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Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

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Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#41

Post by unreal37 »

ISL wrote: post #24
nwh wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's presumably only temporary measure, and only present in the reference client. Anything below four decimal places is completely worthless at this point anyway; do you really have a use for being able to send 0.01c USD?

If micropayments are ever to be possible, sub-penny transactions need to happen. If 10^6 people send you $0.001, you get $1k....

You should be able to send whatever value you want, as long as you pay a fee for the resources used.

Why should it take hours for my Bitcoin client to sync (and therefore for me to do anything with my Bitcoins) because people want to encode URLs in the blockchain?

In a few years, it could take days to sync a new client. What kind of banking system would that be?

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#42

Post by Jtsummers »

unreal37 wrote: post #41
ISL wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If micropayments are ever to be possible, sub-penny transactions need to happen. If 10^6 people send you $0.001, you get $1k....

You should be able to send whatever value you want, as long as you pay a fee for the resources used. Why should it take hours for my Bitcoin client to sync (and therefore for me to do anything with my Bitcoins) because people want to encode URLs in the blockchain? In a few years, it could take days to sync a new client. What kind of banking system would that be?

Can't you submit transaction before it syncs as long as you you're confident the transaction will be valid? For a business, they could maintain a current sync and you submit your transmitting address to them and they can verify, that way your smartphone doesn't have to get bogged down with the task of anything other than signing the transaction.

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#43

Post by sp332 »

drivebyacct2 wrote: post #38
jasonkolb wrote: post #8

I assume the reason behind this is to block people from encoding data into the block chain by doing thousands of worthless transactions. If I recall correctly someone recently encoded the URL to a child porn site into the block chain, this is the only reasonable response to prevent it from happening again IMO.

I don't get this problem. It's not like people literally actively read the BlockChain. (Also, IIRC, wasn't their a proposal to make the data a hash or something mandatory so that it couldn't be random|misc-manual data? Or was that unfeasible for some reason?)

No, but you have to download the blockchain before you can join the network. It's in everyone's interests to keep bloat out of it.

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#44

Post by sp332 »

mortenjorck wrote: post #40

So this slows the growth of the blockchain. If blockchain length is already becoming an issue today, what happens a year from now if trading volume multiplies as much as it did in the past year? What happens in five, ten years? Could the blockchain outstrip the economic feasibility of maintaining it at some point, or is there a mechanism already built into Bitcoin that addresses this?

There is a game called "satoshidice" that is basically clogging the network with ridiculous amounts of tiny transactions. So far, there's plenty of room for "normal" traffic. Here's an opinionated explanation that sums up people's dislike of the practice: http://buttcoin.org/satoshidice-is-killing-bitcoin

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#45

Post by srdev »

lwat wrote: post #14
tocomment wrote: post #12

This sucks. I thought one of the killer apps for bitcoin was going to be micropayments. Oh well maybe the world will switch to litecoin.

No this is awesome. Only transaction smaller than about half a cent is blocked. There's no good reason to make a transaction that small on the blockchain. Satoshidice sends thousands of transactions of one satoshi each every day and it adds gigabytes of data to to millions of computers worldwide. What a waste of resources.

No its not. When faced with a scalability problem, they decided to ban certain uses rather than fix the root cause. Bitcoin isn't going to be able to grow beyond a niche currency if Satoshi Dice's level of activity causes such large problems.

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#46

Post by new299 »

fizx wrote: post #29
jasonkolb wrote: post #8

I assume the reason behind this is to block people from encoding data into the block chain by doing thousands of worthless transactions. If I recall correctly someone recently encoded the URL to a child porn site into the block chain, this is the only reasonable response to prevent it from happening again IMO.

Encoding data into the blockchain isn't a bug--it's a feature (perhaps THE feature). When you want distributed consensus (e.g. for free-as-in-speech domain names), it's the only game in town. People should be able to put whatever data they want in the system, assuming they cover the cost.

Encoding domain names in the block chain probably isn't optimal, have you looked at Namecoin?

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#47

Post by new299 »

jasonkolb wrote: post #8

I assume the reason behind this is to block people from encoding data into the block chain by doing thousands of worthless transactions. If I recall correctly someone recently encoded the URL to a child porn site into the block chain, this is the only reasonable response to prevent it from happening again IMO.

It's more to do with certain services (SatoshiDice) sending very small, useless transactions through the network (SatoshiDice is a gambling service, they send a small transaction to tell you you lost). All those small transactions put a burden on the network.

Regarding the CP URL, it was actually several hundreds of links in a large FAQ, and I don't think this changes anything regarding encoding data in the block chain.

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#49

Post by justinmk »

oillio wrote: post #23

Small value amounts are useful for smart property: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Smart_Property The tl;dr: Represent a piece of property, say a stock certificate, as a small value of bitcoin. By transferring the bitcoin to another user, you are transferring the ownership of the property. This can be useful for creating distributed markets where property can be traded for bitcoins without requiring a trusted intermediary…

Why not forward your suggestion to the lead developer?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5660244

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#50

Post by eof »

trevelyan wrote: post #2

I do not understand this move. If blockchain size is an issue, I don't understand why the focus isn't pruning the blockchain so that only the hashed headers are stored for past transactions. This defeats the point of having 8 decimal places if you can only reasonably use 3+.

not sure pruning the blockchain is really possible. most of the earliest coins are not even spent and many are likely lost; this was something satoshi may not have thought through completely as pruning the blockchain was something he specifically talked about.. but many of the 'deep' coins are still unspent and anything 'above' them is unprunable.
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