WARNING! Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

[marcus_of_augustus]

So as I understand it the default behaviour becomes that the satoshi client will not by default relay any TX with an output less than 5340 sts, i.e. treat them as non-standard TX.

If there is an existing wallet full of unspent TXout <5340 sts will they now become essentially unspendable ... or can they be collected with other larger TX inputs and sent to TXout >5340?

Are we sure there are not dozens of users in very poor locales existing on dollars per day bit-dust farming for a living that this will impact?

I'm all for reducing blockchain bloat and this looks like a good approach but needs to be a way to collect dust back into marketable sized unspent-TXout ... just want to check that it exists using this approach?

tl;dr Dust creators should be penalised and dust reducers should be incentivised.

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[jgarzik]

At worst, it should be a compile-time flag.

It is an option in the configuration file.

Part of the impetus of the change is to make it configurable, rather than compiled in.  In other words, it is getting easier to change these guidelines.

[jgarzik]

You can all thank Erik "Tony Hayward" Voorhees for polluting the blockchain so badly that this has come to pass.

Let's not take this down a hyperbolic road.  There are enough flames and threads on this issue as it is...

SatoshiDICE sending "dust" for losing bets is not The Reason For This Change.

People started dumping wikileaks cables, GPG encrypted data, python scripts and other data into the blockchain recently.

[solex]

If you have ever sent a transaction without a fee attached, you are spamming the blockchain more than SD.

What is everyone's take on this? (will edit in my take on it)

Below a certain economic value, it becomes trivial to use ultra-low-value transactions as data transmission.

This. Just because a fee is paid does not mean it covers the economic cost to the network per transaction.

[freedomno1]

Keep small transactions it will be harder to put it back than to keep it if were thinking really long term
Unless its easy to put it back and someone can correct me on that  

[Inaba]

I think we are, unfortunately, headed for a day where only supernodes host the entire blockchain and regular users host a small portion at best or none at all. 

Kind of against the idea of bitcoin in and of itself, IMHO, but I'm not sure what other options there are.

Say 4 years from now, it would be impractical for all but the beefiest computers to store the blockchain.  It certainly wouldn't be going on a phone or tablet and a laptop might be questionable as well.

[jgarzik]

And of course it is worth re-quoting,

This pull request is the first step towards a market between miners (who want higher fees) and merchants/users (who want lower fees, but also want their transactions confirmed). Miners can already control what fees they accept, this pull lets users control (very clumsily, improvements on the road map) the fee they are willing to pay.

Please re-read this before complaining

[edmundedgar]

Fortunately, some of the more obnoxious abuse these days looks categorically different from ordinary transactions: They create tons of 1e-8 value outputs (not 0 value, because the node software already blocks zero value outputs) which encode data.

Just a thought (not intended in opposition to this change, which is a band-aid that's obviously better than the status quo):

Maybe it would be better off just to allow people to pay a fee and create transactions with zero-value outputs. People seem to want to use the network to send messages, and like email spam this is an economic problem that can't be entirely solved by technical means, because the difference between a message and a payment is the user's intent, which can't be detected by software.

Am I right in thinking that unlike a 1-satoshi output, a zero-value output doesn't have to be forever stored by miners? If so, isn't that better than the status quo before this patch, which is producing gazillions of 1-satoshi outputs that have to be stored forever, and the probable status quo a little bit after this patch, where people carry on sending their messages by creating whatever other output they can get away with?

[ElectricMucus]

This has the potential to be the last nail in the coffin.

[gollum]

One solution to the growing blockchain & small transaction spamming:
Build a bitcoin protocol where you have one global fork with a threshold to stop small transaction spamming, and many smaller forks with no threshold.
The smaller forks can be regional, for example one fork for each geographic region (based on internet connections).
All miners support the main fork plus at least one regional fork.
For example islands like Hawaii can still use the regional fork even if they are cut off from the global fork, as long as they have they have their own fork supported by local miners.

[Crystallas]

The goal for the client, should be to display the transaction rate-bids from miners at the time of the transactions. The miners should have the motive to compete for better fees to raise the odds fo solving that block. Unfortunately, the lack of transparency doesn't allow users to see what they are doing. We don't even have the slightest clue as far as what transaction fees are actually the best, because the hard-coded fees are based on the opinions of a few developers.

Let the market work.

[JamesTaylor]

So with Gavin's patch, all this stuff about "a Bitcoin is divisible to 8 decimal places" has become untrue.

´
Exactly, this is one of the things that amazed me the most and now I feel scammed. This is an epic fail and if they ever release it it's going to be a disaster for most small people (not big companies) using it which is the majority.

Why can these developers decide such important implementation changes? I think they should not be able to now that it's extremely popular, they could be pressed by threats, major companies... It should all be like bitcoin itself, a majority decision.

[gollum]

So with Gavin's patch, all this stuff about "a Bitcoin is divisible to 8 decimal places" has become untrue.

´
Exactly, this is one of the things that amazed me the most and now I feel scammed. This is an epic fail and if they ever release it it's going to be a disaster for most small people (not big companies) using it which is the majority.

Why can these developers decide such important implementation changes? I think they should not be able to now that it's extremely popular, they could be pressed by threats, major companies... It should all be like bitcoin itself, a majority decision.

Would it be any technical difference for the blockchain if they instead made this:
21 million coins with 8 decimals -> 21 trillion coins with 2 decimals

[Ichthyo]

The goal for the client, should be to display the transaction rate-bids from miners at the time of the transactions. The miners should have the motive to compete for better fees to raise the odds fo solving that block. Unfortunately, the lack of transparency doesn't allow users to see what they are doing. We don't even have the slightest clue as far as what transaction fees are actually the best, because the hard-coded fees are based on the opinions of a few developers.

That's exactly the goal the devs are targeting. The goal is that the client observes what miners are accepting and adjusts this threshold automatically. This heavily debated patch is just a step into that direction.

Thus, the real question is: would it be better to wait maybe 1 year for the full solution, or start blocking dust transactions as soon as possible, while continuing to work on the full-blown solution?

The upstream devs of the satoshi client seem to have opted for the latter approach (simple filter right now and build a more elaborate filter as we go). But, since Bitcoin is a protocol, and clients are Opensource, we are free to prefer another approach. All it needs is doing (not debating)

[xavier]

Yet more movement of bitcoin in the direction of Apple. ie: to the graveyard.

The bitcoin foundation has made bitcoin like a company, with Gavin Andresen CEO.

This is just the first of many stupid moves by the developers. At best, a fork will emerge. At worst, the entire project will die.

Sell whilst people are still buying.

[Ichthyo]

Why can these developers decide such important implementation changes?

Simple: because this whole forum is full of complete morons, which talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk talk...

Coding isn't hard. It doesn't require supernatural forces, it just needs some time and dedication.

[luv2drnkbr]

You idiots know it's just a default setting that can be changed, right?

You can just change this in the config, and connect to a few nodes in pools that accept non-standard tx's.

[solex]

So with Gavin's patch, all this stuff about "a Bitcoin is divisible to 8 decimal places" has become untrue.

Start thinking! This is a transaction done just now, at 23.27181128 BTC

https://blockchain.info/tx/25b03fc6f57db1c38e1d81a35191a8f08394171419b82a7f1d8b5bd4ddc2be35

Precision of 8dp is not changing.

Let the market work.

The fees market can't work until the fees per block approach the 25 BTC block reward.  Transactions have to come from real-world business flow, and there is not enough of it yet. Flow needs to increase 50-fold to create a viable fees-market. Spam transactions are effectively where the fee is less than the cost to the network of processing the transaction. These do not help create a viable fees market.

[bigbeninlondon]

Isn't this a bitcoind exclusive setup?  Isn't that all Gavin is responsible for?  Can't other clients still publish no fee tx's to the network?  Why is everyone so doom and gloom about bitcoin in general?  This is just one release of a bitcoin wallet, amirite?

[jdillon]

Just a thought (not intended in opposition to this change, which is a band-aid that's obviously better than the status quo):

Maybe it would be better off just to allow people to pay a fee and create transactions with zero-value outputs. People seem to want to use the network to send messages, and like email spam this is an economic problem that can't be entirely solved by technical means, because the difference between a message and a payment is the user's intent, which can't be detected by software.

Am I right in thinking that unlike a 1-satoshi output, a zero-value output doesn't have to be forever stored by miners? If so, isn't that better than the status quo before this patch, which is producing gazillions of 1-satoshi outputs that have to be stored forever, and the probable status quo a little bit after this patch, where people carry on sending their messages by creating whatever other output they can get away with?

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script#Provably_Unspendable.2FPrunable_Outputs

Not yet supported, but it could be in the future if the developers decide to.