Wonder who this solominer is? 88.6.216.9

[Littleshop]

For all we know they might have found a semi-analytical/statistical algorithm that just takes a few computers and we calculate their hashing power only by solved blocks. AFAIK there's no conclusive evidence that it takes them 1.4GH/s to solve 30 blocks a day. That's just based on the current difficulty. All we know is that it still takes them at least some work to do it, otherwise they would be faster by now.

What??  I do not think you understand hashing. 

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[PulsedMedia]

sub'd

This is indeed rather curious. I guess no ne has more info about the mystery miner ...
Let's just hope if it's some über powerful ASIC rest of us will gain access to it as well.

[wogaut]

What??  I do not think you understand hashing. 

Don't worry, I understand it. You don't need to roll up your sleeves to explain it to me 

Let's hope for the über-powerful ASIC then that we're all so desperately waiting for...

[DeathAndTaxes]

Bitcoin is about freedom.   The protocol rules so you can mine a block with no transactions yet people decide "it isn't fair" and want to change it.  Some people just can't escape the nanny state mentality ("there should be a rule against that").  Sad. 

While I don't think that ignoring empty blocks will work the way some people hope, that seems like an incredibly broad and childish statement.
"Oh, you think there should be a rule against something that could be considered an exploit? Clearly you're just some pathetic government lackey who HATES FREEDOM!"

You said it yourself: The entire Bitcoin protocol is a series of rules designed to force people to behave.

What exploit?  Start paying more fees and miners will be more likely to include them in blocks.  Honestly miners only include transactions in blocks to be nice.  The token amount paid in fees hardly compensates for the work. 

50 BTC for 0 transactions vs 50.001 BTC (or less) for 100+ transactions. 

I might just modify my p2pool node to exclude all transactions with less than a 0.01 reward.

Free markets can solve most problems.   Higher fees = more profits to those who include them which means rising difficulty (as more hardware is deployed to chase those profits) which means lower profits for those who don't include them.  Eventually "mystery" will either be including transactions or taking a huge loss.

However today there really is no loss to not include transactions.  Calling that an exploit is pathetic.  "He won't include my free transactions. .... WAAHHH.  EXPLOIT.  We need to include complex and dangerous counter protocol rules to force him."

Time and resources better spent increasing adoption, improving wallet security, and promoting Bitcoin.

[wogaut]

Honestly miners only include transactions in blocks to be nice. 

Time and resources better spent increasing adoption, improving wallet security, and promoting Bitcoin.

Great, all miners let's not include any transactions and just mine for new blocks as long as the reward is higher than for transactions.

So you really think that will 'increase adoption' and 'promote Bitcoin'?

That would make mining for blocks a rather useless exercise, because until the new block reward dropped substantially in a few years from now hardly anyone but miners will use the system. Yes that's just the other extreme view, I hope reality stays somewhere in between, to actually enable sufficient adoption (meaning using this currency for transactions and pay stuff with it not just hoard and speculate with coins).

Sooooo 'nice' to let other kids play in your sandbox too.

[rjk]

Honestly miners only include transactions in blocks to be nice. 

Time and resources better spent increasing adoption, improving wallet security, and promoting Bitcoin.

Great, all miners let's not include any transactions and just mine for new blocks as long as the reward is higher than for transactions.

So you really think that will 'increase adoption' and 'promote Bitcoin'?

That would make mining for blocks a rather useless exercise, because until the new block reward dropped substantially in a few years from now hardly anyone but miners will use the system. Yes that's just the other extreme view, I hope reality stays somewhere in between, to actually enable sufficient adoption (meaning using this currency for transactions and pay stuff with it not just hoard and speculate with coins).

Sooooo 'nice' to let other kids play in your sandbox too.

You have some other solution for when the subsidy no longer exists? Or are you just trying to milk it until you think you have squeezed everything out of the economy that you can?

0.01 BTC tx fee is not unreasonable.

[kjj]

However today there really is no loss to not include transactions.  Calling that an exploit is pathetic.  "He won't include my free transactions. .... WAAHHH.  EXPLOIT.  We need to include complex and dangerous counter protocol rules to force him."

This nonsense again?

Listen up dude, the only person in this thread that is talking about free transactions is you.  The problem is that these blocks include no transactions at all.

What is under discussion now is what to do in the next decade or two, while the coin generation subsidy is still large enough that it makes sense to mine blocks without transactions.  In the long run, the market will set the fees.  You don't need to keep repeating that because we all know it.  The whole system is designed around it.  But what happens in the short run can prevent the long run from happening.

P.S.  My proposal is neither complex nor dangerous.

[wogaut]

Honestly miners only include transactions in blocks to be nice.  

Time and resources better spent increasing adoption, improving wallet security, and promoting Bitcoin.

Great, all miners let's not include any transactions and just mine for new blocks as long as the reward is higher than for transactions.

So you really think that will 'increase adoption' and 'promote Bitcoin'?

That would make mining for blocks a rather useless exercise, because until the new block reward dropped substantially in a few years from now hardly anyone but miners will use the system. Yes that's just the other extreme view, I hope reality stays somewhere in between, to actually enable sufficient adoption (meaning using this currency for transactions and pay stuff with it not just hoard and speculate with coins).

Just see kjj posted a resonable reply to D&T meanwhile.


Sooooo 'nice' to let other kids play in your sandbox too.

You have some other solution for when the subsidy no longer exists? Or are you just trying to milk it until you think you have squeezed everything out of the economy that you can?

0.01 BTC tx fee is not unreasonable.

What, me?

I'm not milking anything, just trying to use it.
Miners still get rewarded duly right now, anybody who complains about transactions being in their way for their "get rich quickly" (not quoting myself, read it on these boards) plan is trying to milk it.

When the time comes that new coin rewards are not sufficient anymore to sustain the system I'll happily do my share (I'm already granting higher fees than the default).

Just saw that kjj posted a reasonable reply to D&T. +1.

[DeathAndTaxes]

"free" = "almost free".  0.001 BTC extra per block is essentially free.  In aggregate transaction fees are worthless.  Economic theory would suggest when something is worthless people don't care about aquiring it.  It isn't an "exploit" that someone doesn't go out of their way to complete worthless work.  Do you pick up pennies on the street?  Should you be forced to do so?  What if they weren't pennies and instead were penny dust where it multiple just to be worth a single penny?

0.001 BTC per block in fees is ~= worthless.  It isn't worthwhile to mine transactions, hence someone not doing it isn't an exploit.  Honestly miners only include transactions with low/no fees to "support" Bitcoin not out of any direct economic value.  If in aggregate transaction fees were higher then there would be more economic incentive to include them.

You did finally convince me though so congrats.  I will be modifying the p2pool code to exclude all transactions without a fee of at least 0.01.  I won't be including worthless transactions either so I will be exploiting too.  I will make the changes available by open source so anyone else can do the same.  Hopefully other "exploiters" will join me.  If enough people do it fees per block will rise and there will be a correlation between pay and performance. 

[wogaut]

Honestly miners only include fees to "support" Bitcoin not out of any economic value.  

Now that does _not_ make sense at all.

Of course they support it for an economic value.

Without getting people to adopt the bitcoin currency the economic value of the miners BTC would be worth squat. If you told users hey you all have to process your transactions for yourselves while we [the miners] rake in the dough for producing coins I don't see a widespread case for BTC.

Of course there's an economic motive behind processing transactions for "almost free" right now. View it as a promotional offer to get people hooked on BTC and allow miners and hoarders to benefit from their coin mining, because a currency needs an economy. I have no doubt that transaction fees need to increase over the coming years but if all miners exclude transactions now (if one's doing it, then why no all?) you'll be sitting in your sandbox alone pretty soon without kids to play with. So play nice.

[kjj]

"free" = "almost free".  0.001 BTC extra per block is essentially free.  In aggregate transaction fees are worthless.  Economic theory would suggest when something is worthless people don't care about aquiring it.  It isn't an "exploit" that someone doesn't go out of their way to complete worthless work.  Do you pick up pennies on the street?  Should you be forced to do so?  What if they weren't pennies and instead were penny dust where it multiple just to be worth a single penny?

0.001 BTC per block in fees is ~= worthless.  It isn't worthwhile to mine transactions, hence someone not doing it isn't an exploit.  Honestly miners only include fees to "support" Bitcoin not out of any economic value.  If in aggregate transaction fees were higher then there would be more economic incentive to include them.

You did finally convince me though so congrats.  I will be modifying the p2pool code to exclude all transactions without a fee of at least 0.01.  I won't be including worthless transactions either so I will be exploiting too.  I will make the changes available by open source so anyone else can do the same.

See, this isn't like picking up pennies on the street.  Not at all.

We (meaning the community) are paying for a service.  This person has found a loophole in our agreement, and they are taking the pay, but not providing the services that we desire.  The work may be worthless to them, but it is not worthless to us.  And since we are the ones paying, we have the right to revise the terms under which we'll pay for the work.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I have no doubt that transaction fees need to increase over the coming years but if all miners exclude transactions now (if one's doing it, then why no all?) you'll be sitting in your sandbox alone pretty soon without kids to play with. So play nice.

Really?  If it cost 0.01 BTC (roughly 5 pennies) to send any amount of money, anonymously, securely, and safely anywhere in the world there would be no value to Bitcoin?  If you think that Bitcoin can't survive with fees 1/100th of Paypal or VISA what are you doing here?  Personally I think Bitcoin is valuable even with higher fees but I am willing to start at 0.01 BTC.  I won't be "playing nice".  Playing nice has simply led us to this point where people think refusing to include transactions (THE RIGHT OF MINERS) is an exploit.  Miners can't make the network pay a fees but they certainly have the right to exclude transactions. 

[DeathAndTaxes]

We (meaning the community) are paying for a service.  This person has found a loophole in our agreement, and they are taking the pay, but not providing the services that we desire.  The work may be worthless to them, but it is not worthless to us.  And since we are the ones paying, we have the right to revise the terms under which we'll pay for the work.

Your proposal isn't going anywhere.  Starting tomorrow I will be "exploiting" also.  Hopefully in time if enough miners choose to not give freeloaders first class access to transaction processing we will see more of a correlation between pay and performance.

[DeepBit]

We (meaning the community) are paying for a service.  This person has found a loophole in our agreement, and they are taking the pay, but not providing the services that we desire.  The work may be worthless to them, but it is not worthless to us.  And since we are the ones paying, we have the right to revise the terms under which we'll pay for the work.

May be 50 BTC is the reward for securing the blockchain, not for including TXes ?

[pieppiep]

I still think the most important thing is that they have not figured out how to circumvent the proof of work...  they will eventually include transactions when you can make some btc's from it..  currently it is still mostly block reward!

Why do we know that?
We know that they solve about 30 blocks/day.

For all we know they might have found a semi-analytical/statistical algorithm that just takes a few computers and we calculate their hashing power only by solved blocks. AFAIK there's no conclusive evidence that it takes them 1.4GH/s to solve 30 blocks a day. That's just based on the current difficulty. All we know is that it still takes them at least some work to do it, otherwise they would be faster by now.

That simple can not be true because I want to be the first who finds a flaw in (double) sha256 and make bitcoins that way.

btw, I'm sure there is a way to find collisions or even create a specific hash value, I'm just not sure if it will be found before 2^256 is possible to bruteforce.

[PulsedMedia]

That simple can not be true because I want to be the first who finds a flaw in (double) sha256 and make bitcoins that way.

btw, I'm sure there is a way to find collisions or even create a specific hash value, I'm just not sure if it will be found before 2^256 is possible to bruteforce.

ehrm... don't tell this anyone but .... Bitcoin mining is bruteforcing it! *looks shadily around hoping no one heard that*

XD

[muyuu]

I have no doubt that transaction fees need to increase over the coming years but if all miners exclude transactions now (if one's doing it, then why no all?) you'll be sitting in your sandbox alone pretty soon without kids to play with. So play nice.

Really?  If it cost 0.01 BTC (roughly 5 pennies) to send any amount of money, anonymously, securely, and safely anywhere in the world there would be no value to Bitcoin?  If you think that Bitcoin can't survive with fees 1/100th of Paypal or VISA what are you doing here?  Personally I think Bitcoin is valuable even with higher fees but I am willing to start at 0.01 BTC.  I won't be "playing nice".  Playing nice has simply led us to this point where people think refusing to include transactions (THE RIGHT OF MINERS) is an exploit.  Miners can't make the network pay a fees but they certainly have the right to exclude transactions.  

Any fee that's considered reasonable or unreasonable by looking at the current exchange with US$ is introducing a factor of indexation with the dollar.

IMO the fee should be adjusted, like difficulty, in terms of the previous blocks, so that they are expected to add up to a certain quantity per block.

Let's take, for instance 1000 blocks as the unit of adjustment (1 week is 1008, so 1000 blocks would roughly include the variation expected during weekends/workdays and low/high hours) and let's say we want the total pay-out coming from fees to add up to 60 - current_block_reward (making total reward from fees + block discovery more or less stable at 60 over time). With 100 average transactions per block, that would mean an average 0.1 fee right now (60 - current_block_reward = 10). With 1000 transactions, that would mean a 0.01 fee. We'd need more transactions for this to be viable, and we'd need many more as block reward decreases.

Note that any mechanism forcing people to pay a fee will most certainly lead to fewer transactions. Users would try to bundle more payments in fewer transactions. Obviously this also leads to less blockchain bloat, but as a general rule I think it's safe to say we want more transactions.

The voluntary fee scheme is something I saw as a potential source of problems since I first read about it. As you say, miners can't make the network pay a fee but they have the right to exclude transactions. This can lead to an uncertainty over what fee will make my transaction go through that ultimately hurts the whole system. I believe we will have to abandon this charity shop style of operation and switch to a "serious business" style of operation, where people know expected prices and are given some guarantees of getting what they paid for, in regards to fees and transactions.

[kjj]

We (meaning the community) are paying for a service.  This person has found a loophole in our agreement, and they are taking the pay, but not providing the services that we desire.  The work may be worthless to them, but it is not worthless to us.  And since we are the ones paying, we have the right to revise the terms under which we'll pay for the work.

May be 50 BTC is the reward for securing the blockchain, not for including TXes ?

Seriously?

If that is the case, then the whole system was set up totally wrong.  The reward for securing the block chain will get lower and lower over time, presumably as the need for security grows, and will eventually end up at zero.

No, the two are combined for a reason.  There is no block chain to secure without transactions, and there are no transactions without the block chain.  You literally cannot have one without the other, and so the reward is for doing both jobs, not just one or the other.

[kjj]

Note that any mechanism forcing people to pay a fee will most certainly lead to fewer transactions. Users would try to bundle more payments in fewer transactions. Obviously this also lead to less blockchain bloat, but as a general rule I think it's safe to say we want more transactions.

The voluntary fee scheme is something I saw as a potential source of problems since I first read about it. As you say, miners can't make the network pay a fees but they have the right to exclude transactions. This can lead to an uncertainty over what fee will make my transaction go through that ultimately hurts the whole system. I believe we will have to abandon this charity shop style of operation and switch to a "serious business" style of operation, where people know expected prices and are given some guarantees of getting what they paid for, in regards to fees and transactions.

The problem is that right now the subsidy is still huge.  D&T thinks that there should be a minimum fee of 0.01 BTC per transaction.  This is still one or two orders of magnitude too low for transaction fees to be meaningful today.

[DeathAndTaxes]

The voluntary fee scheme is something I saw as a potential source of problems since I first read about it. As you say, miners can't make the network pay a fees but they have the right to exclude transactions. This can lead to an uncertainty over what fee will make my transaction go through that ultimately hurts the whole system. I believe we will have to abandon this charity shop style of operation and switch to a "serious business" style of operation, where people know expected prices and are given some guarantees of getting what they paid for, in regards to fees and transactions.

I don't think building it into the protocol is necessary.  Improving the client might make more sense.  It could use historical pricing so provide users options.

Send with no fee (90% chance of confirmation within 4 hours)
Send with 0.01 fee (90% chance of confirmation within 2 hours)
Send with 0.025 fee (90% chance of confirmation within 40 minutes)

The issue I would fear with having rules in the protocol is it would be easy to game (both by miners and by large transaction entities).