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Topic: Transaction Fees are SPIKING ! (Read 5684 times)

hero member
Activity: 770
Merit: 500
March 05, 2017, 01:26:31 PM
Higher transaction cost still affordable for Bitcoin. Because the traders and the exchange sites can make the higher traffic. This prevent the fraud transactions. And this is also helpful to reduce the storage for transaction logs.
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1004
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
March 03, 2017, 03:41:34 PM
 


Is it even possible to tamper on the mining algorithm in Bitcoin?

Perhaps the POW algorithm may change in the future but the issuance/monetary supply seems
to be one thing that nearly everyone is united on.

hero member
Activity: 2268
Merit: 870
March 03, 2017, 03:39:30 PM
Here mostly every member was happy with bitcoin's price rice but what we see nowdays about transaction fees, it's really bad. Price rised but at the same time double rised fees, I don't enjoy forks but this time it will be great if any hard work will be done. Well, it's still possible to pay with low-normal fee but time of confirmation will be very long. Hope many mining pool like viabtc will offer transaction accelerator and maybe this will be only our hope to end that high fee transactions.
legendary
Activity: 4592
Merit: 1276
March 03, 2017, 03:11:59 PM

So you admit technical points were made, and this debate is not about people getting butt-hurt over candy bars.   Roll Eyes

As I said, the 'technical points' of the article struck me as largely bunk.

My comment about butt-hurt was related to years of observation on this forum.  It remains the most powerful explanation of the driving force for garden variety minions, but these minions are animated (unconsciously or otherwise) by people who see a threat in the aspects of Bitcoin which I personally consider to be liberating.

I welcome competition while those who have a monopoly in other financial instruments see it as a significant threat.  My biggest mis-calculation so far has been in predicting the likely form of attack from corp/gov.  I didn't expect them to be so shrewd in their attack.  Chuck Schumer's strategy was the one I anticipated taking hold and it was kind of a surprise when he was told to put a sock in it and let the professionals handle this.

legendary
Activity: 1245
Merit: 1004
March 03, 2017, 03:11:38 PM
You are correct that a widely distrbuted mining landscape is healthy for the network.  No argument there.

Which is, from a technical perspective, most probalby related to RAM useage. The tintier the required mining chips can be the moar centralisation seems to be awaiting us.
Is it even possible to tamper on the mining algorithm in Bitcoin?
A simple requirement to reach back onto arbitrary blockchain history data would cut a sharp end onto current misdevelopment.
legendary
Activity: 3458
Merit: 1280
English ⬄ Russian Translation Services
March 03, 2017, 03:02:15 PM
if we could somehow limit the fees (I refer to upper limit, since the lower one is 0, obviously) and there are no more mining reward

That is extremely unlikely to happen with Bitcoin, although there might be an altcoin or two with that type of structure

I suspect I should disagree with this

Unless you refer to Lightning Network as "[an] extremely unlikely [thing] to happen" to Bitcoin, of course. As I understand it, integrating LN into Bitcoin will allow creating payment channels by people who are just idly keeping their coins in their wallets. If they are ensured by the network that their coins in no case would be lost (which seems to be a correct assumption here), what could prevent them from setting up such payment channels with no or extremely low fees to help Bitcoin payments pass through smoothly as well as oppose miners' hegemony and domination? If I were one of them, I would certainly go for that. Would you?
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1004
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
March 03, 2017, 02:53:09 PM
if we could somehow limit the fees (I refer to upper limit, since the lower one is 0, obviously) and there are no more mining reward

That is extremely unlikely to happen with Bitcoin, although there might be an altcoin or two with that type of structure.

...


So you admit technical points were made, and this debate is not about people getting butt-hurt over candy bars.   Roll Eyes
legendary
Activity: 3458
Merit: 1280
English ⬄ Russian Translation Services
March 03, 2017, 02:49:22 PM

Even if these are mining pools you still can't escape the simple arithmetic that if there are more miners independently confirming transactions the network would be more secure overall. If you disagree (which seems to be the case), then you will have to explain how hashing difficulty is correlated with security. As far as I understand it, difficulty just shows how difficult it is to find a new block. What correspondence does it have to Bitcoin network security? If some miner grabs more than 50% of hashing power (which basically renders the network "insecure"), it won't matter at which difficulty that happens, right? Thus difficulty is irrelevant to security

You are correct that a widely distrbuted mining landscape is healthy for the network.  No argument there.

I also agree that no pool should have 50% of the hashing power.  This happened a couple years ago with gHash
and the imbalance was soon after corrected as many miners decided to leave that pool since it had too much control

So we are essentially back to square one

We don't know how many pools are actually pools and not huge mining farms with some miners allowed to join them to make the former look like genuine pools. In this manner, if we could somehow limit the fees (I refer to upper limit, since the lower one is 0, obviously) and there are no more mining reward (I specifically repeat it), that will actually contribute to more "distributed mining landscape" (and thus overall security of Bitcoin network). Just because simple folks will be able to support mining for no fees at all (i.e. independently confirm transactions)
legendary
Activity: 4592
Merit: 1276
March 03, 2017, 02:48:08 PM
...
Proponents of main chain scaling are not advocating it for emotional reasons as you are implying.  (Come on dude)... There are genuine concerns including centralization.
Here is an interesting article about LN that someone posted (I haven't read it in detail yet):  http://www.wallstreettechnologist.com/2016/10/03/lightning-network-will-it-save-bitcoin-or-break-it/


My summation of the article is that the author is saying, "Oh no!  Lighting might make Bitcoin work."  From my perspective I would classify the guy's concerns as mostly either advantages, neutral, or no problem, and it looks to me like his main beef is that it would interfere with the bloat-it strategy to quash or control Bitcoin.

The guy tries to scare people about paper-vs-gold.  He relies on the well implemented mass ignorance of the populous and conspicuously neglects to point out that there is no problem with paper notes circulating in lu of gold and it makes a lot of sense in that context.  The trouble lies in fractional reserve monetary inflation where banks create $1000 worth of notes and back them with $100 worth of gold (then pocket the interest on the remaining $900.)  This is simply not an issue with a properly designed Bitcoin-backed exchange currency.

Actually, it could be a problem for anyone stupid enough to use a fractional reserve subordinate exchange currency.  Given an option (and some knowledge) many people would not make this choice.  That's why corp/gov has to force them to do so and quash any other options.

legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1004
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
March 03, 2017, 02:32:04 PM

Even if these are mining pools you still can't escape the simple arithmetic that if there are more miners independently confirming transactions the network would be more secure overall. If you disagree (which seems to be the case), then you will have to explain how hashing difficulty is correlated with security. As far as I understand it, difficulty just shows how difficult it is to find a new block. What correspondence does it have to Bitcoin network security? If some miner grabs more than 50% of hashing power (which basically renders the network "insecure"), it won't matter at which difficulty that happens, right? Thus difficulty is irrelevant to security

You are correct that a widely distrbuted mining landscape is healthy for the network.  No argument there.

I also agree that no pool should have 50% of the hashing power.  This happened a couple years ago with gHash
and the imbalance was soon after corrected as many miners decided to leave that pool since it had too much control.

hero member
Activity: 798
Merit: 506
March 03, 2017, 02:30:16 PM
All time high for the transaction fees : https://bitcoinfees.info/

Now more than 50 cts for the 3 blocks fees !

The network is BLOATED and more people want to confirm transactions on the network.
The result is spiking transaction fees that might seriously hurt the network and its growth in 2017 if there is nothing done very quickly.
If nothing is done and transaction costs keep spiking, a lot of activity will move to cheaper rising networks like DASH. I am not saying it is a bad thing but Bitcoin is NOT well positioned right now at the technical level to benefit from its rise in popularity.


Current trends are :
1. Bitcoin price reach ATH
2. Transaction fees reach ATH
3. Unconfirmed transaction reach ATH
Everyone expects when the price rise up but transaction fees doesn't.
I'm wondering about Mr. Satoshi thought regarding this situation, what the solution?
legendary
Activity: 3458
Merit: 1280
English ⬄ Russian Translation Services
March 03, 2017, 02:25:15 PM
Honestly I don't follow you.  Maybe we're talking past each other

So you reply to my posts without actually reading them?

Basically, I assert that no mining fees would be the lesser of two evils while you claim that it is the worst case scenario. The bigger evil for Bitcoin (or worse case scenario if you please) would be if Bitcoin drops from usage completely. But I wouldn't raise this issue if it was only that (since this is essentially an end point for Bitcoin). Your basic premise (or "small block" advocates) that fees are required to economically support the miners seems to be skewed (obviously, I mean the case when there are no more mining rewards). Fees are not required, and even if there were no fees altogether (and no rewards either), there would still be enough mining nodes to support the Bitcoin infrastructure ticking just for the sake of its further operation. That's why miners as they are today are evil. In other words, they receive a bigger portion of the pie than they deserve, and this is primarily thanks to severe monopolization (or rather olygopolization) of mining as such

Well, there is a difference between having mining nodes just keeping our network 'ticking along' vs strong security

To respond to one of your other points:  We don't have "a dozen miners doing 99% of the transactions".
Maybe you mean pools.  Pools are very different than miners.  Unless you have evidence that it's actually
only a dozen different mining farms.  Even if mining power is very concentrated, that is a different problem than not having security, which is measurable in terms of hashing difficulty

And what does it change?

Even if these are mining pools you still can't escape the simple arithmetic that if there are more miners independently confirming transactions the network would be more secure overall. If you disagree (which seems to be the case), then you will have to explain how hashing difficulty is correlated with security. As far as I understand it, difficulty just shows how difficult it is to find a new block. What correspondence does it have to Bitcoin network security? If some miner grabs more than 50% of hashing power (which basically renders the network "insecure"), it won't matter at which difficulty that happens, right? Thus difficulty is irrelevant to security
legendary
Activity: 1806
Merit: 1090
Learning the troll avoidance button :)
March 03, 2017, 02:17:48 PM
The mempool is full and the average fee keeps rising in exchange to get the transaction confirmed promptly.
The mempool is the aggregate size of transactions waiting to be confirmed.
A lot of exchanges in order to provide for speedy service paid the higher fee but as everyone did the fee kept increasing because the mempool is not shrinking making it costly to send.  
https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-size


There is no "The" mempool in a decentralised transaction network. Each node has it's own mempool, and the settings one uses determines how full or empty your personal mempool is.

Your link is to blockchain.info's mempool, not "The" mempool, which doesn't exist

It's easier to explain it that way for convenience, the point is that the waiting queue is full because the 1MB blocksize limit is not large enough to handle all the transactions.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Block_size_limit_controversy
https://blockchain.info/charts/transactions-per-second\

I could just say we are past 7 txt/second but the mempool is a useful jargon for waitlist.

Or the median confirmation time is 2.3X the standard limit with transaction fees if you want can spin it in various ways still gets the point clearly across.
23 minutes for transaction
https://blockchain.info/charts/median-confirmation-time
https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-confirmation-time

http://www.nigeriatoday.ng/2017/02/bitcoin-transaction-fees-are-up-more-than-1200-in-past-two-years/
legendary
Activity: 1274
Merit: 1004
March 03, 2017, 02:16:09 PM
sure it does costs the highest fees in all the cryptocurrency world. but still i think its lower compared to real world anyway peoples are not started using Dsh Coin insted of Bitcoin but i do not think they can suffer its Serious COndition its like a new plannet rightnow still very hot and inadiquate for living with that
legendary
Activity: 3430
Merit: 3074
March 03, 2017, 02:09:27 PM
The mempool is full and the average fee keeps rising in exchange to get the transaction confirmed promptly.
The mempool is the aggregate size of transactions waiting to be confirmed.
A lot of exchanges in order to provide for speedy service paid the higher fee but as everyone did the fee kept increasing because the mempool is not shrinking making it costly to send.  
https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-size


There is no "The" mempool in a decentralised transaction network. Each node has it's own mempool, and the settings one uses determines how full or empty your personal mempool is.

Your link is to blockchain.info's mempool, not "The" mempool, which doesn't exist
legendary
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1004
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
March 03, 2017, 02:02:12 PM


It's now about 8 years since Bitcoin was released.  Nothing I read in the white-paper said anything about 'several decades'.  At least not that I remember.  At $1200/BTC it seems logical that we would start to see transaction fees become noticeable.

You seem to be missing the point.  Worst case scenario for security is that there are ZERO fees,
which will not matter for decades since mining rewards are substantial and will
take several halvings to erode, even in the face of minimal bitcoin value appreciation.
In other words, lets say there's zero fees, and bitcoins remain at $1200.   After
4 more halvings, this still represents $135,000/day in security and the next drop
after that won't be until 19 years from now.

...

If 1000 trinket purchases were made on a subordinate chain for every balancing transaction on the Bitcoin chain, transaction fees could be $5.00 while the trinket buyers pay $0.005.

This would net infrastructure operators about $1.5M per day compared to your $0.135M.  In short, much better security.

In monetary terms, there is no difference between a subordinate chain user and a main-chain user.  Any currency which exists on a subordinate chain is taken out of the Bitcoin reserve.  From Bitcoin's perspective, a subordinate chain is just a particularly active individual user who can afford realistic fees.  In both cases, it is critical to the users that Bitcoin itself remains healthy and robust.

From a trinket-class user's perspective, they can choose subordinate chain solutions tailored to their particular needs.  e.g., privacy, speed, fees, etc.  So, they get a much better user experience.

There are a raft of other advantages as well, but I won't get into them.  The main 'disadvantage' seems to be that someone feels butt-hurt if their candy bar purchase does not bloat the permanent record on the 'real' blockchain.  Never mind that this 'critical need' impacts every entity who wants to support Bitcoin since they need to carry the data around forever.



Obviously higher fees means more security but where does it end?  How much security is enough?  How high of fees do people want to pay?  The market will decide that.  Where we disagree is on what system is most conducive to a properly functioning fee market and when is the appropriate time to focus on that.

Proponents of main chain scaling are not advocating it for emotional reasons as you are implying.  (Come on dude)... There are genuine concerns including centralization.
Here is an interesting article about LN that someone posted (I haven't read it in detail yet):  http://www.wallstreettechnologist.com/2016/10/03/lightning-network-will-it-save-bitcoin-or-break-it/

  
Of course it doesn't depend on fees right now and won't for several decades.  That's what I've been saying

Should I have said it in every post that I consider the situation when there is no mining reward already? I emphasized that twice in one of my previous posts
 

Honestly I don't follow you.  Maybe we're talking past each other.

To respond to one of your other points:  We don't have "a dozen miners doing 99% of the transactions".
Maybe you mean pools.  Pools are very different than miners.  Unless you have evidence that it's actually
only a dozen different mining farms.  Even if mining power is very concentrated, that is a different problem than not having security, which is measurable in terms of hashing difficulty.



legendary
Activity: 1806
Merit: 1090
Learning the troll avoidance button :)
March 03, 2017, 02:00:52 PM

What is going on with these fees sky rocketing?


The mempool is full and the average fee keeps rising in exchange to get the transaction confirmed promptly.
The mempool is the aggregate size of transactions waiting to be confirmed.
A lot of exchanges in order to provide for speedy service paid the higher fee but as everyone did the fee kept increasing because the mempool is not shrinking making it costly to send.  
https://blockchain.info/charts/mempool-size
legendary
Activity: 3430
Merit: 3074
March 03, 2017, 01:48:49 PM
The main 'disadvantage' seems to be that someone feels butt-hurt if their candy bar purchase does not bloat the permanent record on the 'real' blockchain.  Never mind that this 'critical need' impacts every entity who wants to support Bitcoin since they need to carry the data around forever.

To exemplify this: people like jonald are making the case for using something like the SWIFT network for every pack of $0.50c chewing gum they buy, and it's all SWIFT's fault for charging them $10 to do it.
legendary
Activity: 1372
Merit: 1005
March 03, 2017, 01:43:37 PM
Transactions fees are really spiking these days even exchange sites are not making it any easier as they now charge for both deposit and withdrawal which is not the case before but the way it is I think the transaction fees are moving in the same direction that price of bitcoin is also moving which I also believe should be so in case we witness a price crash so we wont be losing at both ends. However, we should also not be unmindful of the fact that compared to other platforms of making some transactions, bitcoin fees is still the compared to paypal or western Union.

Bitcoin is always feeble than the other mode of international transactions with low fees. Then I using blockchain and electrum wallets respectively. last week I noticed that minimum required fees from blockchain has been revised and it increased. Hope it would reduce again.
legendary
Activity: 4592
Merit: 1276
March 03, 2017, 01:29:39 PM


It's now about 8 years since Bitcoin was released.  Nothing I read in the white-paper said anything about 'several decades'.  At least not that I remember.  At $1200/BTC it seems logical that we would start to see transaction fees become noticeable.

You seem to be missing the point.  Worst case scenario for security is that there are ZERO fees,
which will not matter for decades since mining rewards are substantial and will
take several halvings to erode, even in the face of minimal bitcoin value appreciation.
In other words, lets say there's zero fees, and bitcoins remain at $1200.   After
4 more halvings, this still represents $135,000/day in security and the next drop
after that won't be until 19 years from now.

...

If 1000 trinket purchases were made on a subordinate chain for every balancing transaction on the Bitcoin chain, transaction fees could be $5.00 while the trinket buyers pay $0.005.

This would net infrastructure operators about $1.5M per day compared to your $0.135M.  In short, much better security.

In monetary terms, there is no difference between a subordinate chain user and a main-chain user.  Any currency which exists on a subordinate chain is taken out of the Bitcoin reserve.  From Bitcoin's perspective, a subordinate chain is just a particularly active individual user who can afford realistic fees.  In both cases, it is critical to the users that Bitcoin itself remains healthy and robust.

From a trinket-class user's perspective, they can choose subordinate chain solutions tailored to their particular needs.  e.g., privacy, speed, fees, etc.  So, they get a much better user experience.

There are a raft of other advantages as well, but I won't get into them.  The main 'disadvantage' seems to be that someone feels butt-hurt if their candy bar purchase does not bloat the permanent record on the 'real' blockchain.  Never mind that this 'critical need' impacts every entity who wants to support Bitcoin since they need to carry the data around forever.

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