[ANN] Litecoin - a lite version of Bitcoin. Launched! - page 353.

coblee

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Quote from: coblee on November 22, 2011, 01:28:52 AM

Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 08:12:20 PM

For those of you that have received dust spam (transactions with 0.00000001 ltc other tiny amounts), you may have trouble sending your coins. If you try to send coins, your client might be stuck trying to sort through all those transactions to come up with a list of inputs. ArtForz made a simple suggestion to have the create transaction code ignore transactions below a certain user-configurable amount. I will implement this soon and release a new client. Stay tuned.

Here's the fix: https://github.com/coblee/litecoin/commit/f6fdedcf732265391eebbba48e8c537077b10f01

Windows binary coming up shortly.

Litecoin version 0.5.0.8 released.
https://github.com/downloads/coblee/litecoin/litecoin-windows-client-0.5.0.8.zip

You only need to download this if you have been sent dust spam and are having trouble dealing with it slowing down or crashing your client when you send coins. This new binary should fix the problem. When you run this new client, you will not be able to spend any coins that were sent to you in a transaction less than 0.0001 LTC. If you really need to spend those coins, you can start the client with "-mininput=0.00000001"

coblee

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Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 08:12:20 PM

For those of you that have received dust spam (transactions with 0.00000001 ltc other tiny amounts), you may have trouble sending your coins. If you try to send coins, your client might be stuck trying to sort through all those transactions to come up with a list of inputs. ArtForz made a simple suggestion to have the create transaction code ignore transactions below a certain user-configurable amount. I will implement this soon and release a new client. Stay tuned.

Here's the fix: https://github.com/coblee/litecoin/commit/f6fdedcf732265391eebbba48e8c537077b10f01

Windows binary coming up shortly.

jjiimm_64

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Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 08:12:20 PM

For those of you that have received dust spam (transactions with 0.00000001 ltc other tiny amounts), you may have trouble sending your coins. If you try to send coins, your client might be stuck trying to sort through all those transactions to come up with a list of inputs. ArtForz made a simple suggestion to have the create transaction code ignore transactions below a certain user-configurable amount. I will implement this soon and release a new client. Stay tuned.

this might be what is happening with btc-e wallet.?

coblee

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Creator of Litecoin. Cryptocurrency enthusiast.

For those of you that have received dust spam (transactions with 0.00000001 ltc other tiny amounts), you may have trouble sending your coins. If you try to send coins, your client might be stuck trying to sort through all those transactions to come up with a list of inputs. ArtForz made a simple suggestion to have the create transaction code ignore transactions below a certain user-configurable amount. I will implement this soon and release a new client. Stay tuned.

coblee

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Creator of Litecoin. Cryptocurrency enthusiast.

Version 0.5.0.7 released. Please update to help with dust spam.

https://github.com/downloads/coblee/litecoin/litecoin-windows-client-0.5.0.7.zip

Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 06:56:59 PM

I checked in code to deal with the dust spam: https://github.com/coblee/litecoin/commit/ee851e8cbdd74e8f0fe86613aa93f8c598ab88b4
Basically this changes the transaction relay fee to the same 0.1 LTC base transaction fee. And it adds a base fee for each output less than 0.01 LTC.

Please update to the latest code. As more users update, it will be harder for the spam to get to the old unupdated miners that mine the blocks with this spam. Of course, after updating, your mined blocks won't include this spam.

Note that this does not prevent the spammer to send thousands of 0.01 LTC outputs to himself or others. But this reduces dust spam, where people have to spend work dealing with tiny transactions that aren't worth much. If the spammers sends out 0.01 LTC spams to others, then at least he's also losing significant coins that way. If he sends it to himself, he'd have to deal with a bloated wallet and a slow client trying to deal with those transactions. So win/win.

Windows binary coming soon.

BeeCee1

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Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 06:29:31 PM

Quote from: BeeCee1 on November 21, 2011, 06:13:52 PM

I like the idea of charging higher fees for lots of small outputs, however, we risk capturing small-but-useful transactions in the mix. I also want to have fee formulas we can keep instead of temporarily changing them and planning on changing them back. Instead of two tiers we could have three with only the lowest tier getting charged per-output fees
large value = no fee
small value = .1 fee per transaction
very small value = .1 fee per output

Make "very small" be 10% of small and all these too small to be useful even when aggregated transactions are really expensive, but leaves open the possibility of small but potentially useful transactions (like paypershare mining)

Why do you draw the line at 0.001 ltc? is there really a special use case where someone would need to send tons of ~0.005 ltc to other people and only pay .1 in fees?

It is really just an acknowledgment that my imagination is limited and other people might be able to come up with something useful that wouldn't be possible with higher fees. Pay per share mining is one possible example, but I haven't every joined a pay per share pool so I don't know what they do when someone is due a very small payout. I'm also thinking that if someone started trying to spam with >= 0.001 ltc then it would quickly add up to a useful amount of ltc. Dust spam would still be prohibitively expensive though.

Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 06:29:31 PM

Quote from: BeeCee1 on November 21, 2011, 06:13:52 PM

We can also have a higher fee for large-sized transactions.
From: int64 nMinFee = (1 + (int64)nBytes / 1000) * nBaseFee;
To: int64 nMinFee = (1 + (int64)nBytes / 500) * nBaseFee;

I've thought about this, but that's effectively just doubling the nBaseFee. So I'd rather change the base fee than mess with that code b/c there are other places that expect 1*basefee per 1000 bytes. (like the GUI)

It isn't quite the same since we use nBaseFee other places, like in the small transaction case. If it is too hard to change then it might not be worth it.

Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 06:29:31 PM

Quote from: BeeCee1 on November 21, 2011, 06:13:52 PM

Code:

            BOOST_FOREACH(const CTxOut& txout, vout) {
                if (txout.nValue < (CENT/10))
                    nMinFee += nBaseFee;
                else if ((txout.nValue < CENT) && (nMinFee < nBaseFee))
                    nMinFee = nBaseFee;
            }

I may want change CENT here to nBaseFee/10. As Litecoin gets more popular, and ltc price goes higher, what's classified as dust spam should also be lower.

I like your concept of auto-scaling the definition of spam. Much better than requiring periodic intervention.

coblee

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Creator of Litecoin. Cryptocurrency enthusiast.

I checked in code to deal with the dust spam: https://github.com/coblee/litecoin/commit/ee851e8cbdd74e8f0fe86613aa93f8c598ab88b4
Basically this changes the transaction relay fee to the same 0.1 LTC base transaction fee. And it adds a base fee for each output less than 0.01 LTC.

Please update to the latest code. As more users update, it will be harder for the spam to get to the old unupdated miners that mine the blocks with this spam. Of course, after updating, your mined blocks won't include this spam.

Note that this does not prevent the spammer to send thousands of 0.01 LTC outputs to himself or others. But this reduces dust spam, where people have to spend work dealing with tiny transactions that aren't worth much. If the spammers sends out 0.01 LTC spams to others, then at least he's also losing significant coins that way. If he sends it to himself, he'd have to deal with a bloated wallet and a slow client trying to deal with those transactions. So win/win.

Windows binary coming soon.

coblee

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Quote from: BeeCee1 on November 21, 2011, 06:13:52 PM

I like the idea of charging higher fees for lots of small outputs, however, we risk capturing small-but-useful transactions in the mix. I also want to have fee formulas we can keep instead of temporarily changing them and planning on changing them back. Instead of two tiers we could have three with only the lowest tier getting charged per-output fees
large value = no fee
small value = .1 fee per transaction
very small value = .1 fee per output

Make "very small" be 10% of small and all these too small to be useful even when aggregated transactions are really expensive, but leaves open the possibility of small but potentially useful transactions (like paypershare mining)

Why do you draw the line at 0.001 ltc? is there really a special use case where someone would need to send tons of ~0.005 ltc to other people and only pay .1 in fees?

Quote from: BeeCee1 on November 21, 2011, 06:13:52 PM

If we are making the fees additive, we'd want to remove the "if (nMinFee < nBaseFee)" check so people can't escape the per txout fee by making the block larger.

We can also have a higher fee for large-sized transactions.
From: int64 nMinFee = (1 + (int64)nBytes / 1000) * nBaseFee;
To: int64 nMinFee = (1 + (int64)nBytes / 500) * nBaseFee;

I've thought about this, but that's effectively just doubling the nBaseFee. So I'd rather change the base fee than mess with that code b/c there are other places that expect 1*basefee per 1000 bytes. (like the GUI)

Quote from: BeeCee1 on November 21, 2011, 06:13:52 PM

Code:

            BOOST_FOREACH(const CTxOut& txout, vout) {
                if (txout.nValue < (CENT/10))
                    nMinFee += nBaseFee;
                else if ((txout.nValue < CENT) && (nMinFee < nBaseFee))
                    nMinFee = nBaseFee;
            }

I may want change CENT here to nBaseFee/10. As Litecoin gets more popular, and ltc price goes higher, what's classified as dust spam should also be lower.

BeeCee1

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Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 07:18:49 AM

Basically, we were setting min fee to at least 0.1 LTC if any of your output is less than 0.01 LTC. I'd like to extend that to add 0.1 LTC for every output less than 0.01 LTC. So using sendmany to send to 1000 outputs is fine as long as you are paying the 0.1 LTC fee per 1000 bytes. But if you are sending 0.00000001 LTC to each of those 1000 outputs, then you need to pay an additional 100 LTC in fees.

// To limit dust spam, add MIN_TX_FEE/MIN_RELAY_TX_FEE for any output is less than 0.01
BOOST_FOREACH(const CTxOut& txout, vout)
if (txout.nValue < CENT)
nMinFee += nBaseFee;

The spammer can still send a ton of 0.01 outputs, but this will deal with the dust spam. It's really hard for the receiving end to collect these worthless transactions.

I like the idea of charging higher fees for lots of small outputs, however, we risk capturing small-but-useful transactions in the mix. I also want to have fee formulas we can keep instead of temporarily changing them and planning on changing them back. Instead of two tiers we could have three with only the lowest tier getting charged per-output fees
large value = no fee
small value = .1 fee per transaction
very small value = .1 fee per output

Make "very small" be 10% of small and all these too small to be useful even when aggregated transactions are really expensive, but leaves open the possibility of small but potentially useful transactions (like paypershare mining)

If we are making the fees additive, we'd want to remove the "if (nMinFee < nBaseFee)" check so people can't escape the per txout fee by making the block larger.

We can also have a higher fee for large-sized transactions.
From: int64 nMinFee = (1 + (int64)nBytes / 1000) * nBaseFee;
To: int64 nMinFee = (1 + (int64)nBytes / 500) * nBaseFee;

That would only have an effect on blocks larger than 27000 bytes (but we could make that smaller too).

Code:

            BOOST_FOREACH(const CTxOut& txout, vout) {
                if (txout.nValue < (CENT/10))
                    nMinFee += nBaseFee;
                else if ((txout.nValue < CENT) && (nMinFee < nBaseFee))
                    nMinFee = nBaseFee;
            }

This would be independent of any nMinFee scaling that was done based on difficulty.

Vanderbleek

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I like it.

coblee

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Creator of Litecoin. Cryptocurrency enthusiast.

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on November 21, 2011, 05:20:48 PM

Why not cap fees where they are right now and use formula to decrease them as difficulty rises. With current fee structure spamming would only make sense if value of LTC fell 90% or so. If LTC value has fallen that much the risk of fees being too low are likely not really a significant concern.

It may be easier to convince people fees can only fall than fees can rise and fall but it is unlikely they will rise.

Sounds good. Thanks for the advice. Let's cap the fees at the current 0.1 LTC then.

Code:

Transaction and relay fees:
- base fee = 0.1 / difficulty
- capped at 0.1 LTC
- round to 1 significant digit

With the current difficulty at 0.63769 (0.1 / 0.63769 = 0.156816), the fee is capped at 0.1 LTC.
If the network doubles and difficulty doubles to 1.27538 (0.1 / 1.27538 = 0.078408), the fee will be reduced to 0.08 LTC.
If the difficulty increases tenfold to 6.3769 (0.1 / 6.3769 = 0.0156816), the fee will be reduced to 0.02 LTC.

Sounds good? We can adjust this if there's anything seriously wrong with it... like if the difficulty shoots up but the price stays the same, which makes spamming cheap again.

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 05:09:10 PM

Quote from: localhost on November 21, 2011, 04:57:45 PM

Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 04:51:05 PM

Or if predictability is that important, I can always fix the fee to the previous period's difficulty. So you will just use today's difficulty to figure out the fee for the next period.

Sounds good indeed. And maybe to reduce variability (improve predictability even further), if it's not too much trouble, compute today's fee based on average diff of the last 2 weeks or something (like average of the last 4 diff).

That would take a lot of work and I'm not sure it's necessary. The difficulty is already calculated using the average of the block times in the past period. Also, please remember that as Litecoin becomes more popular, the fee will go down. So I think having fluctuating but generally decreasing fees shouldn't really be a big problem. And if we lose hashrate, I'd be more worried about us getting 51% attacked than the fees. My first suggestion is that we cap the fees at 1 LTC, but I could reduce the cap to 0.2 LTC or even 0.1 LTC if that feels better.

Why not cap fees where they are right now and use formula to decrease them as difficulty rises. With current fee structure spamming would only make sense if value of LTC fell 90% or so. If LTC value has fallen that much the risk of fees being too low are likely not really a significant concern.

It may be easier to convince people fees can only fall than fees can rise and fall but it is unlikely they will rise.

coblee

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Creator of Litecoin. Cryptocurrency enthusiast.

Quote from: localhost on November 21, 2011, 04:57:45 PM

Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 04:51:05 PM

Or if predictability is that important, I can always fix the fee to the previous period's difficulty. So you will just use today's difficulty to figure out the fee for the next period.

Sounds good indeed. And maybe to reduce variability (improve predictability even further), if it's not too much trouble, compute today's fee based on average diff of the last 2 weeks or something (like average of the last 4 diff).

That would take a lot of work and I'm not sure it's necessary. The difficulty is already calculated using the average of the block times in the past period. Also, please remember that as Litecoin becomes more popular, the fee will go down. So I think having fluctuating but generally decreasing fees shouldn't really be a big problem. And if we lose hashrate, I'd be more worried about us getting 51% attacked than the fees. My first suggestion is that we cap the fees at 1 LTC, but I could reduce the cap to 0.2 LTC or even 0.1 LTC if that feels better.

localhost

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Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 04:51:05 PM

Or if predictability is that important, I can always fix the fee to the previous period's difficulty. So you will just use today's difficulty to figure out the fee for the next period.

Sounds good indeed. And maybe to reduce variability (improve predictability even further), if it's not too much trouble, compute today's fee based on average diff of the last 2 weeks or something (like average of the last 4 diff).

bulanula

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The difficulty TX fee idea seems to be neater than manually adjusted TX fees though. Maybe we should go with that ? Are deposits and withdrawals still messed up on BTC-E.com ? Thanks.

coblee

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Quote from: localhost on November 21, 2011, 04:46:01 PM

Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 04:38:23 PM

Though it's just a simple calculation that anyone can do if they know the difficulty, so it's not something mysterious.

Yeah, I meant that more in the way that you can't predict what the fee will be like in a week (since the diff will change). I don't like unpredictable stuff. I believe lots of financial people don't like unpredictable stuff either, just see the mess at Wall Street and such. Wink

Well you can just use allchains to get an estimate of next difficulty. Or if predictability is that important, I can always fix the fee to the previous period's difficulty. So you will just use today's difficulty to figure out the fee for the next period. Like everything it's a tradeoff. Would you rather have to upgrade every now and then to get new adjusted fees? Or would you rather have fees set automatically to something close but then it's not something that's fixed.

localhost

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Quote from: coblee on November 21, 2011, 04:38:23 PM

Though it's just a simple calculation that anyone can do if they know the difficulty, so it's not something mysterious.

Yeah, I meant that more in the way that you can't predict what the fee will be like in a week (since the diff will change). I don't like unpredictable stuff. I believe lots of financial people don't like unpredictable stuff either, just see the mess at Wall Street and such. Wink

coblee

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Creator of Litecoin. Cryptocurrency enthusiast.

Quote from: bulanula on November 21, 2011, 04:29:46 PM

Really sad to see LTC slip away into a maniacal man's paradise just like ScamCoin.

Manual TX fee adjustments ? That sounds like fun Undecided

It's really hard to figure out your position on stuff, bulanula. And plus you seem to flip flop so often. Ever thought of running for a political position?

Are you against manual transaction fee adjustments or for them? Do you know that the bitcoin fee has been manually adjusted from 0.01 btc to 0.0005 btc as the bitcoin price rose to $30? And now that the price is back to $2, the current bitcoin fees make it very cheap to spam bitcoin also.

Quote from: localhost on November 21, 2011, 03:53:13 PM

I'm not sure difficulty is that much linked to coin value. For instance, the BTC diff is now about what it was in early June or something, but its value is like 10 times lower.

Yes, so if bitcoin had auto adjusted fees, the fee won't increase back to 0.01 btc because the difficulty didn't drop so much. But it would be about twice the 0.0005 btc fee, which would at least be going in the right direction without having to release another client just to manually adjust the fees.

Quote from: localhost on November 21, 2011, 03:53:13 PM

I'm not sure either if a fluctuating fee (or to put it in other words, a somewhat unpredictable fee) is a good thing psychologically. Manual adjustment from time to time, depending on the economic situation, sounds good enough to me.

Yes psychologically, it might be bad. Though it's just a simple calculation that anyone can do if they know the difficulty, so it's not something mysterious.

bulanula

hero member

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Really sad to see LTC slip away into a maniacal man's paradise just like ScamCoin.

Manual TX fee adjustments ? That sounds like fun Undecided

luv2drnkbr

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Wow, I go on vacation for a week and come back to see this mess! On the one hand, fuck RS or CH or whoever the fuck it is that's doing this, but I've also been very happy to see the innovative fast response and reasonable client changes as a result. Thanks for all the hard work coblee, litecoins rock!

Topic: [ANN] Litecoin - a lite version of Bitcoin. Launched! - page 353. (Read 1467474 times)