Wonder who this solominer is? 88.6.216.9

[John (John K.)]

weather its a botnet or not it really does not matter

the big problem here (for Bitcoin) is the fact that they are not accepting any transactions in their blocks. It does not really matter if its a zombie botnet or a group of former KGB members with a ASIC farm humming in the basement of the Kremlin.

We need to put pressure on these folks any way we can, at least until the Bitcoin developers come up with a either a way to enforce transactions (not sure if this is even possible) or come up with some way to get rogue miners like this to want to accept them. Its obvious they care nothing about the Bitcoin network but they certainly care about making money and thats where we need to hit them.

To me this is really simple. Make it worth while for miners to accept your transactions. If you pay a higher transaction fee more mining power will play nice and compete to pull in your transaction.

Have a look at the last 10 blocks. None of them have total fee that gets close to 0.1 BTC. Compare that to the 50 BTC block reward.

If I for some reason had access to a huge set of idle computers and wanted them to mine for me I'd have to develop/maintain/update software that effectively turns it into a distributed system. My software would be easier to develop/manage (and more stealthy) if I didn't have to push pending transactions around. With the current fees it is simply not worth the extra hassle.

In other words: If I had 10% of the total mining power, what would be my incentive to pull transactions into my block? Nothing. Don't give me that "I'll do it for the greater good" crap, this is not how the world works. The other 90% make sure that my coins can be spent and keep their value.

Unless the fees increase dramatically(or the block rewards is halved a couple of times), this would hold true.

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[muyuu]

The point is not that he is mining anonymously, but that he is almost certainly stealing computing resources on a massive scale

That is your justification/excuse for "intervention" but in reality, for bitcoin it doesn't matter one bit where do his resources come from and they could perfectly be legit and the problem for bitcoin would be the same.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Unless the fees increase dramatically(or the block rewards is halved a couple of times), this would hold true.

Luckily both of those are solvable problems.  Block rewards will (eventually) be a tiny fraction of current value.  Fees will need to rise.

Personally I would make a larger minimum fee change to the protocol.  Note free transactions would still be possible but 1 satoshi fee wouldn't be valid. 

Then if say 50% of miners said they won't include free transactions then people would have a choice.  Send it free and wait 20 minutes or send it with a small (but above protocol enforced minimum) and wait 10 minutes. If the minimum fee (remember free is still possible) was 0.01 BTC then a block with 200 paying transactions would be worth 2 BTC.  When block reward drops to 25 BTC you are looking at an 8% loss (vs 0.3% now) by not including tx fees.

There is the economic incentive to build more complex software and include paying transactions.

Currently there is absolutely no economic reason to include transactions.  None.  The sub fractional pennies it is worth doesn't even come close to the work, software, bugs, glitches, additional long polls, etc.  Most miners just include tx to be "nice" and provide "free support" to the network they want to see flourish.  As the network grows that kind of model will become more antiquated. 

Note: this could also be accomplished without a protocol change by a cartel of miners with enough combined hashing power to affect transaction times.  The issue there is cheating (just like in OPEC).  If you draw the line at 0.01 and there are enough 0.001 to 0.0008 BTC tx there is an incentive to "cheat".  Still it could be done. 

[muyuu]

Unless the fees increase dramatically(or the block rewards is halved a couple of times), this would hold true.

Luckily both of those are solvable problems.  Block rewards will (eventually) be a tiny fraction of current value.  Fees will need to rise.

Personally I would make a larger minimum fee change to the protocol.  Note free transactions would still be possible but 1 satoshi fee wouldn't be valid. 

Then if say 50% of miners said they won't include free transactions then people would have a choice.  Send it free and wait 20 minutes or send it with a small (but above protocol enforced minimum) and wait 10 minutes. If the minimum fee (remember free is still possible) was 0.01 BTC then a block with 200 paying transactions would be worth 2 BTC.  When block reward drops to 25 BTC you are looking at an 8% loss (vs 0.3% now) by not including tx fees.

There is the economic incentive to build more complex software and include paying transactions.

Currently there is absolutely no economic reason to include transactions.  None.  The sub fractional pennies it is worth doesn't even come close to the work, software, bugs, glitches, additional long polls, etc.  Most miners just include tx to be "nice" and provide "free support" to the network they want to see flourish.  As the network grows that kind of model will become more antiquated. 

Note: this could also be accomplished without a protocol change by a cartel of miners with enough combined hashing power to affect transaction times.  The issue there is cheating (just like in OPEC).  If you draw the line at 0.01 and there are enough 0.001 to 0.0008 BTC tx there is an incentive to "cheat".  Still it could be done. 

You can already set your threshold to whatever you want. If a few big pools do it, then the effect you describe would be achieved. When a couple noobs fail to get their transactions through in reasonable time they will blame bitcoin, though.

[benjamindees]

• appeared out of nowhere
• has 20% of the hashing power
• is hostile

do the math...

[muyuu]

• appeared out of nowhere
• has 20% of the hashing power
• is hostile

do the math...

Doesn't give a fuck about the extra 0.3% in transaction fees / it isn't worth for him because of the structure of his operation. Not necessarily means he's hostile.

[DeathAndTaxes]

• appeared out of nowhere months ago and has grown (likely because Bitcoin mining is profitable)
• has 20% of the hashing power and deepbit has double that
• is hostile I like jumping to conclusions and am scared of shadows.

FYPFY

[P4man]

• appeared out of nowhere months ago and has grown (likely because Bitcoin mining is profitable)
• has 20% of the hashing power and deepbit has double that
• is hostile I like jumping to conclusions and am scared of shadows.

FYPFY

There is no saying he appeared months ago and "grew".  There have been 1 TX blocks for months or longer, its impossible to say if its the same miner or not, but the 1+TH appeared 2 weeks ago and pretty damn sudden. See chart I made earlier.

[pieppiep]

If the protocol would be changed so that a fee is mandatory or there is a minimum fee, what would be a good value?
At the moment a bitcoin is just a few euro or dollar, so minimum of 0.01 BTC sounds good. But if much more people are going to use it and the value of BTC is 1000 dollar, the minimum fee would be 10 dollar? A bit much if you want to buy one bread.
On the other hand, what would be a good percentage to pay for a transaction? 0.1% of the transaction value would be acceptable for something like a bread, but a bit much if you want to buy your house with BTC.

[DeepBit]

If the protocol would be changed so that a fee is mandatory or there is a minimum fee, what would be a good value?
At the moment a bitcoin is just a few euro or dollar, so minimum of 0.01 BTC sounds good. But if much more people are going to use it and the value of BTC is 1000 dollar, the minimum fee would be 10 dollar? A bit much if you want to buy one bread.
On the other hand, what would be a good percentage to pay for a transaction? 0.1% of the transaction value would be acceptable for something like a bread, but a bit much if you want to buy your house with BTC.

Protocol change is not needed, anyone can configure fee amount in their clients according to current BTC rate.

[P4man]

Protocol change is not needed, anyone can configure fee amount in their clients according to current BTC rate.

But of course almost no one will. Its like asking people to pay their taxes voluntarily.
A protocol change might be a bridge too far, but it might not be a bad idea to have the default client at least  suggest a higher fee for larger transactions.

[spiccioli]

Protocol change is not needed, anyone can configure fee amount in their clients according to current BTC rate.

But of course almost no one will. Its like asking people to pay their taxes voluntarily.
A protocol change might be a bridge too far, but it might not be a bad idea to have the default client at least  suggest a higher fee for larger transactions.

P4man,


higher fees could be a problem for developing countries.

Empty blocks should not be accepted if there are a certain number (value?) of waiting transactions.

spiccioli

[dizzy1]

Why is it that suddenly blocks that have a higher height has was created before the current block? I've noticed this a few times in the last week. Unless blockchain.info's info is off.

https://i.imgur.com/FhVME.png

[P4man]

higher fees could be a problem for developing countries.

I did say "suggest" (ie, the user could always override it, because he can anyway) and "for larger transactions".
Someone sending 1000BTC is not going to switch to western union when he is kindly asked to pay 0.1 BTC fees instead of 0.001. Whether he lives in Congo or Monaco doesnt change a thing either.

[Zeikos]

This thread reminds me about another discussion that was talking about a hypotetical AI based on gaining bitcoins 
actualy it's a useless reply but whatever 

[roomservice]

This thread reminds me about another discussion that was talking about a hypotetical AI based on gaining bitcoins 
actualy it's a useless reply but whatever 

{SKYNET ONLINE}

[DeepBit]

Protocol change is not needed, anyone can configure fee amount in their clients according to current BTC rate.

But of course almost no one will. Its like asking people to pay their taxes voluntarily.
A protocol change might be a bridge too far, but it might not be a bad idea to have the default client at least  suggest a higher fee for larger transactions.

It's not similar to taxes at all. More like paying for a service. Usually you can't pay as much taxes as you want and get some services accordingly.

Fees aren't related to protocol, but yes, client's default setting considerably affects them.
People should be able to set zero fees if they are feeling lucky.

[conspirosphere.tk]

Empty blocks should not be accepted if there are a certain number (value?) of waiting transactions.

This is the best idea I heard up to now. At least would keep the network working.

[spiccioli]

higher fees could be a problem for developing countries.

I did say "suggest" (ie, the user could always override it, because he can anyway) and "for larger transactions".
Someone sending 1000BTC is not going to switch to western union when he is kindly asked to pay 0.1 BTC fees instead of 0.001. Whether he lives in Congo or Monaco doesnt change a thing either.

P4man,

I think that if fees are just suggested nobody will pay them even for big amounts.

Small fees work well if you have millions of transactions daily, at that point even a milliBTC fee is enough, but right now there is not such a volume of transactions going on, so you need very high fees to make it worth adding transactions to blocks.

spiccioli

[rjk]

Empty blocks should not be accepted if there are a certain number (value?) of waiting transactions.

This is the best idea I heard up to now. At least would keep the network working.

This would suck for those that might occasionally get partitioned off the main net, which happens occasionally. But if that were the problem, they probably wouldn't be getting valid blocks out in enough time anyway.

This is an interesting concept however, but I'm fairly sure it would be non-trivial to implement.