I know this has been brought up before, but confirmation times are getting weird - page 3.

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Quote from: Mondy on November 21, 2013, 12:09:12 AM

This is actually quite surprising! Could there be a flaw?

https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/mondy-151190
What is with the dozens and dozens of one line posts in the past two days?
Trying to boost up your activity score to appear older and pull off a scam?

Mondy

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This is actually quite surprising! Could there be a flaw?

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Selfish mining wouldn't change the number of tx confirmed.
One could engage in selfish mining actually make larger blocks and thus have less of a backlog.

The vast majority of significantly delayed tx are free. The default block rules cap free tx at 27KB or ~60 transactions per block. That is a mere 0.1 tps. If people are creating more than 1 free tx every 10 seconds unless a miner decides to miner MORE than the default free tx which increases their orphan rate for exactly 0 BTC more revenue then there is going to be a backlog. If the rate of free transaction creation rises then the backlog will get longer and longer and longer.

MoonShadow

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Quote from: chriswilmer on November 14, 2013, 10:20:06 PM

Anybody know what's going on?

I think I might...

http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.0243v2.pdf

http://threatpost.com/researchers-debate-value-of-new-bitcoin-attack

Looks like a mining pool has attempted this 'selfish mining' theory, to gain a profit advantage.

DeathAndTaxes

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Gerald Davis

Or not. The backlog was prior to Eligus making the change and Eligus is only ~15% of the network while confirmation times have risen 80%. Tx volume is higher, blocks aren't, tx have to wait longer.

IsaacGoldbourne

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Looking to start various enterprises

I've not noticed it, I've just noticed that confirmations have been more bunched (like 3 in 3 minutes and then 17 minute wait). I'm guessing this is because of the huge differences in hashpower between pools.

Impaler

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It looks like it was #1 (Miners are mining differently), frankly I think it's a stupid idea too, it looks like people are raising a stink about it and it will be reverted shortly.

franky1

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Quote from: afrustrum on November 16, 2013, 09:51:51 AM

Not sure if this sheds any light on the block size effects of various pools, but here is
a recent snapshot of blocks. What I do not understand is how the Eligius miner created such a small block when there were over 1200 unconfirmed transactions in the mem pool. Direct link: http://i.imgur.com/S29IMDg.png

this will shed some light on eligius

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/miners-time-to-deprioritisefilter-address-reuse-334316

and this is my explaination to the delay its causes

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.3605784

C. Bergmann

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hei... i am no friend of fees ... today i had a talk with someone working for a company making statistics for payments. he told me this. paying with ec in europe we have two options . pin or signature. signature is very insecure, pin costs one euro each transaction. yes. one euro. the companys job is to make complicated statistics when its better to accept pin or sign .... in short. even with thirty minutes confir!ation time and fees btc is far more effectivw than banking.

User705

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Could it be that solo-miners are perhaps thinking mining empty blocks gives a higher odds % to solve blocks?

p2pbucks

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Are Miners rejecting Mastercoin tx now ? Since They are insisting on larger fees instead of zero fees . I dont understand MSC , just guess . Check the tx from the 1Exodus address

MoonShadow

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Quote from: niothor on November 16, 2013, 10:05:22 AM

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on November 15, 2013, 01:17:12 AM

Well threshold would imply some sort of cental block planning agency. Various miners have various different block parameters. Tx volume is higher than the block size being created by the various parameters currently used by various miners. Some miners target larger blocks, some target smaller ones, a couple seem to include nothing but the coinbase tx. Collectively all miners have a certain tx throughput which is less than the tx volume and the limit imposed by the 1MB cap.

Miners can either expand the # of tx they include in blocks
OR
Users can collectively reduce tx volume
OR
The backlog will grow

For the time being a way to put yourself at the front of the line is to pay a tx fee but that won't reduce/eliminate the backlog it will just ensure your tx has a higher chance of going first.

I really hope this will never happen , but let's say that in case number of transactions grows and it starts putting pressure on the limit of the block
IF , the miners don't agree to raising the limits of the block but to raise the fee in order to discourage micropayments .....wouldn't we end up with something like... banks?

Some people will prefer banking institutions anyway, althouth they wouldn't function quite the same. But no, we don't need to go there. Another solution is overlay networks, online wallet sites that agree to delayed settlement, mass transactions, blockchain contracts, etc. There are a lot of ways to move the burden of transactions off of the main network (that the protocol supports) than the obvious general rule today that all transactions are recorded on the blockchain individually and in a near term. Many to many transactions is one method of reducing the absolute number of transactions, for example.

Barek

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Quote from: safeminer on November 16, 2013, 11:30:58 AM

cant this be caused by mastercoin stuffing everyblock with useless information with their crap-r-col

Possible that they are reacting to some sort of transaction DOS "attack". Someone could just be creating a massive amount of no-fee transactions. While there is not much to be done against that, accepting only transactions with fees allows "legitimate" transactions to be processed, while it keeps the others in check.

safeminer

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cant this be caused by mastercoin stuffing everyblock with useless information with their crap-r-col

Barek

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Quote from: BitchicksHusband on November 16, 2013, 11:16:23 AM

Why aren't the transactions just sorted and filled? The miners could take the most fees they could fit in the block and then fill the rest with free ones up to the limit ordered by priority.

Then hardly anyone would pay fees, which can't be in the miner's interest.

BitchicksHusband

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Why aren't the transactions just sorted and filled? The miners could take the most fees they could fit in the block and then fill the rest with free ones up to the limit ordered by priority.

Barek

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As long as transaction with reasonable fee are processed in a timely manner all is good.

Miners are the heart of Bitcoin. Higher mining profits directly improve the infrastructure. A couple of cents in fees are hardly much, considering that transaction will be stored on thousands of computers forever.

What we really need is a method to add fees to a transaction, ideally through an extra transaction, so that merchants (or anyone else) could hurry a transaction.

laowai80

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Quote from: niothor on November 16, 2013, 10:05:22 AM

IF , the miners don't agree to raising the limits of the block but to raise the fee in order to discourage micropayments .....wouldn't we end up with something like... banks?

That's exactly one of the reasons why we need competition in crypto currencies and relying just on bitcoin is a single point of failure. Monopolizing the network together with greed can easily lead to abuse. Human nature is the same at all times, no matter what noble cause there was in the beginning, people more often than not tend to lean to their own selfish ways, and check points and counter-balances need to be in place.

niothor

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in defi we trust

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on November 15, 2013, 01:17:12 AM

Well threshold would imply some sort of cental block planning agency. Various miners have various different block parameters. Tx volume is higher than the block size being created by the various parameters currently used by various miners. Some miners target larger blocks, some target smaller ones, a couple seem to include nothing but the coinbase tx. Collectively all miners have a certain tx throughput which is less than the tx volume and the limit imposed by the 1MB cap.

Miners can either expand the # of tx they include in blocks
OR
Users can collectively reduce tx volume
OR
The backlog will grow

For the time being a way to put yourself at the front of the line is to pay a tx fee but that won't reduce/eliminate the backlog it will just ensure your tx has a higher chance of going first.

I really hope this will never happen , but let's say that in case number of transactions grows and it starts putting pressure on the limit of the block
IF , the miners don't agree to raising the limits of the block but to raise the fee in order to discourage micropayments .....wouldn't we end up with something like... banks?

chriswilmer

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Quote from: dserrano5 on November 16, 2013, 05:36:57 AM

Quote from: Foxpup on November 16, 2013, 12:12:32 AM

Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on November 15, 2013, 10:48:38 PM

That is a flawed understanding of the fee rules. High priority txs have no required fee, none. As in 0 satsohis. This applies regardless if a block is 1MB in size.

The min mandatory fees FOR LOW PRIORITY TXS are designed as a denial of service prevention mechanism. They are only enforced at the client level. Even if miners follow those they have absolutely no effect on high priority txs.

I don't think this is correct. Under the Satoshi client's fee rules (which as I understand are enforced by most, but certainly not all, miners), high priority transactions with no fees will only be included in the first 27 kB of a block (this limit can be changed with the blockprioritysize option). Once the block hits this limit, only fee-paying transactions will be included, regardless of priority.

FWIW all my transactions are high priority ones and I've observed a steep increase in confirmation times, going up to nine hours in some cases, when their priority reaches several thousand million.

Interesting!

Topic: I know this has been brought up before, but confirmation times are getting weird - page 3. (Read 10042 times)