Economically Unspendable Outputs: Another Solution

[misterbigg]

I just thought of this:

The protocol is changed so that when a transaction has an economically unspendable output (the output amount per byte is less than the fees per byte), the amount of the output is given to the miner who mines the block instead of the actual recipient.

Now these things are prunable, and the SatoshiDICE problem is solved permanently?

[gmaxwell]

How would that be superior to simply disallowing those transactions?   Beyond being a hardfork, what you're describing may have the unwelcome surprise of your funds being taken from you in some cases.

[misterbigg]

How would that be superior to simply disallowing those transactions?   Beyond being a hardfork, what you're describing may have the unwelcome surprise of your funds being taken from you in some cases.

This solves the problem where a miner or mining pool "defects" and includes the transactions anyway. Perhaps by having them relayed directly from the source. It is now in their bests interests not to drop them but pick them up, since they get paid.

It would be surprising if your funds were taken away but the client could show a dialog box warning the user that the output would become part of the fee.

[Sukrim]

There is no value like "fees per byte" embedded in the system, it can be chosen (and yes, this value can be 0 too!) by miners freely.

[misterbigg]

There is no value like "fees per byte" embedded in the system, it can be chosen (and yes, this value can be 0 too!) by miners freely.

There's the "fees per byte" implied by the fee attached to the transaction itself.

[gmaxwell]

This solves the problem where a miner or mining pool "defects" and includes the transactions anyway.

Ah. Now I understand! But— instead you could use a soft forking rules (not a hard fork) to prohibit those txn in the chain.  That would also avoid the potential omg-bitcoin-takes-my-money confusion.

[Sukrim]

There is no value like "fees per byte" embedded in the system, it can be chosen (and yes, this value can be 0 too!) by miners freely.

There's the "fees per byte" implied by the fee attached to the transaction itself.

If the condition "output per byte is less than fees per byte" indicates spam... try sending 100 btc then with higher fees per byte than output per byte.