Tx fees going up. What is zero fee mining? What is fair pay?

[DeathAndTaxes]

Miner's costs are in USD (or EUR,etc).  For protection what matters is the real cost to attack the network.

No, what matters is cost vs benefit/profit for the attacker.

Yeah and unless you know of any fixed BTC cost mining hardware or flat rate BTC power companies the attackers cost are also in USD/EUR.  So the net gain has to be measured against the cost to the attacker which is primarily in fiat currencies.   If it cost an attacker $200M to attack the network then the reward has to be more than $200M.

[Grinder]

Yeah and unless you know of any fixed BTC cost mining hardware or flat rate BTC power companies the attackers cost are also in USD/EUR.  So the net gain has to be measured against the cost to the attacker which is primarily in fiat currencies.

The gain will be in bitcoins, so if the bitcoins are worth more in fiat to the miners they will be worth just as much more in fiat to the attackers. Duplicating a 1000 BTC transaction will be much cheaper compared to the gain if the miners only get 1.5 BTC from a block.

If it cost an attacker $200M to attack the network then the reward has to be more than $200M.

And if the value of the BTC has increased tenfold it's because bitcoins have become more popular. With popularity comes more valuable transactions, more opportunities to take advantage of a double spend attack for those who want to scam, and more incentives for companies and organizations which don't want Bitcoin to succeed.

[markm]

The more chains get added onto the typical miner's list of chains all merged-mined at once the more resilient this all should become, as more chains reaching high levels of difficulty should result in more confidence in all of them, more money coming in to miners as even if money moves out of one chain it might well merely move to another instead of out of the cryptochain world completely, and the prospect of co-ordinating attacks on all chains at once might look more complex too. Maybe also depending on the niches various types of chain end up addressing the perception of what kinds of people you would be going up against by attacking might change. (For example if some nuclear labs use a blockchain for some weird reason or something suddenly you are looking at hmm do we want all the powers behind such a chain also coming after us not just the weirdo libertarians who use bitcoin?)

-MarkM-

[Graet]

so anyway
http://blockchain.info/block-index/311449/0000000000000412cb93f5cceceebdd6bec88d5db691a17a823287c47713d2cf
Dunno what broke, but for occasions like these....
worth mining on a pool paying txn fees out?

[DrHaribo]

so anyway
http://blockchain.info/block-index/311449/0000000000000412cb93f5cceceebdd6bec88d5db691a17a823287c47713d2cf
Dunno what broke, but for occasions like these....
worth mining on a pool paying txn fees out?

Wow, 154.68299211 BTC is pretty decent income for a block.

If it had been on a pool that keeps transaction fees that would be almost a 68% fee. Yes, avoiding such steep fees is probably wise. 

[Inaba]

Yeah, but did you include the other 2000 blocks that have a fee in your calculations?

[Graet]

Yeah, but did you include the other 2000 blocks that have a fee in your calculations?

sorry, what 2000 blocks?
what calculation?