Author: Michael Folkson 2022-12-11 15:44:08
Published on: 2022-12-11T15:44:08+00:00
In an email exchange on the Bitcoin Core mailing list, John Carvalho questions the quality of current theory and shows how it might be insufficient. He criticizes the idea that a single Bitcoin transaction can be “incentive-compatible” by simply restricting it to having a higher fee or fee rate, which is theoretical, narrow, and not totally objective. Carvalho argues that RBF is inherently a fee-minimization tool, which conflicts with extra-mempool behaviors that result in more transactions per block / per lifetime. He suggests designs that fill blocks without requiring protocol enforcement, as bidding is already accepted as incentive-compatible, and replacement requires no special code at all. Michael Folkson responds that pull requests on Bitcoin Core's GitHub repository are for technical review of the concept, approach, and code contained within that pull request. The job of the P2P/mempool/policy protocol developers in setting defaults is to ensure anyone can effectively propagate a consensus valid transaction across the network ultimately making its way into miners' mempools without harming network health (full node uptime, DoS attacks, etc.) and to give higher layers built on top of the Bitcoin network the best chance to succeed. Folkson also mentions that there was a discussion started by Lisa on the mailing list last year on whether there is any point to a full node maintaining a mempool, which Carvalho may find interesting. He recommends Gloria's presentation from Adopting Bitcoin last year on transaction relay policy as a better resource than anything he could write. Folkson acknowledges the difficulty in following and understanding these topics, especially for people who haven't been into Bitcoin for long or are trying to build Bitcoin businesses full time, and suggests Carvalho do some more reading as there is a lot of past discussion. Carvalho counters that he has been in Bitcoin for 10 years, builds with it, manages a Bitcoin company with 8 engineers, and there aren't very many non-engineers that grasp how Bitcoin works as well as he does. He puts lots of time into Bitcoin and does his best to scrutinize all concepts presented to him. Carvalho asks several questions related to the mempoolfullrbf debate and whether it conflicts with a goal of mempool harmony, resulting in less overall mining income, less valuable, less useful Bitcoin, and biased decisions based on speculation about what may happen in the future, even when it conflicts with the present and past. In conclusion, both parties have differing perspectives on the topic, with Carvalho questioning the quality of current theory and suggesting alternative designs, while Folkson defends the job of P2P/mempool/policy protocol developers in setting defaults and recommends further reading for Carvalho.
Updated on: 2023-06-16T03:22:12.411876+00:00