Dynamic fee calcuations could turn bad. Watch your software.

[alani123]

As a fee market is emerging, we should do our best to make sure that nothing out of the ordinary happens. Miscalcuating fees could make fees rise unnecessarily. Not only does this have the potential to snowball in the long run, but it also forces users to instantaneously pay more than the minimum fee for a high priority transaction.

If you're transacting bitcoin regularly, you should make sure that you or your software doesn't overcalculate fees to make transactions high priority.
If you're a developer, make sure that YOUR software doesn't miscalculate fees.
If you know of any newbies, suggest to them that they should start using wallet software with proper fee calculations. Preferably with no (or limited) options for flat, user-set fees.

[danda]

What are "proper" fee calculations?

Are best practices specified somewhere?

If you're a developer, make sure that YOUR software doesn't miscalcuate fees.
If you know of any newbies, suggest to them that they should start using wallet software with proper fee calcuations.

[Kprawn]

In my opinion, we should have some sort of watch dog service that reports on these services, like we have badbitcoin sites. If these services start implementing Dynamic fee's... it should be reported

somewhere and clueless people should be able to access this information freely. You still have a choice if you use certain services, but there are services where they sneak in these fees, without

offering you the choice or making it difficult for you to spot the impact it will have on your transaction. We should police these services on our own and help newbies to avoid services where they might

be exploited without their consent. 

[ebliever]

Dynamically set fees should be easily visible to the user of a wallet, not buried and only seen after the fact. It would also be nice to have graphs or other visual data available that would let users see recent patterns in the data. That way they might see a sudden spike and be able to look into it and either wait or decide it is a fluke and set a fee manually.

For user-selectable fees, there should be hardcoded limits so they can't, say, send a transaction out with a fee of 291 BTC.

My 2 satoshis....

[UngratefulTony]

It's already turned bad. Bidding wars for the same number of seats on the train just encourages any extra demand to consider using alt-train networks, which they increasingly will. As demand can simply shift elsewhere, there is never a "crisis" just a slow bleed of utility and market share.

Almost surreal to see this happening while the block reward will be 12.5 BTC for the next 4 years.

[alani123]

What are "proper" fee calculations?

Are best practices specified somewhere?

If you're a developer, make sure that YOUR software doesn't miscalculate fees.
If you know of any newbies, suggest to them that they should start using wallet software with proper fee calculations.

The article I linked in the OP does a good job at describing good and bad practices. Consider reading it, Jameson Lopp knows what he's talking about.

[Dabs]

Personally, I just look for the current minimum relay fee and use that. I also look at the numbers for estimatefee using Bitcoin Core. Then I manually adjust. But that's just me. Usually I just stick to the minimum relay fee or a little bit higher, and it still confirms quickly enough.

If I'm just transferring across my own addresses, sometimes I don't pay a fee and just go to sleep. I wake up tomorrow and it's confirmed. I tend to pay at least the minimum relay fee now. I'm not paying a dollar though, so in terms of satoshi per kbyte or whatever, I'd never send a tx with a fee above 0.002, for example, that's just too high.

[27QVUTZj8rgZP1]

I always pay higher fees than what is actually needed.

My current fee is 0.00000056 per byte. And I could increase it more, but I see it is not needed.

In addition of calculating fee per byte, maybe I should include a percentage as well. 2% would be great, I feel like I am stealing if I send 5.99 BTC and pay only a 0.0001 fee. 

Let's stop being greedy people, move the fee slider UP!

[alani123]

I always pay higher fees than what is actually needed.

My current fee is 0.00000056 per byte. And I could increase it more, but I see it is not needed.

Let's stop being greedy people, move the fee slider UP!

Ha! Not only is this unnecessary, but if such a principle is followed by many people at a time where there's competition for space in blocks (like now), it could snowball to making transactions more expensive for everyone at no benefit for the users. It's exactly what I'm saying that should be avoided.

[27QVUTZj8rgZP1]

Ha! Not only is this unnecessary, but if such a principle is followed by many people at a time where there's competition for space in blocks (like now), it could snowball to making transactions more expensive for everyone at no benefit for the users. It's exactly what I'm saying that should be avoided.

Then I think you should favor "fixed fee" instead. That way all fees would be equal (according to size of transaction, fee/byte) and the user would have no control over it.

I like the option of "setting my own" fees, but if "fixed fee" is implemented it is acceptable.

I do not like the idea of software forcing a fee limit (even if the fees surpasses the amount being sent)... Seems too drastic and dictatorial to me.

[alani123]

Ha! Not only is this unnecessary, but if such a principle is followed by many people at a time where there's competition for space in blocks (like now), it could snowball to making transactions more expensive for everyone at no benefit for the users. It's exactly what I'm saying that should be avoided.

Then I think you should favor "fixed fee" instead. That way all fees would be equal (according to size of transaction, fee/byte) and the user would have no control over it.

I like the option of "setting my own" fees, but if "fixed fee" is implemented it is acceptable.

I do not like the idea of software forcing a fee limit (even if the fees surpasses the amount being sent)... Seems too drastic and dictatorial to me.

Network traffic can vary wildly though. Dynamic calculations aren't forcing a fee limit, they try to find the best fee way to make a transaction have high priority (i.e. have miners it confirm fast.) A fixed fee could lead you to overpaying fees or having your transaction stuck.