Published on: 2015-05-11T06:09:58+00:00
In a 2015 discussion, Gregory Maxwell and Sergio Lerner explored the possibility of gaming the Bitcoin network. Lerner proposed five methods for users to pay fees to miners, including transaction fees, creating multiple transactions with output that pays each miner fees, adding an anyone-can-spend output for fees, using a single input to add desired amount plus fees, and negotiating out-of-band with the miner. Lerner concluded that alternate fee-paying methods without pre-negotiation were unreliable. He suggested reducing the block rate, utilizing the CoVar method, and not allowing spending outputs in the same block they were created.The email thread discussed the connection between the block size debate and creating a fee market. The author argued that there is already a marketplace for block space but miners are not competitive enough. They believed that altering consensus rules to force a marketplace for fees/block space should not be the solution and that the market should develop on its own. Sergio Lerner proposed a new way to create a fee market that does not rely on the blockchain limit. His proposal required a hardfork but had minimal impact on the code and economics. The solution involved requiring that the set of fees collected in a block has a dispersion below a threshold, using the Coefficient of Variation. This would discourage spamming users from paying low fees and encourage the market to develop naturally. Increasing the block size would also prevent miners from filling the block with spamming transactions.In another email conversation in May 2015, Sergio Lerner questioned whether the system could be gamed. It was noted that users have the ability to pay fees out of band to miners, which is undetectable to the network. This behavior has been observed since at least 2011. Lerner's suggestion was seen as further rewarding this behavior and enabling bypassing of controls. It was suspected that any scheme looking at fee values may have similar properties.Two years later, Sergio Lerner presented a new solution to create a fee market that does not depend on the blockchain limit. The proposed solution involved requiring the set of fees collected in a block to have a dispersion below a threshold calculated using the Coefficient of Variation. If the CoVar exceeded the threshold, the block would be considered invalid. However, enforcing consensus rules regarding fees is challenging due to the ability to pay miners out of band. Despite this limitation, the modification to the transaction selection algorithm could discourage spamming users and incentivize researchers to develop better transaction selection algorithms.Overall, these discussions highlight the complexities and challenges associated with creating a fee market within the Bitcoin network. Various methods and proposals have been suggested, but there is still debate and exploration needed to find the most effective approach.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T12:37:35.315954+00:00