Topic: Miners that refuse to include transactions are becoming a problem - page 9. (Read 16972 times)

That's not the current behavior, and that behavior is not part of gmaxwell's proposal. Blocks won't get rejected/discouraged for not including transactions. All blocks just need to include an extra "proof of validation".

51% of miners follow a list which says tx A must be included.
49% of miners follow a list which don't.

It is no different than a 51% "attack".

The 49% may solve a block BUT that block will be ignored by the miners in camp "A".  Eventually the A camp will pull ahead and orphan all the blocks of the 49%.

So say current block height #123
Both camp A & camp B work on block #124.
A miner in camp B solves block #124 but it is missing tx from "A" list.
Miners in camp A invalidate block #124 and continue to build off of #123.

Due to variance "camp b" may pull ahead temporarily but just like a 51% attack eventually camp A will pull ahead and orphan the chain supported by the "B" miners.

This means whatever list is used by 51% must be used by all miners.  That gives massive power to those who control a lot of hashing power like the Big 3 pools.  If the Big 3 pools make "list A" they even miner is defacto forced to use it.  To not use it is economic suicide as any block the mine which is not in compliance with the "list A" risks being orphaned.  No miners is going to take that chance.  All miners will be forced to follow the rules set by the Big 3.

The Big 3 then could decide not to share the list with all miners (permanent mining exclusion unless the excluded gain 51% of hashing power), charge fees for inclusion (think of it as a pool fee but they don't even have to provide a pool), or share "hidden tx" between themselves to orphan out miners not paying to mine.  If only those paying for access to the list know of the list and hidden tx then outside miners can't even hope to compete by including all tx (even every free one) blindly hoping to make a compliant block.  Even if they include all tx they know of they will be missing the hidden ones.

True, although it probably won't be next year. Currently what I said does hold true for "spam" tx, and next year the same will probably hold true for all tx. However, if the 0 fee txs are passed to bots, then the penalty for not including a fee ends up falling on the legitimate miners, who could otherwise extract a higher fee and from a larger number of tx.

Why?

Haplo please learn the protocol before you try to "fix it".

Unless your tx is considered spam (under the 1 day & 1 BTC threshold)  there is no need for a fee and confirmation times are routinely the next block.

Of course they would.  Whatever list is used by 51% of miners will orphan out any other chain. 

I think there's some confusion here.

Currently, it is possible to get a tx pushed with no fee, but the commit times are horrible and there's no guarantee that it will even work. Nothing really changes here, and miners can still do whatever they want, however stupid it may be.

Also, while gmaxwell did propose a mechanism for forwarding lists of tx, this was primarily intended to give the bots some pre-verified tx they could use to mine into their own blocks. In other words, only real miners can produce such a list (since only they can verify the previous tx of the blockchain) and the only way a bot's block could be included at all is if it voluntarily included some tx's sent to it. In other words, you've got it backwards; if a miner doesn't want a 0 fee tx, it can dump it on the bots.

However, I suggest against that simply because it might give people an incentive not to include a fee, and still be able to get their tx committed, thus robbing potential fees from miners who actually own their equipment. A stolen mining rig costs nothing, so even if they only processed 0tx fees they could still compete and drive down prices.

(basically what theymos said, but with a bit more detail)

You're misunderstanding the proposal. Anyone who is verifying the chain can publish a list. Lists can use any fee rules. For example, Bitcoin Block Explorer might publish lists at /q/getValidationProof/minFee, which would only list transactions with a fee above minFee. Under this system, dumb miners would be able to choose essentially arbitrary fee policies; they'd just be forced into mining only properly-verified transactions and blocks.

Why would a rational miner want to allow free tx forever?

Thanks for explaining it theymos but I like it less now with the explanation.  

For example in the last block:

http://blockchain.info/block-index/197728/0000000000000628467e112dd0aca3b6e5abbdd12cbd1b79074c446e85a2689d

there was 0 tx with a fee of 0.01 or higher?

So if majority of miners include a list with these tx I am forced:
a) to mine for nothing
b) to risk my block being considered invalid

Horrible idea.  Mining should be an open free market and if I don't want to include any tx without a sufficient fee I should be able to.  

More centralization for nothing.

If DeepBit and Slush built a shared list they could
a) determine pricing of entire bitcoin economy
b) force other pools to pay for access to the list or risk them building invalid blocks
c) to aid in b they could witholding tx from the list and publish them only to subscribers (if you don't pay you can't mine)

The miner could choose the list to use. Someone could even publish valid lists that are always empty, though rational miners won't use these because including a transaction is almost free.

When there are conflicting lists?
When the list contains free tx and I as a miner don't want to include them?

Wouldn't it be in the best interest of free-loader nodes to publish and follow lists which put all free tx into the required list thus ensure free tx on the backs of miners?

It comes down to a fundamental question:
Do miners have a right to set the price for their services and thus indirectly choose which tx are included in the block they are working on?

Anyone could publish lists of transactions that should be included in the next block along with the necessary "verification proof". Bitcoin nodes themselves could publish lists using a new network message.

Specified by whom?  The person who solved the last block?  If so why aren't the transactions in their block?

But it is my choice right?  Or is the choice on what is an acceptable fee decided by the cental agency of bitcoin fees? I have a right to charge whatever amount I want for my hashing power.  Do you agree?  As the subsidies decline the market will be more competitive but it is still my choice.

If tx MUST be included then does that include all free tx.  Am I now forced to include all free tx?  What incentive is there for a user to pay any fee then?

Does it include all tx w/ a fee?  If so then why every pay more than 1 satoshi?
Does it include all tx w/ a "minimum defined" fee?  Say 0.0005 BTC.  If so then why would any user pay more?

If someone says you must include 25% of all pending transactions... well what if those transactions are below my processing cost (because the users are cheap bastards)?  I am forced to include them or lose the block?  Really?

Well, you wouldn't be doing very good business if you actually had to depend on tx fees, which is mostly the point. Admittedly it's a difficult problem to define an acceptable threshold, but if push comes to shove it could be done. However, unless a lot of miners start purposefully killing their tx throughput that shouldn't be an issue at all. If mystery really is running sans a blockchain, which seems to be the case, then only he would be affected since the stingy miner can still produce the minimum verification, whereas mystery could not.

If mystery finds a way to run with the blockchain with his stolen computing power, then he could continue to do business, but would be running like a normal miner, problem solved. Given his current cushy 16% market share, however, nothing short of chasing him out would motivate him to go to that kind of trouble. Downloading a 2GB file onto thousands millions of computers you don't own without being noticed would be nothing short of a miracle, and not our problem, for that matter.


That's a lot of freaking clients. And also, that's probably exactly what's going on, or something very close. I'm glad someone knows how this crap works .

well, just to add my 2 cents. If it's a botnet, then it'd need a lot of bandwith and controlling processing power. Someone in the thread about  this in the mining section gave 1.8m clients as an average number of estimated clients. If I had a botnet of this size, I'd mod bitcoind to just have the coinbase for getwork, and the clients listen for block changes(could be done via IRC). that way, bots would only "getwork" when a new block comes out, which reduces the amount of resources needed to serve the botnet amssively.

Under gmaxwell's proposal, the miner would need to include exactly the transactions specified by the person who verified that the transactions and the previous block were valid. So if blockchain.info published a set of 10 verified transactions, the miner would have to include all 10 of them.

How would he be traceable.  He can use a few of the nodes to provide validation hashes for the rest of the nodes.  Obviously every block requires the prior blocks hash so he must already be distributing that anyways.  He has to have at least one copy of the bitcoind running somewhere as he needs to be aware of other blocks generated and the current dominant chain.  Requiring "current" tx is nonsensical.  If there are no tx in the block then that adds nothing to what miner needs.  Unless one intends to force miners to include all tx that is.


But he IS validly mining.  Imagine I wanted to run a pool which requires a 1 BTC tx fee.  Currently in last 7 days guess how many tx (other than the coinbase) would be in my pool's blocks.  ..... 0.  

So would I be "invalid mining" (or whatever nonsense term you want to make up)?  The reality is no tx meet my fee requirements.  It doesn't matter than you or others might think my fee conditions are stupid.  Satoshi intended an open fee market.    If I feel my computing time is worth 1 BTC per fee that is my right as a miner.

I'm afraid I don't know that much specifics about how much of the blockchain is actually required in order to validly mine tx. However, gmaxwell's system uses the input data from the previous block's tx, the input data from the tx currently being mined, and the output data, which is added to the current coinbase in order to create a sort of "signature". If the rig isn't validly mining tx, then it wouldn't be able to include valid tx data from the tx it's mining, nor a valid signature.

If they can get around that by using a few servers for distribution, then it seems to me they should also be able to validly mine tx. Problem solved.

However, after re-reading this a few times it seems to me that the primary reason mystery does not do this (or use a mining pool) is because his computing power is probably stolen, and anything that could be used to trace him would put him up shit creek. In that case, the only way to deal with it is to give him the stick. If he tries to get around it, he makes himself traceable, game over.

A I understand it (possibly wrong) your solution is that miner must include in the block a hash of the tx of the prior block.  The issue is that doesn't accomplish anything.  A few distributed servers (or nodes, or calls to blockchain.info) could provide that data via remote call.  A miner could easily then have nodes process blank blocks with valid signatures.

Of course you aren't the only one with proposed solutions.  At least two people have proposed systems which invalidate blocks that don't contain a certain amount of tx.  Satoshi clearly believed miners should be able to set whatever fee requirement they want.