Topic: Obligation of miners to return excessive fees - page 2. (Read 848 times)

The participants in the bitcoin network are governed by the same law. This law (which is the bitcoin code) should be of sound enough design not to require opinions on what is "right" and "good" concerning the actions of certain participants (or lack of responsiveness). And it is of sound design. It runs like clockwork. No rules were broken and there is no need to pass judgement on someone playing by the same rules that everyone else is playing by.

Why not?

Shouldn't a community have a shared sense of ethics?  Can't the members of a community express their opinions about what is "right" and "good"?

Not exactly.

More specifically, I'm stating...

The transaction posted by the OP was mined by AntPool.

Assume for a moment that the operator of AntPool were to create and broadcast a transaction that accidentally paid a 10 BTC transaction fee.

Assume in addition to that, the transaction with the 10 BTC transaction fee was confirmed by some other (Non-AntPool) miner or pool.

Would the operator of AntPool want that someone else to return some of that 10 BTC fee?



Good.  So we are in agreement that the operator of AntPool would want such behavior of others.

Would the operator of AntPool feel like the honorable and "morally good" thing would be for that someone else to return some of that 10 BTC fee?

If the answer is yes, then he is morally obligated to do so for others. If his morals and values lead him to believe that returning some of the excessive fee is "right" and "good", then failing to do so would be immoral, dis-honorable, and "wrong".  Choosing to do what you know is wrong, just because you believe you can get away with it (legally or otherwise), doesn't make it "right" or "moral".

One may choose not to act on a moral obligation, but in doing so they are acting immorally within their own structure of values.

Now, I'm not stating that AntPool objectively DOES have a moral obligation. I don't know them or their belief structure personally.  However, within my understanding of good and bad, I'd feel a moral obligation to return the excess.  I strongly suspect that returning the excess is within the concepts of "right" and "good" of the operator of AntPool.

You are both right and it depends on your perspective, definition, and beliefs about morals.

If one's primary standard of morals is simply not to attack/defraud/threaten others, then there is no 'obligation' per se to correct another's mistake and return money lost due to their own negligence.

On the other hand, if one takes the viewpoint that behaving morally means to uphold the golden rule, then returning the money is a moral way to behave. 

(However, I would say that this is more an act of kindness and not obligation.   'Moral obligation' is somewhat of an oxymoron in that regard.)

So everything is on a scale of truth...  Heck, a thief's morals are that if you can get away with stealing, you earned it! lol.

A little puzzled as to the question, but I'll try...

So a miner creates a transaction that has a mistaken excessive fee (i.e. in the role of a 'user'), and some other miner mined that transaction into a block? Is that the scenario? And you're asking if the first miner would want the second miner to return 'the excess' (whatever 'the excess' might be, which is an interesting question unto itself)?

Of course, miner one would want miner two to refund him the fee. And miner two would again be perfectly justified -- legally and morally -- from refusing to do so.

Why you might think the fact that the erring user also happens to mine would change the calculus in any way is beyond me.

While that might be a strong "legal" or "technical" argument, it is not a strong "moral" argument.


I'm not sure that word means what you think it means.

The "golden rule" would seem to make it pretty clear here.

If the miner (or pool) accidentally included an excessively high fee in a transaction that was confirmed by someone else, would they want that someone else to return the excess?

Well, no. Miners are paid in fee to mine transactions into blocks. Miner was offered a large consideration to mine that transaction into a block RFN. Value was delivered for the consideration offered. The idea that OP did not intend to provide the consideration that s/he advertised is irrelevant from a contractual standpoint. Terms were offered, miner accepted terms, delivered miner's end.

Look, I feel for OP. And as mentioned, I'd like to think that I'd be big enough to return OP's fee. But that would merely be taking pity upon someone for making a mistake.

There is no moral obligation here.

 There's nothing crazy about moral obligation.  Life is not dangerous or there wouldn't be 7 billion humans on the planet - you're simply creating a false narrative. There's nothing dangerous about this particular predicament nor should it be considered a mess, an honest mistake has been made that merely requires honest action on the part of the miner (in this case Antminer) to remedy.  Hellz yeah!

A moral obligation to fix someone else's mistake. Hellz no.

Granted, it would be a nice gesture to return what in this case seems an obvious error. If I were the miner, I would like to think that I would return the overage. But 'moral obligation'? That's crazy ass special snowflake shit.

Life is dangerous. Live accordingly. Don't expect others to clean up your messes for you.

 While perhaps no legally bound to returning the mistakenly attached fee,  I believe that Bitcoin miners have a moral obligation to return blatantly abnormal fees once apprised of the situation hence they are not technically "under no obligation" to return the fee.  Think of it as a goodwill gesture to the Bitcoin community which already has it's more than fair share of scammers.  Wrong is wrong.