WARNING! Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

[boonies4u]

Even if I have to buy a million dollars worth of ASIC machines I will (Basically all my bitcoins).

The fact that you can purchase ASICs and use them to confirm your own and others' "dust" transactions is proof that this isn't censorship.

That makes no sense, that is like saying, a country is censoring the people inside but you can overthrow them so it isn't censorship.

Mining to confirm your own transactions is not the same as overthrowing a government. It just means that you suck at convincing other people to confirm your transactions so you are forced to confirm your own.

Determining default behavior is not censorship, you're just pissed that a lot of the miners are sticking with the default so you claim it is censorship.

What makes you think that miners should be forced to accept your transactions?

[scintill]

And 99.999% of the possibilities were years-ago classified by Satoshi as "non-standard", and not relayed or mined by default.  Only a few transaction types were whitelisted.

Thank you, at least the people still entertaining technical arguments may better understand and believe this is not the first time certain types of transactions have been black-listed.

[scintill]

I still agree that this a censorship.

Honestly I'm not even necessarily arguing against that anymore.  Someone is putting barriers to you expressing yourself in certain ways; you can call that censorship if you want.  But gweedo is trying to use precedent and Satoshi's supposed intentions to paint this as some first-time grave departure from the fundamentals of bitcoin.  I've shown there's already precedent for something similar done by Satoshi himself years ago, and it hasn't killed us yet.  If that doesn't persuade you, fine, but I hope you at least believe what you do for sound reasons.

There's also the fact, mentioned by several people several times, that nobody has to mine or relay anything.  That's the way it's always been.  Tweaking some default settings doesn't change that.  It may nudge a lot of people in a certain direction, but they have just as much of a choice as they always had.

If you want a payment system with strictly-defined parameters under which a payment must be accepted or you have some power to impose consequences, then use legal tender and courts to force your payment to be accepted.  Or maybe see if you can come up with an altcoin with similar properties.

[kjj]

There is no censorship here.  You are still free to create and broadcast any transactions you want.  This patch just makes it easier for other people to decide whether to relay your garbage or not.

[DeathAndTaxes]

There is no censorship here.  You are still free to create and broadcast any transactions you want.  This patch just makes it easier for other people to decide whether to relay your garbage or not.

Obviously not if it will never be included in a block I am not free to do anything the miners choose how I spend my money. Thanks for posting the same thing the last 21 pages are about.

Miners have ALWAYS been free not to include your tx in a block.  Miners everyday routinely don't include tx in the next block (thus the unconfirmed list).

Initially the functionality of the bitcoind were so crude miners had little control over what tx were included.  That wasn't intended it was simply the result of limited development and higher priorities.  Over time more functionality was added which allowed miners to fine tune their transaction selection.

Today miners can and do exclude transactions based on:
a) priority
b) block size
c) tx fees

and starting in 0.8.2
d) output size

0.8.2 simply gives miners the ability to better control the transactions they want to include.  If it wasn't in bitcoind miners could write custom patches to do the very single thing.  Satoshi always intended for miners to have the control over which tx to include.  Nothing has changed, the devs have given miners the tools to make more informed transaction selection. Now miners are "big boys" and if they see a lot of value in including 100 satoshi or even 1 satoshi transactions they can.  They simply need to change the configuration file.  Given miners already set a half dozen configuration values related to min fees, block size, priority, etc one more config value is hardly a burden for a miner.

If you think bitcoin is better off with 1 satoshi spam ... then convince enough nodes to mine them and you can spam away.  The reality is you KNOW miners don't want to include dust spam however prior to 0.8.2 they lacked tools good enough to make optimal tx selection.  No miners wants to bloat the chain with uneconomical spam, it makes their future jobs more difficult.  All those uneconomical outputs have a high probability of never being spent and thus they bloat the UXTO.  The UXTO governs the resources miners (and all full nodes) use to validate tx and blocks.  

It seems you are afraid of the free market.  Freedom is about choice.  You are free to create dust spam, nobody can stop you.  Miners are free to chose not to include that dust spam up till now miners lacked good tools to exclude those tx.  That isn't "freedom" it is merely a lack of choice due to insufficient development.  Starting in 0.8.2 you won't be able to stop miners from exercising their freedom to not include uneconomical transactions. 

[scintill]

Your talking about scripting, that is a different subject, it has nothing to do with dust. I have proven everyone of your argues to be wrong, what else do I need to do, have Satoshi show you it is wrong.

I love how people are arguing against me instead of going "Hey this guy has proven everyone else to be wrong with documentation." But most people are followers and don't see it that way. That is the sad part.

Scripting is about the parameters of transactions, just as dust is.  I find it very relevant.  Satoshi blocked certain transactions based on scripts, Gavin is blocking certain transactions based on values.  There is very little difference, if you're going to be hardcore about free speech and "spending your hard-earned money however you want."  If you will not grant me that, you are either dishonest or confused.  If you agreed but had further issues about why this change is worse, that would be acceptable.  It would at least make you look more informed and reasonable IMO.

Heh, documentation.  Like vague references to what "the whitepapers" say?  Then I showed that the white paper doesn't even come close to saying what you claim where you claim it did, and you gave no answer.

I am not free... the miners choose how I spend my money.

DeathAndTaxes has got this one better than I do, but don't you realize this is exactly how it has been since the start of bitcoin?  I could start solo-mining and attempt to blacklist just your transactions if I wanted.  Each node has as much right to choose what he relays and mines, as you do to create transactions and send it to them.  If you think you ought to have some enforced right to have your transactions confirmed by the network, make an altcoin that magically does that.  Bitcoin has never been that coin.

[boonies4u]

There is no censorship here.  You are still free to create and broadcast any transactions you want.  This patch just makes it easier for other people to decide whether to relay your garbage or not.

Obviously not if it will never be included in a block I am not free to do anything the miners choose how I spend my money. Thanks for posting the same thing the last 21 pages are about.

Miners have ALWAYS been free not to include your tx in a block.  Miners everyday routinely don't include tx in the next block (thus the unconfirmed list).

This.

[scintill]

I know exactly how the free market works and I know how mining works. This goes from a free market, to a dictatorship, plus they don't even have a good free market model for fees, so yeah.

So, when Satoshi made it so miners can discriminate just by nature of how a free market system works, it was a free market, but when the current developers twiddle a bit of code to update defaults and make it "easier" to discriminate (even script kiddies know how to edit configuration files!), it's now a dictatorship.  OK, LOL.  Also, good job on describing the flaws in the fees model of Bitcoin v0.1.  It's a valid concern, but this change does nothing to make it worse.  The developers intend it to be a stepping-stone to improving things, in fact.

Also if I can only mine from the bitcoind, then a default value would most likely be the form of censorship.

Oh, so you want the developers to babysit your configuration for you, but complain that what they're doing is not what you want.  Just set your own configuration to whatever you want!  Anyone who can't or won't has no business complaining about the defaults.

[kjj]

There is no censorship here.  You are still free to create and broadcast any transactions you want.  This patch just makes it easier for other people to decide whether to relay your garbage or not.

Obviously not if it will never be included in a block I am not free to do anything the miners choose how I spend my money. Thanks for posting the same thing the last 21 pages are about.

I've actually read all of the stupid posts in this stupid thread.

One last time just to be clear:  You are still free to create whatever transactions you want.  You are NOT FREE to force other people to relay or mine them.

You are not being censored.  Grow up.

[lophie]

First of all gweedo, Didn't you post that you are done with this thread and our stupidity? Do us all a favour and stick to your word please. 

- Considering bitcoin is indeed undervalued is the dust limit really the "limit"? I mean wasn't a better lower limit is 10 BTC in fees when bitcoin was launched (Considering that it was worth virtually nothing). Bitcoin is still undervalued, Isn't that supposed to be consider in the calculations of the dust amount?

- Secondly, I admit there are alot of things in Bitcoin I don't understand so I don't know if this is possible. If I have 100 address with a dust amount, Obviously having them in one address making them NOT dust amount, But the problem as I understand it is it would not be prun-able unless it was spent, So can a user create two subsequent transactions one to accumulate dust in an address and one to move it to another? Then just broadcast them both. If a node saw both transactions it would relay it. Otherwise it would not.

And yeah gweedo just reminded me of something I heard. It was something like, "Power in the hand of the people is as dangerous as power in the hand of a specific individuals or a government. You are just moving power from one hand to the other."... Epic logic  .

I also just want to put this out there. I disagree with the amount and all my nodes will relay %75 of it. It is my right to do so (in order to censor gweedo txes  )

[darkmule]

Why should your nearly worthless transaction be entitled to the same consideration in getting into a block as one that actually benefits the network in general?

Because where do you draw the line? First it's the dust transactions then they may block one dollar transactions, next thing you know no-one will accept transactions unless you pay a fortune in transactions fees...

Neither I nor anyone else draws the line.  The market draws the line.  If at some arbitrary limit, the choice of miners to transmit or not transmit certain transactions cramps the style of the people using the currency, there will either be a hard fork or (more likely) some miners will begin to accept those transactions.  After all, a hard fork that is adopted by enough people will damage the value of the blocks they generate more than they save by refusing to transmit small transactions.

This isn't a slippery slope, because there will be pushback if that number does not get consensus (in fact there already is some pushback).  The line might even be drawn before this 54 μBTC value, if enough miners reject it.

[CasinoBit]

Why should your nearly worthless transaction be entitled to the same consideration in getting into a block as one that actually benefits the network in general?

Because where do you draw the line? First it's the dust transactions then they may block one dollar transactions, next thing you know no-one will accept transactions unless you pay a fortune in transactions fees...

Neither I nor anyone else draws the line.  The market draws the line.  If at some arbitrary limit, the choice of miners to transmit or not transmit certain transactions cramps the style of the people using the currency, there will either be a hard fork or (more likely) some miners will begin to accept those transactions.  After all, a hard fork that is adopted by enough people will damage the value of the blocks they generate more than they save by refusing to transmit small transactions.

This isn't a slippery slope, because there will be pushback if that number does not get consensus (in fact there already is some pushback).  The line might even be drawn before this 54 μBTC value, if enough miners reject it.

If that was the case the default setting would be to relay 1 satoshi, e.g. everyone relays all the transactions unless they set the settings otherwise.

[ShireSilver]

The line is being drawn between 0.5 and 1.0 cents because this mirrors how the fiat world works.

This is probably what bothers me the most about this, that people are still so stuck in the old ways of doing things that they want to turn bitcoin into fiat.

[wolongong]

Don't like it one bit, this makes it next to impossible to scrape of tiny fractions of your incoming transactions for eg. a service fee.

[darkmule]

Don't like it one bit, this makes it next to impossible to scrape of tiny fractions of your incoming transactions for eg. a service fee.

There might be a way of protesting this kind of arrangement, especially if some miners/pools adopt a policy of transmitting these small transactions, which is to boycott those who don't.  I.e. if you don't take these small transactions, you don't get my larger transactions with transaction fees, and those fees go to those who will.

This might not be very helpful if the majority of people doing those tiny transactions don't do enough "real" traffic to care about, but then the question becomes whether those people are worth caring about in the first place.  The fact is that the network load created by a given transaction has little to nothing to do with the "value" of the transaction, and is solely tied to the number of bytes it eats in a block.  That asset is limited, and for the sake of efficiency, should be allocated to favor those transactions with more value.

In actuality, though, these dust transactions, of minimal to nonexistent value to the network, consume far more of this limited resource than some feel due.  Why should a 10 BTC transaction wait in line behind 100 SatoshiDice transactions?

[Scrat Acorns]

Miners have ALWAYS been free not to include your tx in a block.  Miners everyday routinely don't include tx in the next block (thus the unconfirmed list).

Initially the functionality of the bitcoind were so crude miners had little control over what tx were included.  That wasn't intended it was simply the result of limited development and higher priorities.  Over time more functionality was added which allowed miners to fine tune their transaction selection.

Today miners can and do exclude transactions based on:
a) priority
b) block size
c) tx fees

and starting in 0.8.2
d) output size

0.8.2 simply gives miners the ability to better control the transactions they want to include.  If it wasn't in bitcoind miners could write custom patches to do the very single thing.  Satoshi always intended for miners to have the control over which tx to include.  Nothing has changed, the devs have given miners the tools to make more informed transaction selection. Now miners are "big boys" and if they see a lot of value in including 100 satoshi or even 1 satoshi transactions they can.  They simply need to change the configuration file.  Given miners already set a half dozen configuration values related to min fees, block size, priority, etc one more config value is hardly a burden for a miner.

If you think bitcoin is better off with 1 satoshi spam ... then convince enough nodes to mine them and you can spam away.  The reality is you KNOW miners don't want to include dust spam however prior to 0.8.2 they lacked tools good enough to make optimal tx selection.  No miners wants to bloat the chain with uneconomical spam, it makes their future jobs more difficult.  All those uneconomical outputs have a high probability of never being spent and thus they bloat the UXTO.  The UXTO governs the resources miners (and all full nodes) use to validate tx and blocks.  

It seems you are afraid of the free market.  Freedom is about choice.  You are free to create dust spam, nobody can stop you.  Miners are free to chose not to include that dust spam up till now miners lacked good tools to exclude those tx.  That isn't "freedom" it is merely a lack of choice due to insufficient development.  Starting in 0.8.2 you won't be able to stop miners from exercising their freedom to not include uneconomical transactions. 

Quoted, as it is the post with the highest SNR in this thread.

UXTO bloat can potentially be a big problem in the future if it is not addressed.

The sky is not falling people.

[wolongong]

If I take a .1, 54 μBTC or a .00000001 fee out of a 10 BTC incoming it takes up the same amount of space, but whatever. Good luck explaining random transmission fees to bean counter types.


+                    // Never create dust outputs; if we would, just
+                    // add the dust to the fee.
+                    if (newTxOut.IsDust())
+                    {
+                        nFeeRet += nChange;
+                        reservekey.ReturnKey();
+                    }

Somehow this just keeps reminding me of http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/salami.asp and the story of why coins got ridges.

[DeathAndTaxes]

The line is being drawn between 0.5 and 1.0 cents because this mirrors how the fiat world works.

This is probably what bothers me the most about this, that people are still so stuck in the old ways of doing things that they want to turn bitcoin into fiat.

There is a cost to everything.  Let me know when you issue 1 mg silver cards (~2.3 US Cents).  Next I will ask why not 1 ng cards (0.0023 US Cents).

[DeathAndTaxes]

If I take a .1, 54 μBTC or a .00000001 fee out of a 10 BTC incoming it takes up the same amount of space, but whatever. Good luck explaining random transmission fees to bean counter types.


+                    // Never create dust outputs; if we would, just
+                    // add the dust to the fee.
+                    if (newTxOut.IsDust())
+                    {
+                        nFeeRet += nChange;
+                        reservekey.ReturnKey();
+                    }

Somehow this just keeps reminding me of http://www.snopes.com/business/bank/salami.asp and the story of why coins got ridges.

I think you misunderstand.

If you create a 1 BTC (or even 0.1 BTC or even 0.005 BTC) output it is highly likely to be spent eventually.  Now how long may vary.  Some outputs will be spent very quickly, some longer but the UXTO will be roughly based on the number of users * avg life of an unspent output.  The UXTO (not unpruned historical blockchain) is the CRITICIAL RESOURCE.

However if you create a 1 satoshi output it likely will never be spent.  Would you send 1 penny to your mortgage company to pay down the principal if it costs you $0.46 min to mail it?  Of course not.  So even with NO GROWTH in number of users the UXTO will continually bloat by the creation of "uneconomical transactions".

They can't be pruned, they can't be spent (well technically they can people will just choose not to) so they add the overall cost of the network for no benefit. 

[DeathAndTaxes]

Don't like it one bit, this makes it next to impossible to scrape of tiny fractions of your incoming transactions for eg. a service fee.

Of course you can just use sendmany (or do it off blockchain).

i.e. 10x 0.1 BTC inputs and you want to divert 1% as a processing fee.

Transaction consists of:
10 x 0.1 inputs, 10x 0.099 outputs, 1x 0.01 collected fee.