Author: Damian Williamson 2017-12-26 05:14:14
Published on: 2017-12-26T05:14:14+00:00
The proposal "UTPFOTIB - Use Transaction Priority For Ordering Transactions In Blocks" is aimed at addressing the issue of transactional reliability in Bitcoin. Currently, valid transactions can often be stuck in the transaction pool for extended periods or not confirmed at all. The proposal suggests resolving two key issues: the current transaction bandwidth limit and the ad-hoc methods of including transactions in blocks, resulting in confusing confirmation times for valid transactions.The proposal results in a fee for priority service auction model rather than an auction model for limited bandwidth. This is important to protect the value of fees since these will eventually be the only payment that miners receive. The current system is problematic as even transactions with valid fees may be left in the transaction pool for some time, and extreme fees cannot ensure a timely or guaranteed transaction process. Consumers and businesses require operational reliability and full transaction confirmation for every valid transaction.The proposal suggests providing each valid transaction in the mempool with an individual transaction priority each time before choosing transactions to include in the current block. Nodes would need to keep track of when a transaction is first seen, and the block size should be determined using a dynamic target block size. All block created with a dynamic size should be verified to ensure conformity to a probability distribution curve resulting from the priority method.The proposal has several pros, including maximizing transaction reliability, overcoming transaction bandwidth limits, being fully scalable, maximizing possibility for consumer and business uptake, maximizing total fees paid per block without reducing reliability, and providing additional block entropy. The cons are that it could initially lower total transaction fees per block and must be programmed. Nodes need to have at a minimum, a loose understanding of the average size of the transaction pool as a requirement to enable future changes to the way blocks are constructed.The proposal named UTPFOTIB suggests a new service to be included in Bitcoin Core that will communicate the number of valid transactions in the mempool of another valid Bitcoin node along with the Serial Node ID of the node whose value is provided. The service also includes expiring any value not updated for k minutes and broadcasting all mempool information every m minutes, including its own.The actual operation details need to be determined accurately in a spec for the programmer. The proposed solution involves selecting transactions to include in the current block using probability in transaction priority order until the target block size is met. If the target block size is not met, dust and zero-fee transactions are included to pad. There has been some concern expressed over spam and very low fee transactions, and an infinite block size resulting. This solution needs a competent mathematician with experience in probability and statistical distribution.It is necessary that this proposal is implemented considering full transaction reliability and scalability of Bitcoin. A new network service should be constructed to meet the requirement of nodes having at a minimum, a loose understanding of the average size of the transaction pool to enable future changes to the way blocks are constructed. This service makes no changes to any existing operation or function of the node. If not this proposal, an alternative must be considered.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T22:44:52.157604+00:00