Economically Unspendable Outputs: A Problem On The Radar

[Bitobsessed]

OP, thread title is VERY misleading...go take some prozac.

[1714011319]

1714011319

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

I think that raising awareness is the best we can do.

This is not "raising awarness". This is whining like a crybaby, and spreading unnecessary panic & chaos.

[misterbigg]

Yup, that's how Bitcoin works. So what? SD paid a transaction fee to do that.

No, it's not how Bitcoin works. When you send an ordinary transaction, it's outputs only need to stay in the block chain while they are unspent. After someone spends the entire output, it can be pruned (removed from disk). Until that point it needs to stay in long term storage. Single-satoshi outputs would cost more in fees to send than the amount of the output, which is why no sane person would ever spend such an amount. For this reason they effectively can never be pruned.

[johnyj]

If the network can't handle the load from SD then we should all just pack it in and go home.  You ain't seen nothin' yet.

I'm quite sure the paypal network won't even stand a chance to handle the 1/10 load from Nasdaq exchange

I never understand why a game with lot's of bot's transaction should use the world bank's transaction network

[justusranvier]

Single-satoshi outputs would cost more in fees to send than the amount of the output, which is why no sane person would ever spend such an amount. For this reason they effectively can never be pruned.

You keep saying this no matter how many times someone points out that it isn't true.

[anarchy]

Someone please ban this mrbigg troll

[conv3rsion]

Yup, that's how Bitcoin works. So what? SD paid a transaction fee to do that.

No, it's not how Bitcoin works. When you send an ordinary transaction, it's outputs only need to stay in the block chain while they are unspent. After someone spends the entire output, it can be pruned (removed from disk). Until that point it needs to stay in long term storage. Single-satoshi outputs would cost more in fees to send than the amount of the output, which is why no sane person would ever spend such an amount. For this reason they effectively can never be pruned.

Yea, it is how Bitcoin works. That's exactly WHY it works. Bitcoin is a protocol. Pruning is a client implementation. Does this make pruning techniques less efficient, yup sure does.

[JusticeForYou]

It's not a flaw, it's competition complaining about the competition.

The best way to resolve is to increase competition.

I see SD as a anti-monopoly service. It will prevent mining consortiums from dictating their fees. They will try to do it never the less but the less greedy will gladly take less.

An extended backlog of confirms will ultimately have to lead to voluntarily reducing of difficulty through consensus. Find the 'sweet' spot.

Adapt or perish.

[Jutarul]

Yup, that's how Bitcoin works. So what? SD paid a transaction fee to do that.

...they effectively can never be pruned.

kinda reminds me of the nuclear waste debate. It's a future liability which is not captured by current transaction fees.

Would a simple change to the propagation rule fix this problem: ?

do not propagate if:
fee > unspent transaction output.

This would prevent satoshi-type unspent transaction outputs, unless they are introduced with zero fees. And those should be filtered out heavily in a transaction fee governed market. (Although such a rule would probably have collateral damage for other valid transaction models, e.g. colored coins)

[anarchy]

You are basically calling for censorship based on your personal preferences, disguising them under "common good" myth. This strategy is very dishonest and reminds me of shitload of propaganda that is poured on every single person all around the world for the last several thousand years.

If anywhere this should be solved at the protocol level, not at the social level. The bitcoin system should be completely agnostic about the intention of a transaction.  All it should be concerned about is the total cost of a transaction, both to the miners and relay nodes.

If people start using patched clients to block transactions based on perceived intentions, we are going to get into a huge mess.  

You guys have restored my faith in the forum community, very well said

I fully agree, it's also great to see smart people like you having an influence. Bitcoin is the greatest invention mankind has made, and it will eventually free us from oppression, people don't realise it yet. Bitcoin's essence should never be touched.

[kakobrekla]

All this bitching makes me wanna spam the blockchain myself, just to point out that removing SD is no solution.

[misterbigg]

kinda reminds me of the nuclear waste debate. It's a future liability which is not captured by current transaction fees.

Would a simple change to the propagation rule fix this problem: ?

do not propagate if:
fee > unspent transaction output.

Yeah good analogy. It's exactly like nuclear waste.

Your suggestion is a good one; However, it is vulnerable to miners defecting. It would be in the short-term best interests for an individual miner or pool to just comment that line out.

[Jutarul]

kinda reminds me of the nuclear waste debate. It's a future liability which is not captured by current transaction fees.

Would a simple change to the propagation rule fix this problem: ?

do not propagate if:
fee > unspent transaction output.

Yeah good analogy. It's exactly like nuclear waste.

Your suggestion is a good one; However, it is vulnerable to miners defecting. It would be in the short-term best interests for an individual miner or pool to just comment that line out.

Well at least it would be simple enough to quickly fix the code and maybe offer it as a command line option - and probably has a huge impact. Then SD needs to fix their problem...

But before implementing that, is there any conceivable reason why somebody may want to send a transaction where the fee is higher than the unspent transaction output (colored coins aside)?

[misterbigg]

Sweet! Transaction dust = Lost coins = Money supply deflation = more money for me!

Bob Loblaw is that you?

[aruca]

Wait, hold on.

You're saying one satoshi outputs are "un-spendable."

I think this is not true.

Whenever you spend coins, the inputs are not required to come from a single source.

Let's say I have an address where my balance is 0.01 BTC.

However, for whatever reason, every single transaction that was sent to that address was a single satoshi.

Would that bit cent be un-spendable?

I don't think so.

The transaction would just have one million inputs.

This transaction would definitely be *huge* in size in bytes compared to a normal transaction, but it should still be valid.

It might take a really long time to get a confirmation as well, since I think it'd get a really low priority due to its low amount sent and high size in bytes.

[jubalix]

If a small website that 99.9999999% of the world population don't even know about is causing a problem for Bitcoin, then what hope do we have. You don't fix a problem in a p2p payment network by politely (or impolitely in this case) asking them to please stop. That's, of course, assuming that this even IS a problem. I agree with Mike. They're the only site that's really testing the real world (as in wide adoption) stability of the network.

If SDice is considered an attack on Bitcoin, Then Bitcoin itself is flawed.

EDIT: I will add, I cannot for the life of me understand why people are willing to play a negative EV game, with a currency that was worth $13 2 months ago and $42 today... It defies all logic. 

This beats the Shi% out om too....? I mean maybe lotto with a devaluating currency just for fun....the only explanation can be

[1] evolutionary logic short circuit of gamble pleasure outweighs rational odds, and this is osrta what the human race had to do to get a head be able to understand they would most likely die but do the experiment anyway, until one you could find a way to make it work, or a least shut out all possibility, a curious mixture or being able to reason something out then ingnore that reason....this sort thing may drive a AI attempt crazy

[2] they though BT was going down, or will go down

[phelix]

new title:

Re: Newly Discovered Flaw, Could KILL Bitcoin!

come on this is pure FUD

Did you sell your coins and would like the price to drop now?

[misterbigg]

You're saying one satoshi outputs are "un-spendable."

They are not technically unspendable but economically unspendable, because they cost more in fees than the amount that is being sent. No rational actor would bother to transmit a 1-satoshi amount. Except for SatoshiDICE of course, since it is using the blockchain as a cheap "messaging service."

[evoorhees]

...How about just not sending dust to notify losing bets?

That would reduce the SD transactions by about 25%. Will that satisfy you and solve the "problem"? Or will this discussion flare up again when SD grows by a subsequent 33% a month later?

Again it's not the volume of transactions that is the sole problem, it's the unprunable and unspendable outputs that are sent for losing bets. They will be carried around in every copy of the block, in perpetuity, and can never be realistically spent (since it would cost more in fees than the actual amount).

How do you not see that this is a problem with the Bitcoin protocol and not SatoshiDice?? You are focusing on a symptom instead of the disease. The analogy of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic is relevant.

The devs need to fix the protocol issue, if there is one. I'm happy to donate funds from SD to assist the devs in this endeavor if that would be helpful.

[misterbigg]

How do you not see that this is a problem with the Bitcoin protocol and not SatoshiDice?...The devs need to fix the protocol issue

Yes, I agree that this is currently a vulnerability of Bitcoin and it most definitely needs to be resolved. A simple solution is not so apparent. You're quite well versed with Bitcoin intricacies, can you propose a solution? But in the meanwhile, wouldn't it be helpful for SatoshiDICE to cut down on the spam while we get this thing fixed?

Just because Bitcoin has a weakness doesn't make it right to exploit it for personal gain.

There's an ocean of difference between doing what's right for you, versus doing what's right.