Topic: Economically Unspendable Outputs: A Problem On The Radar - page 10. (Read 16443 times)

If you can send transactions for free, is there any reason you would not be able to send a big transactions with a reduced fee?

Just wondering: Is the size of the bitcoin transactionss cumulative, or does it reset after each transaction? What I mean is if I take a bunch of small amounts and send them to one address, that would be a big transaction, but if I then send the coins from the one address to somewhere else, does that also make a big transaction or does it become a small transaction because it is from only one address now?

u could, but the TX is getting big and you would have to pay a higher fee for it, altough u still can do it for free. scroll up or click here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1601755

I don't see why these are unspendable? Couldn't you just have more incoming bitcoins land on that address, and then spend them as a group?

Maybe everyone should stop using Bitcoin to help out the miners at this early point of Bitcoin's evolution.

We can start using it again once we have enough transactions where this problem will not exist.

misterbigg, a good level-headed and polite summary

I certainly am not against SatoshiDice as a business or in principle, there are just a few simple house-keeping changes which would be a MAJOR help to bitcoin. Erik loves Bitcoin so I hope he takes these comments on-board.


There IS also lesson for the devs, because SD shows a potential attack vector which a malicious Central Bank (for example) could use to choke the Bitcoin network for long periods of time.

u can spend them, wait some time (so they arent "new coins" anymore, dunno how many blocks that would be) and send them even with 0 fees trough the raw tx API.

Yeah when we talk small amounts we're talking about pennies, or maybe a fraction of a penny like 1/10 of a cent. But 1 satoshi = $0.00000045. Is this really useful?


Yep, I agree and there is no question that SatoshiDICE has done some great things. But they are also pushing a burden of disproportionate costs onto all full nodes that exist or will ever exist in the future. No other Bitcoin enterprise behaves this way.


I wouldn't say that it is going to "kill" Bitcoin but it is definitely make running a full node more expensive, and in a way that doesn't grow the Bitcoin user base in proportion to its cost. It has also been driving up transaction fees, again in a way that doesn't really help the network.

All that SatoshiDICE needs to do is pick one of several options for changing the way it sends unspendable outputs to notify gamblers of losing bets. There isn't even a problem with the winning bets, since those are spendable. It's just the losing bets which have a miner's fee and a microscopic output (1 satoshi). Here are a couple of options:

1) Require gamblers to include a tiny additional deposit of 0.01 BTC which is always refunded regardless of a win or loss

2) Send an amount equal to the transaction fee back to losing bets, instead of sending 1 satoshi.

3) Stop sending betting loss confirmations

If you pay any attention to what the developers have to say, you realize that Bitcoin is still not even full release software, it is in beta. The current version is 0.8. It was said that we will probably get up to 0.20 (zero point twenty) before we have a 1.0 release. There are still many to-do items before they consider Bitcoin to be at a level where it is ready for the masses.

It does Bitcoin a disservice for SatoshiDICE to place the network under the constant load of it's unprunable transaction spam in it's current beta state. Sure, if you want to think of it is as doing us a "favor", then okay they flooded the network and now we have some hard data. So, can SatoshiDICE please turn the spam off for a few weeks while the developers get things sorted out? After they make the necessary fixes then SatoshiDICE can turn it back on. That's being a good citizen during the beta stage.

The also hang out in #bitcoin-dev IRC channel on Freenode

You are right. Programmers rule in the world of software money (bitcoin).  Thanks for the link and more impetus to learn programming.

this.

isn't micro transactions a feature in bitcoin? send small amounts low fees unlike credit cards?

using bitcoin to make a provably fair casino? seems to be a perfect match

if 1 in 100 million people in the world using satoshi dice kills bitcoin there is something wrong with bitcoin

(not a player or investor in satoshi dice but this just seems like common sense)

I'm 100% positive that the value of my bitcoins has gone up because of SD's success and interest from the gambling industry that has come from that. So you've made myself, and everyone else who has bitcoins, money. And you've helped us to understand issues that need to be dealt with in the protocol. Thank you for that.

So far there's been no comments in this thread by actual developers, which is not unexpected because such threads are not very likely to converge on any kind of rough consensus for a technical solution. 

This is because actual developers hang out this this forum instead https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls simply because that forum is almost all "signal" and this forum is almost all "noise" from their perspective.

MisterBigg, being a competent C++ programmer that I know you to be, simply submitting a sub-10 line pull request to alter the logic to prioritize transactions unlikely to ever be economically spendable with clear explanation of its logic, test scenario, etc would actually have about a 1000 times more chance of actually making a difference out there in the "real world" of code ... rather than in this talking shop of bitcointalk.org.

Cheers ... :-)

Unfortunately I am not well-versed in the technical intricacies of Bitcoin, and I'm not a programmer. I have huge respect for those who are, and thus I'm happy to contribute to their work by donating some money to assist them. If developers come to me and say they have a good solution, I'll fund it.

Next, I'm not convinced that there even is a weakness. Bitcoin seems to be working beautifully, and already many are thinking about how to scale it even more. These are the growing pains of such a system, and is a sign of surging strength, not weakness. So I do not see that SD is "exploiting" anything... rather it's simply using Bitcoin, following the rules, paying more transactions fees than everyone else combined, and demonstrating to the world how awesome Bitcoin is for gambling.

Yes, SD is profiting from this, but so is the Bitcoin system itself as adoption grows and these growing pains are worked out sooner rather than later.

SatoshiDice is a spark which is driving interest from the entire gambling industry into Bitcoin. Certainly it puts stress on the system, but a system that's used is a system that's stressed, and the Bitcoin economy is far healthier for it.

We cannot advance Bitcoin by asking anyone who is putting stress on the system to "please refrain." I do not think Bitcoin is so delicate and poorly constructed as you. It can handle SatoshiDice, it can handle far more than SatoshiDice, and I congratulate and encourage everyone else out there who is building infrastructure and putting stress on this system.

Yes, I agree that this is currently a vulnerability of Bitcoin and it most definitely needs to be resolved. A simple solution is not so apparent. You're quite well versed with Bitcoin intricacies, can you propose a solution? But in the meanwhile, wouldn't it be helpful for SatoshiDICE to cut down on the spam while we get this thing fixed?

Just because Bitcoin has a weakness doesn't make it right to exploit it for personal gain.

There's an ocean of difference between doing what's right for you, versus doing what's right.

How do you not see that this is a problem with the Bitcoin protocol and not SatoshiDice?? You are focusing on a symptom instead of the disease. The analogy of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic is relevant.

The devs need to fix the protocol issue, if there is one. I'm happy to donate funds from SD to assist the devs in this endeavor if that would be helpful.

They are not technically unspendable but economically unspendable, because they cost more in fees than the amount that is being sent. No rational actor would bother to transmit a 1-satoshi amount. Except for SatoshiDICE of course, since it is using the blockchain as a cheap "messaging service."

new title:

come on this is pure FUD

Did you sell your coins and would like the price to drop now?

This beats the Shi% out om too....? I mean maybe lotto with a devaluating currency just for fun....the only explanation can be

[1] evolutionary logic short circuit of gamble pleasure outweighs rational odds, and this is osrta what the human race had to do to get a head be able to understand they would most likely die but do the experiment anyway, until one you could find a way to make it work, or a least shut out all possibility, a curious mixture or being able to reason something out then ingnore that reason....this sort thing may drive a AI attempt crazy

[2] they though BT was going down, or will go down

Wait, hold on.

You're saying one satoshi outputs are "un-spendable."

I think this is not true.

Whenever you spend coins, the inputs are not required to come from a single source.

Let's say I have an address where my balance is 0.01 BTC.

However, for whatever reason, every single transaction that was sent to that address was a single satoshi.

Would that bit cent be un-spendable?

I don't think so.

The transaction would just have one million inputs.

This transaction would definitely be *huge* in size in bytes compared to a normal transaction, but it should still be valid.

It might take a really long time to get a confirmation as well, since I think it'd get a really low priority due to its low amount sent and high size in bytes.

Bob Loblaw is that you?