Author: Greg Sanders 2022-10-21 14:47:50
Published on: 2022-10-21T14:47:50+00:00
The bitcoin-dev mailing list has been discussing the impact of full RBF on Bitcoin transactions. RBF is an opt-in policy that has been proposed as a solution to the issue of pinning attacks. However, there are concerns that it could degrade the user experience for 0-conf deposits if bip125 was full RBF. Opt-in RBF is also seen as a pain for users due to the risk of exchange rate changes between fiat and BTC.There have been suggestions that CPFP could be used to lock in FX risk or make the double-spender over-pay to exploit the delta. However, this would only work for larger amounts or new users with no track record. The main concern with RBF is the risk of exchange rate changes, which is why a potentially long “timeout” is required to be decided in the near-ish future.The discussion also highlighted the current state of bitcoin transactions. Approximately 5% of transactions are on-chain and seem shady, while 20% of transactions signal RBF and are excluded from zeroconf. Only 60% of on-chain transactions are fine for zeroconf, and 15% of transactions are lightning. This means that 25% of payments already get a sub-par experience compared to what users would like them to have. Going full RBF would increase that number to 85%.Some participants suggest that it would be easier to discuss the issue when Lightning is at 80%+ of all bitcoin transactions. However, it is difficult to estimate when that might happen given current trends. While exponential growth is possible, it is likely that we are talking about years here. Without actual data available, people are just going with their gut. Overall, the discussion highlights the need to find ways to improve the RBF experience and the importance of waiting for Lightning adoption to hit a certain percentage before making major changes to the system.
Updated on: 2023-06-16T00:51:52.553736+00:00