Mempool full? Long transaction times + fees x10!

[NeuroticFish]

paying more does not cause mining pools to want your transaction more then a spam meme

there are already many spam memes that pay NO FEE AT ALL but allowed to bloat a whole block

Come on, Franky, the fact that some can now and then make a deal with the mining pool to mine their tx with small or no (on-chain) fee (who knows if other payment was made and how much that was?) is an exception.
The rule is that in 99.999% of the cases a mining pools will prefer the transactions with the higher fees ( per vByte ).


On the other hand, I do agree that paying more may, on long term only make all the fees gradually increase with no benefit for anybody else than the miners. Plus the users think that the next fee after 1 sat/vByte is 2 sat/vByte, not 1.1 or so, making the rise more abrupt.
I'd like to see this NFT spam gone, but I don't think it'll happen too soon. And I fear we are heading to ... what we had in December 2017 (as fees).

[1714241964]

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[franky1]

paying more does not cause mining pools to want your transaction more then a spam meme

there are already many spam memes that pay NO FEE AT ALL but allowed to bloat a whole block

Come on, Franky, the fact that some can now and then make a deal with the mining pool to mine their tx with small or no (on-chain) fee (who knows if other payment was made and how much that was?) is an exception.
The rule is that in 99.999% of the cases a mining pools will prefer the transactions with the higher fees ( per vByte ).


On the other hand, I do agree that paying more may, on long term only make all the fees gradually increase with no benefit for anybody else than the miners. Plus the users think that the next fee after 1 sat/vByte is 2 sat/vByte, not 1.1 or so, making the rise more abrupt.
I'd like to see this NFT spam gone, but I don't think it'll happen too soon. And I fear we are heading to ... what we had in December 2017 (as fees).

you do know that while you want everyone else to pay more fee's where you are trying to justify that paying over 10sat/byte is a happy number

the ordinal junk pays 0.5sat/byte as their norm
and less. where there are examples of paying nothing at all

pools dont care. to them only having to collate 1 transactions with 1 sigop is quick computation for collating data. thus they can push out blocktemplate hashs faster. thus win rewards sooner then competition
you crying about "but pools need their 0.013btc extra"... whilst actual pools happily would sacrifice that extra for a few seconds start on their next block to get more chances of 6.25
yep even a 2/600 chance increase is worth more then "normal fees"

oh and as for mining pools
the pools dont do the hard work. they are just data collators(pool stratum owners dont do the hashing). they dont care what the actual asics get in the end. whether its a cut of 6.2 (pool takes 0.05) or a cut of 6.213 (tx fee 0.013, pool takes 0.05)

the pool itself does not care. pools even do empty blocks at times too. they dont care. its the asic miners who are remote users to the pool server.. whom have the main split after pool takes it cut
and asic miners have no say in what junk their hash represents

a pool would love to give miners less coin. becasue that then pushes the cost per coin up meaning it affects the market rate

[NeuroticFish]

you do know that while you want everyone else to pay more fee's where you are trying to justify that paying over 10sat/byte is a happy number

I'm not trying to justify anything. Imho any fee bigger than the minimal (for my small sized transactions) is probably not worth it because I'd pay less on LN if I'd bother switching.

pools dont care
[...]
whilst actual pools happily would sacrifice that extra for a few seconds start on their next block to get more chances of 6.25
yep even a 2/600 chance increase is worth more then "normal fees"

I don't deny that. But if there's no huge improvement in the number of blocks mined by the pool, the miners will not be happy about those fees they're losing.
And I can bet that the pool does care about keeping (most of) its miners there.

a pool would love to give miners less coin. becasue that then pushes the cost per coin up meaning it affects the market rate

Again, I think that you're over-simplifying the things. Let's say the pool doesn't care and mines empty blocks. But if the pool constantly mines empty blocks and the miners don't get the income they're expecting, they'll leave. And then the pool will care. (Of course, again, the pool will make sure this doesn't happen, hence will try to find a good balance.)


... But I think that we've started now to get somewhat off topic...

[Artemis3]

Don't be a cheapass. Just pay a higher fee.

If you think these fees are too high to transact on the world's most secure computational network, you're a newb, that's the only explanation.

Be happy people are using Bitcoin for things and not other blockchains.

And the spammers will do as well. Guess who will win?

No, its not about "using blockchain", its about Bitcoin transactions.

The irony is that its the "newb" that would pay the high transactions, since the wallets will by default estimate the fee and use high one so it doesn't take "too long", which is where most "newb" complains comes from about Bitcoin being both expensive and slow.

Get the spam out of Bitcoin, and boycott anyone involved in producing and pushing this spam.

The "minimum wage" in Venezuela is currently the equivalent of $5 (five USD) a month, most private companies pay at least about $40. Many fled the country and are sending money back from abroad for their families, those who don't know Bitcoin would pay the likes of Western Union 15~30 dollars per 100 sent... This is THE reason El Salvador adopted Bitcoin.

Oh yes, i forgot to mention blackouts are frequent in most parts of the country. Guess how well that plays for running a lightning node?

[franky1]

Again, I think that you're over-simplifying the things. Let's say the pool doesn't care and mines empty blocks. But if the pool constantly mines empty blocks and the miners don't get the income they're expecting, they'll leave. And then the pool will care. (Of course, again, the pool will make sure this doesn't happen, hence will try to find a good balance.)

miners prefer getting more block wins per day. compared to the fees

lets run the numbers in a scenario:
a pool of 20% hashrate
gets ~29blocks = 181.25btc a day roughly
the fee's of that day is usually 0.013 a block = 0.377 a day

now imagine over a whole day
would you prefer the pool manager manually selects transactions, does all the checks and sigops on thousands of tx a block template collation causing a delay in blockhashing start times. meaning that instead of 181.25btc average daily coin... it may get 1 less block= 175btc due to messing around with tx burden/selection just for 0.377. meaning 175.377

which would you care more for
181.25 or 175.377

as you can see. saving time by doing less block collating means better chance of earning an extra block per day which reaps better income then doing the transaction management/selection

[NeuroticFish]

miners prefer getting more block wins per day. compared to the fees

lets run the numbers in a scenario:
a pool of 20% hashrate
gets ~29blocks = 181.25btc a day roughly
the fee's of that day is usually 0.013 a block = 0.377 a day

now imagine over a whole day
would you prefer the pool manager manually selects transactions, does all the checks and sigops on thousands of tx a block template collation causing a delay in blockhashing start times. meaning that instead of 181.25btc average daily coin... it may get 1 less block= 175btc due to messing around with tx burden/selection just for 0.377. meaning 175.377

which would you care more for
181.25 or 175.377

as you can see. saving time by doing less block collating means better chance of earning an extra block per day which reaps better income then doing the transaction management/selection

This logic is useful only if another pool gets a target hash in the same time, which happens rather rarely.
In most cases that competition for milliseconds between pools doesn't exist. It's not like all pools find the block all the time exactly at 11:23:56.777 and being the quickest really matters.
So normally the pool can easily grab both the block and the fees. Sometimes it may not be able do that, but it doesn't know when is that.

Maybe I'm missing something, but really, if you would be right, all miners would just mine empty blocks.

[franky1]

read the stats
pools accept dead weight memes for less than genuine tx sat/byte.. all way way to 0 fee
=shows pools dont care about demanding spam bloat "pays more"

secondly look at the stats of dates pre-spam bloat
empty block: 779013, 778,663, 775,654 (just some of many randomly seen)

i can show you lot more of "thin blocks" where there is a low threshold of transactions

i could also tell you about how mining pools do things

for instance most pools now start their block template empty of transactions.
and as asics run through their rounds of nonce/extra nonce.
pools then send out the next round with extra tx added. where by blocks solved in a couple minutes from previous are usually alot more empty then a block that took ~5 ~10 minutes

take some time to find every empty block. and you will see its previous block is under 2 minutes prior

[btc_angela]

Ok just to break the ice, I try and tested it out again,

Mempool says that I overpaid, Lol, but in previous days, just like 2-3 days ago, mempool is congested that I have to pay double that price to 6-7 sat/vB. So I guess everyone needs to check the mempool and not to used wallet suggestion as it might be too much, just saying.

[franky1]

Ok just to break the ice, I try and tested it out again,

Mempool says that I overpaid, Lol, but in previous days, just like 2-3 days ago, mempool is congested that I have to pay double that price to 6-7 sat/vB. So I guess everyone needs to check the mempool and not to used wallet suggestion as it might be too much, just saying.

another rule bitcoin consensus can have to mitigate the spam/empty blocking
have blocks rejected if they only contain under 1000tx

that would suddenly inspire pools to fill blocks with more transactions

[pooya87]

The fee market only works for normal spam attack types but not with a incentivized spam attack. Ordinals is the later and the bigger it gets and the bigger market that it gains the bigger the spam is going to get because people who are gambling with these shittokens don't care about paying a higher fee.
Exactly like what the exchanges do, a gambler trading shittokens on CEX doesn't care much about paying a high withdrawal fee.

[nutildah]

Don't be a cheapass. Just pay a higher fee.

If you think these fees are too high to transact on the world's most secure computational network, you're a newb, that's the only explanation.

...

The irony is that its the "newb" that would pay the high transactions, since the wallets will by default estimate the fee and use high one so it doesn't take "too long", which is where most "newb" complains comes from about Bitcoin being both expensive and slow.

Get the spam out of Bitcoin, and boycott anyone involved in producing and pushing this spam.

The "minimum wage" in Venezuela is currently the equivalent of $5 (five USD) a month, most private companies pay at least about $40. Many fled the country and are sending money back from abroad for their families, those who don't know Bitcoin would pay the likes of Western Union 15~30 dollars per 100 sent... This is THE reason El Salvador adopted Bitcoin.

Oh yes, i forgot to mention blackouts are frequent in most parts of the country. Guess how well that plays for running a lightning node?

I'm referencing the fact that, for much of Bitcoin's history, average fees have been much higher than they currently are now. Fees aren't particularly higher now than they have been in the last year:



Will the median fee ever go below 50 cents again? Yes, most likely when the ordinals craze dies down.

Crypto remittances to El Salvador have actually fallen over the last year:

https://cryptonews.com/news/crypto-accounts-for-less-than-2-of-all-el-salvadors-remittances-btc-adoption-plan-failed.htm

In total, crypto worth $126.7 million was sent to crypto wallets in El Salvador in January.

This figure is a slight decline from last year. The BCR has previously revealed that between September 2021 and June 2022, 1.8% of the $6.4 billion total remittances sent to the nation were made in crypto.

I think Bitcoin (and some other cryptocurrencies) are great for this type of cross-border transfer, but I also think Bukele was taken advantage of by clout addicts like Jack Mallers for the purpose of creating superhero levels of hopium for their fan base. As of Nov., El Salvador's average buy price was $43,357. 🤦

And if you have blackouts and the internet is out, you can't use regular BTC, either.. doesn't just affect lightning nodes.

[Cuenta Alternativa]

another rule bitcoin consensus can have to mitigate the spam/empty blocking
have blocks rejected if they only contain under 1000tx

that would suddenly inspire pools to fill blocks with more transactions

The problem I see with that is that not only would you get rid of spam, you would also invalidate the mining of empty blocks whose hash is discovered a few milliseconds after the previous one. Although I suppose if the spam problem becomes serious, the miners could potentially come to an agreement. At the moment AFAIK there is only one that has never mined an empty block:

When I made my analysis on the subject, I found that all pools mined empty blocks except for Kano.is, kano publicly stated that his pool code won't send an empty block template to miners unless his mempool is empty which is more like 'never'

[franky1]

another rule bitcoin consensus can have to mitigate the spam/empty blocking
have blocks rejected if they only contain under 1000tx

that would suddenly inspire pools to fill blocks with more transactions

The problem I see with that is that not only would you get rid of spam, you would also invalidate the mining of empty blocks whose hash is discovered a few milliseconds after the previous one.

and the answer in the form of a rhetorical question. should blocks get solved in milliseconds or in an average 2016block/fortnight(~10min)

whereby less blocks in milliseconds stops affecting the difficulty negatively(raising diff to make it harder(shooting self in foot))

yep empty blocking means mempool size increases by delaying transaction inclusion into blocks and causes a difficulty rise by making blocks too fast

[Cuenta Alternativa]

and the answer in the form of a rhetorical question. should block get solved in milliseconds or in an average 2016block/fortnight(~10min)

whereby less blocks in milliseconds stops affecting the difficulty negatively(raising diff to make it harder(shooting self in foot))

Well, an average is just that, an average. It takes 10 minutes or milliseconds or an hour or more. I'm not a miner, I was trying to point out that you would not only penalise spam but also miners who have no bad intentions when mining empty blocks, but I recognise that potentially in the future they could come to an agreement on this.

[serveria.com]

Don't be a cheapass. Just pay a higher fee.

If you think these fees are too high to transact on the world's most secure computational network, you're a newb, that's the only explanation.

Thanks for your opinion, but did you even read this thread? Or is this irony?

I don't object paying more if there's valid reason for that. I'd be happy to help miners, help improve Bitcoin infrastructure, help maintain LN nodes etc but why should we all pay for some d*ckhead uploading billions of monkey pics believing "it's the next big thing" and hoping he can get rich by selling you that crap some day? You seriously think Bitcoin was built for that purpose? 

Be happy people are using Bitcoin for things and not other blockchains.

I'm not even going to comment on this, it's just laughable! Muahahaha... 

[nutildah]

I don't object paying more if there's valid reason for that.

The "valid reason" is to make sure your tx is included in the next block. This privilege costs about 50 cents at the moment. Does that really constitute a problem?

What's funny to me is that people believe their opinions have any effect on the situation.

[BlackHatCoiner]

It's funny how some somewhat established members of the Bitcoin community suddenly switched from "censorship-resistant transactions" to "we need to stop this spam / bloating" and "there has to be a valid reason to make transactions". 

When the mempool is full, and you're forced to pay more, the last group of people you have to blame are those who make the transactions.

[Artemis3]

It's funny how some somewhat established members of the Bitcoin community suddenly switched from "censorship-resistant transactions" to "we need to stop this spam / bloating" and "there has to be a valid reason to make transactions". 

When the mempool is full, and you're forced to pay more, the last group of people you have to blame are those who make the transactions.

Well said, censorship-resistant transactions, not censorship-resistant spam.

No one is talking about censoring transactions, the talk is about making non-transactions (aka. spam) more difficult/expensive.

Not transactions, not Bitcoin.

5 days and counting...

[mikeywith]

another rule bitcoin consensus can have to mitigate the spam/empty blocking
have blocks rejected if they only contain under 1000tx

that would suddenly inspire pools to fill blocks with more transactions

What is more inspiring than money as far as miners are concerned?  Nothing is, mining pools want nothing more than to include as many transactions as possible, when they mine an empty block or one with just a few transactions it happens for a reason, also many people seem to think that there is a centralized mempool the all miners share, there isn't, I can just claim that "my" mempool is empty and mine only empty blocks.

This is a free market, subject to spam and biding, exactly how a decentralized system should be, there is nothing you can do to make it better.

[BlackHatCoiner]

No one is talking about censoring transactions, the talk is about making non-transactions (aka. spam) more difficult/expensive.

The protocol doesn't agree with your definition of transaction.