Can we "decouple" the tx fee from the txs themselves ?

[TinfoilHat]

Hi guys,

We know that, in general, miners prefer putting txs with higher fees into blocks. In particular, this is bad for users who do microtransactions as it doesn't make much sense to put a lot of fee if you're only sending a small amount. I've been thinking whether it is possible to overcome this.

Basically, if we somehow find a way to decouple fees from the txs themselves then every tx will look equal to the miners. When this is the case, there's no incentive to prefer one tx over another. I believe this would make the Bitcoin more "fair" to the users.

However, I can't tell whether it is possible to come up with such a protocol while maintaining the properties of the Bitcoin. What I have in my mind is basically as follows:

1) Users first send some "participation tax" to an adress/adresses which is collectively maintaned by the miners.
2) Miners in turn collectively sign a token and send back the token to users.
3) Users then include this token in their txs to prove their validity. Txs without tokens can be either be discarded or might have less priority.
4) The total tax sum in the pool is distributed to miners according their fraction of hash power.
5) The process repeats over time periods.

The key point in here is, every tx with a valid token would look the same for miners. So, there's no reason to choose one over another.
Of course, as it is, it probably has many flaws. For example, a user can pay participation fee and his txs might still not make it to the block. In this case, he basically pays the participation fee for nothing. Maybe we can overcome this with a "decentralized escrow" mechanism (not sure if this even exists) but anyway, this needs to be worked on.

What do you think ? Might such a system help the Bitcoin in a way ?

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[DannyHamilton]

2) Miners in turn collectively sign a token and send back the token to users.

Explain "collectively".

How would anyone know who the miners are?  How would anyone know when ALL the miners have signed?  What would happen if one (or more) miners do not sign? What would happen if only 1 miner signs? Without a centralized entity in charge of this process, how could it work?

4) The total tax sum in the pool is distributed to miners according their fraction of hash power.

Distributed how?  By whom? Without a centralized entity in charge of this process, how would you prevent someone from getting more (or less) than they should? Who would determine the fraction of hash power of each miner, and how would they determine it?

What do you think ? Might such a system help the Bitcoin in a way ?

Not in the way you've described it.

[bob123]

Like the post above me mentioned, this is not possible (decentralized).
Even if it was possible.. this would probably destroy the whole Network.
1 Idiot with 1 BTC could send 50.000.000 Transactions (1 Satoshi TX + 1 Satoshi Fee).

And since Bitcoin would be "fair" - with your idea - there would be 50.000.000 TX in mempool.
Currently there are 55.000 TX's in mempool.

So when the next block would be mined, 99,89% (50.000.000 / 50.055.000) of all TX confirmed would be spam TX's - on average.
And since Attacker would be sending TX's to his own Wallet.. this Attack would cost 0.5 BTC (fees) and would make Bitcoin unusable.

[aleksej996]

Transaction fees are a feature, not a bug. They are there for a reason, not just a necessity we could go around. They are there to stop the transaction spam, if there were no fees in the first place, Bitcoin would be an easy target for the DoS attack that could be stopped. Bitcoin would be dead in seconds. Don't fix what ain't broken, my friend.

[TinfoilHat]

1 Idiot with 1 BTC could send 50.000.000 Transactions (1 Satoshi TX + 1 Satoshi Fee)

I was thinking about putting a limit of number of txs that could be sent with the token, e.g. say 100 or so. Anyway, I see that removing tx fees would do more harm than good.

[twthmoses]

Transaction fees are a feature, not a bug. They are there for a reason, not just a necessity we could go around. They are there to stop the transaction spam, if there were no fees in the first place, Bitcoin would be an easy target for the DoS attack that could be stopped. Bitcoin would be dead in seconds. Don't fix what ain't broken, my friend.

True, but fee is also what prevents btc from become a payment option in a small shop.
If you can’t pay 500 sat for gum, without paying an additional 5000 sat for fee, it’s never going to work.

As I understand it fee is not really a requirement in btc, but a necessary evil in order to get your transaction included (timely). Of course once the block reward stops, it’s the only incentive for miners to keep producing blocks, which carries your transaction. Ironically this is what prevents btc from replacing other payments methods in minor daily usage.

[aleksej996]

Transaction fees are a feature, not a bug. They are there for a reason, not just a necessity we could go around. They are there to stop the transaction spam, if there were no fees in the first place, Bitcoin would be an easy target for the DoS attack that could be stopped. Bitcoin would be dead in seconds. Don't fix what ain't broken, my friend.

True, but fee is also what prevents btc from become a payment option in a small shop.
If you can’t pay 500 sat for gum, without paying an additional 5000 sat for fee, it’s never going to work.

As I understand it fee is not really a requirement in btc, but a necessary evil in order to get your transaction included (timely). Of course once the block reward stops, it’s the only incentive for miners to keep producing blocks, which carries your transaction. Ironically this is what prevents btc from replacing other payments methods in minor daily usage.

Well as I said, it is there mainly to stop spam. The fact that the payment to miners will be in fees is I believe just killing two birds with one stone. The block reward could have been implemented to go on for billions of years and the mining fees could have been replaced with a small proof of work attached to the transaction, but since proof of work is already done by miners and burning coins as a mining fee would have a same effect as just having mining fees without the block reward. You might want to look into the Lightning Network, it was designed to solve these problems.