[2018-04-02] Bitcoin Is Close to Cutting Fees with Better Coin Selection

[sensimilia]

One of the technical mechanisms that has helped earn bitcoin comparisons to cash is on the verge of a major update.

Called "coin selection," the term refers to the algorithm that today decides which bits of data come together to create a user's transaction. Essentially, the coin selection code replicates the process of giving, say, a $10 bill to a cashier for a $7 item and the consumer receiving $3 in change.

But if that doesn't sound particularly complex, remember bitcoin is experimental software, and this function, while working, isn't altogether optimized. Making matters worse, the part that perhaps needs tweaking has a direct impact on user costs.

https://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-core-finally-going-get-better-selecting-coins-payments/

[hatshepsut93]

This is great news, it's clear now that there's still a lot of space for improvement when it comes to on-chain transaction fees - wallet algorithm's like coin selection and network fee estimation can be improved, services can adopt batching, Schnorr signatures can make some transactions more compact. Eventually on-chain fees will get very expensive, proportionally to Bitcoin's price and adoption, because blockspace is such a limited resource, and it will push users to search for every opportunity to minimize fees.

[CryptoBry]

I am expecting more changes from the world of Bitcoin soon...despite the fact the market is really down for the whole of cryptocurrency let us continue on the journey aiming to make Bitcoin they way it should be the representative of innovations and the foretaste of the great future ahead for all of us.

[Karartma1]

In my early bitcoin days I used to send transactions via coin control for both better privacy and coin selection. I don't spend much these days, mostly accumulating but if this gets improved for every user I guess it will beneficial for the overall state of bitcoin. We need this to become as simple as possible