Author: Michael Folkson 2022-12-11 13:58:29
Published on: 2022-12-11T13:58:29+00:00
In an email exchange between John Carvalho and Michael Folkson, John expressed his concerns about the concept of "incentive-compatibility" in relation to mempoolfullrbf and how it may harm network health. He argued that RBF is inherently a fee-minimization tool, which conflicts with extra-mempool behaviors that result in more txns per block/per lifetime. He proposed a user-compatible design where users can signal intent and desired behavior rather than having a mempool that overrides all intent with RBF. Michael recommended some resources on the topic, including a discussion from Lisa on whether there is any point to a full node maintaining a mempool and Gloria's presentation on transaction relay policy. Michael explained that the job of P2P/mempool/policy protocol devs in setting defaults is to ensure anyone can effectively propagate a consensus valid transaction across the network without harming network health and to give higher layers built on top of the Bitcoin network the best chance to succeed. If they totally screwed up that job with the defaults or were unable to cater for a particular use case within default policy, then there is always the alternative of submitting consensus valid transactions directly to miners bypassing the P2P network entirely. It is policy too of course rather than consensus so if the full node operator wants to change from the defaults, they are free to do so without risking being forked off the network or risking a chain split.
Updated on: 2023-06-16T03:22:25.946180+00:00