Is 1PEDJAibfNetJzM289oXsW1qLAgjYDjLgN trolling the bitcoin ecosystem?

[AvL42]

This address has, from November 2nd 2012 till now, produced more than 12000
transactions betting on satoshidice and immediately re-betting the return.

Some of these obviously take a while to confirm (despite 0.5mBTC-fee) and
are binding other funds into never-confirming transactions and double-spends.

How could the bitcoin-ecosystem defend against such? Or is it normal business?
One thing that comes to my mind is, that returning a satoshi for lost dice-game
bets seems wrongheaded in hindsight.

https://blockchain.info/address/1PEDJAibfNetJzM289oXsW1qLAgjYDjLgN
https://blockchain.info/address/1PEDJAibfNetJzM289oXsW1qLAgjYDjLgN?offset=12000

[kangasbros]

I don't see the problem. He is not tying up anyone's else money than his/her own. That guy is the only loser, in addition to playing losing game.

But the real thing to note is that transaction costs will go up.

[AvL42]

I don't see the problem. He is not tying up anyone's else money than his/her own.

Maybe the problem is limited to the gambling corner of BTC-world, where
waiting for confirmations before re-spend is rarely seen.

If that's the case, then the owner of the address merely trolls the gambling-scene.

I'm not yet long enough in the scene to judge how that might affect the rest in
medium or longer terms.

[wikiaki]

I don't see the problem.

+1

[Foxpup]

How could the bitcoin-ecosystem defend against such? Or is it normal business?

It is normal business. That's what transaction fees are for. Miners are free to increase transaction fees if it's a problem.

One thing that comes to my mind is, that returning a satoshi for lost dice-game
bets seems wrongheaded in hindsight.

A single satoshi is completely useless as money unless you don't mind paying a five million percent transaction fee to spend it. What it is useful for is proving that a losing bet was processed correctly, otherwise there's no easy way to tell the difference between a losing bet and a failure to pay out a winning bet due to technical problems.

[AvL42]

How could the bitcoin-ecosystem defend against such? Or is it normal business?

It is normal business. That's what transaction fees are for. Miners are free to increase transaction fees if it's a problem.

Ok.  I was also thinking, that if a substantial part of his txs gets confirmed, then that one
guy alone probably added several megabytes to the blockchain within merely a month.

One thing that comes to my mind is, that returning a satoshi for lost dice-game
bets seems wrongheaded in hindsight.

A single satoshi is completely useless as money unless you don't mind paying a five million
percent transaction fee to spend it. What it is useful for is proving that a losing bet was
processed correctly, otherwise there's no easy way to tell the difference between a losing bet
and a failure to pay out a winning bet due to technical problems.

Still it feels like spamming the blockchain in the long run.  There have been discussions about
embedding messages in transactions and all responsible service-providers (fortunately) refuse
to do it, but single satoshis are still being spammed into the blockchain in large numbers
essentially for "message passing purposes".

[AvL42]

A single satoshi is completely useless as money unless you don't mind paying a five million percent transaction fee to spend it.

That isn't exactly accurate, as hardly anyone re-spends a received satoshi in a tx all
on its own. Typically, a small number of single satoshis are added to other transactions
without further raising the fee for that tx.

Some more knowledgeable people might create statistics of how many of the one-satoshi
outpus are spent versus still ignored after a certain time.  Most wallets probably don't even
offer a feature to "forget" certain outputs, so likely they'll all be used sooner or later.

[Foxpup]

Still it feels like spamming the blockchain in the long run.  There have been discussions about
embedding messages in transactions and all responsible service-providers (fortunately) refuse
to do it, but single satoshis are still being spammed into the blockchain in large numbers
essentially for "message passing purposes".

So what? Who cares what anyone does to the blockchain as long as they pay the transaction fee?

A single satoshi is completely useless as money unless you don't mind paying a five million percent transaction fee to spend it.

That isn't exactly accurate, as hardly anyone re-spends a received satoshi in a tx all
on its own. Typically, a small number of single satoshis are added to other transactions
without further raising the fee for that tx.

Some more knowledgeable people might create statistics of how many of the one-satoshi
outpus are spent versus still ignored after a certain time.  Most wallets probably don't even
offer a feature to "forget" certain outputs, so likely they'll all be used sooner or later.

A transaction with any outputs smaller than BTC0.01 requires a BTC0.0005 fee. A transaction with low-value inputs does not incur this fee, but an extremely large number of such inputs are required to create a large-value transaction, and that does incur a larger fee. Note also that when a large number of outputs are spent, they no longer need to be remembered by clients that implement pruning, so consolidating single satoshis into a large transaction actually benefits the network rather than hurting it. Sending single satoshis individually does hurt, but that's what the fees are for. There's no problem, and if it ever becomes a problem it can and will be solved by increasing the transaction fees.

[AvL42]

So what? Who cares what anyone does to the blockchain as long as they pay the transaction fee?

Unproductive growth of the blockchain appears to me like a similar type of problem
as environmental concerns in real life. As in: "Who cares, if I use ozone-slayer-sprays?
I paid for them, when I bought them."
I do not realistically expect *everyone* to give a sh*t for "environmental" matters, but
I hope that certain central role-players do, where the effect multiplies by large numbers.

A transaction with low-value inputs does not incur this fee, but an extremely large number...

That's irrelevant to the problem that the majority of single satoshis *WILL* be re-spent,
and each re-spent satoshi (just like any other value) costs about ¼ of a kilobyte in the
blockchain.

It doesn't really matter at all, that spent satoshis no longer fill up the owner's wallet.
That's like: once the garbage collectors empty my waste bin with nuclear wastes, the
disposal problem is solved.

All I'd like to see is betting addresses that just don't waste a response on loss, and I'll
just have a look at the website to know if I lost, or the bet went wrong. In exchange for
not wasting typically 0.00050001 BTC for lost bets, the betting sites could drop the edge
a bit ;-)

(Edit: ¼ rather than ½ of a kb for each re-spent output)

[cunicula]

A transaction with any outputs smaller than BTC0.01 requires a BTC0.0005 fee. A transaction with low-value inputs does not incur this fee, but an extremely large number of such inputs are required to create a large-value transaction, and that does incur a larger fee. Note also that when a large number of outputs are spent, they no longer need to be remembered by clients that implement pruning, so consolidating single satoshis into a large transaction actually benefits the network rather than hurting it. Sending single satoshis individually does hurt, but that's what the fees are for. There's no problem, and if it ever becomes a problem it can and will be solved by increasing the transaction fees.

If you expect to need to increase fees to ration space later, the efficient thing to do is begin increasing fees now.

Blockchain space is not priced efficiently at all. To get an efficient price, you need full centralization of the blockchain. Without full centralization, you need some form of central planning (e.g. coding rules capping block size). However we can see from the above example that a cap on block size is not an efficient policy. An efficient policy would be considerably more complex.

[cunicula]

So what? Who cares what anyone does to the blockchain as long as they pay the transaction fee?

Unproductive growth of the blockchain appears to me like a similar type of problem
as environmental concerns in real life. As in: "Who cares, if I use ozone-slayer-sprays?
I paid for them, when I bought them."
I do not expect *everyone* to give a sh*t for "environmental" matters, but I hope that
certain central role-players do, where the effect multiplies by large numbers.

Good thinking. We could use more people with such good intuition around here.

[AvL42]

... To get an efficient price, you need full centralization of the blockchain.

What did you smoke? :-)  I want some of that sh*t, too!

Please tell me, that its only my sarcasm detector that needs recalibration.

[cunicula]

... To get an efficient price, you need full centralization of the blockchain.

What did you smoke? :-)  I want some of that sh*t, too!

Please tell me, that its only my sarcasm detector that needs recalibration.

You said it yourself.

Unproductive growth of the blockchain appears to me like a similar type of problem
as environmental concerns in real life. ...
I do not realistically expect *everyone* to give a sh*t for "environmental" matters, but
I hope that certain central role-players do

If you want to price access to a common pool resource like blockchain storage efficiently, you need to have a single owner controlling access. If multiple owners can sell access, then they will set inefficiently low prices. The blockchain will get cluttered with crap.

Since having a central owner is off the table, you need to create rules that mimick the decisions made by a central owner. A central owner would conserve space now to save room for later. There is no attempt to do this in the blockchain, so it is filled with spam.

I understand why. It is a difficult problem. We don't know how much space will be worth later. Nevertheless, it never makes sense to allow complete spam.

[Foxpup]

Unproductive growth of the blockchain appears to me like a similar type of problem
as environmental concerns in real life. As in: "Who cares, if I use ozone-slayer-sprays?
I paid for them, when I bought them."
I do not realistically expect *everyone* to give a sh*t for "environmental" matters, but
I hope that certain central role-players do, where the effect multiplies by large numbers.

How? The blockchain isn't an ecosystem, it's essentially a special-purpose cloud-storage service. Storing information (normally financial transactions, though any kind of information can be stored in the blockchain if you want) in exchange for a fee is the whole purpose of the blockchain. That's what it's designed for and that's what it does. Storing excessive amount of data in the blockchain isn't "pollution", it's ordinary use of a service in the way it is purposefully designed to be used.

That's irrelevant to the problem that the majority of single satoshis *WILL* be re-spent,
and each re-spent satoshi (just like any other value) costs about ¼ of a kilobyte in the
blockchain.

It doesn't really matter at all, that spent satoshis no longer fill up the owner's wallet.
That's like: once the garbage collectors empty my waste bin with nuclear wastes, the
disposal problem is solved.

Nobody other than miners even needs the full blockchain, and miners charge a fee to add to the blockchain to cover their expenses. A pruned blockchain is good enough for non-miners, though of course they're free to use a full blockchain at their own expense if they want. And that expense is very minimal. Hard drives are cheap and getting cheaper all the time.

... To get an efficient price, you need full centralization of the blockchain.

What did you smoke? :-)  I want some of that sh*t, too!

Please tell me, that its only my sarcasm detector that needs recalibration.

You're using the wrong tool for the job. Sarcasm detectors don't function as expected when your interlocutor truly believes what they say. For these people, you need a BS meter. When dealing with people like cunicula, be sure to set it to high-range mode to avoid overloads.

[justusranvier]

When dealing with people like cunicula, be sure to set it to high-range mode to avoid overloads.

I used to do this, but then I discovered the forum's "ignore" feature.

[cunicula]

Do either of you dullards have any professional training in economics at all? Didn't think so. I am just explaining how collective storage works using neoclassical economic theory.


The OP had the correct intuition, which is unusual. Most people find these situations confusing, like yourself, for example.

If you think I am incorrect, then you should explain how. This allows me to pick apart your reasoning and identify your errors.

If you simply dismiss what I have to say, then you will remain ignorant.

[interlagos]

Maybe a bit off-topic, but I have always wandered what prevents satoshidice or similar service to include your bet in a losing (for you) round instead of a winning one?

As I understand it there are several dice rounds per minute and if the house waits just a bit it will have a great chance to encounter a loosing round for you within that minute. It can always claim that it didn't insert your transaction earlier because it didn't see it.

Any thoughts? Did I get the whole thing wrong?

[minorman]

When dealing with people like cunicula, be sure to set it to high-range mode to avoid overloads.

I used to do this, but then I discovered the forum's "ignore" feature.

+1 
coinicula also made me activate this highly useful feature.

[AvL42]

If you think I am incorrect, then you should explain how.

You're merely unlucky in making your point.  You're like someone going into
a cat-lovers forum and answer questions by first suggesting adopting a dog,
and only later continuing to point out some cat-inherent facts. That way you
collected ignores by people not bothering to read past the initial nonsense.

Actually, I think the fees are ok as they are, and all I'd like to see are
dice-games allowing me *not* to waste essentially *my* money on
some extra  ¼kb blockchain storage that I do not really need nor want.

They could offer alternative no-response-on-loss bet-addresses.
If the house-edge is then just a bit lower it will attract the customers
and the service-providers will still even earn more as they no longer
waste 0.5mBTC per lost bet. Customers would instead just look on the
website if they don't see a win-payout within a minute.

I had better make that point in a dice-game forum, though. (did so, in
the btc-dice forum once, but it shut down shortly afterwards - without
having implemented the suggestion, yet, btw.)

[cunicula]

If you think I am incorrect, then you should explain how.

You're merely unlucky in making your point.  You're like someone going into
a cat-lovers forum and answer questions by first suggesting adopting a dog,
and only later continuing to point out some cat-inherent facts. That way you
collected ignores by people not bothering to read past the initial nonsense.

You are right. But I have no patience with people who cannot support their views with a logical argument.
I'm certainly not willing to reduce myself to their level.