Author: Russell O'Connor 2018-02-12 23:46:43
Published on: 2018-02-12T23:46:43+00:00
In a discussion on the Bitcoin-dev mailing list, Peter Todd and Russell O'Connor talked about a problem with BIP 125, which specifies rules for replacing unconfirmed transactions. Rule 3 of BIP 125 requires that any replacement transaction pay an absolute fee higher than the original transaction being replaced plus any unconfirmed child transactions (known as "descendants") attached to it. However, this can cause problems when a user has added a large fee to an unconfirmed transaction in order to incentivise its inclusion in the blockchain. If a double-spend replaces this transaction, the high-fee unconfirmed child transactions become invalid, resulting in a loss for the original user. The discussion suggests that a restriction on spending unconfirmed outputs may be necessary to solve this problem, but such a restriction could also affect child-pays-for-parent transactions.
Updated on: 2023-06-13T00:35:08.879264+00:00