What will happen if this congestion continues

[Stalker22]

From my understanding, the only way miners can help is by not prioritizing transactions solely based on the transaction fees, but I doubt that will ever happen.

In another topic, it was proposed to introduce a quota for old payments so that they are included in the block, regardless of the size of the commission. But what if we introduce a quota not for old payments, but for Ordinals? Aren't they typical transactions? We can, perhaps, allocate a quota for them, let's say, in the same 25%, over which they can only be the last in line.

While I agree that a quota system could be a potential solution, there are a few things to consider. First, implementing a quota system for Ordinals could create a backlog of other types of transactions that are also important for the network. There could be potential issues with determining what qualifies as an Ordinal transaction and how to allocate the quota fairly.

Another challenge would be to achieve a consensus among all miners regarding this matter. Given that transaction fees are a significant source of income for them, it is unlikely that they would be open to any efforts to limit or regulate them. Perhaps incentivizing miners in other ways, such as rewarding them for including a certain number of low-fee transactions in each block, could be a potential solution. However, I do not know where to get the funds for such a reward.

[WillyAp]

People will find a way around it using other coins.
As always Litecoin wins, even with faster coins like USTD. Due to the higher fees and being a subchained coin.

[Z-tight]

People will find a way around it using other coins.
As always Litecoin wins, even with faster coins like USTD. Due to the higher fees and being a subchained coin.

If people want to use other coins, it is a free market. If transaction fees can make one choose shitcoins over BTC, then they are weak hands, and the fewer weak hands in the network, the better for the long term. I would rather hold and use BTC even if i have to pay a few more Satoshis as transaction fees, than hold a centralized stable coin that can even be frozen in my own wallet.

[Who is John Galt?]

In another topic, it was proposed to introduce a quota for old payments so that they are included in the block, regardless of the size of the commission. But what if we introduce a quota not for old payments, but for Ordinals? Aren't they typical transactions? We can, perhaps, allocate a quota for them, let's say, in the same 25%, over which they can only be the last in line.

While I agree that a quota system could be a potential solution, there are a few things to consider. First, implementing a quota system for Ordinals could create a backlog of other types of transactions that are also important for the network. There could be potential issues with determining what qualifies as an Ordinal transaction and how to allocate the quota fairly.

Another challenge would be to achieve a consensus among all miners regarding this matter. Given that transaction fees are a significant source of income for them, it is unlikely that they would be open to any efforts to limit or regulate them. Perhaps incentivizing miners in other ways, such as rewarding them for including a certain number of low-fee transactions in each block, could be a potential solution. However, I do not know where to get the funds for such a reward.

It seems to me that miners are also interested in the stable operation of the network, and ever-increasing fees will only lead to an increase in the requirements for the amount of computing equipment that they need. Therefore, I think they are also interested in the balance, so that there is an interest in commissions, and most of the usual payments also take place in a reasonable time.

[pooya87]

Seems that this opinion is not shared among all devs, right? Like, who considers this an attack and/or an exploit and who doesn't.
Also, who sees a fix as a censorship move and who doesn't. In my view, this is an exploit and as with any other software, exploits needs to be fixed.

I believe everyone considers this an exploit considering that it was created because of an oversight in the Taproot implementation. There is nothing to dispute there. But some don't consider this an attack which in my opinion is weird considering that when someone exploits a protocol and abuses it, that's the literal definition of an attack

[Renampun]

Ordinals Inscriptions is the cause of increase in mempool congestion. After Ordinals NFT, there is now ways to create fungible tokens called BRC-20 which led to the more in the rise of mempool congestion. BRC-20 marketcap has surpass $1 billion.

Some people call it another scam. But during the days when Ethereum blockchain started ERC20 and ERC721 (NFTs), some people were saying that it is the beginning of scam. Yes many people were scammed and many people lost money, but there are many of these altcoins tokens that are surving now.

The mempool is far from getting less congested. Bitcoin transaction fee is too much and becoming unbearable.

What do you think can solve what is happening? How can the mempool become not congested again. More miners needed or what?

Ban ordinals and BRC20 and any other NFT/non-financial data on blockchain. Some of my customers already contacted me saying they can't pay me because of the ridiculous fees. They have to pay in fees more than the invoice sum on some occasions. Everything depends solely on core devs now. Just let me remind you that inaction (not only action) also can be an offense. If you see some crime or attack going on and refuse to prevent it you can be called a criminal as well.

it's up to people what to say, but I 1000% support the btc dev must be banned all kinds of tokens / NFTs that ride on the bitcoin network (such as vitalik which offers a smart contract feature on bitcoin) if congestion continues to occur the impact will be bad for bitcoin in the future ahead, just imagine in el salvador, people start using bitcoin as a transaction but is it fair if they are required to pay a fee of $ 10 for the coffee or food they buy.

[bettercrypto]

As for what's happening now, if I compare it to last week, it's pretty good in terms of fees. Unlike last week, the fees are a headache because of the spam transactions made by ordinals and brc20.

       At least somehow, we can breathe a little easier. Unlike for the past few days ago, there was really exploitation due to the hype of the ordinals and that brc20, now their hype is over, so the fees are gradually decreasing for each of our bitcoin transactions.

[NotATether]

In another topic, it was proposed to introduce a quota for old payments so that they are included in the block, regardless of the size of the commission. But what if we introduce a quota not for old payments, but for Ordinals? Aren't they typical transactions? We can, perhaps, allocate a quota for them, let's say, in the same 25%, over which they can only be the last in line.

We can't reliably identify what exactly is an Ordinals transaction and what is not because with all the different ways of storing junk data inside a Taproot output, the format of what an Ordinal might look like can mutate like a virus strain.

The only way to avoid something like that is to impose a quota on ALL transactions involving Taproot outputs, which is not ideal at all.

[Who is John Galt?]

In another topic, it was proposed to introduce a quota for old payments so that they are included in the block, regardless of the size of the commission. But what if we introduce a quota not for old payments, but for Ordinals? Aren't they typical transactions? We can, perhaps, allocate a quota for them, let's say, in the same 25%, over which they can only be the last in line.

We can't reliably identify what exactly is an Ordinals transaction and what is not because with all the different ways of storing junk data inside a Taproot output, the format of what an Ordinal might look like can mutate like a virus strain.

The only way to avoid something like that is to impose a quota on ALL transactions involving Taproot outputs, which is not ideal at all.

If there is no way to detect and quota only transactions with "tokens" in order to divide the flows between the main transactions in the network and the secondary ones in the form of "tokens", then, of course, the limitation of the new consensus bitcoin code looks fundamentally wrong. Thus, it will simply be incentivized that miners do not upgrade not only to Taproot, but also to subsequent upgrades, due to the risks of such quota. Too bad if the idea of quoting only "tokens" is not possible.

[pooya87]

The only way to avoid something like that is to impose a quota on ALL transactions involving Taproot outputs, which is not ideal at all.

It wouldn't be a new limit, but the limit that already exists. That is to say just copy the limits on witness version 0 to witness version 1 and we'd prevent the Ordinals Attack very easily! It also is very ideal because nobody has any use case that would need bigger witness size other than this attack.

[pawel7777]

/snip/
In short, let the economy talk and you'll see fees stabilizing soon.

You're probably right about fees coming down eventually, but let's not pretend that the problem doesn't exists. It doesn't take much to get the network congested and prohibitively high fees make it unusable for the average user. That's unless we assume Bitcoin is only for holding and doesn't have to be transacted.


Anybody knows what's the lead developers' view on ordinals and congestion? Do they recognise this as a problem or a feature? I'm a bit out of the loop on recent devs affairs.

[serveria.com]

Ban ordinals and BRC20 and any other NFT/non-financial data on blockchain.

This is as silly a thing to say as people imploring the government to "ban bitcoin" because they don't like it.

Ordinals should be banned not because somebody doesn't like it but because it's ddosing the sh*t out of the blockchain.

Bitcoin is is designed to be ban-proof. You can harass the onramps and off-ramps but you can't stop bitcoin
itself in its tracks.

That's a fact. But there's a huge difference between Bitcoin and ordinals.

Similarly, ordinals are pretty ban-proof. By the time you get a significant fraction of nodes to try filter them out from the mempool, they have already adopted a different encoding scheme bypassing the filter. The more you filter, the more ordinals encoding will become indistinguishable from financial transactions, and the more collateral damage you cause. In the worst case, they will just use fake output addresses for embedding data.

That's BS. It's easy to fix the ordinals bug. Just like the double-spend and unlimited Bitcoin bugs were fixed. I guess it will only take a few lines of code that's it. Removing or filtering/limiting OP_RETURN is not complicated at all. Just simply limiting the size will instantly send 70-80% of that crap into oblivion.

That may be a little less efficient but at these fee levels they're willing to pay it obviously doesn't matter much.

Again wrong. they're not paying lots of money for their spam transactions. Regular users who need to process their tx faster do that trying to outbid each other.

Not only is there no plausible approach to banning them from the mempool, but doing so wouldn't even suffice. Miners are very keen on processing these transactions which raise overall fee levels. So they'll make it easy to have these transactions routed directly to them.

Cut off the metadata tag and miners won't have anything to process. 

[Kryptowerk]

/snip/
In short, let the economy talk and you'll see fees stabilizing soon.

You're probably right about fees coming down eventually, but let's not pretend that the problem doesn't exists. It doesn't take much to get the network congested and prohibitively high fees make it unusable for the average user. That's unless we assume Bitcoin is only for holding and doesn't have to be transacted.


Anybody knows what's the lead developers' view on ordinals and congestion? Do they recognise this as a problem or a feature? I'm a bit out of the loop on recent devs affairs.

I agree regarding "doesn't take much to get congestion issues". Layer1 is just extremely limited in regards of data-capacity and a good scaling solution here is not on the horizon at all. Lightning will help (layer2), especially for mid/low-value-payments, but it's just one part of a difficult puzzle.
However, right now, fees are at an almost reasonable level already and with 10 - 20 sat/byte most stuff goes through quite rapidly already.

Regarding your other point: Yes, would be interested to hear it, too. What I heard so far: The system will sort itself out - which seems to have turned out as true already.
I mean it does make sense: It costs a ton of money to put data on the Bitcoin-blockchain - not sustainable with the BS that 99% or ordinalcrap is anyway.

[bettercrypto]

That's right, in fact, here in our country, a merchant here who exchanges bitcoin with our fiat has stopped temporarily, I won't mention the name first, because of the effect of the transaction fees.

       Here, if the congestion really continues, it is likely that other merchants in different corners of the world who accept bitcoin may switch to other cryptos with cheaper transaction fees, such as Bep20, Xrp, Matic, Trx and others, this is just my example. Instead of spreading the beauty of Bitcoin, what will eventually happen is that it may not be talked about anymore because of the high fees and its holders will be reduced little by little.

[larry_vw_1955]

Having said that, I was talking about the situation where it's affecting the price of the Bitcoin market cause people are switching to alternative means of making payments. I also hate the fact that I make payments for my internet network which is 0.001BTC and I have to pay 0.0013BTC for a fast transaction fee and you're telling me to celebrate that? Of course, I am celebrating.

so you're willing to pay double to your internet service provider just so you can use bitcoin? why not cash out the 0.001BTC and send it to them some cheaper way. i am sure they take other payment methods like paying from a bank account or debit card. those are probably free.

Anybody knows what's the lead developers' view on ordinals and congestion? Do they recognise this as a problem or a feature? I'm a bit out of the loop on recent devs affairs.

i've been curious about that too. seems like they've been remaining silent on the entire thing. but i could be wrong. but i haven't hear anything. i think the developers kind of hang out on that archaic linux mailing list for some reason, away from this forum's prying eyes. so they're insulated from these type of discussions. 

[Who is John Galt?]

I agree regarding "doesn't take much to get congestion issues". Layer1 is just extremely limited in regards of data-capacity and a good scaling solution here is not on the horizon at all. Lightning will help (layer2), especially for mid/low-value-payments, but it's just one part of a difficult puzzle.
However, right now, fees are at an almost reasonable level already and with 10 - 20 sat/byte most stuff goes through quite rapidly already.

Regarding your other point: Yes, would be interested to hear it, too. What I heard so far: The system will sort itself out - which seems to have turned out as true already.
I mean it does make sense: It costs a ton of money to put data on the Bitcoin-blockchain - not sustainable with the BS that 99% or ordinalcrap is anyway.

On May 16th, Ryan Gentry from Lightning Labs announced that they are launching Taproot Assets v0.2. As far as I understand, this update should allow us to operate with tokens mainly in the second layer and not take up as much space in blocks as happened recently. Will the new solution from the Lightning Network help solve the problem and reconcile the community with tokens without a mempool congestion?

[pawel7777]

I agree regarding "doesn't take much to get congestion issues". Layer1 is just extremely limited in regards of data-capacity and a good scaling solution here is not on the horizon at all. Lightning will help (layer2), especially for mid/low-value-payments, but it's just one part of a difficult puzzle.
However, right now, fees are at an almost reasonable level already and with 10 - 20 sat/byte most stuff goes through quite rapidly already.

They're seem to be slowly coming down but an average fee of >$4 per transaction is still pretty high. I made a transaction with a 12sat/vbyte fee and it's stuck for almost a week now (can't bump the fee as was sending entire wallet's balance).
The problem is some wallets are not doing the best job in terms of estimating fees/transaction times. When I made it, it was showing as "Economic" with 2-3 hours expected confirmation time (Mycelium wallet). Needless to say, that was far from accurate.

On May 16th, Ryan Gentry from Lightning Labs announced that they are launching Taproot Assets v0.2. As far as I understand, this update should allow us to operate with tokens mainly in the second layer and not take up as much space in blocks as happened recently. Will the new solution from the Lightning Network help solve the problem and reconcile the community with tokens without a mempool congestion?

Thanks for sharing. Sounds like a step in a right direction.

[serveria.com]

On May 16th, Ryan Gentry from Lightning Labs announced that they are launching Taproot Assets v0.2. As far as I understand, this update should allow us to operate with tokens mainly in the second layer and not take up as much space in blocks as happened recently. Will the new solution from the Lightning Network help solve the problem and reconcile the community with tokens without a mempool congestion?

Well, not the solution I was waiting for, but still better than nothing. Moving all spam transactions to L2 will free up the mempool and get rid of the congestion. Most NFT transactions use low fees so they should be suitable for Lightning Network.

[suzanne5223]

Having said that, I was talking about the situation where it's affecting the price of the Bitcoin market cause people are switching to alternative means of making payments. I also hate the fact that I make payments for my internet network which is 0.001BTC and I have to pay 0.0013BTC for a fast transaction fee and you're telling me to celebrate that? Of course, I am celebrating.

so you're willing to pay double to your internet service provider just so you can use bitcoin?

I was actually mad that I had to pay double due to the Bitcoin network congestion and that's why I am not happy with the recent hike in the tx fee.

why not cash out the 0.001BTC and send it to them some cheaper way. i am sure they take other payment methods like paying from a bank account or debit card. those are probably free.

Yes, but the payment will be even worse buddy because I have to move the BTC from my personal wallet (non-custodial) and I have to use a competitive fee since I need the internet network asap.

[Onset]

Take this as another test for Bitcoin, man. It’s frustrating but it is what it is. Things don’t move extremely fast in Bitcoin (except price ), you have to be patient until a solution is found. This Ordinal thing is so annoying but the devs will figure it out at some point.

As much as I hate this happening and having to overpay fees, Bitcoin is still young and needs a lot of patience.. by the way, can’t these ordinal guys just move to another freaking layer instead of attacking Bitcoin? By attacking BTC they’re pretty much attacking themselves lol