Are Mining pools spamming the network with fake transactions?

[Quantus]

 
Are Mining pools spamming the network with fake transactions to prop up transaction fees and push a false narrative about full blocks to support BU and usurp the power to adjust block size?
Or am I just crazy?  Its my personal belief that 80 to 90% of all transactions are fake.

[rizzlarolla]

Are Mining pools spamming the network with fake transactions to prop up transaction fees and push a false narrative about full blocks to support BU and usurp the power to adjust block size?
Or am I just crazy?  Its my personal belief that 80 to 90% of all transactions are fake.

Bitfury are including thousands of fake tx's into their blocks using this address. Bitfury support segwit.
https://blockchain.info/address/3QQB6AWxaga6wTs6Xwq8FYppgrGinGu15f

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added

600+ tx included in block 458160 mined by bitfury today.
550+ tx included in block 458138 mined by bitfury today.

Bitfury been doing this for couple months now.

[shield132]

Are Mining pools spamming the network with fake transactions to prop up transaction fees and push a false narrative about full blocks to support BU and usurp the power to adjust block size?
Or am I just crazy?  Its my personal belief that 80 to 90% of all transactions are fake.

Yes, every fake transaction that is unnecesary, is spamming bitcoin network and that causes slow confirmation time and high fees.  Well, bitcoin has many users and if we just think that 90% of transactions are fake, that means only 10% is real user, which is very, very low and spammy result, maybe your thought is out of reality.

[-ck]

Are Mining pools spamming the network with fake transactions to prop up transaction fees and push a false narrative about full blocks to support BU and usurp the power to adjust block size?
Or am I just crazy?  Its my personal belief that 80 to 90% of all transactions are fake.

Bitfury are including thousands of fake tx's into their blocks using this address. Bitfury support segwit.
https://blockchain.info/address/3QQB6AWxaga6wTs6Xwq8FYppgrGinGu15f

Wait a minute... it's the propagation of unconfirmed transactions that leads to mempool blowout, transaction fees growing, and network backlog. Bitfury is mining the transactions into blocks and removing them from the network backlog. How does that implicate bitfury?

[AngryDwarf]

Wait a minute... it's the propagation of unconfirmed transactions that leads to mempool blowout, transaction fees growing, and network backlog. Bitfury is mining the transactions into blocks and removing them from the network backlog. How does that implicate bitfury?

Take a look at the receive time, and the time they are included in a block. It makes you wonder what the reason is.

[rizzlarolla]

Are Mining pools spamming the network with fake transactions to prop up transaction fees and push a false narrative about full blocks to support BU and usurp the power to adjust block size?
Or am I just crazy?  Its my personal belief that 80 to 90% of all transactions are fake.

Bitfury are including thousands of fake tx's into their blocks using this address. Bitfury support segwit.
https://blockchain.info/address/3QQB6AWxaga6wTs6Xwq8FYppgrGinGu15f

Wait a minute... it's the propagation of unconfirmed transactions that leads to mempool blowout, transaction fees growing, and network backlog. Bitfury is mining the transactions into blocks and removing them from the network backlog. How does that implicate bitfury?

But.... if bitfury fill their blocks with these fake, low fee tx's, other's in the mempool can't get included.
Your the miner. What is the point of these thousands of tx's from this address?

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added
over 70,000 tx's from this address now. All (except about 500 of the first higher fee txs) are included in bitfury blocks.

[AngryDwarf]

But.... if bitfury fill their blocks with these fake, low fee tx's, other's in the mempool can't get included.
Your the miner. What is the point of these thousands of tx's from this address?

Maybe they are testing their own LN effects. What gets me is that these transactions are created at the exact same time of the block that they are included in. That is not normal network propagation.

[rizzlarolla]

But.... if bitfury fill their blocks with these fake, low fee tx's, other's in the mempool can't get included.
Your the miner. What is the point of these thousands of tx's from this address?

Maybe they are testing their own LN effects. What gets me is that these transactions are created at the exact same time of the block that they are included in. That is not normal network propagation.

That get's me too.
Are they broadcast at the same time as the block?
Do they even hit the mempool?

Some bitfury blocks are 1/3 full of this address's tx's paying 0.0001btc fee each to send zero bitcoins.

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added
over 2950 tx's included in bitfury blocks last 24 hour, all sending zero bitcoin. That is more than a full block. (1.147550 mb)
https://blockchain.info/address/3QQB6AWxaga6wTs6Xwq8FYppgrGinGu15f?offset=2950&filter=6

[numismatist]

That get's me too.
Are they broadcast at the same time as the block?
Do they even hit the mempool?

Some bitfury blocks are 1/3 full of this address's tx's paying 0.0001btc fee each to send zero bitcoins.

I have been waiting for a precise definition of "all transactions are fake" what does that mean?!
Zero bitcoins transferred, that does indeed sound invalid. Any blockchain explorer link (TXID or similar) for the naked eye to see?
It's hard to believe without cryptographically sound evidence. If this proves true, the network should develop a way to route around malicious pool activities.

[AngryDwarf]

Maybe they are testing their own LN effects. What gets me is that these transactions are created at the exact same time of the block that they are included in. That is not normal network propagation.

That get's me too.
Are they broadcast at the same time as the block?
Do they even hit the mempool?

Some bitfury blocks are 1/3 full of this address's tx's paying 0.0001btc fee each to send zero bitcoins.

They would be losing out on higher network fees by including these transactions. It appears that they are creating them themselves and stuffing them straight into their own blocks. So possibly one way of creating their own reliable off-chain service?

Example transaction: https://blockchain.info/tx/b6d186f14ac6e33267d352f4762a42a73f7d88513dfddfa1e87d918c580b68f0

[rizzlarolla]

That get's me too.
Are they broadcast at the same time as the block?
Do they even hit the mempool?

Some bitfury blocks are 1/3 full of this address's tx's paying 0.0001btc fee each to send zero bitcoins.

I have been waiting for a precise definition of "all transactions are fake" what does that mean?!
Zero bitcoins transferred, that does indeed sound invalid. Any blockchain explorer link (TXID or similar) for the naked eye to see?
It's hard to believe without cryptographically sound evidence. If this proves true, the network should develop a way to route around malicious pool activities.

See link to address in my post above.
That page is start of today. Scroll/click back/forward from there.
(it includes fees paid/btc sent)

Do you need more?

[calkob]

Have you any proof of this what so ever ? or are you just giving your opinion, and buy the way there is no such thing as a fake transactions,  all transaction that pay a fee are legitimate transactions.  you may just not agree with the transaction.

[rizzlarolla]

Have you any proof of this what so ever ? or are you just giving your opinion, and buy the way there is no such thing as a fake transactions,  all transaction that pay a fee are legitimate transactions.  you may just not agree with the transaction.

Err, the blockchain is proof? see my links. You think i just made this up?

These tx's pay a low fee, sending no other bitcoin anywhere, and are included only in bitfury blocks by their hundreds.
It's not my fault!

Core support here usually say 0.0001 fee is spam,.
Now you say any low fee is legit, and is not fake even though it sends no other bitcoin, and it is right for bitfury to include these in their blocks hundreds at a time, above many other higher fee paying, bitcoin sending tx's.

Weird.

[rizzlarolla]

Maybe they are testing their own LN effects. What gets me is that these transactions are created at the exact same time of the block that they are included in. That is not normal network propagation.

That get's me too.
Are they broadcast at the same time as the block?
Do they even hit the mempool?

Some bitfury blocks are 1/3 full of this address's tx's paying 0.0001btc fee each to send zero bitcoins.

They would be losing out on higher network fees by including these transactions. It appears that they are creating them themselves and stuffing them straight into their own blocks. So possibly one way of creating their own reliable off-chain service?

Example transaction: https://blockchain.info/tx/b6d186f14ac6e33267d352f4762a42a73f7d88513dfddfa1e87d918c580b68f0

That is how it look's.
But these tx's contain nothing but a (low) fee, how is that any service?

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added
Last 10 blocks mined by bitfury contain 1.147550mb of tx's from 3QQ address. That is 11.4% of their blockspace. (last 24 hour)
bitfury have 10% of Bitcoin's total hashpower.
11.4% blockspace of 10% Bitcoin's total hashpower = 1.14% of Bitcoins total hashpower mining fake tx's from 1 address.
1 address sending zero bitcoin is using 1% of Bitcoin's total resource's

At that rate Bitcoin could only serve 100 addresses!

[AngryDwarf]

Perhaps it is what is encoded in the output script. It must have some purpose.

https://blockchain.info/tx/b6d186f14ac6e33267d352f4762a42a73f7d88513dfddfa1e87d918c580b68f0?show_adv=true

Beyond my knowledge to be honest. But why would they create these transactions, collecting their own fee, and risking block orphanage creating a large block? If they where spamming the network, they would send out low fee transactions to bloat others mempools. They are only reducing there own fee collection by not including higher paying fees. Or they could mine emptier blocks just to push them out of the door and collect the block reward with reducing risk of orphanage.

So my guess is, that this is some system which is storing immutable data onto the blockchain.

[Quantus]

Its my personal belief that the BU faction is enabled and encouraged by the Chines mining pools who are in turn might be controlled by Chines government oligarchs.  

After a theoretical continuous hard fork between Bitcoin Core and BTU the mining pools who initiated the fork would be in full control of the BTU chain. They would have a majority of the hash power. Its my belief that if they fail to win a majority of the Bitcoin communities support and the price of BTU coins starts to fall dramatically below the price of Bitcoin they will halt all transactions on the BTU chain other then their own coins so they can flash sell for a huge profit before pointing their miners back to the Bitcoin Core chain. They will have lost their bid for complete control over Bitcoin but they will have made a huge profit. It is known that Chines mining pools are sitting on hundreds of thousands of bitcoins. Or maybe we are under attack by the Chines government and this is just how they chose to wage war, by destroying our creditability reliability, public image. I don't know but something is going on.

[rizzlarolla]

^^^What has that to do with Mining pools spamming the network with fake transactions?^^^
Just some religious proofless rant after only bitfury (segwit/core supporter) has so far been named here for sending "dodgy" tx's, not unlimited.

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Perhaps it is what is encoded in the output script. It must have some purpose.

https://blockchain.info/tx/b6d186f14ac6e33267d352f4762a42a73f7d88513dfddfa1e87d918c580b68f0?show_adv=true

Beyond my knowledge to be honest. But why would they create these transactions, collecting their own fee, and risking block orphanage creating a large block? If they where spamming the network, they would send out low fee transactions to bloat others mempools. They are only reducing there own fee collection by not including higher paying fees. Or they could mine emptier blocks just to push them out of the door and collect the block reward with reducing risk of orphanage.

So my guess is, that this is some system which is storing immutable data onto the blockchain.

I think that unlikely, though i don't know for sure either.

Could be as simple as their software is rubbish at filling blocks. To avoid embarrassment they fill up the block with their own spam.
Maybe they have a motive involving the segwit/blocksize debate.

Bitfury could tell us. Someone should ask why 1% of the total Bitcoin network is dedicated to 1 address seemingly sending nothing but low fees.
(there was a short discussion here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1799541.msg18068053#msg18068053 but nothing came of it)

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vvv no worries Quanta. (hope we can show all miners who do this, core or unlimited supporters)
Next bitfury block found, 600+ 3QQ tx's included, (23% of blockspace) no bitcoin moved (except low fees) https://blockchain.info/block-index/1470916

[gentlemand]

Pools? Dunno.

Someone? I believe so.

Look at how empty it all became once Bitcoin Unlimited started looking scary and confident.

[Quantus]

I'll be the first to admit I have no proof, I have been awake for like 3 days.. So I apologize for my shit posting rants and conspiracy theories. But when I look at records of the mempool it looks like someone is flipping a switch on and off. One day we'll have 100k transactions waiting for confirmation the very next day will have less then 1k. Someone is spamming the network and the Chines mining pools make for a great candidate. They are incentivised to spam the network to prop up transaction fees. They are even incentivised to back a crazy faction like BU and intentionally cause a contentious Hard-fork for no other reason then to sell off a new asset (the tens of thousands of BTU coins) and then go back to mining bitcoins and avoid all blame by pushing the blame on BU.  The Bitcoin Unlimited idiots probably don't even realize their just patsies.

[Herbert2020]

Are Mining pools spamming the network with fake transactions to prop up transaction fees and push a false narrative about full blocks to support BU and usurp the power to adjust block size?
Or am I just crazy?  Its my personal belief that 80 to 90% of all transactions are fake.

things that we know:
* there is a spam attack, and no it is not 80-90%. even before the spam attack also when it stops there are still lots of transactions (1000-3000 per 10 minutes)
* this spam attack has increased the fees and as a result the revenue of miners (i've said this before and nobody paid much attention https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1811430.0) that is why i say even if it is miners who are spamming they are not doing it to force "adjustment of block size".
* and it has started again. it was only a short couple of days they stopped

... cause a contentious Hard-fork for no other reason then to sell off a new asset (the tens of thousands of BTU coins) and then go back to mining bitcoins and avoid all blame by pushing the blame on BU. ...

i disagree with this too.
the risk is so much higher. there are some things that you can not come back from.

[amacar2]

Look at how empty it all became once Bitcoin Unlimited started looking scary and confident.

This is true, i am 100% sure that all those network congestion were created by either mining pools or individuals that are supporting BTU, we may again see same level of spam on network from them after few days again.  

[Tesorex]

You should mark and ban any miner intentionally mining spam transactions and is not helping the network.

[Amph]

i don't think so, unless you think that bitcoin can not genuinely grow its user base and have more transaction per second, let's face it bitcoin will eventually have million of transaction per sec if we want it to be adopted

also only antpool was with bitcoin unlimited, why you are including all other pools? i'm not aware of other pool that were supporting bitcoin unlimited, and even antpool was only directing 75% of his hash

also the number of TX on blockchaininfo, was at 2k per block since many months, and i don't remember any strong BU argument back then

[ImHash]

If user base continue to grow we'll face an unfair increase of fees over time, however I think increasing the block size without maintaining the responsibility of securing the network is harmful, bigger the block size=harder to securing the blocks=more computing power needed.
SW thought about that already and implemented the required measures.

We all should find the honest pools and broadcast our transactions through their connected honest nodes.
More than 2700 transactions and all sending the same amount to the same address and one unparsed output.
Maybe they are mixing coins?

[Dimelord]

Are Mining pools spamming the network with fake transactions to prop up transaction fees and push a false narrative about full blocks to support BU and usurp the power to adjust block size?
Or am I just crazy?  Its my personal belief that 80 to 90% of all transactions are fake.

Yes,some one is deliberately sending 750BTC back and forth for every 5 seconds.It adds more traffic to the bitcoin transactions.This transaction comes with a high transaction fees forcing others also to pay such fees for speeding up their transactions.Such an attack during the tension between core and BU is to be noticed.Miners may get higher fees.But its not good for bitcoin progress.People may start to chose other altcoins which has low transaction fees and fast transactions.

[SONG GEET]

You should mark and ban any miner intentionally mining spam transactions and is not helping the network.

There is no way to prove this and actually there is no way to banned any miner from mining bitcoin. Bitcoin transactions are completely anonymous so even if those mining pool are just mining their own transactions than nobody gonna know about it.

[Catmony]

Are Mining pools spamming the network with fake transactions to prop up transaction fees and push a false narrative about full blocks to support BU and usurp the power to adjust block size?

Don't know about other mining pools or mining farms, but viabtc is actually prioritizing transactions that are included in their database through their tx accelerator service in an attempt to support BU. Don't know we can consider this as spamming network with tx they like while neglecting other tx but they are doing it from several weeks.

[Technicality]

Are Mining pools spamming the network with fake transactions to prop up transaction fees and push a false narrative about full blocks to support BU and usurp the power to adjust block size?

Don't know about other mining pools or mining farms, but viabtc is actually prioritizing transactions that are included in their database through their tx accelerator service in an attempt to support BU. Don't know we can consider this as spamming network with tx they like while neglecting other tx but they are doing it from several weeks.

Their transaction accelerator service is a good thing for people who make mistakes or feel that their fees are too high to deal with for small transactions, and I don't think that that's a problem even if it is with their clear allegiance.  I also wouldn't call it spamming the network with transactions because the transactions are nearly all legitimate and done through other people.

[mr.mister]

Mining pools are what screwed up btc to begin with. They should not be permitted, regardless of their benefits. Miners should be on their own, without any pools, then we would not have this looming threat of a fork that is coming. Satoshi did not have mining pools in mind when he designed it. Mining pools also threaten decentralization.

[HanSchultz]

It is true that we are seeing more fake transactions in the past few months and the network difficulty started with these sort of transactions that clogged the network and the people behind these attacks were planning to implement their will,be it BU or Segwit and so is the reason to create frustration and panic among common users.

[sickpig]

i don't think so, unless you think that bitcoin can not genuinely grow its user base and have more transaction per second, let's face it bitcoin will eventually have million of transaction per sec if we want it to be adopted

also only antpool was with bitcoin unlimited, why you are including all other pools? i'm not aware of other pool that were supporting bitcoin unlimited, and even antpool was only directing 75% of his hash

also the number of TX on blockchaininfo, was at 2k per block since many months, and i don't remember any strong BU argument back then

dunno if millions of txn per second is a correct figure.

about mining pools backing BU, the list is sure longer: gbminers, btc.top, viabtc, bitcoin.com, canoepool, bitclub and of course AntPool.

[-ck]

about mining pools backing BU, the list is sure longer: gbminers, btc.top, viabtc, bitcoin.com, canoepool, bitclub and of course AntPool.

Just to elaborate further, antpool is dedicating 75% of its hashrate to BU, and bitclub being in that list is an error; I know doin.dance is listing them but it's wrong. They're definitely advertising segwit only.

[Tigggger]

Mining pools are what screwed up btc to begin with. They should not be permitted, regardless of their benefits. Miners should be on their own, without any pools, then we would not have this looming threat of a fork that is coming. Satoshi did not have mining pools in mind when he designed it. Mining pools also threaten decentralization.

I'd disagree, how would forcing everyone to solo mine help decentralisation ?

The big farms would still have the same chances of finding blocks daily so it wouldn't affect them, but the small miners that are the decentralisation (what little of it there is) are hit worse, for an example someone with an S9 @ 12.5TH would on average wait over 5 years to find a block, that would surely reduce the number of users, burning all that electric everyday and with an ever increasing diff you may never hit one.

As much as most users hate centralisation, it's the hardware not the pools that is the cause. CPU -> GPU -> FPGA -> ASIC as we moved down the line the more centralisation occurred.

[-ck]

As much as most users hate centralisation, it's the hardware not the pools that is the cause. CPU -> GPU -> FPGA -> ASIC as we moved down the line the more centralisation occurred.

And that's not true either. The most centralised it ever was (after becoming more than just a fringe between a handful of people) was when the deepbit pool had about 50% of the network hashrate which was in the GPU (and a lesser extent still CPU) days. Assuming all pools are actually discrete entities at the moment and not just one bigger entity masquerading as multiple entities, it is actually more distributed now than it was in the GPU days. It is not the hardware, nor is it the mining algorithm, it's the fact that pooled mining can (and will) occur. There is talk of ways around it, but I've yet to see a concrete way to make it truly impossible to pool proof of work.

[Tigggger]

As much as most users hate centralisation, it's the hardware not the pools that is the cause. CPU -> GPU -> FPGA -> ASIC as we moved down the line the more centralisation occurred.

And that's not true either. The most centralised it ever was (after becoming more than just a fringe between a handful of people) was when the deepbit pool had about 50% of the network hashrate which was in the GPU (and a lesser extent still CPU) days.

But wasn't that during the changeover period, once GPU mining was established didn't it spread out again, I don't recall the deepbit pool was it just one user ?  There was a time when btcguild and ghash both got very high but in the former that was lots of users and the latter some split between their own hashrate and users

Assuming all pools are actually discrete entities at the moment and not just one bigger entity masquerading as multiple entities, it is actually more distributed now than it was in the GPU days. It is not the hardware, nor is it the mining algorithm, it's the fact that pooled mining can (and will) occur. There is talk of ways around it, but I've yet to see a concrete way to make it truly impossible to pool proof of work.

Not sure if I'm not 'getting it' or we are on about different things, but when I say centralisation I mean the number of individual users (as a percentage of hashrate).  It's decentralised by the fact that there are many more machines sure, it's also decentralised as there are more individual users than before, but the current top 10 pools which are the bulk of the hashrate are mainly private.

As the technology has moved on so has the ability for groups to control greater percentages, even with and I suppose despite of an increase in users.