Total fees have almost crossed the block reward

Total fees have almost crossed the block reward
2017-12-21 22:02 ` Jameson Lopp
                   ` (2 more replies)
  
From: Melvin Carvalho @ 2017-12-21 21:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: bitcoin-dev

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I asked adam back at hcpp how the block chain would be secured in the long
term, once the reward goes away.  The base idea has always been that fees
would replace the block reward.

At that time fees were approximately 10% of the block reward, but have now
reached 45%, with 50% potentially being crossed soon

https://fork.lol/reward/feepct

While this bodes well for the long term security of the coin, I think there
is some legitimate concern that the fee per tx is prohibitive for some use
cases, at this point in the adoption curve.

Observations of segwit adoption show around 10% at this point

http://segwit.party/charts/

Watching the mempool shows that the congestion is at a peak, though it's
quite possible this will come down over the long weekend.  I wonder if this
is of concern to some.

https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/more/#24h

I thought these data points may be of interest and are mainly FYI.  Though
if further discussion is deemed appropriate, it would be interesting to
hear thoughts.

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2017-12-21 22:02 ` 
                   ` 
  
From: Melvin Carvalho @ 2017-12-21 21:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: bitcoin-dev

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I asked adam back at hcpp how the block chain would be secured in the long
term, once the reward goes away.  The base idea has always been that fees
would replace the block reward.

At that time fees were approximately 10% of the block reward, but have now
reached 45%, with 50% potentially being crossed soon

https://fork.lol/reward/feepct

While this bodes well for the long term security of the coin, I think there
is some legitimate concern that the fee per tx is prohibitive for some use
cases, at this point in the adoption curve.

Observations of segwit adoption show around 10% at this point

http://segwit.party/charts/

Watching the mempool shows that the congestion is at a peak, though it's
quite possible this will come down over the long weekend.  I wonder if this
is of concern to some.

https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/more/#24h

I thought these data points may be of interest and are mainly FYI.  Though
if further discussion is deemed appropriate, it would be interesting to
hear thoughts.

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2017-12-21 22:02 ` Jameson Lopp

  2017-12-21 23:15   ` Michel 'ic' Luczak
  
From: Jim Rogers @ 2017-12-21 22:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: 'Jameson Lopp', 'Bitcoin Protocol Discussion'

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It seems that the exchanges are doing everything that they can to slow things. Not only have the major exchanges not implemented segwit yet, but a bigger, less addressed issue is that they have start applying transfer limits on crypto as well as cash. They do not respond for months to requests to upgrade limits, and this results in many transactions instead of one to transfer crypto to cold storage devices. 

 

These issues may self-resolve over time, since I think they are all impacted by KYC and the explosive growth. 

 

 

From: bitcoin-dev-bounces@lists•linuxfoundation.org [mailto:bitcoin-dev-bounces@lists•linuxfoundation.org] On Behalf Of Jameson Lopp via bitcoin-dev
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2017 1:03 PM
To: Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail•com>; Bitcoin Protocol Discussion <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Total fees have almost crossed the block reward

 

I'd hope that the incentives are in place to encourage high volume senders to be more efficient in their use of block space by batching transactions and implementing SegWit, though this may not be the case for providers that pass transaction fees along to their users.

 

We've been trying to be more proactive about outreach regarding efficient use of block space to our own customers at BitGo - when we break down the cost savings of implementing a new technique, it generally helps to hasten their adoption. I suspect that in many cases this is an issue of education - we should be more proactive in calling out inefficient uses of block space.

 

Good resources to bookmark and share:

 

https://bitcointechtalk.com/saving-up-to-80-on-bitcoin-transaction-fees-by-batching-payments-4147ab7009fb

 

https://blog.zebpay.com/how-zebpay-reduced-bitcoin-transaction-fees-a9e24c788598

 

- Jameson

 

On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 4:30 PM, Melvin Carvalho via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> > wrote:

I asked adam back at hcpp how the block chain would be secured in the long term, once the reward goes away.  The base idea has always been that fees would replace the block reward.

At that time fees were approximately 10% of the block reward, but have now reached 45%, with 50% potentially being crossed soon

https://fork.lol/reward/feepct

While this bodes well for the long term security of the coin, I think there is some legitimate concern that the fee per tx is prohibitive for some use cases, at this point in the adoption curve.

Observations of segwit adoption show around 10% at this point

http://segwit.party/charts/

Watching the mempool shows that the congestion is at a peak, though it's quite possible this will come down over the long weekend.  I wonder if this is of concern to some.

https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/more/#24h

I thought these data points may be of interest and are mainly FYI.  Though if further discussion is deemed appropriate, it would be interesting to hear thoughts.


_______________________________________________
bitcoin-dev mailing list
bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> 
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev

 


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2017-12-21 21:30 [bitcoin-dev] Total fees have almost crossed the block reward Melvin Carvalho
  2017-12-21 22:02 ` Jameson Lopp

  2017-12-21 23:35   ` Paul Iverson
  2018-02-12 17:23 ` Melvin Carvalho
  
From: Gregory Maxwell @ 2017-12-21 22:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Melvin Carvalho, Bitcoin Protocol Discussion

Personally, I'm pulling out the champaign that market behaviour is
indeed producing activity levels that can pay for security without
inflation, and also producing fee paying backlogs needed to stabilize
consensus progress as the subsidy declines.

I'd also personally prefer to pay lower fees-- current levels even
challenge my old comparison with wire transfer costs-- but we should
look most strongly at difficult to forge market signals rather than
just claims-- segwit usage gives us a pretty good indicator since most
users would get a 50-70% fee reduction without even considering the
second order effects from increased capacity.

As Jameson Lopp notes, more can be done for education though-- perhaps
that market signal isn't efficient yet. But we should get it there.

But even independently of segwit we can also look at other inefficient
transaction styles: uncompressed keys, unconfirmed chaining instead of
send many batching, fee overpayment, etc... and the message there is
similar.

I've also seen some evidence that a portion of the current high rate
congestion is contrived traffic. To the extent that it's true there
also should be some relief there soon as the funding for that runs
out, in addition to expected traffic patterns, difficulty changes,
etc.


On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 9:30 PM, Melvin Carvalho via bitcoin-dev
<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> I asked adam back at hcpp how the block chain would be secured in the long
> term, once the reward goes away.  The base idea has always been that fees
> would replace the block reward.
>
> At that time fees were approximately 10% of the block reward, but have now
> reached 45%, with 50% potentially being crossed soon
>
> https://fork.lol/reward/feepct
>
> While this bodes well for the long term security of the coin, I think there
> is some legitimate concern that the fee per tx is prohibitive for some use
> cases, at this point in the adoption curve.
>
> Observations of segwit adoption show around 10% at this point
>
> http://segwit.party/charts/
>
> Watching the mempool shows that the congestion is at a peak, though it's
> quite possible this will come down over the long weekend.  I wonder if this
> is of concern to some.
>
> https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/more/#24h
>
> I thought these data points may be of interest and are mainly FYI.  Though
> if further discussion is deemed appropriate, it would be interesting to hear
> thoughts.
>
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>


 permalink raw reply	[|nested]
2017-12-21 22:02 ` Jameson Lopp
  2017-12-21 22:18   ` Jim Rogers

  
From: Michel 'ic' Luczak @ 2017-12-21 23:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Jameson Lopp, Bitcoin Protocol Discussion

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Hi,

This is the first time I post on this list.

First of all, Thank you Jameson for the interview you gave yesterday, it’s been a model of calm and self-control for all of us.

I deeply believe the high average fees we experience right now are mostly due to the miscalculations of most of the hardware (ledger & trezor) wallets (and probably software too) on the market.

I personally made transactions at the worst period for the Blockchain with less than 40 sat/WU of fees and got confirmed in less than a day.

I think there’s a lot of work to do in used education to make them understand that for a low amount of fees they can still get a transaction confirmed and that’s the POS’ work to make sure the transaction is legit.

Regards, Michel.

> On 21 Dec 2017, at 23:02, Jameson Lopp via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> 
> I'd hope that the incentives are in place to encourage high volume senders to be more efficient in their use of block space by batching transactions and implementing SegWit, though this may not be the case for providers that pass transaction fees along to their users.
> 
> We've been trying to be more proactive about outreach regarding efficient use of block space to our own customers at BitGo - when we break down the cost savings of implementing a new technique, it generally helps to hasten their adoption. I suspect that in many cases this is an issue of education - we should be more proactive in calling out inefficient uses of block space.
> 
> Good resources to bookmark and share:
> 
> https://bitcointechtalk.com/saving-up-to-80-on-bitcoin-transaction-fees-by-batching-payments-4147ab7009fb <https://bitcointechtalk.com/saving-up-to-80-on-bitcoin-transaction-fees-by-batching-payments-4147ab7009fb>
> 
> https://blog.zebpay.com/how-zebpay-reduced-bitcoin-transaction-fees-a9e24c788598 <https://blog.zebpay.com/how-zebpay-reduced-bitcoin-transaction-fees-a9e24c788598>
> 
> - Jameson
> 
> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 4:30 PM, Melvin Carvalho via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>> wrote:
> I asked adam back at hcpp how the block chain would be secured in the long term, once the reward goes away.  The base idea has always been that fees would replace the block reward.
> 
> At that time fees were approximately 10% of the block reward, but have now reached 45%, with 50% potentially being crossed soon
> 
> https://fork.lol/reward/feepct <https://fork.lol/reward/feepct>
> 
> While this bodes well for the long term security of the coin, I think there is some legitimate concern that the fee per tx is prohibitive for some use cases, at this point in the adoption curve.
> 
> Observations of segwit adoption show around 10% at this point
> 
> http://segwit.party/charts/ <http://segwit.party/charts/>
> 
> Watching the mempool shows that the congestion is at a peak, though it's quite possible this will come down over the long weekend.  I wonder if this is of concern to some.
> 
> https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/more/#24h <https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/more/#24h>
> 
> I thought these data points may be of interest and are mainly FYI.  Though if further discussion is deemed appropriate, it would be interesting to hear thoughts.
> 
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev <https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev>
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev


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2017-12-21 22:44 ` Gregory Maxwell

  2017-12-22  0:30     ` Mark Friedenbach
  
From: Paul Iverson @ 2017-12-21 23:35 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Gregory Maxwell, Bitcoin Protocol Discussion

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I agree with Greg.  What is happening is a cause for celebration: it is the
manifestation of our long-desired fee market in action.  That people are
willing to pay upwards of $100 per transaction shows the huge demand to
transact on the world's most secure ledger. This is what success looks
like, folks!

Now that BTC is being phased out as a means of payment nearly everywhere
(e.g., Steam dropping BTC as a payment option) (to be replaced with the
more-suitable LN when ready), I'd propose that we address the stuck
transaction issue by making replace-by-fee (RBF) ubiquitous.  Why not make
every transaction RBF by default, and then encourage via outreach and
education other wallet developers to do the same?

The frustration with BTC today is less so the high-fees (people realize
on-chain transactions in a secure decentralized ledger are necessarily
costly) but by the feeling of helplessness when their transaction is
stuck.  Being able to easily bump a transaction's fee for users who are in
a hurry would go a long way to improving the user experience.

Paul.


On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:44 PM, Gregory Maxwell via bitcoin-dev <
bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

> Personally, I'm pulling out the champaign that market behaviour is
> indeed producing activity levels that can pay for security without
> inflation, and also producing fee paying backlogs needed to stabilize
> consensus progress as the subsidy declines.
>
> I'd also personally prefer to pay lower fees-- current levels even
> challenge my old comparison with wire transfer costs-- but we should
> look most strongly at difficult to forge market signals rather than
> just claims-- segwit usage gives us a pretty good indicator since most
> users would get a 50-70% fee reduction without even considering the
> second order effects from increased capacity.
>
> As Jameson Lopp notes, more can be done for education though-- perhaps
> that market signal isn't efficient yet. But we should get it there.
>
> But even independently of segwit we can also look at other inefficient
> transaction styles: uncompressed keys, unconfirmed chaining instead of
> send many batching, fee overpayment, etc... and the message there is
> similar.
>
> I've also seen some evidence that a portion of the current high rate
> congestion is contrived traffic. To the extent that it's true there
> also should be some relief there soon as the funding for that runs
> out, in addition to expected traffic patterns, difficulty changes,
> etc.
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 9:30 PM, Melvin Carvalho via bitcoin-dev
> <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> > I asked adam back at hcpp how the block chain would be secured in the
> long
> > term, once the reward goes away.  The base idea has always been that fees
> > would replace the block reward.
> >
> > At that time fees were approximately 10% of the block reward, but have
> now
> > reached 45%, with 50% potentially being crossed soon
> >
> > https://fork.lol/reward/feepct
> >
> > While this bodes well for the long term security of the coin, I think
> there
> > is some legitimate concern that the fee per tx is prohibitive for some
> use
> > cases, at this point in the adoption curve.
> >
> > Observations of segwit adoption show around 10% at this point
> >
> > http://segwit.party/charts/
> >
> > Watching the mempool shows that the congestion is at a peak, though it's
> > quite possible this will come down over the long weekend.  I wonder if
> this
> > is of concern to some.
> >
> > https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/more/#24h
> >
> > I thought these data points may be of interest and are mainly FYI.
> Though
> > if further discussion is deemed appropriate, it would be interesting to
> hear
> > thoughts.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > bitcoin-dev mailing list
> > bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
> > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
> >
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev
>

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2017-12-21 23:35   ` Paul Iverson

  2017-12-22  1:15       ` Gregory Maxwell
  
From: Mark Friedenbach @ 2017-12-22  0:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Paul Iverson, Bitcoin Protocol Discussion

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Every transaction is replace-by-fee capable already. Opt-in replace by fee as specified in BIP 125 is a fiction that held sway only while the income from fees or fee replacement was so much smaller than subsidy.

> On Dec 21, 2017, at 3:35 PM, Paul Iverson via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> 
> I agree with Greg.  What is happening is a cause for celebration: it is the manifestation of our long-desired fee market in action.  That people are willing to pay upwards of $100 per transaction shows the huge demand to transact on the world's most secure ledger. This is what success looks like, folks!
> 
> Now that BTC is being phased out as a means of payment nearly everywhere (e.g., Steam dropping BTC as a payment option) (to be replaced with the more-suitable LN when ready), I'd propose that we address the stuck transaction issue by making replace-by-fee (RBF) ubiquitous.  Why not make every transaction RBF by default, and then encourage via outreach and education other wallet developers to do the same?  
> 
> The frustration with BTC today is less so the high-fees (people realize on-chain transactions in a secure decentralized ledger are necessarily costly) but by the feeling of helplessness when their transaction is stuck.  Being able to easily bump a transaction's fee for users who are in a hurry would go a long way to improving the user experience.  
> 
> Paul.
> 
> 
> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 2:44 PM, Gregory Maxwell via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>> wrote:
> Personally, I'm pulling out the champaign that market behaviour is
> indeed producing activity levels that can pay for security without
> inflation, and also producing fee paying backlogs needed to stabilize
> consensus progress as the subsidy declines.
> 
> I'd also personally prefer to pay lower fees-- current levels even
> challenge my old comparison with wire transfer costs-- but we should
> look most strongly at difficult to forge market signals rather than
> just claims-- segwit usage gives us a pretty good indicator since most
> users would get a 50-70% fee reduction without even considering the
> second order effects from increased capacity.
> 
> As Jameson Lopp notes, more can be done for education though-- perhaps
> that market signal isn't efficient yet. But we should get it there.
> 
> But even independently of segwit we can also look at other inefficient
> transaction styles: uncompressed keys, unconfirmed chaining instead of
> send many batching, fee overpayment, etc... and the message there is
> similar.
> 
> I've also seen some evidence that a portion of the current high rate
> congestion is contrived traffic. To the extent that it's true there
> also should be some relief there soon as the funding for that runs
> out, in addition to expected traffic patterns, difficulty changes,
> etc.
> 
> 
> On Thu, Dec 21, 2017 at 9:30 PM, Melvin Carvalho via bitcoin-dev
> <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>> wrote:
> > I asked adam back at hcpp how the block chain would be secured in the long
> > term, once the reward goes away.  The base idea has always been that fees
> > would replace the block reward.
> >
> > At that time fees were approximately 10% of the block reward, but have now
> > reached 45%, with 50% potentially being crossed soon
> >
> > https://fork.lol/reward/feepct <https://fork.lol/reward/feepct>
> >
> > While this bodes well for the long term security of the coin, I think there
> > is some legitimate concern that the fee per tx is prohibitive for some use
> > cases, at this point in the adoption curve.
> >
> > Observations of segwit adoption show around 10% at this point
> >
> > http://segwit.party/charts/ <http://segwit.party/charts/>
> >
> > Watching the mempool shows that the congestion is at a peak, though it's
> > quite possible this will come down over the long weekend.  I wonder if this
> > is of concern to some.
> >
> > https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/more/#24h <https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/more/#24h>
> >
> > I thought these data points may be of interest and are mainly FYI.  Though
> > if further discussion is deemed appropriate, it would be interesting to hear
> > thoughts.
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > bitcoin-dev mailing list
> > bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
> > https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev <https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev>
> >
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org <mailto:bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev <https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev>
> 
> _______________________________________________
> bitcoin-dev mailing list
> bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org
> https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/bitcoin-dev


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2017-12-22  0:30     ` Mark Friedenbach

  
From: Gregory Maxwell @ 2017-12-22  1:15 UTC ( / )
  To: Mark Friedenbach, Bitcoin Protocol Discussion

On Fri, Dec 22, 2017 at 12:30 AM, Mark Friedenbach via bitcoin-dev
<bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:
> Every transaction is replace-by-fee capable already. Opt-in replace by fee
> as specified in BIP 125 is a fiction that held sway only while the income
> from fees or fee replacement was so much smaller than subsidy.

The distinction is does a next fee replacement hit the next block 99%
of the time or does it do so with 10% probability each successive
block that the original remains unconfirmed; eventually converging to
the same 99% but only after a non-trivial additional delay.  As a
result it's still useful to flip it on.

I believe electrum has been defaulting to opt-in without any big problems.

There was discussion in the bitcoin core weekly irc meeting today
about defaulting it on.  Some expressed the view that perhaps it
should be left off by default for the RPC because some industrial
users but I'm of the view that those users are both most likely to
want it on and also the most able to see it in the release notes and
change their settings.
2017-12-21 21:30 [bitcoin-dev] Total fees have almost crossed the block reward Melvin Carvalho
  2017-12-21 22:02 ` Jameson Lopp
  2017-12-21 22:44 ` Gregory Maxwell

  2018-02-12 17:47   ` rhavar
  2018-02-12 18:12   ` Peter Todd
  
From: Melvin Carvalho @ 2018-02-12 17:23 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bitcoin Protocol Discussion

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On 21 December 2017 at 22:30, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail•com>
wrote:

> I asked adam back at hcpp how the block chain would be secured in the long
> term, once the reward goes away.  The base idea has always been that fees
> would replace the block reward.
>
> At that time fees were approximately 10% of the block reward, but have now
> reached 45%, with 50% potentially being crossed soon
>
> https://fork.lol/reward/feepct
>
> While this bodes well for the long term security of the coin, I think
> there is some legitimate concern that the fee per tx is prohibitive for
> some use cases, at this point in the adoption curve.
>
> Observations of segwit adoption show around 10% at this point
>
> http://segwit.party/charts/
>
> Watching the mempool shows that the congestion is at a peak, though it's
> quite possible this will come down over the long weekend.  I wonder if this
> is of concern to some.
>
> https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/more/#24h
>
> I thought these data points may be of interest and are mainly FYI.  Though
> if further discussion is deemed appropriate, it would be interesting to
> hear thoughts.
>

Just following up on this, for no other reason than I've had my eyes glued
to these stats the last few weeks.  I'll share a few more stats links.

Mempool has come down significantly, as have fees.  Tho, of course, this
could spike any time.

https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/

Typically fees are :

 $2.06 on tx $543 (median) # 0.38%
 $3.47 on tx $75,000 (mean) # 0.005%

Aside: An observation on this.  High value transactors seems to be getting
a much better deal, than the mean.  This lead me to ponder whether the
intuitive metric of satoshi/byte is, in fact, game theory optimal.
Possibly over the short term it is, but over a longer period, those wishing
to increase the longevity of proof of work in general might wish to
consider more progressive fee approaches.  Naively, it might be possible to
imagine some kind of gaussian distribution that picks tx according to a
blended combination of sats/byte and %transacted.  Perhaps something for
miners and fee estimation algorithms to develop over time.

Segwit adoption has increased, and anecdotal evidence shows that trend to
continue.  The release of 0.16 will I think also have a positive effect.

Finally, I came across this wonderful site that shows lightning network
adoption on mainnet

http://shabang.io/

LN is increasing well.  Some blocks are not far off 1% lightning funding,
which I think bodes well.  I'll go out on a limb and predict that over 1%
of btc tx will be lightning based by year end.

Since such posts are not strictly development, I'll keep them to a
minimum.  However, I hope these stats provide useful data points for
project evolution.

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2018-02-12 17:23 ` Melvin Carvalho

  2018-02-12 18:12   ` Peter Todd
  
From: rhavar @ 2018-02-12 17:47 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Melvin Carvalho;  Bitcoin Protocol Discussion

> This lead me to ponder whether the intuitive metric of satoshi/byte is, in fact, game
>theory optimal.  Possibly over the short term it is, but over a longer period, those
> wishing to increase the longevity of proof of work in general might wish to consider
> more progressive fee approaches. 

The constraining factor for blocks is the max-block weight. So miners are already optimizing for the right thing (creating a block that gives the most immediate reward). If miners want to start a cartel-like behavior of charging more for more value-transfer it would be incredibly harmful and even likely promote centralization (the cartel would likely not look kindly on any miner who doesn't follow their rules, and perhaps start orphaning their blocks).

Now I guess in theory you could add consensus rules that apply restrictions on the amount of "value transfer" in a block, such that miners are motivated to charge more for high-value transactions. However there's going to be almost 0 appetite from anyone to want to do anything like this, and the amount of unintended and harmful side effects would be profound.  (Personally, I'd lose any interest in bitcoin if such a change was ever instated)


​-Ryan

​

-------- Original Message --------
 On February 12, 2018 12:23 PM, Melvin Carvalho via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org> wrote:

>
>
>On 21 December 2017 at 22:30, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail•com> wrote:
>>I asked adam back at hcpp how the block chain would be secured in the long term, once the reward goes away.  The base idea has always been that fees would replace the block reward.
>>At that time fees were approximately 10% of the block reward, but have now reached 45%, with 50% potentially being crossed soon
>>
>>https://fork.lol/reward/feepct
>>
>>While this bodes well for the long term security of the coin, I think there is some legitimate concern that the fee per tx is prohibitive for some use cases, at this point in the adoption curve.
>>
>>Observations of segwit adoption show around 10% at this point
>>
>>http://segwit.party/charts/
>>
>>Watching the mempool shows that the congestion is at a peak, though it's quite possible this will come down over the long weekend.  I wonder if this is of concern to some.
>>
>>https://dedi.jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/more/#24h
>>
>>I thought these data points may be of interest and are mainly FYI.  Though if further discussion is deemed appropriate, it would be interesting to hear thoughts.
>>
>Just following up on this, for no other reason than I've had my eyes glued to these stats the last few weeks.  I'll share a few more stats links.
>Mempool has come down significantly, as have fees.  Tho, of course, this could spike any time.  
>
>https://bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin/
>Typically fees are :
>
> $2.06 on tx $543 (median) # 0.38%
> $3.47 on tx $75,000 (mean) # 0.005%
>Aside: An observation on this.  High value transactors seems to be getting a much better deal, than the mean.  This lead me to ponder whether the intuitive metric of satoshi/byte is, in fact, game theory optimal.  Possibly over the short term it is, but over a longer period, those wishing to increase the longevity of proof of work in general might wish to consider more progressive fee approaches.  Naively, it might be possible to imagine some kind of gaussian distribution that picks tx according to a blended combination of sats/byte and %transacted.  Perhaps something for miners and fee estimation algorithms to develop over time.
>Segwit adoption has increased, and anecdotal evidence shows that trend to continue.  The release of 0.16 will I think also have a positive effect.
>Finally, I came across this wonderful site that shows lightning network adoption on mainnet
>
>http://shabang.io/
>LN is increasing well.  Some blocks are not far off 1% lightning funding, which I think bodes well.  I'll go out on a limb and predict that over 1% of btc tx will be lightning based by year end.
>Since such posts are not strictly development, I'll keep them to a minimum.  However, I hope these stats provide useful data points for project evolution.
>
>



 permalink raw reply	[|nested]
2018-02-12 17:23 ` Melvin Carvalho
  2018-02-12 17:47   ` rhavar

  2018-02-12 19:41     ` Christian Decker
  
From: Peter Todd @ 2018-02-12 18:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Melvin Carvalho, Bitcoin Protocol Discussion

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On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 06:23:35PM +0100, Melvin Carvalho via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> Finally, I came across this wonderful site that shows lightning network
> adoption on mainnet
> 
> http://shabang.io/
> 
> LN is increasing well.  Some blocks are not far off 1% lightning funding,
> which I think bodes well.  I'll go out on a limb and predict that over 1%
> of btc tx will be lightning based by year end.

Does shabang.io say anywhere how it determines whether or not a transaction
funded a Lightning channel?

-- 
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org

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2018-02-12 18:12   ` Peter Todd

  2018-02-13 19:03       ` Peter Todd
  
From: Christian Decker @ 2018-02-12 19:41 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Peter Todd, Bitcoin Protocol Discussion, Melvin Carvalho,
	Bitcoin Protocol Discussion

Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
writes:
> Does shabang.io say anywhere how it determines whether or not a transaction
> funded a Lightning channel?

My guess they simply collect the short_channel_ids which point to
on-chain outputs that funded a channel. This relies on the channels
being public, non-public channels can still be identified on settlement.


 permalink raw reply	[|nested]
2018-02-12 19:41     ` Christian Decker

  
From: Peter Todd @ 2018-02-13 19:03 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Christian Decker;  Bitcoin Protocol Discussion

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On Mon, Feb 12, 2018 at 08:41:39PM +0100, Christian Decker wrote:
> Peter Todd via bitcoin-dev <bitcoin-dev@lists•linuxfoundation.org>
> writes:
> > Does shabang.io say anywhere how it determines whether or not a transaction
> > funded a Lightning channel?
> 
> My guess they simply collect the short_channel_ids which point to
> on-chain outputs that funded a channel. This relies on the channels
> being public, non-public channels can still be identified on settlement.

Sounds plausible; it'd be good if they documented that on the site!

-- 
https://petertodd.org 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org

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