Topic: what is data size of a transaction? - page 2. (Read 475 times)

It's not small bitcoin or big bitcoin... it's the fee rate as mentioned above... that is to say, the number of sats per (v)byte that a given transaction is paying that will generally determine any given transactions priority.

They only have a finite amount of space in a block, so by including transactions paying the highest "rate" (not necessarily just a large total fee amount), they are more likely to receive the optimal payout for finding a block.

For arguments sake, if you only have 1,000,000 bytes of space... and you have 1 transaction that is 1,000,000 bytes and pays 0.01 BTC in fee... you think, that's a BIG fee... I'll use that one... well, the actual fee rate on that is 1,000,000 sats / 1,000,000 bytes = 1 sat/byte.

If you have 10 transactions of 100,000 bytes each paying 0.002 BTC in fees... then because their rate is 200,000 sats / 100,000 bytes = 2 sat/byte... you're better off taking the multiple "smaller" transactions with the larger rate. 10 X 0.002 = 0.02.


Outside of the logical choice being to maximise the amount of fees received, miners are essentially free to do whatever they like with regards to prioritising transactions... for instance, a miner could elect to ignore any transaction going to a specific address or group of addresses if they really wanted to... they'd be foolish to do so, because they'd be ignoring potential income, but they could do it.

Thinking of it, I agree with your point of view. If we think of it, the actual information provided by the color of the boxes is very basic - Everyone is able to see that the sooner the transactions enters the mempool, the longer they'll stay in it and the more "greenish/blueyish" they'll get. Not only the default selection should be in vbytes, and the color grading based in the fee rate, but whenever the block is mined it could still keep the colors of the blocks instead of turning all orange (I think I do know why it turns orange though). That way most people could see - in a very visual way - that the miners will favor transactions with higher fees than the ones who don't carry them (but will still try to optimize the block whenever they can). He could even add a small analytical regarding the average fee per block (with both biggest and smallest fee just as an extra information).

On a brighter side, this color grading is already on the backlog of the developer according to this[1] tweet. I'll try to send him some other suggestions that we've mentioned and we'll see how it goes...

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[1]https://twitter.com/superenrico/status/1464653485631279107

That's certainly a cool visualization, and I was also unfamiliar with that site, but I don't understand why its default setting is to vary the size of the boxes based on the value of the transaction. Indeed, that is the exact opposite of what is actually relevant when consider blocks/mining/the mempool, and would be very confusing for any newbies, OP included. I also think coloring the blocks based on how long they have been in the mempool is dumb as well, since that metric is also irrelevant to whether or not a transaction is included.

It would be far better to make the default size of the boxes be based on the size of each transaction in vbytes, and perhaps make the color of the boxes vary depending on the fee rate each transaction pays in sats/vbyte. Then when a new block is mined, it would very obvious why each transaction was being included.

That is quite the wrong place to do research.
You may need to go to somewhere else reputable, like the websites "The Bitcoin Wiki" and "Learn Me a Bitcoin".
Links:

• Bitcoin Wiki: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page
• learnmeabitcoin: https://learnmeabitcoin.com/technical/

For example: Bitcoin Wiki has an entry about 'fee rate' under "Miner Fees" article - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Miner_fees#Feerates

OP, to see this "tetris" in action that jackg mentions, and especially to see how a block is composed, I highly advise you to look to this[1]website (All credits should go to TryNinja, I saw his post here[2]). In that website you see two very important pieces of information : How "full" is the Mempool - all the transactions that are bound to be processed and their size (you can order by value or by (v)byte) - and how the "inner" configuration of the last mined block looks like (blocks of different sizes). If you wait around until the block is mined you'll even see a cool animation of the new block being mined!

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[1]https://bits.monospace.live/
[2]https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/mempool-do-bitcoin-e-o-que-faz-um-bloco-5373221

This is correct. The amount of bitcoin you are sending is largely irrelevant to how much fee you need to pay. A transaction sending 0.01 BTC might be larger and require a larger fee than a transaction sending 100 BTC, and vice versa.

This is referring to the mempool. You can get a visual representation of the mempool at these two sites: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#1,8h and https://mempool.space/. If there are lots of other transactions sitting in the mempool waiting to be mined, then you will have to pay a larger fee to be at the top of the waiting list. If, on the other hand, the mempool is empty, then you will be able to get away with a much lower fee.

The size or weight of the transaction depends on the number of inputs in your transaction, the number of outputs in your transaction, the type of addresses you are sending to and from, and the exact script requirements (such as a standard transaction, a multi-sig transaction, etc.) This is what is meant by the data size. The actual amount of bitcoin contained within that data is largely irrelevant.

They will try to make blocks as efficient as possible thought by including smaller transactions that don't pay as much per byte if they're only a few bytes in size and have a small amount of space to fill (in my experience this seems to happen anyway) - at most it'll only be a few per block.

This isn't accurate: miners prefer transactions with the highest fee per (v)byte. The size of the transaction and total fee aren't relevant: Bitcoin block space is scarce, miners try to fill it with the transactions from which they earn the most.

Transaction sizes are measured in (v)bytes, not in Bitcoins.

Statement 1 is correct. Statement 2 and 3 are also correct.

Suggestion: play around with CoinB.in's Bitcoin Fee Calculator.

I was doing research and I read this from blockchain support.

I separate the statements into 3 to be clear for my explanation.
If you check below you will see blockchain support how they explain data size of transaction.

What is small transaction and what is larger transaction?
If transaction with small bitcoin is small transaction and the transaction with big bitcoin is large transaction. Then statement 1 is wrong.
Read more from Blockchain support...