POLL: Allow dust transactions in Bitcoin? (5430 satoshis or less)

[whiskers75]

There's a lot of hate against this, so let's see what you think....

[svbeon]

Other option: Destroy all dust with new fork.

[whiskers75]

Other option: Destroy all dust with new fork.

Added!

[royston]

one day (in the near future), when the value of bitcoin rockets to the stratosphere, you'll regret eliminating every single satoshis you ever owned.

[bg002h]

An option should be: not now, but someday, of course.

[solex]

So the OP seems comfortable to see this growth rate accelerate faster, but rather than have real-world consumer and business transactions, it is filled with spam dust junk.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-blockchain-grows-to-8gb/

[raze]

Check out this blockchain size graph and tell me that you can't see the reasoning behind eliminating sub-cent transactions. Seriously, it's less than the fees you would normally send with a transaction. I'm happy with this decision.

[AliceWonder]

I don't like them but allow them for a fee.
I can see them being useful for hash timestamping. Personally I think there are better ways - take the sha256 sum and post it in a thread on a public forum for all to see, but I don't have a problem with them being in the blockchain if someone is willing to pay the fee and a miner accepts it.

[Eri]

Crappy options are crappy.

How about 'Do not relay dust' transaction. (i like the change). Its a start to allow the community to make what is and isnt acceptable adjustable network wide by user consensus.

[Snail2]

By eliminating dust bitcoin will stuck in the "big transactions" area and in the long run it can loose it's ability for being a widely used means of payment. In addition if its value grows high enough the amount what we today call dust could be your monthly phone bill in the future... or your monthly salary... Just remember the price of the first pizza what has been bought by using bitcoins .

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

- Need a "No idea" or "Just show me the results" option or else people will just click one to see the results.

- "Mandatory fee" doesn't even make sense because each miner will decide; there are ultimately no mandators in the Bitcoin world and I think this is a slight but important indicator of thinking about this in the wrong way a way that is inefficient. It makes people freak out because they think everything has to be consensus and unilateral. Really people will do what they want with dust transactions on their own terms, and the devs can only stay in their role as long as they continue to support the miners' ability to do just that. The new changes to lay the groundwork for a fee market to arise are a big step toward this.

[DeathAndTaxes]

By eliminating dust bitcoin will stuck in the "big transactions" area and in the long run it can loose it's ability for being a widely used means of payment. In addition if its value grows high enough the amount what we today call dust could be your monthly phone bill in the future... or your monthly salary... Just remember the price of the first pizza what has been bought by using bitcoins .

You do understand that dust is linked to min tx fee on low priority txs right?  That fee has declined by a factor of 100x from 0.01 to 0.0001 BTC as the exchange rate has risen.  There is nothing to indicate this won't continue to happen.   If the tx has economical value then miners have lowered their fees to below that and thus what was previously dust is no longer dust.  Also 0.8.2 doesn't prevent the spending of dust it simply prevents (for nodes that follow the default value) the creation of dust with the current default threshold set at 54.3% of the min fee


 Dust will always be dust. Low value regardless of if you measure it in fiat equivalence of the amount of goods and services which can be purchased.  They are worthless because it costs more to spend than it is worth spending.  This means (and the blockchain is good history of this) that it won't be spent and every node keeps it in the UXTO forever.  Nobody benefits, everyone pays additional overhead of being a peer. 

If you found a penny on the street but the only way to spend it was to mail it (say to your mortgage/rent holder) at a cost of $0.42?  Spend $0.43 to pay down $0.01 of your rent?  Would you?  Sure it has >0 value but seeing as it is worth less than the transaction cost if your only way to spend it was to mail at a higher cost you never would.  Now imagine everyone in the world had to keep track of the fact that you have that penny ... forever.  That is Bitcoin.

This polls like this only highlight a misconception of Bitcoin.  There is no "network" as if it is a single unified structure; the "network" is a loose association of independent nodes.  If you think the default dust threshold of 0.0543 mBTC (5430 satoshis) is too high then change the min mandatory fee required for your node to relay (and/or mine) low priority transactions.  The min mandatory fee on low priority txs in 0.8.2 is 0.1 mBTC (10,000 S).  The dust threshold is 54.3% of the min fee.  There is a reason for this as it is the relationship between the size of an input and the resulting transaction for the most common form (2 inputs, 1 output, 1 change output).  Still I wish the developers had gone with the slightly less precise but easier to explain 50% ("dust is half the min fee").  If you change the min mandatory fee for low priority transaction you can change the dust threshold.

If you run a node which has a min mandatory fee of 0.10 mBTC (10,000 S) to relay transactions CONGRATULATIONS you are using the default dust threshold of 0.0543 mBTC (5430 S)    0.1 * 54.3% = 0.0543
If you run a node which has a min mandatory fee of 0.04 mBTC ( 4,000 S) to relay transactions CONGRATULATIONS you have lowered the dust threshold to 0.02172 mBTC (2172 S)    0.04 * 54.3% = 0.02172
If you run a node which has a min mandatory fee of 0.25 mBTC (25,000 S) to relay transactions CONGRATULATIONS you have raised the dust threshold to 0.1629 mBTC (16,290 S)    0.25 * 54.3% = 0.1629

[wolverine.ks]

a miner should have the choice to relay or not relay any transaction they choose and at any price they choose. yes I realize that dust is not technically prohibited. but it is also a dangerous targeting of a once successful bitcoin business. additionally, would this spamming of the block chain increase fees for everyone, and therefore increase revenue for miners, thereby increasing the security of the block chain and reducing the network deficit?

[wolverine.ks]

additionally, the argument that it costs more to spend than the transaction is worth....
you are comparing apples and oranges. one persons costs to another persons value.  additionally, there are non monetary values associated with those transactions that make it more valuable than it's face value.

[DeathAndTaxes]

additionally, the argument that it costs more to spend than the transaction is worth....
you are comparing apples and oranges. one persons costs to another persons value.  additionally, there are non monetary values associated with those transactions that make it more valuable than it's face value.

There is a difference between the freedom of speech and the requirement of someone to listen.  If you feel dust transactions are "valuable" then simply find people who are willing to relay and mine them for you.  Problem solved.   0.8.2 simply prevents nodes who don't share the "value" of massive UXTO bloat (a cost shared by all for the benefit of a few) to not actively assist you in that goal.

[Lethn]

While I don't know a huge amount about the technical stuff behind this if the 'dust' transactions are what I think they are then I think they should be kept, my reasoning being that one of Bitcoins main features are that it is easy to divide, if you restrict that then it becomes less useful and convenient. Then again, I could be entirely wrong and this is something completely different to what I'm thinking off, I was thinking that the restrictions were about people sending 0.000005 BTC amongst themselves or something.

[countryfree]

100% in favor of invalidating all transactions below one US cent. In satoshis, that means the minimum should be regularly changed, but that isn't a problem.

[RandyFolds]

So the OP seems comfortable to see this growth rate accelerate faster, but rather than have real-world consumer and business transactions, it is filled with spam dust junk.

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-blockchain-grows-to-8gb/

Yeah, a real world banking system would never allow consumers and businesses to carry out small transactions in the denominations they want, or keep records of those transactions. They know that anything below $1000usd is just clutter. All that data is taking up too much space, damnit, and a man's gotta eat.

edit: I sort of cracked my joke without making my point...I think hard coding a lower limit to transaction size is foolish. Blockchain bloat is very real, and growing exponentially. Limiting dust txs just delays the inevitable, and doesn't address the root of the issue, which is every node needing to possess humanity's accounting. So the options are to offload blockchain hosting to a trusted entity and start central banking anew, but 1850s central banking, where they might just maybe probably skip town with all of your hard earned color, or...I am not sure what.

DeathandTaxes, my man! Long time no see. I must say, my opinion on this did change a bit after reading your post, and opened my eyes to the true scale of this explosive growth. Would you be so kind as to do a simple man such as myself the courtesy of setting me straight on the community's current plan to curb blockchain size beyond this stopgap measure? I've been away for a while (not in jail, just not on bitcointalk).

[wiser]

It seems to me that services like coinbox.me allow you to have your cake and eat it too when it comes to tiny transactions.  Why not just go with a service like that if you are inclined to send out small transactions?  Then the recipient can just pick it up along with all his faucet earnings.

[EndTheFed321]

I vote to Accept and relay dust transactions.