jgarzik



Offline



Activity: 1596

Merit: 1007







LegendaryActivity: 1596Merit: 1007 Always pay transaction fee? September 07, 2010, 03:17:34 AM #1

To accurately reflect that processing a transaction has certain resource costs across the network, I propose that tx fee be required for every transaction after X datetime (where X is a few months in the future).



Jeff Garzik, Bloq CEO, former bitcoin core dev team; opinions are my own.

Visit bloq.com / metronome.io

Donations / tip jar: 1BrufViLKnSWtuWGkryPsKsxonV2NQ7Tcj

MoonShadow



Offline



Activity: 1708

Merit: 1000









LegendaryActivity: 1708Merit: 1000 Re: Always pay transaction fee? September 07, 2010, 04:10:39 AM #2 I propose that that number of months be 1440. "The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."



- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'

caveden



Offline



Activity: 1106

Merit: 1002









LegendaryActivity: 1106Merit: 1002 Re: Always pay transaction fee? September 07, 2010, 07:19:01 AM #3 That will probably happen spontaneously if someone make a client (or add the option to the current one) that allows the user to charge transaction fees for the blocks it generates.

FreeMoney



Offline



Activity: 1246

Merit: 1011





Strength in numbers







LegendaryActivity: 1246Merit: 1011Strength in numbers Re: Always pay transaction fee? September 07, 2010, 08:04:49 AM #4 The correct fee is so small right now that the psychological detriment far outweighs the benefits of charging it imo. It's like that damn place that charges me a quarter a tiny cup of water when I buy a $9 meal. Yes, I know there are costs to pressing the button, but now I don't like you anyway.



I expect it will be a long time before a high % of nodes require a fee for normal transactions. This means most users will not attach a fee, being willing to wait 4 blocks on average or whatever. So for a good while charging a fee simply means not putting transactions in blocks, this will make bitcoin slightly less appealing and slightly reduce use which will slightly reduce the value of coins. So anyone who has coins can self interestedly include transactions for free.



Jgarzik, do you have a guess as to the resource costs of a normal transaction? Play Bitcoin Poker at sealswithclubs.eu. We're active and open to everyone.

satoshi

Sr. Member



Offline



Activity: 364

Merit: 2583







FounderSr. MemberActivity: 364Merit: 2583 Re: Always pay transaction fee? September 07, 2010, 04:32:21 PM Merited by collapse (1) #5 Another option is to reduce the number of free transactions allowed per block before transaction fees are required. Nodes only take so many KB of free transactions per block before they start requiring at least 0.01 transaction fee.



The threshold should probably be lower than it currently is.



I don't think the threshold should ever be 0. We should always allow at least some free transactions.



lfm



Offline



Activity: 196

Merit: 100









Full MemberActivity: 196Merit: 100 Re: Always pay transaction fee? September 07, 2010, 05:36:22 PM #6 If you WANT to start paying the transaction fees now you can with the -paytxfee=0.01

(beta?) command line switch. If more people use this switch then it might help discourage others from requiring compulsory fees.



MoonShadow



Offline



Activity: 1708

Merit: 1000









LegendaryActivity: 1708Merit: 1000 Re: Always pay transaction fee? September 07, 2010, 07:20:29 PM #7 Quote from: satoshi on September 07, 2010, 04:32:21 PM Another option is to reduce the number of free transactions allowed per block before transaction fees are required. Nodes only take so many KB of free transactions per block before they start requiring at least 0.01 transaction fee.



The threshold should probably be lower than it currently is.



I don't think the threshold should ever be 0. We should always allow at least some free transactions.





What is the current threshold, and how does a client know to pay for this in advance? What is the current threshold, and how does a client know to pay for this in advance? "The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank...sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world."



- Carroll Quigley, CFR member, mentor to Bill Clinton, from 'Tragedy And Hope'

satoshi

Sr. Member



Offline



Activity: 364

Merit: 2583







FounderSr. MemberActivity: 364Merit: 2583 Re: Always pay transaction fee? September 08, 2010, 05:30:14 PM #9 Currently, paying a fee is controlled manually with the -paytxfee switch. It would be very easy to make the software automatically check the size of recent blocks to see if it should pay a fee. We're so far from reaching the threshold, we don't need that yet. It's a good idea to see how things go with controlling it manually first anyway.



It's not a big deal if we reach the threshold. Free transactions would just take longer to get into a block.



I did a rough tally of 4000 blocks from around 74000-78000. This is excluding the block reward transactions:



There were average 2 transactions per block, 17 transactions per hour, 400 transactions per day.



Average transaction bytes per block was 428 bytes, or 214 bytes per transaction.



The current threshold is 200KB per block, or about 1000 transactions per block. I think it should be lowered to 50KB per block. That would still be more than 100 times the average transactions per block.



The threshold can easily be changed in the future. We can decide to increase it when the time comes. It's a good idea to keep it lower as a circuit breaker and increase it as needed. If we hit the threshold now, it would almost certainly be some kind of flood and not actual use. Keeping the threshold lower would help limit the amount of wasted disk space in that event.

