Transaction Accelerator

[Yogafan00000]

https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/

I've just seen the Transaction Accelerator hosted by ViaBTC, a miner clearly in the Bitcoin Unlimited camp.  The idea is that you submit your transaction to them, and they will include your transaction in the next block they mine.  I think it's a fantastic technical idea, however it comes at a cost.

I find it quite distasteful that they are subjecting Bitcoin users to the ugly scaling debate with their political propaganda against the Core team before you are allowed to use their "service."

It's obvious the purpose of this is to lure frustrated Bitcoiners with a promise of action and then subjecting them to a purely political point of view.

ViaBTC is of the opinion that the current "Bitcoin Core + Blockstream” Bitcoin development team is not taking satisfactory steps to ensure the growth and advancement of Bitcoin in accordance with satoshi's original white paper, and is in fact actively harming the health of the Bitcoin economy by actively stifling efforts to solve some of Bitcoin’s most pressing problems.

The reason why this Transaction Accelerator exists is due to problems created by Bitcoin Core’s inability and unwillingness to deliver any sort of meaningful protocol upgrade over the last several years, against the desires of the Bitcoin community at large. Those who have attempted to deliver the necessary upgrade have been vilified and silenced by Bitcoin Core and their affiliated censored media channels. Average users who dare to disagree are banned and have their comments deleted.

Rather than viewing Bitcoin as a fast, affordable, and reliable payments network, as it has been for years, they aim to transform Bitcoin into what they call “a settlement layer”, defined by high fees, unreliable transactions, and a labyrinth of complex overlays that require third-party trust on top of the basic system.

This development team has further prevented the ability of the Bitcoin community to freely discuss this radical change of direction by tacitly, and in some cases explicitly, supporting censorship of Bitcoin’s largest discussion forums, along with the outright banning of many prominent developers, businesses, and community members who have differences of opinion with Bitcoin Core’s current roadmap. After years of stagnation, stalling, and broken promises, it has become clear that positive change will not come from Bitcoin Core, but rather from the diverse group of alternate development teams that have emerged as a result of Core’s tactics.

The following article cites many specific examples of the rampant censorship on the "r/bitcoin" sub-reddit:

A (Brief and Incomplete) History of Censorship in r/bitcoin, by John Blocke

As efforts by the community to resolve these problems have failed, it is necessary to resolve them with a different approach:

By unsubscribing to /r/bitcoin, and subscribing to sub-reddit /r/btc you take a stand against censorship.
By running an alternate implementation, such as Bitcoin Unlimited or Bitcoin Classic, you are casting a vote against the current development team.
There are currently several other cryptocurrencies which perform better than Bitcoin, have more features than Bitcoin, have a more receptive and open development team than Bitcoin, and have a better upgrade path than Bitcoin. The only remaining qualities that Bitcoin has over these other cryptocurrencies are its first-mover advantage and its pre-existing network of users and infrastructure. If these qualities are not preserved, Bitcoin will continue to lose market share to competing cryptocurrencies.

The current Bitcoin Core developers are rapidly eroding this last advantage with poor design choices, a failure to understand basic economic principles, and promoting censorship through their support of censored discussion forums and their vilification of forums committed to free speech.

We encourage all members of the Bitcoin community to make their voices heard, and to stand up for what is right.

Sincerely,

ViaBTC

[jonald_fyookball]

Politics aside, there is this tool which is more useful if you can get it to work:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1506632.0

[Carlton Banks]

It's a joke really.

All one does when using such a service is directly order space for your transaction in blocks that ViaBTC create. The rules are the rules (until a fork changes them), 1MB per block, they're not adding any extra capacity this way, it's a queue jumping service.

This is essentially an adverstising/PR campaign for ViaBTC, as this way they lose the transaction fees they would be getting if they simply accepted transactions from the Bitcoin network, instead of through their website. All ViaBTC gain from it is some of the users thinking "oh what nice people they are at ViaBTC, giving me a free transaction"

So, ViaBTC give you a free transaction, and they lose a bit of money doing it. With only a small percentage of the hashrate, it's not very quick or reliable to do this, as you have to wait for ViaBTC to solve a block for it to work.

[Kprawn]

" The reason why this Transaction Accelerator exists is due to problems created by Bitcoin Core’s inability and unwillingness to deliver any sort of

meaningful protocol upgrade over the last several years, against the desires of the Bitcoin community at large. "  ..... No, it should read, " The reason

why this Transaction Accelerator exists is because we are not supporting SegWit and LN and we profit from this decision because the network is

spammed by a unknown entity and people have to pay higher fees to get their transactions confirmed." They look like the Hero, but they contribute to

the problem. 

[pedrog]

https://www.viabtc.com/tools/txaccelerator/

I've just seen the Transaction Accelerator hosted by ViaBTC, a miner clearly in the Bitcoin Unlimited camp.  The idea is that you submit your transaction to them, and they will include your transaction in the next block they mine.  I think it's a fantastic technical idea, however it comes at a cost.

I find it quite distasteful that they are subjecting Bitcoin users to the ugly scaling debate with their political propaganda against the Core team before you are allowed to use their "service."

It's obvious the purpose of this is to lure frustrated Bitcoiners with a promise of action and then subjecting them to a purely political point of view.

Well, they're defending their business and expressing their point of view, isn't that what people do when they see their investment being threatened?

[BitcoinNewsMagazine]

A pool supporting SegWit like BTCC or Slush should offer the same service.

[piebeyb]

A pool supporting SegWit like BTCC or Slush should offer the same service.

in this case I agree to your suggestion, I think the other mining sites also need to make something like this

[eternalgloom]

Are they factually incorrect on some of the issues they mention in that post?
If not, I don't think it's unethical or distasteful to want to inform users about their position in the matter.

I'm not saying they're right or wrong here, just saying that I'm not opposed to informing users and trying to sway them one way or another.

[Idrisu]

A pool supporting SegWit like BTCC or Slush should offer the same service.

in this case I agree to your suggestion, I think the other mining sites also need to make something like this

Not only mining site, exchangers like btcc, okcoin and coinbase should introduce such services. The delay in confirming transactions this day is alarming. If exchangers has software or tools that can be used to accelerate transactions more people will like to exchange through them.

[noodle_dam]

I just used it and did not have any problems with them.
It is a service they are providing to the community at no charge.
So what is there to complain about really?

[BitcoinNewsMagazine]

FWIW if people would start using wallets like Electrum that offer replace by fee routinely there would be no need for the accelerator.

[cpfreeplz]

But this isn't at the protocol level so it's just a 3rd party that's paying the fee on your behalf then... right? Miner fees aren't that much, so I don't see much of a long term point to this service. It's fine as a gimmick to get their name out there though.

[DooMAD]

I find it quite distasteful that they are subjecting Bitcoin users to the ugly scaling debate with their political propaganda...

I suppose the question is, if that pool happened to take the complete opposite stance and warned users about outside developers being wayward heretics attempting to perform a hostile takeover of the network, would it still be equally objectionable?

Is the issue really that they subject users to propaganda, or is it more that you just don't like the views they are expressing?

A pool supporting SegWit like BTCC or Slush should offer the same service.

Case in point:  If such a pool had thought of this first, would people still be raising concerns?

Are they factually incorrect on some of the issues they mention in that post?
If not, I don't think it's unethical or distasteful to want to inform users about their position in the matter.

I'm not saying they're right or wrong here, just saying that I'm not opposed to informing users and trying to sway them one way or another.

"Factually incorrect" is probably the wrong way to look at it, not least because people will spend forever arguing about it.  Some of it is quite strongly worded, but I supposed at least they prefaced it with "ViaBTC is of the opinion that..." so they are clearly expressing an opinion rather than facts.

[Slark]

This is essentially an adverstising/PR campaign for ViaBTC, -snip-

The statement we are seeing now - before we can reach the actual site with Transaction Accelerator - was added recently.
Maybe yesterday or two days ago. bBfore that it was simple service without all this 'allegiance to Satoshi's ideal' drama we are seeing.
What ViaBTC realized is probably that theirs service became very popular among users. So ViaBTC decided to add their statement.
You may see it as advertising or PR campaign, the thing is they are right about one thing - something needs to be done.

[amacar2]

Politics aside, there is this tool which is more useful if you can get it to work:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1506632.0

Thanks for this link i have never seen this before. I have used viabtc transaction accelerator and found it is working. So i have to thank them because i have waited for that transaction to get confirmation for 30 hour+. Personally i also don't like the way they are promoting their bitcoin unlimited.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

It's a good tool if you mess up & make a transaction with a low fee but they're heavily pushing/shilling for BU so it's not really for the right reason.

[asuryan180]

I don't know,I've used this once and it actually made the transaction confirm faster so I suspect it's valid-I have recently heard about it too but I like how simple the concept and the execution is-you just put your transcation id and that's it

[numismatist]

It's a good tool if you mess up & make a transaction with a low fee but they're heavily pushing/shilling for BU so it's not really for the right reason.

And their success rate stands up against the remaining network hashrate. Initially Bitcoin has been permissionless, so any participant has not been forced to join this-camp or that-camp to be able to participate.
If I am forced to join any coalition to be able to transfer Bitcoins, I'm out of this and joining PayPal again.

[lurker10]

ViaBTC loses money every day providing this service to community. They could be mining more highly paying txs instead.

The irony is small blockers using their service and complaining about the message.

[NUFCrichard]

I like the idea a lot, but it seems like it is just showing that Bitcoin has problems that need to be fixed asap!
If I mess up a transaction in the future (as I did recently and had to ait 4 days for it to go through) then I would definitely give the accelerator a go.

I hope it won't be needed long term though!