Author: Mark Friedenbach 2017-12-22 00:30:52
Published on: 2017-12-22T00:30:52+00:00
The recent rise in Bitcoin transaction fees has caused some concern among users. However, some experts see it as a sign of success and the manifestation of a long-desired fee market. Gregory Maxwell notes that this increased activity level is producing fee-paying backlogs needed to stabilize consensus progress as the subsidy declines. While people realize that on-chain transactions in a secure decentralized ledger are necessarily costly, the feeling of helplessness when a transaction is stuck is frustrating. To improve user experience, Paul Iverson suggests making replace-by-fee (RBF) ubiquitous and encouraging other wallet developers to do the same. While fees replacing the block reward bode well for the long-term security of Bitcoin, Melvin Carvalho expresses concern that the fee per transaction may be prohibitive for some use cases, particularly at this point in the adoption curve. Segwit adoption is around 10% at this point, which gives an indication that more can be done for education in terms of using uncompressed keys, unconfirmed chaining instead of send many batching, fee overpayment, etc. It is also noted that a portion of the current high rate congestion may be contrived traffic and should offer some relief when the funding for it runs out. Overall, while the frustration with high fees exists, the increased activity in the fee market is a positive sign for the long-term stability of Bitcoin.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T23:16:57.059619+00:00