIP 100 because of a Blockstream recommendation is a perfect example. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1164429.0 This turns what could be a workable proposal into one that is way more vulnerable to the attack mentioned above.

Edit: It also creates a situation that is much worse in that the loosing side could have well over 50% of the hashrate creating the perfect storm for a hostile fork.

[CohibAA]

How will we know when it's happening? Will smaller transactions slow to a halt?

You have to watch node stats.  During the last "test" the unconfirmed transactions count was somewhere around 30,000, iirc.  This can vary widely from one node to another, though, as node operators can decide which transactions are included in their mempool, to a degree.

[CoinBateman]

Should also expect some price volatility along with this.

[ph.amracyshop]

This is interesting but it feels like a sabotage. 

[Q7]

I don't understand what are they trying to prove by conducting the test? To convince people to accept the fact that the larger block size is indeed needed? I thought that was shown clearly the last time. Apart from that, it doesn't serve any purpose and will just end up a plain act of sabotage that brings nothing but inconveniences to everyone. 

[Envrin]

If CoinWallet goes ahead with this, then I'm starting a "boycott CoinWallet" petition.

What cunts.  We have a testnet for a reason.  If there's one thing in life you don't do, it's screw with other people's money.  They may not realize this, but there's many people's livelihoods that currently rely on the Bitcoin financial network being online, including my own.

[johnyj]

I guess no stress test will happen this time because it did not cause the panic it wanted last time, and this time every nodes is more prepared to filter out the spam transactions

[Carlton Banks]

If CoinWallet goes ahead with this, then I'm starting a "boycott CoinWallet" petition.

What cunts.  We have a testnet for a reason.  If there's one thing in life you don't do, it's screw with other people's money.  They may not realize this, but there's many people's livelihoods that currently rely on the Bitcoin financial network being online, including my own.

It's fairly certain that CoinWallet is simply a front for what this really is: an attack. If you go to CoinWallet.eu, the website looks functional, but is not in reality. A few credible bitcointalkers signed up to investigate whether they are a real service serving customers or not, and it appears not.

[biggus dickus]

If CoinWallet goes ahead with this, then I'm starting a "boycott CoinWallet" petition.

What cunts.  We have a testnet for a reason.  If there's one thing in life you don't do, it's screw with other people's money.  They may not realize this, but there's many people's livelihoods that currently rely on the Bitcoin financial network being online, including my own.

It's fairly certain that CoinWallet is simply a front for what this really is: an attack. If you go to CoinWallet.eu, the website looks functional, but is not in reality. A few credible bitcointalkers signed up to investigate whether they are a real service serving customers or not, and it appears not.

I looked at their site yesterday and there was nothing about their stress tests on it. They have a FAQ and I expected to find something about the stress testing there because its had such a big effect on the transaction speed. If they had a legit reason for their stress tests I think it would be published on their site. As it stands I consider it an attack rather than a test.

[BornBlazed]

BTC will shit the bed  , buy it  for super cheap after the weak hands sell.

[mallard]

CoinWallet are crypto terrorists.
Have they said what transaction fee they will be using for the next spam attack?

[sAt0sHiFanClub]

If CoinWallet goes ahead with this, then I'm starting a "boycott CoinWallet" petition.

What cunts.  We have a testnet for a reason.  If there's one thing in life you don't do, it's screw with other people's money.  They may not realize this, but there's many people's livelihoods that currently rely on the Bitcoin financial network being online, including my own.

It's fairly certain that CoinWallet is simply a front for what this really is: an attack. If you go to CoinWallet.eu, the website looks functional, but is not in reality. A few credible bitcointalkers signed up to investigate whether they are a real service serving customers or not, and it appears not.

credible bitcointalkers?  Oxymoron much?  Would they be the same morons advocating crypto terrorist tactics against XT? 

People in glass houses throwing stones....  Clever strategy. 

[knight22]

CoinWallet are crypto terrorists.
Have they said what transaction fee they will be using for the next spam attack?

If CoinWallet can easily spam the network that way it proves only one thing: the network in its actual form totally sucks. Thanks to the 1 mb blockade.

[favdesu]

CoinWallet are crypto terrorists.
Have they said what transaction fee they will be using for the next spam attack?

If CoinWallet can easily spam the network that way it proves only one thing: the network in its actual form totally sucks. Thanks to the 1 mb blockade.

the last spam proved that the network can easily handle spam and did absolutely not suck. so, let them do whatever. it's their money and time to waste

[knight22]

CoinWallet are crypto terrorists.
Have they said what transaction fee they will be using for the next spam attack?

If CoinWallet can easily spam the network that way it proves only one thing: the network in its actual form totally sucks. Thanks to the 1 mb blockade.

the last spam proved that the network can easily handle spam and did absolutely not suck. so, let them do whatever. it's their money and time to waste

The next spam will be more aggressive. Not sure the network will handle it as well as it did.

[Envrin]

If CoinWallet goes ahead with this, then I'm starting a "boycott CoinWallet" petition.

What cunts.  We have a testnet for a reason.  If there's one thing in life you don't do, it's screw with other people's money.  They may not realize this, but there's many people's livelihoods that currently rely on the Bitcoin financial network being online, including my own.

It's fairly certain that CoinWallet is simply a front for what this really is: an attack. If you go to CoinWallet.eu, the website looks functional, but is not in reality. A few credible bitcointalkers signed up to investigate whether they are a real service serving customers or not, and it appears not.

So you're insinuating this is Mike and Gavin trying to push XT?

[knight22]

If CoinWallet goes ahead with this, then I'm starting a "boycott CoinWallet" petition.

What cunts.  We have a testnet for a reason.  If there's one thing in life you don't do, it's screw with other people's money.  They may not realize this, but there's many people's livelihoods that currently rely on the Bitcoin financial network being online, including my own.

It's fairly certain that CoinWallet is simply a front for what this really is: an attack. If you go to CoinWallet.eu, the website looks functional, but is not in reality. A few credible bitcointalkers signed up to investigate whether they are a real service serving customers or not, and it appears not.

So you're insinuating this is Mike and Gavin trying to push XT?

Probably not. It more likely to be one or some big players that needs bitcoin to scale soon so they can scale their operations so they are performing stress tests behind a shady company to not affect their reputations.

[mallard]

If CoinWallet goes ahead with this, then I'm starting a "boycott CoinWallet" petition.

What cunts.  We have a testnet for a reason.  If there's one thing in life you don't do, it's screw with other people's money.  They may not realize this, but there's many people's livelihoods that currently rely on the Bitcoin financial network being online, including my own.

It's fairly certain that CoinWallet is simply a front for what this really is: an attack. If you go to CoinWallet.eu, the website looks functional, but is not in reality. A few credible bitcointalkers signed up to investigate whether they are a real service serving customers or not, and it appears not.

So you're insinuating this is Mike and Gavin trying to push XT?

If it is, bigger blocks doesn't really solve the problem. It would just make it cost more money to run the attack (wouldn't be a problem for big corporations or governments).

[CohibAA]

Has it begun?

[White sugar]

How will we know when it's happening? Will smaller transactions slow to a halt?

watch this forum and the transactions

when you see lots of unconfirmed transactions and people complaining that their transactions are stuck, then you'll know there is a stress test

[CohibAA]

How will we know when it's happening? Will smaller transactions slow to a halt?

watch this forum and the transactions

when you see lots of unconfirmed transactions and people complaining that their transactions are stuck, then you'll know there is a stress test

My node is currently at 40050.26 KB and 23419 pending transactions, which is very similar to where it was during the previous "test" - fwiw, it hasn't been anywhere near those numbers for at least a few weeks until today.

edit:
tradeblock has about the same amount of transactions

blockchain.info doesn't have the transactions

reddit thread

[BayAreaCoins]

CoinWallet.eu is shady anonymous individual appeared recently just to advertise himself and XT fork.
Just ignore this crap. Slightly raising mining fees during attack will make his efforts useless.

Hopefully their website gets pwned if they try pwning Bitcoin.

This is fucking redic.

Hurts no one, but the little people.

In fact reading their statement it almost sound like a publicity thing "Our users of course will be unaffected *hahaha*!"

[knight22]

CoinWallet.eu is shady anonymous individual appeared recently just to advertise himself and XT fork.
Just ignore this crap. Slightly raising mining fees during attack will make his efforts useless.

Hopefully their website gets pwned if they try pwning Bitcoin.

This is fucking redic.

Hurts no one, but the little people.

In fact reading their statement it almost sound like a publicity thing "Our users of course will be unaffected *hahaha*!"

Stop whining. If bitcoin can't handle this, it's because bitcoin sucks in its actual form. Plain and simple.

[BayAreaCoins]

CoinWallet.eu is shady anonymous individual appeared recently just to advertise himself and XT fork.
Just ignore this crap. Slightly raising mining fees during attack will make his efforts useless.

Hopefully their website gets pwned if they try pwning Bitcoin.

This is fucking redic.

Hurts no one, but the little people.

In fact reading their statement it almost sound like a publicity thing "Our users of course will be unaffected *hahaha*!"

Stop whining. If bitcoin can't handle this, it's because bitcoin sucks in its actual form. Plain and simple.

It can handle it just fine, but it hurts the little people & is fucking frustrating for people.  Plain and simple.

Waste of money and time.

Fuck that service I can't believe they are still up.

[BayAreaCoins]

CoinWallet.eu is shady anonymous individual appeared recently just to advertise himself and XT fork.
Just ignore this crap. Slightly raising mining fees during attack will make his efforts useless.

Hopefully their website gets pwned if they try pwning Bitcoin.

This is fucking redic.

Hurts no one, but the little people.

In fact reading their statement it almost sound like a publicity thing "Our users of course will be unaffected *hahaha*!"

Stop whining. If bitcoin can't handle this, it's because bitcoin sucks in its actual form. Plain and simple.

Fuckin XT shills ftl.

[ABitNut]

CoinWallet.eu is shady anonymous individual appeared recently just to advertise himself and XT fork.
Just ignore this crap. Slightly raising mining fees during attack will make his efforts useless.

Hopefully their website gets pwned if they try pwning Bitcoin.

This is fucking redic.

Hurts no one, but the little people.

In fact reading their statement it almost sound like a publicity thing "Our users of course will be unaffected *hahaha*!"

Stop whining. If bitcoin can't handle this, it's because bitcoin sucks in its actual form. Plain and simple.

Fuckin XT shills ftl.

Turn their argument around. If bitcoin can handle this it's in perfect form.

[meono]

CoinWallet.eu is shady anonymous individual appeared recently just to advertise himself and XT fork.
Just ignore this crap. Slightly raising mining fees during attack will make his efforts useless.

Hopefully their website gets pwned if they try pwning Bitcoin.

This is fucking redic.

Hurts no one, but the little people.

In fact reading their statement it almost sound like a publicity thing "Our users of course will be unaffected *hahaha*!"

Stop whining. If bitcoin can't handle this, it's because bitcoin sucks in its actual form. Plain and simple.

Fuckin XT shills ftl.

Hey dumbfuck once the blockstream is able to choke bitcoin, the little one you're so worried about will face the same problem.

[BayAreaCoins]

CoinWallet.eu is shady anonymous individual appeared recently just to advertise himself and XT fork.
Just ignore this crap. Slightly raising mining fees during attack will make his efforts useless.

Hopefully their website gets pwned if they try pwning Bitcoin.

This is fucking redic.

Hurts no one, but the little people.

In fact reading their statement it almost sound like a publicity thing "Our users of course will be unaffected *hahaha*!"

Stop whining. If bitcoin can't handle this, it's because bitcoin sucks in its actual form. Plain and simple.

Fuckin XT shills ftl.

Hey dumbfuck once the blockstream is able to choke bitcoin, the little one you're so worried about will face the same problem.

Only choke hold I see is the XT people trying to fuck shit up on purpose so their "fix" looks good.  

Not the best way to gain my support anyways.

Fuck XT & fuck https://www.coinwallet.eu/ too.  

[BayAreaCoins]

CoinWallet.eu is shady anonymous individual appeared recently just to advertise himself and XT fork.
Just ignore this crap. Slightly raising mining fees during attack will make his efforts useless.

Hopefully their website gets pwned if they try pwning Bitcoin.

This is fucking redic.

Hurts no one, but the little people.

In fact reading their statement it almost sound like a publicity thing "Our users of course will be unaffected *hahaha*!"

Stop whining. If bitcoin can't handle this, it's because bitcoin sucks in its actual form. Plain and simple.

Fuckin XT shills ftl.

Turn their argument around. If bitcoin can handle this it's in perfect form.

True 

(good mindset)

[mallard]

https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions/ looks normal, have they started?

[uxgpf]

https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions/ looks normal, have they started?

https://tradeblock.com/bitcoin/

Looks like it has started. There's also a thread about it at r/bitcoin

I'm surprised that no one at r/bitcoin has brought up that the spammer might be profiting from this. If few large mining operators work together, then these spam transactions would be cheap or ever profitable when we are closer to the blocksize limit as less transactions (and fees paid) are needed to saturate the block and people raise their fees to get their transactions through. Also if they want bigger blocks it would probably advance their cause at the same time. But maybe that's not the case yet. Last time I looked we were averaging around 0.5 MB/block

Can we even call transactions with 0.0004+ BTC fee as spam? Anyway, if you pay 0.0005 BTC fee your transaction will get through.

[edit] /r/bitcoin thread title says that spammer is paying 0.0007 BTC/tx

[knight22]

CoinWallet.eu is shady anonymous individual appeared recently just to advertise himself and XT fork.
Just ignore this crap. Slightly raising mining fees during attack will make his efforts useless.

Hopefully their website gets pwned if they try pwning Bitcoin.

This is fucking redic.

Hurts no one, but the little people.

In fact reading their statement it almost sound like a publicity thing "Our users of course will be unaffected *hahaha*!"

Stop whining. If bitcoin can't handle this, it's because bitcoin sucks in its actual form. Plain and simple.

It can handle it just fine, but it hurts the little people & is fucking frustrating for people.  Plain and simple.

Waste of money and time.

Fuck that service I can't believe they are still up.

If it hurts the little people then no, bitcoin is NOT handling it just fine. How can you dare to say so?

[Carlton Banks]

Fuck that service I can't believe they are still up.

If it hurts the little people then no, bitcoin is NOT handling it just fine. How can you dare to say so?

Casting yourself as the defender of the "little people" (as you so patronisingly put it) is outrageous. You support not 1, but 2 attempts to enact a corporate backed takeover of Bitcoin. You're a disgrace.

[knight22]

Fuck that service I can't believe they are still up.

If it hurts the little people then no, bitcoin is NOT handling it just fine. How can you dare to say so?

Casting yourself as the defender of the "little people" (as you so patronisingly put it) is outrageous. You support not 1, but 2 attempts to enact a corporate backed takeover of Bitcoin. You're a disgrace.

I support nothing, I'm just facing the cold plain reality. Stop doing this Carlton:



Since when bitcoin is technically so fragile it needs you to defend it with words on internet forums?

[ArticMine]

Something is going on https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

[CohibAA]

Something is going on https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Try a better blockchain explorer to really see what's going on.  Lot's more than blockchain.info shows.

[knight22]

Something is going on https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions

Try a better blockchain explorer to really see what's going on.  Lot's more than blockchain.info shows.

They are aiming for 10 days backlog transactions. It won't be pretty.

[HostFat]

Everything is all right!
It's from the 2013 that all is going good. 

 

[HostFat]

The best method is to make it expensive and useless.

The stress test is temporary, and there were full blocks even before it, the problem will not go away.

A good start is finding who is really blind.

[hdbuck]

Hmm, so what will this do for the standard user than cost them a bit more to send a transaction for the time being? These spam attacks are ridiculous but we need to figure out a true solution as the 1mb limit was imposed to protect against another form of spam attacks, it just seems it left it open for this kind, just making a larger block isn't a decent solution. Maybe be a limit on sends from an ip in a certain set of time?

I really feel like blindly upping the blocksize due to a spam attack would open the floodgates for cyber bullies to attack to get their way with the blockchain.

what is ironic is that the 1MB limit was implemented to prevent spam attacks whilst now they want to spam it to push the centralization/governance agenda of removing it...

tireless psyop bullshit fud, that is what it is.

BITCOIN STAY STRONG!

[HostFat]

1MB was implemented against the DoS attack of bigger blocks, not against the spam attack.

But I've already saw here that you like a lot to talk about things that you really don't understand:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1160038.0

[hdbuck]

1MB was implemented against the DoS attack of bigger blocks, not against the spam attack.

and how do you DoS attack? by spamming.

[meono]

Carton, when bitcoin become bitcoinXT how much will you sell your acct for? I want a first dip.

I mean you will be laughed at every time you say bitcoin.

I must warn you tho..  The price is getting lower everytime you post now.

Anyway PM me,

[HostFat]

and how do you DoS attack? by spamming.

It's a different problem that has different solutions.
Still the 1MB was against big blocks, too high for the network at the time, and NOT against spam attack.

Satoshi was worried that a fund or a government could make a big pool full of GPUs for a cheaper price,  and pushing bigger blocks to DoS the network.

[meono]

The best method is to make it expensive and useless.

The stress test is temporary, and there were full blocks even before it, the problem will not go away.

A good start is finding who is really blind.

Could you explain exactly what you mean? I understand we need larger blocks and I think everyone agrees but we can't let this spam attack push us into an unwanted change. I see BIP100 has the miners vote but isn't exactly ready for launch and BIP101  has too much fear surrounding it and harsh emotions that won't lead to a consensus easily but there has to be a solution out there that is easy to implement and liked by most.

So you admit that fear and emotion cause ppl to oppose bip101?

Hmm interesting.....

[HostFat]

If the blocks are bigger, a spam attacker needs to spend much more to DoS the network.

if the blocks are usually at 700 KB, and the spammer needs to spend X to make the blocks full.
With a block of 8 MB (8192) then it will need to spend like 27.3 times the amount that he is spending now to DoS the network.

[hdbuck]

If the blocks are bigger, a spam attacker needs to spend much more to DoS the network.

if the blocks are usually at 700 KB, and the spammer needs to spend X to make the blocks full.
With a block of 8 MB (8192) then it will need to spend like 27.3 times the amount that he is spending now to DoS the network.

Yet increase the block size wont solve the spam/DoS attacks problem. It's merely a question of resources.
But bloating up the blockchain will centralized the network, hence alter its security, which is what makes bitcoin valuable.


Anyway, I also heard some more efficient measures to prevent such attacks are being investigated, if not about to be implemented within some next patch, and regardless of the block size.

[hdbuck]

If the blocks are bigger, a spam attacker needs to spend much more to DoS the network.

if the blocks are usually at 700 KB, and the spammer needs to spend X to make the blocks full.
With a block of 8 MB (8192) then it will need to spend like 27.3 times the amount that he is spending now to DoS the network.

Yet increase the block size wont solve the spam/DoS attacks problem. It's merely a question of resources.
But bloating up the blockchain will centralized the network, hence alter its security, which is what makes bitcoin valuable.


Anyway, I also heard some more efficient measures to prevent such attacks are being investigated, if not about to be implemented within some next patch, and regardless of the block size.

You aren't suggesting a permanent 1mb blocksize now are you? That would be more foolish than anything, it is hard to know what you are implying by "bloating up the blockchain"

I am suggesting to let the fee market develop especially considering the upcoming halving.
I am suggesting to further investigate, test and rinse/repeat any scaling option.
I am suggesting to deal with problems as they come, not extrapolate fake data and unicorn rainbows.
I am suggesting to take into consideration the fragile economic equilibrium that lies within each code detail.
I am suggesting to focus on keeping bitcoin decentralized and secured instead of handling it to big corps and governments.
I am suggesting that anyone here that righfully care about his bitcoin being worth something on the long haul not to blindly follow some egomaniac, easily corruptible dev/mining farm/company.

I am suggesting bitcoin is financial freedom, the ultimate safe haven from the banksters, the best investment of the millenium.
I am suggesting we are the one that make the rules, we are the consensus, we are governance, we dgaf about the propaganda of somehow saving the world with free-insta-SPV-spaming whilst frappuccino-tipping-the-little-africans.

I am suggesting people to get their shit straight and tell anyone that wants to highjack or does not abide to our holy ledger to gtfo.

[ArticMine]

..
I am suggesting to let the fee market develop especially considering the upcoming halving.
..

For a proper fee market to develop one needs an adaptive blocksize limit with a cost associated with increasing the blocksize not a low fixed blocksize limit that remains fixed no matter what the demand and increase in fees. The latter is what makes the current attack feasible, and economically profitable to the attacker, as was explained earlier in this thread.

[tmltd]

At the moment https://blockchain.info is down for maintenance and according to https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC:
Unconfirmed Transactions = 12,486
Optimal Fee / Kb to get into next block = 0.00003992 BTC
Low Priority Fee / Kb to get into a block within 2 blocks = 0.00000653 BTC
data values are updated in real time at https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC

EDIT: If you have urgent transactions that cannot wait, set the transaction fees according to https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC "Optimal Fee / Kb" to get it confirmed quicker, during the stress test period. The data are updated in real time.
Coinwallet.eu that conducts the stress test has some BTC to lose and miners will get more profit from the tx fees..

[mallard]

If CoinWallet goes ahead with this, then I'm starting a "boycott CoinWallet" petition.

Implying that
 - CoinWallet is a legitimate service
 - People use it

[mallard]

Should also expect some price volatility along with this.

It will be a good time to buy some more 

[CohibAA]

Are the addresses being used in these transactions related to the previous test addresses?  

There a lot of these pending in the mempool and recently confirmed, consuming 70k+ B each.

 

edit: I just saw this post.  Hmmm...

[knight22]

..
I am suggesting to let the fee market develop especially considering the upcoming halving.
..

Miners resources are already scares. No need to add artificial scarcity on top of that to have a fee market.