UTXOs and Bitcointalks's Signature Campaigns

[SickDayIn]

For those that participate in Bitcoin Signature Campaigns, a significant number of UTXOs are generated which impede their ability to spend or use their coins, and the costs associated with the transfer by the campaign manager are also high and inefficient.

I haven't participated in any signature campaigns on BitcoinTalk, but I have observed this and I am curious on what current members think about the topic of Unspent Transaction Outputs (UTXOs) and signature campaigns.

Currently there are a lot of signature campaigns run paying $40 - 50 USD of BTC per week, however transaction fees are sitting around $3 - 50+ USD per week at the moment, particularly post Bitcoin halving.

For anyone that has participated in these campaigns if they wish to sell or trade their coins, they'll have a ton of UTXOs and so the fees calculated to combine these could be immensely high. Even if currently the fiat value is not absurdly high, long term when the fiat price of BTC continues to rise, they will look back and recognise how much BTC they had to pay to spend these coins.

Is there any fix or solution to this?

The only thing I can imagine is that Bitcointalk.org offers an escrow service of some kind where users are sent coins directly as transfers on the forum, similar to the sMerit system, but they can be withdrawn at a certain amount. That way 10 weeks of campaign participation result in 1 UTXO via withdrawing from Bitcointalk forum escrow rather than multiple directly from the campaign manager. The development and security efforts required may not be worth it, but curious to hear your perspectives.

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[_act_]

Nobody in signature campaign will go with your idea. They will prefer weekly payment than escrow.

The solution to it is that you should consolidate when the transaction fee is lower while mempool is not congested.

[Zaguru12]

Is there any fix or solution to this?

There is a more easier solution, since you’re not spending the utxo immediately and you’re waiting for it to pile up. Then try to consolidate your utxo together whenever the fees are low. This is how many people you receive different transactions do. The fees can never be so high every time.

The only thing I can imagine is that Bitcointalk.org offers an escrow service of some kind where users are sent coins directly as transfers on the forum, similar to the sMerit system, but they can be withdrawn at a certain amount. That way 10 weeks of campaign participation result in 1 UTXO via withdrawing from Bitcointalk forum escrow rather than multiple directly from the campaign manager. The development and security efforts required may not be worth it, but curious to hear your perspectives.

What happens when the forum runs into problems? It is never advisable to leave your funds on centralized entity which you don’t have control over, in my understanding this is your solution is same as leaving funds on centralized entities

[PX-Z]

It's not actually that huge, even for 10 weeks of UTXOs. What actually make fees go higher is if you received tons of dust UTXOs. By dust means tons of below 10k sats amount you received. Which will obviously create so much fees by transaction size.

[dzungmobile]

For those that participate in Bitcoin Signature Campaigns

There are campaigns that pay participants in Bitcoin and in altcoins.

The only thing I can imagine is that Bitcointalk.org offers an escrow service of some kind where users are sent coins directly as transfers on the forum

Escrow can not do anything if the chain used is still Bitcoin. There will be on chain transaction fee from the Escrow and can not reduce the cost. You can consider campaign managers as Escrow of signature campaign funds. They escrow campaign fund and distribute it weekly, bi weekly or monthly.

Is there any fix or solution to this?

Change the intensity of payment from weekly to longer one like bi weekly or month.

Change the payment method from Bitcoin to altcoins.
Generally signature campaigns are from companies, not from the forum. This topic does not belong to Meta board, move it to Service discussion board please.

[Coyster]

Is there any fix or solution to this?

This is not a forum problem, but one for the campaign manager and their participants, they can agree to collect payments monthly or bi-weekly, but it has nothing to do with the forum per se or its administrators.

The only thing I can imagine is that Bitcointalk.org offers an escrow service of some kind where users are sent coins directly as transfers on the forum, similar to the sMerit system, but they can be withdrawn at a certain amount.

I don't really understand what you are trying to say here, firstly, the forum in itself does not offer escrow services and how do you send Bitcoin in a way that is similar to the merit system? Bitcointalk does not pay users on this forum, it is corporations that run campaigns here, that pays people who advertise their service, so it is up to their campaign managers to decide what is best for business and also those "hired".

[_act_]

What happens when the forum runs into problems? It is never advisable to leave your funds on centralized entity which you don’t have control over, in my understanding this is your solution is same as leaving funds on centralized entities

I wanted to post this also but there are different ways of using escrow. It can go for 2-of-3 multisig in a way that the escrow will not have anything to gain, even if he wants to steal the money, he will not be able to steal it.

But this will not change the fact that people will not want that but prefer to consolidate the utxos.

[Solosanz]

Or, you can just ask the campaign manager to withhold your payment for x weeks before he transfer to your address, simple.

You also need to know if many users who participate in signature campaign choose to use centralized exchange over their own personal wallet, so there's no problem with high fees. It's really easy to check in explorer, sometime they ask the managers to change their wallet address since CEX no longer accept their old address.

Edit:

And now Satoshi is spinning at 9000 RPM in his sleep.

Sorry, clicked too fast without re-check.

[stompix]

Is there any fix or solution to this?

The only thing I can imagine is that Bitcointalk.org offers an escrow service of some kind where users are sent coins directly as transfers on the forum, similar to the sMerit system, but they can be withdrawn at a certain amount.

Use Doge!
And now that I committed the greatest blasphemy ever to have been uttered on this forum , bun me!  

You also need to know if many users who participate in signature campaign choose to use centralized exchange wallet over their own personal wallet, so there's no problem with high fees.

And now Satoshi is spinning at 9000 RPM in his sleep.

[mocacinno]

You can always ask your campaign manager to roll over your payments untill a certain value has been reached... I know several members did this in the past, and i would have no problem doing this right now (since i trust the campaign manager i'm currently working with).

An other solution would be to open a lightning channel between the manager and the participant. An opening transaction that *should* have a sufficient value to cover a full year of weekly payments and one closing transaction after said year would replace 50 small transactions. It might not even be required to open a channel between the manager and the participant if both have sufficient open channels with value on both sides to begin with (eventough small fees will arise if there isn't a direct channel between manager and participant).

Or, like said by other members: altcoins

Or, just consolidate the UTXO's when the fees dip.

[Zaguru12]

I wanted to post this also but there are different ways of using escrow. It can go for 2-of-3 multisig in a way that the escrow will not have anything to gain, even if he wants to steal the money, he will not be able to steal it.

But this will not change the fact that people will not want that but prefer to consolidate the utxos.

A good idea but it depends on who keep the third co-signer key. If you keep it, it’s as same as a standard wallet and if another third party keep it then the risk of losing your funds so still there.

More so we are talking about saving fees from the first place, a multisig transaction has a larger size than normal or standard wallet transaction. If it increases the fees then it is not worth the hassle then.

[Upgrade00]

Is there any fix or solution to this?

The only thing I can imagine is that Bitcointalk.org offers an escrow service of some kind <snip>

The forum will never get involved in signature campaigns, this includes holding payment, regulating how much they pay etc.

Other actual solutions;
• Rolling your payment over several weeks,
• Consolidating your utxos when fees are low,
• Using a segwit address,
• Receiving your payment directly to an exchange address (I do not recommend).
• LN has never been used, but it practically will be able to reduce payments as far as the participants do not wish to transfer onchain each week they are paid.

[Husires]

If it is difficult to use Bitcoin on a weekly basis, it is better to stop promoting Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency. The fees are currently high, but there will come times when you can broadcast your transaction for less than 10 sat/vByte and then it will be possible to accumulate all UTXOs into larger future inputs.

[Maus0728]

@_act_ is right, people here would prefer the monthly payments rather than using an escrow, not to mention that there's not really a lot of reputable escrows nowadays, you can't trust anyone with large amounts of bitcoins anymore, even if you don't want to believe and believe that there's still something good in the human heart, it's still not a plausible way to do that kind of thing with escrows anymore. Remember the blankcode incident or the Charity that they did, the escrow wasn't doing it right and the funds were sort of embezzled and misappropriated to God knows. Even if you make the campaign managers on board with your idea, the campaign participants would be hesitant to follow through with that plan.

[Sandra_hakeem]

Use Doge!
And now that I committed the greatest blasphemy ever to have been uttered on this forum , bun me!  

Seriously, I took that to be a joke but on what basis should that be? It's no blasphemy to recommend an alternative to evade the fee surge so, you've been forgiven!!  

The fees are currently high, but there will come times when you can broadcast your transaction for less than 10 sat/vByte and then it will be possible to accumulate all UTXOs into larger future inputs.

I can't recall the last time a high priority fee was reduced to 10 sat/Vbyte.... You'll only get your transaction broadcasted for days on low or no priority, until it gets discarded from the mempool

Edit:

You can always ask your campaign manager to roll over your payments untill a certain value has been reached...

how about the transition in exchange rate?

[Lucius]

~snip~
Change the intensity of payment from weekly to longer one like bi weekly or month.

I would immediately choose the monthly option if it existed in any campaign run by a respectable manager - although I don't think it makes sense at the moment, given that the payouts for my current campaign come directly to my casino account. However, I understand those who prefer weekly payments because they probably depend a lot on that money.

Use Doge!
And now that I committed the greatest blasphemy ever to have been uttered on this forum , bun me! 
~snip~

You will probably be punished by negative karma in a parallel crypto universe where Mr. Mars advocates the use of fossil fuels, and Jamie Dimon and Mr. Buffett are the biggest advocates of Bitcoin

[KingsDen]

@_act_ is right, people here would prefer the monthly payments rather than using an escrow, not to mention that there's not really a lot of reputable escrows nowadays, you can't trust anyone with large amounts of bitcoins anymore, even if you don't want to believe and believe that there's still something good in the human heart, it's still not a plausible way to do that kind of thing with escrows anymore. Remember the blankcode incident or the Charity that they did, the escrow wasn't doing it right and the funds were sort of embezzled and misappropriated to God knows. Even if you make the campaign managers on board with your idea, the campaign participants would be hesitant to follow through with that plan.

In the other side of the idea, majority of the campaign managers also offer escrow services. So, if the idea is workable, it therefore means that the managers will dual as managers and also escrow managers which will reduce the risk of embezzlement as you have pointed out.

If it is difficult to use Bitcoin on a weekly basis, it is better to stop promoting Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency. The fees are currently high, but there will come times when you can broadcast your transaction for less than 10 sat/vByte and then it will be possible to accumulate all UTXOs into larger future inputs.

It is obvious that bitcoin is failing fulfil her promise of low transaction fees. And I am afraid the good old days of 10 sat/vByte might be gone forever.

[Igebotz]

It's not actually that huge, even for 10 weeks of UTXOs. What actually make fees go higher is if you received tons of dust UTXOs. By dust means tons of below 10k sats amount you received. Which will obviously create so much fees by transaction size.

Wallet with Coin control and dust control solves all these without breaking a sweat.

[PX-Z]

Wallet with Coin control and dust control solves all these without breaking a sweat.

I tried searching and you are right, looks like that feature already exists. I found your thread on Nigeria board too, but i can't see any for electrum wallet since i'm currently using it.

[SickDayIn]

Apologises all, this thread may have been posted in the wrong section, it can be moved by a moderator to the services discussion thread if preferred.

With my suggestion/solution in the original post, I agree that the forum getting involved in payments or holding coins is not a good idea. The reality is I just didn't know what else to suggest as it seems there are limited options.

However, based on others points in summary it seems changes can be enacted on an individual basis, such as receiving payment on a fortnightly or monthly basis rather than weekly. Or alternatively change nothing but combine the transactions into a single UTXO when the mempool fees are low.