Mempool fees and Solutions

[Z-tight]

And if the transaction fee persists, it will affect businesses very badly. Because nobody like to do a business and loss it in. Mostly people that are involved in small scale transactions. I was thinking that before this year will end the fee will come back to normalcy but things are getting worse. There should be a solution to this problem by Satoshi and his co developers.

This is the reality right now and a lot of people are going to avoid using BTC as a payment method right now, it is sad when you think about it, because BTC is a p2p electronic cash, and it was created to be used for payments. Using the BTC network for micro payments is almost impossible right now and i don't think businesses that accept BTC would be getting many customers who want to pay in BTC. As for a solution, it is not as easy as you think, first of all, it must be one that isn't pro-censorship because the network is censorship resistant. I don't have the skills to suggest a solution, but i will support one that falls under the 'principles' of the BTC network.

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[Pmalek]

I couldn't believe the state of the mempools when I checked last night to see if the situation calmed down a bit because of the weekend. But I noticed that you needed to pay between 300 and 400 sat/vByte for a possible next-block confirmation. It's just insane what the banana monkey fanboys have created and done with the network. It's difficult to talk about a normally functioning blockchain if you need to pay a $20 BTC equivalent fee to send $10 worth of bitcoin. I can't believe I am saying this, but I hope they find a solution to what is now a problem.

[hugeblack]

The situation today is worse. Miners have found an opportunity to collect more Bitcoin before the next split occurs, and as long as prices remain above $30,000, they will be happy for these high fees to continue. Therefore, I expect a correction to occur soon, but I do not think that this is the problem, but rather that people are accustomed to 10-50 sat/vB is a cheap fee, and if this problem persists, it will be difficult to return to 1-2 satoshi, which is harmful to adoption in the long term.

[Synchronice]

The situation today is worse. Miners have found an opportunity to collect more Bitcoin before the next split occurs, and as long as prices remain above $30,000, they will be happy for these high fees to continue. Therefore, I expect a correction to occur soon, but I do not think that this is the problem, but rather that people are accustomed to 10-50 sat/vB is a cheap fee, and if this problem persists, it will be difficult to return to 1-2 satoshi, which is harmful to adoption in the long term.

It's not miners' fault if people are willing to pay 60 times and 100 times higher transaction fees than recommended.
Check these transactions and tell me, what do you think, why did they pay so high transaction fees?
TX1 https://mempool.space/tx/abd0372aaaac6392eb5be258dcf282ffc152b9fd99a75945342be84416c93b36
TX2 https://mempool.space/tx/0cef268fff70c605dd91a00586d4edefc00ea47fc3c38500c67692aea8f6e9c9
TX3 https://mempool.space/tx/8a199391385b767b3923f8005012d7ab7fce66e78bc9ca302db2e6bd6bf730ff

I personally can't understand why do some people pay 100x times more than what's recommended by mempool. I see no point in sending $20 000 and paying $15 000 in transaction fees. I think that number of bitcoin transactions are very high and 1 MB blocksize doesn't meet the modern demand but on anther hand, here you have people who are willing to pay thousands in trash. If people have so much money that they don't know how to spend it, no block size and nothing can stop them from it. I really don't know what to think after seeing how people pay up to 100x more than recommended. Doesn't it affect their budget? It's curious.

[Z-tight]

The situation today is worse. Miners have found an opportunity to collect more Bitcoin before the next split occurs, and as long as prices remain above $30,000, they will be happy for these high fees to continue.

Miners wouldn't say no to more money. With this hike in tx fees, miners now even earn as high as 3 BTC in tx fees for a mined block, look at block 821669 mined by Antpool mining pool, they earned 3.874 BTC in tx fees alone, and 10.124 in fees + Subsidy, that is how high miners are earning because of ordinals.

and if this problem persists, it will be difficult to return to 1-2 satoshi, which is harmful to adoption in the long term.

It is already harming adoption right now, with how high the fee rate is, nobody is going to use BTC as a payment method or spend it especially for micro payment, it is sad to say but that is the reality.

[pooya87]

It's not miners' fault if people are willing to pay 60 times and 100 times higher transaction fees than recommended.

Sometimes these things is because of broken implementations that suggest much higher fees and in some cases there are malicious fee estimation websites that intentionally suggest a ridiculously high fee rate.
There are also cases where the user wants to get their transaction confirmed with 100% certainty so they go overboard with the fee rate and pay a very high one so that if there were a spike between the time they broadcast and their tx is confirmed, they are still paying a high rate.
There is also this new case with the spam attack where newbies are participating in the Ordinals Attack and they don't mind paying a ton of fees because they are hoping to earn a profit on the garbage they dump on each other.

I think that number of bitcoin transactions are very high and 1 MB blocksize doesn't meet the modern demand but on anther hand, here you have people who are willing to pay thousands in trash.

If you remember the situation before the Ordinals Attack began, you can see that the 4 MB weight was enough to handle the real demand. But after the spam attack began, the fees started going up and stayed up.
In other words the problem isn't the block space.

[Pmalek]

If you remember the situation before the Ordinals Attack began, you can see that the 4 MB weight was enough to handle the real demand. But after the spam attack began, the fees started going up and stayed up.
In other words the problem isn't the block space.

That's true. However, it's the current demand. But if Bitcoin is to have many more users globally, it needs to be able to handle the load. This Ordinals spam is a good example of how a huge influx of new users could look like. The results are unsatisfactory. The solutions are unsatisfactory as well. Telling everyone just use the Lightning Network and it will be fine is like sweeping the problems under the carpet.

[dkbit98]

If you remember the situation before the Ordinals Attack began, you can see that the 4 MB weight was enough to handle the real demand. But after the spam attack began, the fees started going up and stayed up.
In other words the problem isn't the block space.

Exactly, and I am sure the situation would be exactly the same with bigger block.
It sucks to have high transaction fees like they are right now, with over 500 sat/vB that is over $30 worth of Bitcoin and your transaction may still be with low priority.
With attacks like this it would not be that hard for someone with unlimited funds ^{like gov.} to make bitcoin almost unusable for most people  
Maybe it's time for another fork, and more people need to use Lightning Network for small transactions.

[Pmalek]

With attacks like this it would not be that hard for someone with unlimited funds ^{like gov.} to make bitcoin almost unusable for most people  

You might have meant it as a joke but it's not. The enemies of Bitcoin can't easily attack the decentralized ledger reproduced across tens of thousands of computers. They also can't easily attack and put out of business the thousands of mining companies and small-time home miners. What they can do is exactly what you said: attack the value transfer. Make it difficult and expensive to use Bitcoin and then fud, through their media, what a waste of time and resources Bitcoin is.

Maybe it's time for another fork, and more people need to use Lightning Network for small transactions.

Doesn't really help much because you still need to open and fund the channel and close it eventually. Both are on-chain transactions and require those currently expensive on-chain fees.

[pooya87]

This Ordinals spam is a good example of how a huge influx of new users could look like.

Yes, but there are still some major differences too.
For example remember your own first days with bitcoin. How many transactions did you make in first week or first month? 1? 10? Multiply that with 100k new users and it still wouldn't be as many transactions per minute as the spam attacks inject into the mempool. There are currently 340k transactions in the mempool.

[Pmalek]

Yes, but there are still some major differences too.
For example remember your own first days with bitcoin. How many transactions did you make in first week or first month? 1? 10? Multiply that with 100k new users and it still wouldn't be as many transactions per minute as the spam attacks inject into the mempool. There are currently 340k transactions in the mempool.

Bitcoin now is easier to use than what it was in the beginning. You have a lot of more software and hardware alternatives. You have loads of exchanges. It's easier to find information and tutorials on how to start than 10+ years ago. Chances are that you know someone who introduced you to the technology who can show you how to begin. In our time, it was new to everyone and the information was limited.

I am very much against the Ordinals spam, but how to get rid of it or at least minimize it without applying censorship? Regardless of the negative opinions on Ordinals, Bitcoin wouldn't be a censorship-resistant blockchain if you censored and forbid Ordinals. Are they breaking any consensus rules? No. If they did, the transactions would be rejected and wouldn't find their way into legit blocks. So, the blockchain functions the way it's supposed to. Sadly, they are playing by the rules. I would like to emphasize that, sadly. I didn't follow closely the entire issue of Ocean mining pool and what they did recently. But their attempt to stop Ordinals resulted in tagging Samourai Whirlpool transactions as irregular as well. That's censorship.       

[satscraper]

And many of the gamblers don't know they are wasting time and money either,

Ordinals and other similar stuff developers are trying to  piggyback off of Bitcoin  success and utilize its brand in BLT. Boneheads, dazzled by  brand, are buying that junk  in the hope to make money on it. Miners are doing their job and secure network. They are the only players in the field who can not be blamed.  As the matter of fact one can view the current situation as the  stress test scenario for the future development when after two or three upcoming halving the fee must reach a level high enough to be the only incentive for miners .

[Synchronice]

It's not miners' fault if people are willing to pay 60 times and 100 times higher transaction fees than recommended.

Sometimes these things is because of broken implementations that suggest much higher fees and in some cases there are malicious fee estimation websites that intentionally suggest a ridiculously high fee rate.

I know there is a moment when errors happen because of wrong suggestions but to my mind, this is bullshit in this case but I'll be frank and say that I don't understand the real motives either. Imagine you have send $18,000 and Electrum or malicious fee estimator suggest you to pay $6400 in transaction fees, let's be frank, would any human say: okay, these are recommended fees, let's pay $6400 and send my coins. No one will do that if they don't get back more, that's why I lose my mind, can't figure out why that happens with 100% confidence.

If you remember the situation before the Ordinals Attack began, you can see that the 4 MB weight was enough to handle the real demand. But after the spam attack began, the fees started going up and stayed up.
In other words the problem isn't the block space.

I haven't seen blocks higher than 2MB on mempool.space
By the way, ordinals make me laugh. The existence of Bitcoin ordinals is not a problem but it's a problem that people pay tons of money to buy them. People pay so much money in pixelated bullshit that tens of thousands of people every day pay enormously high transaction fees to create ordinals as soon as possible. In other words, dumb people create dumb problems. Block size increase or ordinals ban can't decrease the number of dumb people, they need a better education. This is sarcasm for sure!

[hosseinimr93]

I haven't seen blocks higher than 2MB on mempool.space

We had 5 blocks larger than 2 MB in the past 24 hours.

• 822136
  
• 822200
  
• 822202
  
• 822207
  
• 822208
  

Segwit upgrade increased the maximum block size to 1 vMB or 4 million weight units. The block size in bytes depends on types of the transactions included in the block and can be up to 4 MB.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Doesn't really help much because you still need to open and fund the channel and close it eventually. Both are on-chain transactions and require those currently expensive on-chain fees.

But, maybe that's the only cure. You cannot fit everyone on-chain. If history of cryptocurrencies has taught us something, it's this. I agree that a regulated block size increase might mitigate the problem, but only temporarily. The real solution has to come from a second layer, and sadly, I don't see lightning being that one.

Introducing censorship to lower the fees is definitely not an option. I prefer having terabytes of Ordinals blockchain than that.

[philipma1957]

With attacks like this it would not be that hard for someone with unlimited funds ^{like gov.} to make bitcoin almost unusable for most people  

You might have meant it as a joke but it's not. The enemies of Bitcoin can't easily attack the decentralized ledger reproduced across tens of thousands of computers. They also can't easily attack and put out of business the thousands of mining companies and small-time home miners. What they can do is exactly what you said: attack the value transfer. Make it difficult and expensive to use Bitcoin and then fud, through their media, what a waste of time and resources Bitcoin is.

Maybe it's time for another fork, and more people need to use Lightning Network for small transactions.

Doesn't really help much because you still need to open and fund the channel and close it eventually. Both are on-chain transactions and require those currently expensive on-chain fees.

Well you can find an exchange that offers LN services. Deposit cash in the exchange and buy some btc.

I did a thread that shows how to use Kraken and or nicehash..  

The two catches are KYC and you do not have the KEYS

but lets pretend you have 1000usd in btc keep 900 in a wallet and 100 on the exchange problem is solved so to speak.

here is a how to thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5478443.msg63346745#msg63346745






@ BlackHatCoiner  you posted as I was typing above.

I agree with you and I think people need to look into LN. The thread I did will show more ways to use LN  over the next months.

Doesn't really help much because you still need to open and fund the channel and close it eventually. Both are on-chain transactions and require those currently expensive on-chain fees.

But, maybe that's the only cure. You cannot fit everyone on-chain. If history of cryptocurrencies has taught us something, it's this. I agree that a regulated block size increase might mitigate the problem, but only temporarily. The real solution has to come from a second layer, and sadly, I don't see lightning being that one.

Introducing censorship to lower the fees is definitely not an option. I prefer having terabytes of Ordinals blockchain than that.

All things point to high fees on the main chain. So learn a way to use LN

[Pmalek]

I haven't seen blocks higher than 2MB on mempool.space

As hosseinimr93 mentioned, the block size in MBs is no longer the statistic you should focus on. Keep an eye on the weight in MWU. If you take a look at the last 3 blocks, which were all below 2 MB/block (1.69 MB, 1.75 MB, and 1.78 MB), all three were full. Two had a weight of 4 MWU and one 3.99 MWU.

Blocks: 822245, 822246, 822247

[BlackHatCoiner]

I agree with you and I think people need to look into LN. The thread I did will show more ways to use LN  over the next months.

People absolutely need to use it, I'm myself using it for commercial transactions, but it isn't the solution to the problem either. Even currently, it takes a lot of money to open and close just one channel, and a lot of space if we are to dedicate a channel to each person.

Let's do some math. Regular opening and closing channel transactions are roughly 150 vB and 180 vB respectively. With block size being limited to 4 MvB, you can fit up to about 12 thousand channels in a block (the entire channel, with the closing transaction included). If 10 million people would want to join lightning, it'd take roughly 10M / 12k = 833 blocks. That's about 6 days of blocks filled to the top exclusively with lightning channels. For a billion people? 600 days. And that's under the hypothesis that:

- there will be no other on-chain transactions.
- no person will ever open more than a channel.
- opening and closing transactions will just have an input and two outputs respectively. (which is the minimum)

[philipma1957]

I agree with you and I think people need to look into LN. The thread I did will show more ways to use LN  over the next months.

People absolutely need to use it, I'm myself using it for commercial transactions, but it isn't the solution to the problem either. Even currently, it takes a lot of money to open and close just one channel, and a lot of space if we are to dedicate a channel to each person.

Let's do some math. Regular opening and closing channel transactions are roughly 150 vB and 180 vB respectively. With block size being limited to 4 MvB, you can fit up to about 12 thousand channels in a block (the entire channel, with the closing transaction included). If 10 million people would want to join lightning, it'd take roughly 10M / 12k = 833 blocks. That's about 6 days of blocks filled to the top exclusively with lightning channels. For a billion people? 600 days. And that's under the hypothesis that:

- there will be no other on-chain transactions.
- no person will ever open more than a channel.
- opening and closing transactions will just have an input and two outputs respectively. (which is the minimum)

For me as a primary miner

LN-Nicehash
LN-Kraken
LN-Electrum

should fix my issues as long as the three companies above do not fuck with their "free" services.

The risk of feeding $1000-$2000 into my Nicehash wallet  for mining Kawpow was already being taken. So I have 1000-2000 a month I can use kawpow.
the risk of using kraken was already there.

I just need to learn LN on electrum.

[UmerIdrees]

Doesn't really help much because you still need to open and fund the channel and close it eventually. Both are on-chain transactions and require those currently expensive on-chain fees.

But, maybe that's the only cure. You cannot fit everyone on-chain. If history of cryptocurrencies has taught us something, it's this. I agree that a regulated block size increase might mitigate the problem, but only temporarily. The real solution has to come from a second layer, and sadly, I don't see lightning being that one.

Introducing censorship to lower the fees is definitely not an option. I prefer having terabytes of Ordinals blockchain than that.

If the lightning network is not the second layer solution to Bitcoin, then what is the 2nd layer solution that exists at the moment?
Nothing I guess 

Though the miners may be liking the situation as they get a higher reward on every blocked mine but for the end user (most of us ) would be waiting for the mempool fee to normalize to transact using Bitcoin or some may switch to other coins (for the time being) for cheaper transactions? Unless it is necessary to send Bitcoin, or those rich bodies to whom high fees do not matter,  no one would be using the Bitcoin network at the moment.