Author: Mike Hearn 2014-02-25 16:55:58
Published on: 2014-02-25T16:55:58+00:00
There are two potential outcomes with regards to the implementation of lower transaction fees. The first possibility is that the reduced fee will not be enough to outweigh the increased orphan costs, causing miners to refuse to include the transactions en-masse. In this scenario, wallet authors may concede and revert back to setting higher fees until block propagation is optimized and orphan costs decrease. Alternatively, nodes facing memory pressure can locally increase their min relay fee until their resources can handle their usage.The second possibility is that the total value of transactions, even with the lower fee, is still greater than the orphan costs. This value encompasses more than just the monetary worth of a transaction - Bitcoin's usefulness, growth, and perceived affordability also contribute to its overall value. If miners stop including useful transactions due to the lower fee, they may face pressure from the community to change their policies. However, if all miners refuse to include small blocks, then nothing will change.Concerns about a DoS attack through flooding the network with small transactions are only relevant in the first scenario. However, it is not the easiest or cheapest way to conduct such an attack. While there is a desire for more DoS resistance, any changes to Bitcoin can be opposed on anti-DoS grounds until someone dedicates significant time to resource scheduling and code audits.
Updated on: 2023-06-08T03:27:36.089724+00:00