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Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

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Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#51

Post by richcollins »

new299 wrote: post #47
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 cha…

AFAICT, this only applies to bitcoin-qt. Miners can still accept small tx into a block from other clients.

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#52

Post by richcollins »

eof wrote: post #50
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.

What does above mean in this context? If its later tx involving those addresses then it isn't a problem because there are none?

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#53

Post by new299 »

richcollins wrote: post #51
new299 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 cha…

AFAICT, this only applies to bitcoin-qt. Miners can still accept small tx into a block from other clients.

From what I read on bitcointalk I believe this applies to miners too (if they use bitcoind). However it would be possible to run a mining pool which would accept small txs with no fee, and clients would still accept them as valid blocks.

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#54

Post by lwat »

srdev wrote: post #45
lwat wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see any suggestions from your side?

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#55

Post by dragontamer »

tlrobinson wrote: post #37

This isn't a protocol change, so it's not really a big deal. It's basically a strongly worded (coded) suggestion from the core developers to discourage micro-transactions and blockchain spam (SatoshiDice, encoding data in the blockchain, etc) If miners decide they still want to include these transactions, they can. This is the way it should be since miners bear the cost of every transaction in the form of computing/n…

Miners also are the ones running the system. If you control 51% of bitcoin miners, you control the BTC network as well as the rules.

A malicious BTC miner would want the BTC network to be as hard as possible. The fewer people mining, the easier it is to take over the network.

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#56

Post by eof »

richcollins wrote: post #52
eof wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does above mean in this context? If its later tx involving those addresses then it isn't a problem because there are none?

Well the way to prune the blockchain is to store the merklehash only of all spent outputs if you can get a whole tree that has no spendable coins left. So if a bunch of old outputs all had their coins spent you can just prune that part of the tree and forget the blocks themselves and just store the merkleroot that represents the tree; but so many of the oldest coins are still unspent that there won't be a lot of benefit to this (I haven't done the analysis so this is somewhat a hypothesis).

You actually have it backwards, it's aproblem precisely because there are not transactions involving those addresses other than the initial block rewards; pruning the tree would make those coins unspendable, which would be unfair.

There are so many definitely-lost and likely-lost coins that I imagine at some point there will be a 'move your coins or lose them' mandate that will give people.. idk maybe 2 years or something to move coins to prove they aren't lost, and allow a large chunk of the blockchain to be pruned.

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#57

Post by recursive »

lwat wrote: post #54
srdev wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't see any suggestions from your side?

The parent didn't claim to be a proponent or supporter of bitcoin. He may not know of any improvements. He may not believe any fundamental ones are possible. That does not detract from the point.

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#58

Post by jpdoctor »

This is idiocy. I know it's a knee jerk reaction to ZOMG-PORN-IN-THE-BLOCKCHAIN!!1!, but c'mon. We can use such steganography all over the net.

Do we have to show proof-of-concept by putting porn into the DNS records? How about imgur; You know all those LSBs in the pictures? Think it's hard to get google search to propagate your steganography for you [and then have Bing steal it?]

The genie is out of the bottle, I'm surprised that the bitcoin / litecoin /cryptocoin world is where a line got drawn in the sand.

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#59

Post by lwat »

recursive wrote: post #57
lwat wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see any suggestions from your side?

The parent didn't claim to be a proponent or supporter of bitcoin. He may not know of any improvements. He may not believe any fundamental ones are possible. That does not detract from the point.

Bitcoin still supports transactions down to 1 cent which is waaaay better than Visa or Mastercard in terms of micro transactions. Just because you can't transfer fractions of a cent anymore doesn't mean Bitcoin is 'doomed'

EDIT: Downvote me all you want niggers, I don't care.

Re: Bitcoin will soon block small transaction outputs

#60

Post by icelancer »

rubinelli wrote: post #34
consz wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>here's no good reason to make a transaction that small on the blockchain. You don't have the right to say that, it should be my right to decide whether my transaction size is appropriate or not. This sounds like regulation to me.

When your transaction size affects my bandwidth and my hard disk, it becomes my business. Essentially you are acting like a spammer: wasting a disproportional amount of other people's computational resources for your gain.

But that's not his fault. That's Bitcoin's model's fault.
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