Author: Nathan Wilcox 2017-09-29 02:17:05
Published on: 2017-09-29T02:17:05+00:00
The discussion on the bitcoin-dev mailing list revolves around the real-world implications of the Monopolistic Price Mechanism proposed in the RSOP paper. The authors' vision of the fee selection UX in such a world is being questioned, with concerns that blindly asking users to enter what they're willing to pay may not result in higher overall mining revenue. Instead, users are likely to be presented with a list of options with feerates and expected confirmation times to select from, similar to the present situation. The time sensitivity of Bitcoin use-cases is another factor to consider, as the fee users are willing to pay often changes over time. Peter Todd gives an example of his OpenTimestamps service, where the fee selection mechanism involves using a RBF loop to bump the fee every time a block gets mined without confirming his latest transaction. He suggests that this kind of time sensitivity is probably true of a majority of Bitcoin use-cases, with the caveat that often the slope will be negative eventually. Another member of the mailing list suggests that the RBF loop would behave pretty much the same in the Monopolistic Price Mechanism, and it may be possible to raise Pay-Your-Bid fees and Monopolistic Price fees over time to express the time curve preference.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T19:13:21.765718+00:00