Do you think SatoshiDice is blockchain spam? Drop their TX's - Solution inside

[K1773R]

you could set it to

Code:

if (txout.nValue <= 1)

since SD losses are 1 satoshi.

I heard the developers mumbling that after some mining pools began dropping tx with 1-satoshi outputs, SatoshiDICE responded by including a random amount of satoshis (from 2 to 9) instead of a 1-satoshi input.

Regardless, from an economic standpoint there is no difference between a 1 or 10 satoshi output.

in this case just set it to 10.
if SD is going to include bigger outputs il happily greate a patch which remembers the biggest dust output and sets this+1 automaically (without restart) to this check.

[Mosper]

So you want to actively attack one of the only actual uses for bitcoin and certainly the only legitimate and ongoing business using bitcoin because it is working completely within the rules of bitcoin and paying the transaction fees in order to be prioritized? If bitcoin can't handle one producer of large volumes of transactions how do you think it is going to function as a currency adopted and used worldwide? If amazon started accepting bitcoins and paid the fees to prioritize its transactions would you be asking people to attack its activity as well? Is something which circulates your currency not a good thing considering that it is deflationary and prone to hoarding/stagnation? I think you guys ranting and plotting against SatoshiDice are being counter-productive to your proclaimed goal of spreading bitcoin and wanting it to be the currency of the entire world. If it can't handle this it definitely won't be able to function in that realm so if anything you should be clamoring for an alteration of the core functionality of how transactions are handled because as it stands there is no chance of being a functional currency. The more people who use it the less functional it will be making it only useful as a niche tool for moving/using funds for illegitimate things on a small scale.. It would be a good idea to make necessary alterations in advance of it really catching on or a big distributor like amazon picking it up. You only get one shot at a first impression.

It's funny that MtGox crawls to a level which would make a real broker kill himself whenever it experiences a high volume of trades as well. It looks like both the bitcoin system itself and the avenues of treating it like a real currency (or commodity) are actually harmful to the system so I would say spend your effort improving the infrastructure for trading/obtaining and the mechanism for sending/receiving instead of trying to rally against one of the few things providing a reason to use the coins at all.

[doobadoo]

I love Satoshi Spam Dicke. It made me rich, I know when to pull out from gamble.

Exactly, always pull out before you bust.  err something....

[misterbigg]

So you want to actively attack one of the only actual uses for bitcoin and certainly the only legitimate and ongoing business using bitcoin because it is working completely within the rules of bitcoin and paying the transaction fees in order to be prioritized?

Here's the part that you missed (which you can figure out by simply reading all the posts):

SatoshiDICE figured out a way to use the Bitcoin network to send transactions with a fee that is considerably less than the true cost of the transaction.

SD transactions (for losing bets) are not like normal transactions. Yeah, he figured out a way to work within the rules - unfortunately the rules are broken. This is no different than someone cheating in an online game. Sure, it might be possible to do so without detection or consequences, but is it ethical?

Does the end justify the means? Of course not.

[Mosper]

I don't think it is cheating or unethical to act within the confines of the rules that govern a piece of software. It not an exploit it is a function of the system. If you don't like it then rally to change the system. It's going to have to happen for bitcoin to have any chance of even coping with the mythical world-wide adoption should it ever happen.

[misterbigg]

I don't think it is cheating or unethical to act within the confines of the rules that govern a piece of software. It not an exploit it is a function of the system.

Bitcoin is beta, SatoshiDICE is taking advantage of bugs in the software.

If you don't like it then rally to change the system. It's going to have to happen for bitcoin to have any chance of even coping with the mythical world-wide adoption should it ever happen.

Now this I agree with. But it would be gentlemanly for Erik Vorhees to disable the generation of SatoshiDICE spam, or choose one of the alternatives I provided to notify players of losing bets. At least until the developers can patch this defect.

[davout]

Bitcoin is beta, SatoshiDICE is taking advantage of bugs in the software.

If a system is broken, fix the system, don't blame the abuser.

Now this I agree with. But it would be gentlemanly for Erik Vorhees to disable the generation of SatoshiDICE spam, or choose one of the alternatives I provided to notify players of losing bets. At least until the developers can patch this defect.

Yup, let's ask abusers to be nice to the system and stop abusing it, because you know, it's not nice.
It just doesn't work that way.

EDIT : Also this patch is pointless, you probably spent more CPU cycles browsing this thread than you'll spend verifying SD txes for a full year.

[Raoul Duke]

EDIT : Also this patch is pointless, you probably spent more CPU cycles browsing this thread than you'll spend verifying SD txes for a full year.

Can you do the math you did to reach this conclusion and show us?
Or did you just pulled it out of your ass?

Also: It's my computer, I'll spend my CPU cycles as I see fit, and verifying SD tx's before they get included in a block isn't what I want to spend my CPU cycles on, unlike browsing this forum, here I'll spend all CPU cycles it takes without even thinking about it. See the difference?
Any counter-argument?

[nyusternie]

Bitcoin is beta, SatoshiDICE is taking advantage of bugs in the software.

If a system is broken, fix the system, don't blame the abuser.

precisely.

btw, out of curiosity i played a few 50/50 games (actually made a few mBTC) and received 0.00005 when i finally lost. if my math is right, isn't that like 5000x more than the minimum? and it seems like their paying 0.001 in tx fees (which is double the min). are they adjusting their model as a result of all the fuss?

[kakobrekla]

Now this I agree with. But it would be gentlemanly for Erik Vorhees to disable the generation of SatoshiDICE spam, or choose one of the alternatives I provided to notify players of losing bets. At least until the developers can patch this defect.

I think your sub 1k transactions are spammy. Everything under 1k BTC should be blocked, lets do this! I think that is a fair limit, honestly.

Now act gentlemanly, stop wasting our time and psys cpu cycles and stfu.

[Raoul Duke]

Now this I agree with. But it would be gentlemanly for Erik Vorhees to disable the generation of SatoshiDICE spam, or choose one of the alternatives I provided to notify players of losing bets. At least until the developers can patch this defect.

I think your sub 1k transactions are spammy. Everything under 1k BTC should be blocked, lets do this! I think that is a fair limit, honestly.

Go for it! You just need to change the patch values...

[ShireSilver]

Bitcoin is NOT yet ready for primetime until we find ways to make microtransactions feasible.

Microtransactions are feasible now, you can easily send pennies. But is it really fair to say that Bitcoin isn't ready because it is problematic to send $0.00000045?

I really hate that people have so totally misused the microtransaction term. IMHO microtransactions are significantly less than a penny, i.e. something that just can't be done in the dollar based system. And yes, I do want to be able to send $0.00000045 and have it accepted by the network; because I might have some need that people just haven't thought of yet.

Back when I was a Windows C++ programmer and COM was the big new thing, there was the idea that you could write reusable objects that would be paid for by really tiny usage charges. The idea never caught on because the payment infrastructure was too costly so the minimum payments were around 50 cents or more. That's clearly unacceptable when your component is something like a smart drop-down list; but it would be possibly acceptable to charge a satoshi per use.

Think about music. I would never pay as much as one cent per play of a song, but I might be willing to pay 0.0000001btc/song. The ability to have really truly small transactions is one of the benefits that makes bitcoin worth using over the traditional payment systems.

IMHO, the bitcoin network needs to be able to handle several orders of magnitude MORE transactions than the major credit card processors. That will open up new opportunities that just weren't possible before. Satoshi Dice is just one example of using the unique characteristics of bitcoin to do something that wasn't possible before, and it won't be the last.

[misterbigg]

I really hate that people have so totally misused the microtransaction term. IMHO microtransactions are significantly less than a penny, i.e. something that just can't be done in the dollar based system. And yes, I do want to be able to send $0.00000045 and have it accepted by the network; because I might have some need that people just haven't thought of yet.

Yeah I hate it too, that people misuse the term microtransaction. It was never intended, for any payment system, to support transactions so small that the value of the transaction is less than the cost to send it and/or store it (in the case of Bitcoin).

No matter what the payment system, a microtransaction must have value greater than the cost of transmission. Transactions that cost more to send and/or store than the actual payment make no sense. Sure we should scale Bitcoin but is it necessary for growth to support transactions that are a net loss to the network?

[justusranvier]

IMHO, the bitcoin network needs to be able to handle several orders of magnitude MORE transactions than the major credit card processors. That will open up new opportunities that just weren't possible before.

I've used this analogy before, but Bitcoin is to money what the WWW is to newspapers.

We aren't yet able to imagine what it will make possible because it's something completely new.

[kakobrekla]

No matter what the payment system, a microtransaction must have value greater than the cost of transmission. Transactions that cost more to send and/or store than the actual payment make no sense. Sure we should scale Bitcoin but is it necessary for growth to support transactions that are a net loss to the network?

Blah blah, pennies cost more to make than they are worth.

As ET said, no miner has the initiative NOT to accept a fee of 1 satoshi for tx.

[solex]

Think about music. I would never pay as much as one cent per play of a song, but I might be willing to pay 0.0000001btc/song. The ability to have really truly small transactions is one of the benefits that makes bitcoin worth using over the traditional payment systems.

That's the problem, your example becomes a fallacy if it costs the Bitcoin network 0.0000047 to process your 0.0000001 payment. This might be fine if it was just you, but not 10 million people doing the same thing!

[solex]

As ET said, no miner has the initiative NOT to accept a fee of 1 satoshi for tx.

Miners are not as dumb as a herd of goats. If it costs the network 47 satoshis for 1 miner to accept a 1 satoshi fee - then they will stop accepting such low fees.
At the moment the high block reward disguises such calculations.

[ShireSilver]

Think about music. I would never pay as much as one cent per play of a song, but I might be willing to pay 0.0000001btc/song. The ability to have really truly small transactions is one of the benefits that makes bitcoin worth using over the traditional payment systems.

That's the problem, your example becomes a fallacy if it costs the Bitcoin network 0.0000047 to process your 0.0000001 payment. This might be fine if it was just you, but not 10 million people doing the same thing!

Why would it cost 0.0000047? Who says the cost has to be that high? Do you have any real numbers showing how much it actually costs to do a transaction?

And why not have 10 million people doing that? Don't you want bitcoin to grow? The idea that we should limit its growth seems absurd to me.

[Raoul Duke]

Think about music. I would never pay as much as one cent per play of a song, but I might be willing to pay 0.0000001btc/song. The ability to have really truly small transactions is one of the benefits that makes bitcoin worth using over the traditional payment systems.

That's the problem, your example becomes a fallacy if it costs the Bitcoin network 0.0000047 to process your 0.0000001 payment. This might be fine if it was just you, but not 10 million people doing the same thing!

Why would it cost 0.0000047? Who says the cost has to be that high? Do you have any real numbers showing how much it actually costs to do a transaction?

And why not have 10 million people doing that? Don't you want bitcoin to grow? The idea that we should limit its growth seems absurd to me.

The idea that we should limit ourselves to do whatever you think it's right seems absurd to me.

Is anyone forcing you to use the patch?

It's possible to do and not against the Bitcoin protocol, so deal with it. People will do it with or without your approval. Like we needed it...

[solex]

Why would it cost 0.0000047? Who says the cost has to be that high? Do you have any real numbers showing how much it actually costs to do a transaction?
And why not have 10 million people doing that? Don't you want bitcoin to grow? The idea that we should limit its growth seems absurd to me.

You always want to limit the growth of an uneconomic activity. Even a loss leading item has to be economic when considered part of total inventory.

1 satoshi is ridiculously small. It is 0.5 millionths of a US$. If you had a music service where 10 million people bought single-tracks for 1 satoshi a time then you would earn $5 per day.

This is 10 million transactions processed for $5 (ignoring costs and scope for profit).

In four years Bitcoin has just processed 14 million transactions:
https://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions-total

Could it have done that for $7 ?? Consider all the disk space across thousands of nodes, the hashing power used, electricity, IT work, bandwidth!
Then your music "service" wants Bitcoin to process 10 million more transactions, every single day, for $5, customers are always good to have, right?

Draw your own conclusions about what micro-transactions are realistic.