bitcoin-dev

Over Half of Replace-by-Fee-Rate Replacements Are Mined

Over Half of Replace-by-Fee-Rate Replacements Are Mined

Original Postby Peter Todd

Posted on: February 24, 2024 15:58 UTC

The recent development in the Bitcoin Core v26.0 fork, as explored by Peter Todd, introduces a prototype Libre Relay that implements Pure Replace-By-Fee-Rate (RBFR) with a specific 2x ratio requirement.

This advancement dictates that for a transaction to be replaced, the fee rate of the new transaction must be at least twice as high as that of the existing one(s), regardless of whether the absolute fee is lower. The introduction of RBFR is particularly significant for systems like Lightning and similar smart contract platforms, offering a solution to pinning attacks by ensuring protocol progress through higher fee bids, which are more likely to be processed swiftly.

Despite the potential benefits, it appears that the adoption and implementation of RBFR among miners remain limited. However, data collected over a month from one of Todd's well-connected Libre Relay nodes reveals that at least 64% of the RBFR replacement transactions observed were successfully mined by various pools. This finding underscores two critical insights: first, by not adopting RBFR, miners might be missing out on profitable transactions before others capitalize on them; second, the relaying of RBFR replacements could be considered an efficient use of relay bandwidth given the majority success rate in mining.

Nevertheless, it's important to note that the dataset analyzed to draw these conclusions was relatively small, consisting of only 14 RBFR replacement transactions within a single month. These transactions appear to originate from diverse wallets, often as double-spends where the original transactions had too low a fee rate for prompt mining. Despite this limitation, the analysis suggests that even a conservative estimate of RBFR transaction replacements shows a promising trend towards successful mining, indicating a potential path forward for wider RBFR adoption and experimentation among nodes and miners.

For further details on this topic, the original blog post can be accessed at Peter Todd's website.