Topic: Can congestion in bitcoin price be controlled? (Read 268 times)

Developers are constantly trying to improve bitcoin but we already have a few protocols that have been implemented to try and reduce transaction fees. One is Segwit where it basically changes the format to reduce the size of each transaction so that more can fit into a block. Layer 2 or Lightning network solutions have also been implemented.
Simply because it is the first cryptocurrency to have been made. It has set the standard and the rest are seen as just imitation of what the original is which is bitcoin. People are most likely to think that the original one is the most credible and legit compared to the rest that follows especially that there is now too much coins/tokens out there

From congestion in Bitcoin mempools to congestion in Bitcoin price, there is no logic.

There is nothing as price congestion as I know and about Bitcoin mempools, the fact is mempools are cleaning up recent months and become better than months ago and in 2023.

Today you can move your bitcoin with 8 or 10 sats/vbyte and get a first confirmation quickly. You can try with 7 sats/vyte but will have to wait longer.
https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,1w
https://t.me/BitcoinFeesAlert_bot

The lowest possible value is not 1 sat/vb, that's what I intended to highlight before. The lowest is 0 sat/vb, and then 1 satoshi per transaction. The fact that anything less than 1 sat/vb is getting ignored, is because it is negligible already. If 1 sat/vb ever becomes expensive, expect to move move lower than that (e.g., 0.1 sat/vb).

The price of Bitcoin affects the fee rate in dollar terms only due to the standardness' lower limit of the fee rate. Beyond that, the fee rate is primarily determined by competition. Maybe another reason is that, in Bitcoin, a lot of software is configured to set arbitrarily high fees, such as exchanges.

When usage and on-chain competition is concerned, you are right nothing come close to bitcoin but the code, the way mempool works, the way fee spikes take place, etc. are very similar to bitcoin. We even saw this same behavior in shitcopies like bcash that have a much bigger block cap https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.52337255

Being expensive (dollar wise) in general depends on both the price and competition not just one.
Otherwise even setting the fee rate to the smallest possible value for bitcoin and all its copies (ie. 1 sat/vb), the bitcoin transactions are still more expensive because bitcoin price is higher.

It is not performing exactly as Bitcoin. There's clearly more on-chain competition for Bitcoin block space, and that's why it comes more expensive.

The minimum fee is not 1 sat/vb. That's the minimum relay fee. And it just happens to be the same with Bitcoin. If the competition for Litecoin block space was the same as with Bitcoin, then the respective fee rate should be 8260 sat/vb (826 x 10 bitcoin-sat/vb), because of the exchange rate (1 BTC = 826 LTC). Or, if Bitcoin block space was as scarce as Litecoin's, the respective fee rate should be 0.001 sat/vb (in Bitcoin).

Lets not forget that Litecoin, like many other altcoins, is a copy of Bitcoin so it is performing exactly as Bitcoin. Litecoin is currently worth far less than what bitcoin was worth in 2014 and yet it is using the same fee mechanism as Bitcoin. The min fee is 1 sat/vb and it spikes just the same if its usage grows.

Very simply put:

- If we don't want to make the operation of full nodes prohibitively expensive (see Bitcoin SV or even Ethereum) then you need a cap for on-chain transactions. As pooya87 correctly wrote, this will lead to congestion always if there is high demand for transactions.
- But we can reduce congestion if we achieve that not all full nodes have to relay, validate and store (relaying and validating is much more important than storage!) every transaction.
- This is what "second layers" (L2s) like Lightning, Ark, Sidechains and other technologies aim to achieve. Basically there are three ways: off-chain transaction bundling (Lightning, Ark, Statechains) and use alt-chains to transact Bitcoin (Sidechains) or a mix of alt-chain and main-chain (rollups).

On all of these technologies there is heavy work going on currently, but they all still have their flaws. A good website to see their current state and their shortcomings is BitcoinLayers. Lightning is the most mature of all, with the best values in terms of decentralization/safety/maturity.

There was one additional idea I found somewhat interesting: a way to reserve future block space in advance to ensure low fees, as proposed in this thread. I don't think it will happen on Bitcoin, but it could be an interesting solution for a high-availability altcoin which isn't in need to sacrifice decentralization for "low fees".

I don't think this has anything to do with it. In your example, you used an arbitrary number (0.0001) as a transaction fee, but if there is no competition, then no matter how much 1 ALT unit costs, the user can divide it into smaller pieces in case 0.0001 is expensive. In 2014, you'd be paying more than 0.001 BTC as a transaction fee. Ten years later, you'd pay less than 5% of that.

It's a matter of competition. If there is no competition, no matter what the price of one Bitcoin, people pay low fees. Respectively, if there is competition, transaction fee is defined by what the people are willing to pay for it. If 1 BTC = $1M, you'd notice decline in sat/vb.

That would be a temporary solution because altcoins like LTC are copies of bitcoin. So they inherit all bitcoin's shortcomings and they usually add more problems as well.
So if their usage grows, their fees would go up as well.

In fact one of the coins that were advertised as "will never have high fees" ended up having a much higher fee compared to bitcoin when it's network traffic grew back in 2017.

Two reasons:
1) These altcoins are not used nearly as much as bitcoin is. So their blocks are mostly empty and there is no competition for the block space to push the fee rate up. If their usage grows, their fees shoot up as well.

2) Their prices are far lower than bitcoin so what you pay in fiat terms appear lower. For example if you pay a high fee of 0.0001 for a bitcoin tx, that is about $6 but the same fee of 0.0001 in litecoin, that is worth $0.007 because of how much lower LTC price is compared to bitcoin. This is why the fees you pay in altcoins usually don't seem high even if the fee-rate were actually high.

but when you check the exchanges, you see that not all the exchanges accepts transactions with lighting network,  expect that their is particular exchange that uses lighting network which is unknown to me. According Charles-Tim I will wish for you to list exchanges that you think that accept lighting network.

If I want to hold a bitcoin I can use custodial wallet to hold my bitcoin, but I'm talking of the charges being pay like transferring bitcoin from Electrum wallet to exchanges or transferring from trust to coinomi even to am exchanges address.

Your options for Liquid wallets are extremely limited because there is very few software that support that apart from Blockstream Jade (and anything else coming out of that company).

I agree with you that the Lightning Network is a better solution for this. Ideally, you'd want to run a decentralized node, but unless you have people paying for you, liquidity will be a huge problem. So the alternative is to use a custodial wallet to hold small amounts and when they become large, submarine-swap them for real bitcoins using Boltz or something like that.

Read what some users have posted above. NotATether also later posted his own opinion. Either you leave it the way it is or you make use of alternatives is what people posted.

You can hold huge amount of coins on a cold wallet or a multisig wallet. That will not demand much onchain transactions from you. Have small or few amount on a lightning wallet.

You can even go for L-BTC or maybe those other pegged coins that are altcoins. It is small or few amount that you want to be using for frequent transactions that you will have them for.

I have been using lightning network recently than I possibly thought of. Many exchanges are supporting it. There are many noncustodial lightning wallets that are good for newbies. There are more sites that are now accepting it for payment. I use lightning network for transactions that are not more than 0.005 BTC.

my question is very simple and understood, which I know that everyone who reader my question understood  it, congestion of bitcoin transaction always be a problem bitcoin have, and I'm asking if the congestion doesn't have way it can be corrected so that they will not be high transaction fee again, likewise other cryptocurrencies network, if you transacting with litecoin or withdrawing any coin through litecoin the charges will be lesser of bitcoin charges,  why can't bitcoin maintain same transaction fees with one of altcoins.

Well, there is nothing that can be done about that. The fee system is good the way it is. No need to be tweaking it like the Ethereum devs always do, because too much tinkering does not make the bitcoin network better but worse.

One needs to only look at the disruptive nature of Ordinals and Runes to see what too much modifications will do against a blockchain.

I think what the OP meant as price is the high amount needed for bitcoin transaction as fee. He is asking questions about how mempool congestion, about how it can be reduced or gotten rid of if possible. Also about why bitcoin remain the dominant cryptocurrency.

Price is not governed by the Bitcoin network, but by the exchanges. So no, we can't do that, but you could go to some exchanges and ask them to close their options for buying and selling Bitcoin periodically.

Because, in extremeness, this is the only way even exchanges can regulate the price. That is since traders buying and selling coins is what influences the price, and the price is different on each exchange.

As long as there is a cap there will be a congestion.

Imagine a website, the server of that website can only handle a maximum number of requests. If more users connect to that server than it can handle, it will slow down and the user experience for all users deteriorates.

It's similar for Bitcoin. There is a cap and there will always be a cap on block space. When there is more transactions than there is space, there will be a backlog and the bigger that backlog the higher the fees and lower the user experience will get.

Sometimes we experience attacks that also deteriorate user experience. Similar to a DDoS attack on the website's servers we see spam attacks in Bitcoin. For example we have had the longest attack so far called Ordinals that is causing that congestion.

It is not possible to remove that cap either. It is impossible to prevent attacks as well. The only thing we can do is "manage" them. For example by fixing the protocol to remove the exploit they are using to perform the attack.
The cap itself is actually helping by creating a fee market that makes such attacks increasingly expensive to sustain.

I think we already have the solution.  The transaction fees control and regulate the congestion. The network isn't meant for microtransactions, at least not now, which is where altcoins come in.

You use btc as an investment.
You use others for transactions.

For the technical way, idk how it can be improved.
For the sensible way, people could stop using btc to transfer small amounts.

 

If Ordinals and BRC20 tokens are removed, the congestion will reduce. Although transaction of 9 sat/vbyte is getting confirmed presently. Also if those platforms like exchanges are not causing congestions with their several consolidation transactions that will remain in the mempool for long, the congestion will reduce. These are the two reasons the mempool is getting congested sometimes. But with what I saw, these are allowed to stay. And bitcoin is decentralized.

To be regulated in a way bitcoin will becoming centralized? Regulation means centralization. Not by definition but you should understand what I meant.

Bitcoin is the first coin that was created. It reminds as a decentralized coin. It has the strongest blockchain. People think of it as bitcoin while others as altcoins which makes bitcoin remain relevant than altcoins. It is less volatile than most other coins. No one knows the real identity of its founder unlike altcoins.

What do we think that is the technical way to get rid of congestion in bitcoin network, what method can be apply to shortcut transaction congestion of bitcoin, can't another application established to blockchain to make congestion to be regulated instead of halving one policy system of confirmation of transaction, and what makes Bitcoin and ethereum always have higher congestion more than any other cryptocurrencies, the question is that why the demands of bitcoin is always higher than others?