Advantage of coin control, response to Mike Hearn - page 3.

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legendary

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Quote from: Mike Hearn on March 31, 2013, 07:25:26 AM

That is indeed a useful thing, but coin control is the wrong way to do it (which is what I've been getting at all along).

Automatically defragmenting wallets are something that has been discussed, at least on IRC, quite a few times. As long as miners are willing to bias their priority calculations towards transactions that reduce the size of the UTXO set it can make sense. Not only when you create new payments, but for example at night time if your wallet is open (or on an always-on device like an android).

My point about coin control is that whatever problem you're solving with it, you can usually see a better solution that works for more people.

You aren't going to get anywhere on this line of thinking, except simply digging a deeper foxhole for yourself.

The benefit of the so called "coin control" for nearly every user is in allowing him/her to see the how the protocol operates "under the hood". This is a great learning tool both for the beginning users and for the developers that begin to work with Bitcoin.

Even if the significant portion of the "coin control" users wont use it for the "control" but just as a magnifying glass to see whats inside their wallet, it will be a great upgrade to the reference client.

Maybe just rename it from "coin control" to "coin loupe & tweezers"?

etotheipi

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Maybe I am missing something. Does Armory have this already? Why do you want a change to the Bitcoin software if this be done by a wallet or plugin that sits on top of the main software?

Armory lets you control the source addresses, not the individual coins (but still called "Coin Control"). People requested "Coin control", I gave them that, and I haven't really heard any complaints. So I left it alone.

etotheipi

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Quote from: Mike Hearn on March 31, 2013, 07:25:26 AM

That is indeed a useful thing, but coin control is the wrong way to do it (which is what I've been getting at all along).

Automatically defragmenting wallets are something that has been discussed, at least on IRC, quite a few times. As long as miners are willing to bias their priority calculations towards transactions that reduce the size of the UTXO set it can make sense. Not only when you create new payments, but for example at night time if your wallet is open (or on an always-on device like an android).

My point about coin control is that whatever problem you're solving with it, you can usually see a better solution that works for more people.

And my point, based on experience, taking feature requests from hundreds of users and trying to negotiate things in designing Armory... some users just want control. I agree with you that the fee logic could be updated to favor cleaning up dust. But that's not the only reason people use it (though, it might be the base for the OP, here). The advanced folks who understand how it works under the hood *want control". It's the same reason I will always drive a manual-transmission even though automatic technically does the same thing for me.

Mike Hearn

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That is indeed a useful thing, but coin control is the wrong way to do it (which is what I've been getting at all along).

Automatically defragmenting wallets are something that has been discussed, at least on IRC, quite a few times. As long as miners are willing to bias their priority calculations towards transactions that reduce the size of the UTXO set it can make sense. Not only when you create new payments, but for example at night time if your wallet is open (or on an always-on device like an android).

My point about coin control is that whatever problem you're solving with it, you can usually see a better solution that works for more people.

wumpus

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Quote from: etotheipi on March 31, 2013, 01:51:04 AM

As far as I'm concerned, the answer is splitting the interface into usermodes.

Isn't this already the case with the current coin control pull? I haven't tested it myself yet, but I was told that it's disabled by default:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/2343

etotheipi

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Quote from: Rothgar on March 30, 2013, 11:56:54 PM

Quote from: Mike Hearn on March 29, 2013, 10:12:59 AM

For something like coin control, parts were merged already, but the GUI wasn't. Well, honestly, if I was maintaining a wallet (I'm not) I wouldn't merge it either. We should be trying to make Bitcoin easier to use and less nerdy, not exposing the guts of the protocol in the UI. Rather I'd want to figure out a list of what people are using the coin control gui for - find a list of use cases then encourage people to implement them in a more direct way. Is this a privacy thing? Is it an accounting thing? Both? Neither? There's probably a better way to solve those problems.

This post is intended to be factual, and answer for what people use coin control for. Yes it can help a privacy. But it can make micro-payments (dust) more profitable for the user.

Say a user has 1.02 BTC at one address and .00012381 at another. When the user wants to pay .2 BTC to another a transaction can be made that draws both inputs and yields the .2 payment output and a .82012381 change output. This allows a user to merge micro-payments into spendable outputs. Do this several times and much BTC in fees could be saved making the .00012381 payment worthwhile.

As far as I'm concerned, the answer is splitting the interface into usermodes. That's why Armory has a "Standard", "Advanced" and "Expert" usermode. Custom change addresses and coin-control only appear if the user explicitly changes the mode to "Expert." It's a very elegant solution to making these "manual-transmission" features available while still giving most users the automatic transmission.

Although it's easiest if the windows are laid out in code. Then in the code you say:

Code:

layout = QVBoxLayout
layout.addWidget(button1)
layout.addWidget(button2)  
if usermode=="Expert":
   layout.addWidget(button3)

Rothgar

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Quote from: Mike Hearn on March 29, 2013, 10:12:59 AM

For something like coin control, parts were merged already, but the GUI wasn't. Well, honestly, if I was maintaining a wallet (I'm not) I wouldn't merge it either. We should be trying to make Bitcoin easier to use and less nerdy, not exposing the guts of the protocol in the UI. Rather I'd want to figure out a list of what people are using the coin control gui for - find a list of use cases then encourage people to implement them in a more direct way. Is this a privacy thing? Is it an accounting thing? Both? Neither? There's probably a better way to solve those problems.

This post is intended to be factual, and answer for what people use coin control for. Yes it can help a privacy. But it can make micro-payments (dust) more profitable for the user.

Say a user has 1.02 BTC at one address and .00012381 at another. When the user wants to pay .2 BTC to another a transaction can be made that draws both inputs and yields the .2 payment output and a .82012381 change output. This allows a user to merge micro-payments into spendable outputs. Do this several times and much BTC in fees could be saved making the .00012381 payment worthwhile.

Topic: Advantage of coin control, response to Mike Hearn - page 3. (Read 4716 times)