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

[misterbigg]

It sends out 5000 satoshi tx even for losing bet of 0.01 BTC.  That is, Satoshi Dice now absorb all tx fee, and return 0.5% of bet amount, even for minimum bet. 

Are you sure? It seems that it only returns 5,000 in all cases. Can you point me to a tx in blockchain.info that returns more than 5,000 satoshi?

Also, 5,000 satoshi is still considered dust.

[SalvorHardin]

It sends out 5000 satoshi tx even for losing bet of 0.01 BTC.  That is, Satoshi Dice now absorb all tx fee, and return 0.5% of bet amount, even for minimum bet. 

Are you sure? It seems that it only returns 5,000 in all cases. Can you point me to a tx in blockchain.info that returns more than 5,000 satoshi?

Also, 5,000 satoshi is still considered dust.

5000 satoshi tx is only for minimum 0.01 BTC bet, if you bet more, SD will return more.  It appears that SD now sends back a flat 0.5% regardless of bet size, and absorb the tx fee itself.  Previously, you need to bet at least 0.20 BTC to get back even 0.5 mbtc, and all bets under 0.10 BTC will simply be confirmed via a 1 satoshi tx.

You can observe the results on the Satoshi Dice website for the payoff of losing bets.  You will notice that the new policy started today, March 9, 2013, without any prior announcement from SD.     

[jl2012]

Should make these as configurable options, so people can filter any unwanted addresses or dust outputs easily.

[paraipan]

Should make these as configurable options, so people can filter any unwanted addresses or dust outputs easily.

+1 and add some blockchain re-org option so people can be able to defend in case of large 51% attacks (+5 blocks), not larger than last embedded checkpoint of course.

[marcus_of_augustus]

I'm pretty sure SatoshiDICE could run exactly as it is now without bloating the blockchain (and the the tens of thousands of harddrives that support bitcoin). But they choose not to run SatoshiDICE off-chain, for whatever reason.

It is a tragedy of the commons situation that SatoshiDICE has taken advantage of to 'profit' at the expense of storage space on other people's hard-drives (and now CPU cycles). Until fees become appreciable enough that the blockchain is no longer a common good but a commercial asset, anyone can CHOOSE to abuse the goodwill of others.

Would anyone tolerate a herd of grazing animals in Central Park NY?

I don't even know anyone who plays SatoshiDICE. I have a hunch it is some kind of contrived "stress-test" or bitcoin-shuffling operation where the majority of trades are actually automated. The size of the bitcoin user base is nowhere near big enough to support the volume of trades if they are being performed by individuals hitting buttons. I don't even think the $500K profit is real, it maybe just bitcoin that has been moved from one location to another, under the guise of "profit".

DYODD.

[solex]

I'm pretty sure SatoshiDICE could run exactly as it is now without bloating the blockchain (and the the tens of thousands of harddrives that support bitcoin). But they choose not to run SatoshiDICE off-chain, for whatever reason.

It is a tragedy of the commons situation that SatoshiDICE has taken advantage of to 'profit' at the expense of storage space on other people's hard-drives (and now CPU cycles). Until fees become appreciable enough that the blockchain is no longer a common good but a commercial asset, anyone can CHOOSE to abuse the goodwill of others.

Would anyone tolerate a herd of grazing animals in Central Park NY?

I don't even know anyone who plays SatoshiDICE. I have a hunch it is some kind of contrived "stress-test" or bitcoin-shuffling operation where the majority of trades are actually automated. The size of the bitcoin user base is nowhere near big enough to support the volume of trades if they are being performed by individuals hitting buttons. I don't even think the $500K profit is real, it maybe just bitcoin that has been moved from one location to another, under the guise of "profit".

DYODD.

Sanity prevails on this thread, while insanity prevails on another...

Looking for someone to write me a Satoshidice script
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=149496.0

[Raoul Duke]

Sanity prevails on this thread, while insanity prevails on another...

Looking for someone to write me a Satoshidice script
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=149496.0

Program me a bot so I can lose my bitcoins, please!

[paulie_w]

first attempt at blockchain censorship begins...

[foo]

Hm, looks like the patch blocks every address starting with "1dice". That's not good since someone could generate such an address accidentally. Make it block only the addresses listed on satoshidice.com and I'll consider applying it.

[Blowfeld]

@psy:  Thanks for spreading this patch.  I wrote in another thread of an unintended consequence of this patch, so I won't repeat.  But, for a regular node, not running a mining service, this patch is a significant improvement.  It cuts your memory usage.  It significantly cuts your outgoing bandwidth.  And it may cut your total CPU usage, slightly.

@blazr:  I, too, have turned off one full node.  This was a well-connected node at a commercial service provider.  The resources provided to my VPS are no longer sufficient to run the standard client.  I'm not willing to pay more real dollars to upgrade to the next level of service.

[Maybe I should collect donations from the SD supporters, who think I'm censoring SD.  $20 per month should be sufficient to go to the next level VPS as long as SD is only consuming 60-70% of the transactions.  Send me a PM stating what your donation is for, and when I've collected 3 months worth, I'll restart my node.]

@Debian Squeeze users:  I am running the patched client on Debian Squeeze.  The one "required" prerequisite I wasn't able to install via normal apt-get was for UPNP support.  But I don't need *or want* UPNP support.  (The USE_UPNP option removes the requirement for that one prerequisite.)  These four commands are sufficient to rebuild both the bitcoind and bitcoin-qt clients.  Run these commands from the directory that contains the "build", "doc" and "src" directories.

Code:

qmake USE_UPNP=-
make
qmake -o Makefile.test bitcoin-qt.pro USE_UPNP=-
make -f Makefile.test

(I didn't show building and running the test script.  It works fine until it gets to the UPNP tests.)

After this is decently adopted by the user community, the next step will be to preferentially connect to "SD-free" nodes (and to disconnect from nodes who are sending me the SD spam).

[crazy_rabbit]

Why couldn't SatoshiDice, with their massive profits, build their own mining cluster (invest in lots of ASICS) so that they can keep adding their transactions into the block chain themselves, and run a number of full nodes as well? It seems more reasonable to ask them to do this then drop their TX's. We should be figuring out how to prevent spam from harming the system, not kicking SatoshiDice off it.

[finway]

Shipping fee is the big problem.

[jl2012]

When more miners refuse to mine and nodes refuse to reply SD TX, SD is exposed to much higher risk of different types of double spend attacks, and eventually has to stop accepting 0-confirmation TXs. 

[paulie_w]

Why couldn't SatoshiDice, with their massive profits, build their own mining cluster (invest in lots of ASICS) so that they can keep adding their transactions into the block chain themselves, and run a number of full nodes as well? It seems more reasonable to ask them to do this then drop their TX's. We should be figuring out how to prevent spam from harming the system, not kicking SatoshiDice off it.

this is a great solution

[Raoul Duke]

When more miners refuse to mine and nodes refuse to reply SD TX, SD is exposed to much higher risk of different types of double spend attacks, and eventually has to stop accepting 0-confirmation TXs. 

They already stopped sending 1 satoshi tx's, so to the ones who say the patches don't work, there's your answer.

They will not change the way they do things if they don't feel the pressure.
I bet Erik prefers to spend his half million dollars of SD profits travelling around the world, etc. but maybe he should spend at least $10k of it to improve the way his service uses the resources that belong to all of us and not just to SD.

[oleganza]

Alternatively:

[marcus_of_augustus]

Why couldn't SatoshiDice, with their massive profits, build their own mining cluster (invest in lots of ASICS) so that they can keep adding their transactions into the block chain themselves, and run a number of full nodes as well? It seems more reasonable to ask them to do this then drop their TX's. We should be figuring out how to prevent spam from harming the system, not kicking SatoshiDice off it.

this is a great solution

No, a better solution would be if SatoshiDICE were to take all their transactions off-chain, or bundle them into a single hourly, daily transaction, etc ... just like a large, semi-trusted transactions clearer who had to pay true cost for transactions, i.e a bank or e-wallet might do.

SatoshiDICE is free-loading off our cpu cycles and hard-drive space because the network is letting it.

[smtp]

Thanks psy, already looking for an easy way to patch bitcoin-qt.

Thanks psy, already looking for an easy way to patch ***'s brain.
:->>

smtp

[Quantus]

Just because SDice makes money by spamming the network with pointless transactions dose not mean its not an attack on the network.

If the CIA found a way to attack the Bitcoin network and make money doing it It's still an attack!

   
    We can filter the millions of pointless transactions or Do nothing and let the system deal with it as it was designed to. Its not a bad thing that the hard/soft  limit has been reached. We just let the free market push SDice out of profitability with higher fees. But for this to happen we "the mining community" must stop the mining pools from rising the block header size. (this lowers fees and weakens the network opening it up to more spam.) 

It is the responsibility of the mining community to shame the large mining pools for their abhorrent actions over the past week. It is not their right to pull numbers out of there ass and set transaction fees for the whole network. It is the responsibility of every one who has a voice on this forum to voice there discontent towards any company intentionally or unintentionally harming the network. 

[paraipan]

Just because SDice makes money by spamming the network with pointless transactions dose not mean its not an attack on the network.

If the CIA found a way to attack the Bitcoin network and make money doing it It's still an attack!

   
    We can filter the millions of pointless transactions or Do nothing and let the system deal with it as it was designed to. Its not a bad thing that the hard/soft  limit has been reached. We just let the free market push SDice out of profitability with higher fees. But for this to happen we "the mining community" must stop the mining pools from rising the block header size. (this lowers fees and weakens the network opening it up to more spam.) 

It is the responsibility of the mining community to shame the large mining pools for their abhorrent actions over the past week. It is not their right to pull numbers out of there ass and set transaction fees for the whole network. It is the responsibility of every one who has a voice on this forum to voice there discontent towards any company intentionally or unintentionally harming the network. 

Have you read the news lately? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152030.0

Actually block size can't be raised at all due to software limitations, BDB libraries to be more precise.