Published on: 2017-12-24T13:59:23+00:00
Damian Williamson, a developer, has raised concerns about the profitability of wasting space on the blockchain and suggests increasing fees to discourage wasteful usage. Another developer proposes a complex solution, but Williamson favors a simpler approach. He suggests that nodes should stop propagating transactions with fees over the maximum limit, and miners should reject blocks where the coinbase exceeds the block reward plus the maximum fee rate multiplied by the block size. This would incentivize efficient usage by both users and miners. However, Williamson acknowledges that unbounded fees, small blocks, and big miners introduce a flaw in the incentives equilibrium. To address this, he suggests gradually increasing the block size along with his proposal.An email sent to the bitcoin-dev mailing list discusses a potential issue with the current incentive system in Bitcoin. The author points out that miners may be incentivized to spam the network with low-fee transactions, leading regular users to pay higher fees to confirm their transactions. The author presents calculations showing that even with just 5-10% of the hashing power, such an attack could be profitable. To mitigate this problem, the author proposes several solutions, including increasing the block size, changing the proof-of-work algorithm, or implementing a protocol-level maximum transaction fee.The author suggests that a maximum fee would make spamming the network more expensive than the fees recovered, ensuring fair competition among miners. The email includes links to additional information and discussions on the topic. In conclusion, the author seeks input from others on addressing the current incentive system and preventing high fees for regular users.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T22:22:27.442139+00:00