sigh...
4 posts ago, i did my very best to give a non-technical, but complete answer to all those people spreading incorrect information... But it seems like people don't even read the last couple of posts before they start blurting out misinformation...
Unless somebody starts a serious, to-the-point discussion in this thread, i'm giving up... This will be my last reply in this thread (unless, as i've said before, serious posters start posting here). EDIT: i couldn't help myself... People just blurt out whatever nonsense comes to their minds, so i simply had to reply to a couple postsI'll take even one more step back from the technical crypto-related discussion, and simplify even more... Bare with me, this is going to take a certain level of imagination.
Imagine you are a photo editor and you make a living watermarking images with some text. You get payed if the image you watermarked is published in a newspaper.
It's a very simple world you live in, there are only 2 photo editors available:
- microsoft paint, running on micro$oft windows... Very easy to use, no learning curve... That's why 99% of the photo editors use it
- Gimp, running on linux... Great program, but both the OS and the photo editing software have a bigger learning curve, that's why only 1% of the editors use it
One day, there is a communist attack in your world... Allmost all newspapers decide that red text can be linked to communism, so most of the newspapers in the world no longer print pictures that have a red text watermark on them.
Beecause micro$oft tries to shield it's users (they're not that tech savvy), they decide that all future versions of paint will no longer feature the color "red". It is now impossible to change any pixel into a red one, let alone put red text on an image. Gimp on the other hand, being an open source program, allows it's users the freedom to do whatever they want (no ban on the color red).
After a while, you visit a forum where photo editors congregate, and somebody asks if red text can still be added to a picture. 90% Of the posters immediately answer:
"no". Some tech savvy posters start to mumble about technical possibility's but immediately point out that no newspaper will ever accept the image.
But the truth is: there is no law against red letters on an image, there are still photo viewers that show images (even with red letters), there is an image editor that still allows the color red (but it's not very user-friendly, since you need to install a different OS and learn how to use gimp). There are even a small amount of newspapers that don't correlate red text to the communist attacks, and they're willing to buy your images with red text watermarks if you would make them.
So, the answer to the question is:
"YES", with a sidenote that you need some technical knowledge to do this, and you'll have a hard time finding a newspaper that's willing to publish your images... So if you'd just add blue letters to the image, it would make your life a lot easyer...
I know, the comparison of this imaginary world to 0 fee transactions isn't perfect, but to a certain degree, it is valid...
If you wish to know why, just look at my earlyer posts in this very topic...
A last remark: people don't seem to get some simple facts about fees.
When a miner finds a block header whose sha256d hash is under the current target, the block he found is valid. The first transaction in the block is the coinbase transaction, it usually funds one of the miner's addresses with a value of: 12.5
BTC + the sum of the fees of all transactions in the block.
If a miner would add no transactions, or all 0 fee transactions, he'd STILL get 12.5
BTC (untill the next block reward halving).
The sum of the fees is very small compared to the 12.5
BTC, so the difference to a miner is neglectible at this moment (i'm not talking about those spam-attack, bidding war, full blocks periods... At these periods, a miner might get significant income from mining fees, and at this point it would be unimaginable to get a 0 fee transaction into a block unless you pay a huge miner to increase the priority of your transaction in his mempool)
In times of blocks being incompletely filled, it would be perfectly possible to fill the blocks with 0 fee transactions IF (and only if) people would start running nodes that relayed 0 fee transactions, and miners would be willing to include them into blocks... The reason they're not doing this is probably because in a couple block halvings, they reward will be rather low, and they'll have to start depending on the fees to make a living... But like i said: this is in the far future, this is not happening right now... Right now, a miner choses not to include 0 fee transactions because 1) it doesn't give him any monetary incentive to do so and 2) because the default config he might be running is already configured not to accept 0 fee transactions.