[Apr 2024] Fees are HIGH, wait for opportunity to Consolidate your small inputs

[LoyceV]

I noticed this address: someone is consolidating many transactions with 1088 inputs (I guess to reach the maximum transaction size of 99.9 kB). Many of the inputs are very close to the same amount (0.00047477, 0.00047478, 0.00047479, 0.00047480, 0.00047481, ....). It looks like they're consolidating them starting from the largest inputs, and working their way down. At 11,549 transactions, it may have been millions of inputs already. They all have one large bc1-output, and all transactions send 1000 sats to an address starting with 3. I first thought that may be so they can use CPFP later, but RBF makes more sense. Why create dust while consolidating?

[1714512320]

1714512320

[1714512320]

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[1714512320]

1714512320

[Cricktor]

Maybe this entity uses those 1000sat "dust inputs" on address 3Dc6zoToYwxxmBY9kcoLUrCMRjFx7ZpLky as some kind of status indication? I would assume that the consolidating transactions are prepared programmatically.

I tried to have a look into what happens with those 1000sat "dust" UTXOs for above address, but my own Electrum server (Fulcrum on a Raspi 4B 8GB RAM) struggles to deliver the transaction history for a watch-only wallet.

The coin traffic of involved addresses, looking past consolidation target address, is somewhat substantial.

[stompix]

66035317

There are 66 million of those spam things?

To be honest I don't know how you can count them
At first I was no way in hell are 60 million possible in such short time, there is no capacity, ut looking at the ones before this

https://ordiscan.com/inscription/66035316
https://ordiscan.com/inscription/66035315
they exist, they are very small, and they got from 10 million to 66 million in a year, that's 154tx a day, with bitcoin averaging 500k , yup, possible..

But most are probably this kind of shit and not the ones I linked first, so 50bytes not 153kb.
Oh, and worth mentioning:
https://ordiscan.com/inscription/1
yup, such art, much taste, impressive design, much veneer of refinement.

[LoyceV]

To be honest I don't know how you can count them

I just saw the number, and the few lower numbers I checked all existed.

that's 154tx a day

It's 15k 154k per day.

Every chance of lower fees during the weekend is gone when automated spammers fill most of the blocks:

[LoyceV]

Spam is getting worse again:


How can one guy be allowed to fuck up Bitcoin transactions for a year with automated spam transactions? This guy alone must have added about 50 GB to the blockchain, and that data will have to be kept forever. He must have paid hundreds of millions up to billions of dollars for this too.

[LoyceV]

Spam is still getting worse:


From this screenshot, I estimate a "spam score" of 85%.
I really don't get it: tens of millions of spam transactions, paying hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in transaction fees. Madness!

[stompix]

that's 154tx a day

It's 15k per day.

56 000 000/365 is 153 424, nobody would have cared for an extra 14k a day when the blocks were mostly empty!

I really don't get it: tens of millions of spam transactions, paying hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in transaction fees. Madness!

Not really billions!
First, we had a very bad day in terms of blocks, only 117 blooks in the last 24 hours so by bye early 25% of the capacity, then the total fees are not that bad either, only 7.9 millions, and in this you include people that don't mint ordinals, binance that pays 150sat/vb  or Bitfinex that has no second thoughts on 469 sat/vb

So in the end, it takes little effort to clog the network, cause...you know...1MB is enough for everyone  

[bitmover]

I really don't get it: tens of millions of spam transactions, paying hundreds of millions if not billions of dollars in transaction fees. Madness!

I think they are trying to mint all the nft they can before the halving.

After the halving the price there is a chance that the price  will skyrocket anytime and fees will get even higher (usd value)

[LoyceV]

I think they are trying to mint all the nft they can before the halving.

NFTs make no sense, so "minting them" makes no sense either. It really looks like one guy came up with this, and is now holding the most of them. Or something.

[OcTradism]

I think they are trying to mint all the nft they can before the halving.

If they are doing this (minting) NFTs because of halving and they want to do this before the halving, the spam will reduce a lot after the halving. I can hope so because we can not know their reasons to mint a lot of NFTs like this. I doubt that they will stop after halving because in a bull run, there will be a lot of speculation and gamblers in this market.

NFTs make no sense, so "minting them" makes no sense either. It really looks like one guy came up with this, and is now holding the most of them. Or something.

NFTs are useless, make no sense but in a bull market, many people believe in chance of get rich through NFTs. They will realize that they are wrong in a bear market.

[LoyceV]

Who are those people who spend $33 to turn their 0.0005 BTC into dust?

[NeuroticFish]

Who are those people who spend $33 to turn their 0.0005 BTC into dust?

I was told that those dust inputs carry Ordinals/NFT so I'd say... those making and selling that crap scam art.
Maybe somebody else can read/make more sense in that particular tx.

And if you hope expect to get 1000s of $ for that tx, spending 33$ is not a bad investment (in your dreams).

[LoyceV]

I was told that those dust inputs carry Ordinals/NFT

I don't care about some "deeper meaning" that someone external from Bitcoin made up for something. All I see is fungible on-chain Bitcoin dust.

And if you hope expect to get 1000s of $ for that tx, spending 33$ is not a bad investment (in your dreams).

I'd understand that if there's a few of them. But since someone is creating tens of millions of them, it doesn't make sense. It's not rare, it's not scarse, it's just BS.

[NeuroticFish]

And if you hope expect to get 1000s of $ for that tx, spending 33$ is not a bad investment (in your dreams).

I'd understand that if there's a few of them. But since someone is creating tens of millions of them, it doesn't make sense. It's not rare, it's not scarse, it's just BS.

I don't have a good overview / chart on how many are Ordinal related (is P2TR a good enough identifier? I don't know) and how many are just plain spam made by somebody who knows what is he doing (eg somebody related to mining).

But don't take me wrong, I do agree that those ordinals are useless garbage more related to some hopes of scamming the next one than anything of real use.
I also had my proposals to block them (as spam), but some said that Bitcoin network should not start censoring arbitrarily (which is also something I agree with). I have a feeling the truth is somewhere in between.
Afaik Bitcoin Knots (Luke-Jr's fork of Bitcoin Core?) already filters them. But I guess that it's "market share" is far too small to matter.

[LoyceV]

I also had my proposals to block them (as spam), but some said that Bitcoin network should not start censoring arbitrarily (which is also something I agree with). I have a feeling the truth is somewhere in between.

I wouldn't call it "arbitrary" if it's one person spamming the blockchain for so long. The reason I still think it's one person is because of the massive numbers of similar transactions that keep flooding the blockchain. If fees aren't enough to deter spammers, I'd like to bring back the "coin days destroyed" priority mechanism. But it's going to be difficult to get miners on board if it means less profit.

[bitmover]

Who are those people who spend $33 to turn their 0.0005 BTC into dust?

I was told that those dust inputs carry Ordinals/NFT so I'd say... those making and selling that crap scam art.
Maybe somebody else can read/make more sense in that particular tx.

And if you hope expect to get 1000s of $ for that tx, spending 33$ is not a bad investment (in your dreams).

I checked and I saw no rare satoshi in this address
https://magiceden.io/ordinals/discover-raresats?walletAddress=bc1pj54z06qh9pxhae09xw3mvrupzfppfgstfxvuhtt52t4fpgrvhs2qkmzqct

strange, he even overpaid fees.

[NeuroticFish]

I wouldn't call it "arbitrary" if it's one person spamming the blockchain for so long. The reason I still think it's one person is because of the massive numbers of similar transactions that keep flooding the blockchain. If fees aren't enough to deter spammers, I'd like to bring back the "coin days destroyed" priority mechanism. But it's going to be difficult to get miners on board if it means less profit.

As I said, I don't know "all the data", is it indeed only one entity doing all the spam?!
But at the end, it goes to miners (and, as you said, let's not count on them because they're in only for the money) and maybe to community too.

I guess that the community can do wonders - from switching to a "filter on" wallet/node to actually putting pressure/convince the devs to this direction. But... is the community convinced? Imho it's not. Imho if we want to go on this direction we may need to start with properly exposing the wallets (and hopefully entities too) that are responsible for all this spammy mess.

It feels soooo like in the winter of 2017/2018...

I checked and I saw no rare satoshi in this address

So it's not Ordinals related after all? Interesting...

[stompix]

I checked and I saw no rare satoshi in this address
https://magiceden.io/ordinals/discover-raresats?walletAddress=bc1pj54z06qh9pxhae09xw3mvrupzfppfgstfxvuhtt52t4fpgrvhs2qkmzqct

strange, he even overpaid fees.

It's minting brc-20 tokens
https://ordiscan.com/address/bc1pj54z06qh9pxhae09xw3mvrupzfppfgstfxvuhtt52t4fpgrvhs2qkmzqct
and it's related to these
https://ordiscan.com/address/bc1pvu6qnzpuyl6w3vmpuy79d6slplr7fyhan9wd476npjnf070wgn9s3uyjr2

Normally I wouldn't mention them since, well, just some addresses with inscriptions, there are thousands, but speaking of weird transactions, this one really made me curious, I mean, what the f is it actually doing?
https://mempool.space/tx/634a89b727cda93ddd10ea68dc08e7f17163444ee018881b4bf3fa98900bca02

Afaik Bitcoin Knots (Luke-Jr's fork of Bitcoin Core?) already filters them. But I guess that it's "market share" is far too small to matter.

Just how his pool filters them but, money is what it counts, so 6 months and it's still just getting one exahash per day.
https://ocean.xyz/dashboard

[LoyceV]

is it indeed only one entity doing all the spam?!

I'm not sure, but it looks like it: exactly the same fee, exactly the same transaction, often using the previous outputs as inputs, and broadcasting them in batches.

Maybe it's time to significantly raise the dust limit. This transaction creates more than 1000 dust inputs.

[ABCbits]

is it indeed only one entity doing all the spam?!

I'm not sure, but it looks like it: exactly the same fee, exactly the same transaction, often using the previous outputs as inputs, and broadcasting them in batches.

Maybe it's time to significantly raise the dust limit. This transaction creates more than 1000 dust inputs.

Or maybe several people use same script/software which create TX with static or poor fee rate choice algorithm.

Maybe it's time to significantly raise the dust limit. This transaction creates more than 1000 dust inputs.

I recall the dust limit was lowered from about 5460 satoshi to 546 satoshi some years ago, partially due to rising Bitcoin price. Unless Bitcoin price decline significantly, i don't expect dust limit will be raised.