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Topic: Are we stress testing again? - page 19. (Read 33192 times)

hero member
Activity: 700
Merit: 500
July 11, 2015, 03:07:14 AM
No, I don't think anyone knows the source of the spam/stress test this time around. Someone with a decent amount of funds and a motivation to force some improvements, I'd say.


This must be their promised retry.  Their goal is to get 250 MB of unconfirmed transactions in the queues.  They got already over 100 MB and the backlog is still growing.  The network could theoretically process 1 MB (~2500 tx) every 10 minutes, but the miners have been processing only ~0.5 MB (~1300 tx) of transactions per block, on average, even when the queues are fulll; and the normal traffic has been using ~0.32 MB (~800 tx) lately.  Therefore, once the test traffic ends, it will take ~1400 blocks (~10 days) to clear the backlog.

Not all the extra traffic is theirs.  Many of their transactions send many very small amounts to Wikileaks, charitable organizations, or addresses with well-known private keys.  As the recipients of those micro-donations collect them, their transactions add to the test traffic.

Well the transactions are going to charity although it seems to be causing a mess
I was wondering when people refer to the backlog where do you find the chart that measures the amount of data.
Just wanted to check if I was looking at the right place https://blockchain.info/unconfirmed-transactions
hero member
Activity: 910
Merit: 1003
July 10, 2015, 10:29:33 PM
No, I don't think anyone knows the source of the spam/stress test this time around. Someone with a decent amount of funds and a motivation to force some improvements, I'd say.

The first test was done by a bunch of volunteers recruited informally through an /r/bitcoin thread.  Each volunteer tried to spam transactions on his own, within a specified 1-hour window (that became 2-3 hours actually) on a Friday night.

The second test, about 2 weeks ago, was started by an entity called "coinwallet.eu".  They described their plans on /r/bitcoin.  They had a 5000 euro budget.  That attempt was aborted after spending ~500 euros because their scripts/servers could not handle the load.  They also realized that their fees were too low.  They promised to retry in a couple of weeks.

This must be their promised retry.  Their goal is to get 250 MB of unconfirmed transactions in the queues.  They got already over 100 MB and the backlog is still growing.  The network could theoretically process 1 MB (~2500 tx) every 10 minutes, but the miners have been processing only ~0.5 MB (~1300 tx) of transactions per block, on average, even when the queues are fulll; and the normal traffic has been using ~0.32 MB (~800 tx) lately.  Therefore, once the test traffic ends, it will take ~1400 blocks (~10 days) to clear the backlog.

Apparently they are sometimes using more than the standard fees, but (most of the time) they don't seem to be adjusting the fees to aggressively keep normal traffic blocked.  That is, legitimate transactions that pay 2-3 times the standard fee are apparently able to jump the queue and get confirmed in the next block or two.

Not all the extra traffic is theirs.  Many of their transactions send many very small amounts to Wikileaks, charitable organizations, or addresses with well-known private keys.  As the recipients of those micro-donations collect them, their transactions add to the test traffic.
full member
Activity: 168
Merit: 100
July 10, 2015, 01:52:17 PM
This problem was addressed and fixed with litecoin years ago.

LTC dev, Coblee advised bitcoin devs about this but no one listened.

If this problem persists, there is an alternative coin on standby ready to go.
legendary
Activity: 1274
Merit: 1000
July 10, 2015, 01:44:42 PM
Because your transaction most likely has a higher ratio of fees to bites the transaction will fill up.

As of right now the mempool is over 126 MB, meaning if no one sends any additional transactions to the network it will take at least 126 additional blocks to clear out the mempool:
Code:
quickseller@quickseller1:~$ date
Fri Jul 10 14:22:10 EDT 2015
quickseller@quickseller1:~$ bitcoin-cli getmempoolinfo
{
    "size" : 41682,
    "bytes" : 126584240
}
I think it should be pretty clear that the obvious solution would be to raise the block limit substantially.


Yes, I also think that, unfortunately, Bitcoin is not ready yet.

Quickseller, I tend to disagree.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Last blocks (chain.so, sorry for the not-so-great formatting)
Code:
Block #	Age			Miner			Transactions	Size
364,739 23 minutes 1FeDtFhA... 1,445 998.13 kb
364,738 31 minutes F2pool (Discus Fish) 243 98.93 kb
364,737 33 minutes F2pool (Discus Fish) 1,421 377.32 kb
364,736 37 minutes 1JaxbrU7... 701 415.91 kb
364,735 44 minutes F2pool (Discus Fish) 1,677 358.95 kb
364,734 about an hour 16EW6Rv9... 452 801.47 kb
364,733 about an hour 1M5hoG1p... 1 0.21 kb
364,732 about an hour 21 Inc. 1,107 749.18 kb
364,731 about an hour BTCChina Pool 1,857 949.20 kb
364,730 about an hour F2pool (Discus Fish) 4,234 999.96 kb

So while some pools "do their best" and process up to 999.96 Kb (!!!), some get the easy "finder's prize" and that's all.
Is it me or this can / has to be fixed and fast?

If all pools would have been .. fair with the network, all should have gotten as much as possible and the stash of "unconfirmed" would have dropped to normal by now, without bigger block size.

edit: improved the formatting

Lots of this discussion in the recent empty block thread: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/empty-blocks-1085800
legendary
Activity: 3668
Merit: 6382
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July 10, 2015, 01:31:03 PM
Mine was confirmed within 1 hour, but that transaction was made on the 9th of July, with only $0.03 worth of fee. Is there any stress testing happening as of this moment?

Nope, but the network seems to be recovering rather slow.
There are still 9-10k unconfirmed transactions, most of those being (chain.so tells) ~32h old.

That is odd. Why is mine confirmed that fast when I only put 0.0001 fees on it? As long as those transactions are confirmed, it should be fine all in all. I think, we are not ready for a huge volume of transactions in the near future. As I can see it, we cannot handle VISA-level transactions.
Because your transaction most likely has a higher ratio of fees to bites the transaction will fill up.

As of right now the mempool is over 126 MB, meaning if no one sends any additional transactions to the network it will take at least 126 additional blocks to clear out the mempool:
Code:
quickseller@quickseller1:~$ date
Fri Jul 10 14:22:10 EDT 2015
quickseller@quickseller1:~$ bitcoin-cli getmempoolinfo
{
    "size" : 41682,
    "bytes" : 126584240
}
I think it should be pretty clear that the obvious solution would be to raise the block limit substantially.

Yes, I also think that, unfortunately, Bitcoin is not ready yet.

Quickseller, I tend to disagree.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Last blocks (chain.so, sorry for the not-so-great formatting)
Code:
Block #	Age			Miner			Transactions	Size
364,739 23 minutes 1FeDtFhA... 1,445 998.13 kb
364,738 31 minutes F2pool (Discus Fish) 243 98.93 kb
364,737 33 minutes F2pool (Discus Fish) 1,421 377.32 kb
364,736 37 minutes 1JaxbrU7... 701 415.91 kb
364,735 44 minutes F2pool (Discus Fish) 1,677 358.95 kb
364,734 about an hour 16EW6Rv9... 452 801.47 kb
364,733 about an hour 1M5hoG1p... 1 0.21 kb
364,732 about an hour 21 Inc. 1,107 749.18 kb
364,731 about an hour BTCChina Pool 1,857 949.20 kb
364,730 about an hour F2pool (Discus Fish) 4,234 999.96 kb

So while some pools "do their best" and process up to 999.96 Kb (!!!), some get the easy "finder's prize" and that's all.
Is it me or this can / has to be fixed and fast?

If all pools would have been .. fair with the network, all should have gotten as much as possible and the stash of "unconfirmed" would have dropped to normal by now, without bigger block size.

edit: improved the formatting
legendary
Activity: 3542
Merit: 1352
Cashback 15%
July 10, 2015, 01:30:06 PM
Mine was confirmed within 1 hour, but that transaction was made on the 9th of July, with only $0.03 worth of fee. Is there any stress testing happening as of this moment?

Nope, but the network seems to be recovering rather slow.
There are still 9-10k unconfirmed transactions, most of those being (chain.so tells) ~32h old.

That is odd. Why is mine confirmed that fast when I only put 0.0001 fees on it? As long as those transactions are confirmed, it should be fine all in all. I think, we are not ready for a huge volume of transactions in the near future. As I can see it, we cannot handle VISA-level transactions.
Because your transaction most likely has a higher ratio of fees to bites the transaction will fill up.

As of right now the mempool is over 126 MB, meaning if no one sends any additional transactions to the network it will take at least 126 additional blocks to clear out the mempool:
Code:
quickseller@quickseller1:~$ date
Fri Jul 10 14:22:10 EDT 2015
quickseller@quickseller1:~$ bitcoin-cli getmempoolinfo
{
    "size" : 41682,
    "bytes" : 126584240
}
I think it should be pretty clear that the obvious solution would be to raise the block limit substantially.

Maybe that was the case. Btw where are you viewing the current mempool of the network? I'm seeing 73.00 MB here in tradeblock.
copper member
Activity: 2996
Merit: 2374
July 10, 2015, 01:25:00 PM
Mine was confirmed within 1 hour, but that transaction was made on the 9th of July, with only $0.03 worth of fee. Is there any stress testing happening as of this moment?

Nope, but the network seems to be recovering rather slow.
There are still 9-10k unconfirmed transactions, most of those being (chain.so tells) ~32h old.

That is odd. Why is mine confirmed that fast when I only put 0.0001 fees on it? As long as those transactions are confirmed, it should be fine all in all. I think, we are not ready for a huge volume of transactions in the near future. As I can see it, we cannot handle VISA-level transactions.
Because your transaction most likely has a higher ratio of fees to bites the transaction will fill up.

As of right now the mempool is over 126 MB, meaning if no one sends any additional transactions to the network it will take at least 126 additional blocks to clear out the mempool:
Code:
quickseller@quickseller1:~$ date
Fri Jul 10 14:22:10 EDT 2015
quickseller@quickseller1:~$ bitcoin-cli getmempoolinfo
{
    "size" : 41682,
    "bytes" : 126584240
}
I think it should be pretty clear that the obvious solution would be to raise the block limit substantially.
legendary
Activity: 3542
Merit: 1352
Cashback 15%
July 10, 2015, 01:17:13 PM
Mine was confirmed within 1 hour, but that transaction was made on the 9th of July, with only $0.03 worth of fee. Is there any stress testing happening as of this moment?

Nope, but the network seems to be recovering rather slow.
There are still 9-10k unconfirmed transactions, most of those being (chain.so tells) ~32h old.

That is odd. Why is mine confirmed that fast when I only put 0.0001 fees on it? As long as those transactions are confirmed, it should be fine all in all. I think, we are not ready for a huge volume of transactions in the near future. As I can see it, we cannot handle VISA-level transactions.
legendary
Activity: 3668
Merit: 6382
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July 10, 2015, 01:13:14 PM
Mine was confirmed within 1 hour, but that transaction was made on the 9th of July, with only $0.03 worth of fee. Is there any stress testing happening as of this moment?

Nope, but the network seems to be recovering rather slow.
There are still 9-10k unconfirmed transactions, most of those being (chain.so tells) ~32h old.
legendary
Activity: 3542
Merit: 1352
Cashback 15%
July 10, 2015, 01:02:32 PM
And the exchange rate just jumped. This again proved that bitcoin's value is not mainly decided by its payment function, but investment and speculation, both do not require a high transaction frequency, and can afford to pay a high fee to get the payment done when needed

The other use cases are international remittance and drug dealing, again both are typical large transactions over $50, so even the fee rises to $1 (e.g. 0.003 btc), it is still acceptable



any payment that clears faster then 24 hours with $0.10 fee is incredible. so whatever happens to the attack, you can always clear a TX faster with a little higher tx fee.

Mine was confirmed within 1 hour, but that transaction was made on the 9th of July, with only $0.03 worth of fee. Is there any stress testing happening as of this moment?
legendary
Activity: 1274
Merit: 1000
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July 10, 2015, 12:59:21 PM
I bet first this guy (https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/tkeenan-154254) (Yes, TKeenan) will come here and post something like that "Hey, let's use bigger blocks, don't you see we need it right now!"

I'm still thinking Gavin is doing such spamming.

Also how the hell is that possible?
This tx broadcasted (spammed network) and  get accepted immediately; https://blockchain.info/tx/5f475e567548232d3b9f395b941c2ca8584df68492bd586937cd8d08f96c30e7
It's outputs are lower than the min limit...

Each block has a FIFO area in size where it accepts tx for free. do you mean DUST got accepted?
Now the dust is meaning amount less than 546 satoshis, not 5460 anymore. So since the smallest output is 1000 satoshi which is larger than the spam threshold, it is relayed and accepted in a block. Also, it pays 0.0002 for the ~500B tx, which is higher than normal (0.0001). So miners 'like' it and hence take it.

When it was reduced from 5430 satoshi to 543 satoshi? Can you provide me github push about it?
AFAIK it's still 5430 satoshi.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1000
July 10, 2015, 08:39:18 AM
And the exchange rate just jumped. This again proved that bitcoin's value is not mainly decided by its payment function, but investment and speculation, both do not require a high transaction frequency, and can afford to pay a high fee to get the payment done when needed

The other use cases are international remittance and drug dealing, again both are typical large transactions over $50, so even the fee rises to $1 (e.g. 0.003 btc), it is still acceptable



any payment that clears faster then 24 hours with $0.10 fee is incredible. so whatever happens to the attack, you can always clear a TX faster with a little higher tx fee.
legendary
Activity: 1988
Merit: 1012
Beyond Imagination
July 10, 2015, 08:17:55 AM
And the exchange rate just jumped. This again proved that bitcoin's value is not mainly decided by its payment function, but investment and speculation, both do not require a high transaction frequency, and can afford to pay a high fee to get the payment done when needed

The other use cases are international remittance and drug dealing, again both are typical large transactions over $50, so even the fee rises to $1 (e.g. 0.003 btc), it is still acceptable

legendary
Activity: 3248
Merit: 1070
July 10, 2015, 02:37:18 AM
Does anyone know who is making this stress test?

Someone call the authorities and track down these transactions. Tongue 

No, I don't think anyone knows the source of the spam/stress test this time around. Someone with a decent amount of funds and a motivation to force some improvements, I'd say.

he have a point, with the current bitcoin limit, bitcoin can not go anywhere, all major merchants are not willing to adopt something that could limit their poteantial revenue if implementend among their accepted payments
legendary
Activity: 1100
Merit: 1032
July 10, 2015, 02:04:56 AM
Which website shows the correct size of mempool? blockchain.info seems to be giving different number than whats being stated here.

There is no "correct size", it depends on what the node has seen since it has been restarted, custom settings, propagation & relaying delays etc.
legendary
Activity: 1001
Merit: 1005
July 10, 2015, 01:53:53 AM
Which website shows the correct size of mempool? blockchain.info seems to be giving different number than whats being stated here.
legendary
Activity: 1764
Merit: 1000
July 10, 2015, 01:19:12 AM
I don't see a reason behind this attack. Nodes and miner will stop accepting 0 fee spam TX and that's it.
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1000
July 10, 2015, 12:05:43 AM
Does anyone know who is making this stress test?

Someone call the authorities and track down these transactions. Tongue 

No, I don't think anyone knows the source of the spam/stress test this time around. Someone with a decent amount of funds and a motivation to force some improvements, I'd say.

Do you mean that this was happened before? And this same attacked hit blockchain twice? They did not update a good wall to protect this attack? But

what the purpose of doing this attack? They will get the effect too for making this attack
legendary
Activity: 3654
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July 09, 2015, 10:31:32 PM
I bet first this guy (https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/tkeenan-154254) (Yes, TKeenan) will come here and post something like that "Hey, let's use bigger blocks, don't you see we need it right now!"

I'm still thinking Gavin is doing such spamming.

Also how the hell is that possible?
This tx broadcasted (spammed network) and  get accepted immediately; https://blockchain.info/tx/5f475e567548232d3b9f395b941c2ca8584df68492bd586937cd8d08f96c30e7
It's outputs are lower than the min limit...

Each block has a FIFO area in size where it accepts tx for free. do you mean DUST got accepted?
Now the dust is meaning amount less than 546 satoshis, not 5460 anymore. So since the smallest output is 1000 satoshi which is larger than the spam threshold, it is relayed and accepted in a block. Also, it pays 0.0002 for the ~500B tx, which is higher than normal (0.0001). So miners 'like' it and hence take it.
hero member
Activity: 910
Merit: 1003
July 09, 2015, 10:15:19 PM
"If blocks are 8MB, the fees will fall, therefore the cost of getting 1MB of spam on the blockchain will fall.

A Spam attack does not aim to put spam on the blockchain (there is plenty of it already), but to swamp the queues so as to deny service by hours or days.  With 1 MB blocks, the spammer needs to issue only 0.7 tx/s, at a sufficiently high fee, to keep legitimate transactions from being confirmed.  With 8 MB blocks, it would have to issue ~15 tx/s all at the same high fee to keep those same transactions from being confirmed.

Hard to believe that the let-it-saturate-hooray camp can honestly think that SMALLER block sizes will make spam attacks more difficult.  What have they promised to their investors, that they need to resort to lies and ad-hominems to try to prevent any block increase?

To prevent the filling up of the blockchain and the utxo tables with spam, there is a much simpler measure: set a fixed, hard, and significant transaction fee, say 0.2 mBTC (~0.05 USD), for each output, whatever its amount; and a fixed, hard, and significant minimum output value, say 0.1 mBTC (~0.03 USD).  Any existing UTXO smaller than this amount then can be removed from the tables.
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