delvingbitcoin

[BUG]: spammers get Bitcoin blockspace at discounted price. Let's fix it

[BUG]: spammers get Bitcoin blockspace at discounted price. Let's fix it

Original Postby GregTonoski

Posted on: December 27, 2023 20:54 UTC

The email discusses disparities in blockspace pricing for different types of Bitcoin transactions, highlighting how a simple transaction can be more costly than a complex one.

For instance, a transaction with 616 weight and 205 bytes is priced higher compared to another that has 1140 weight and 767 bytes. The links provided, aabbcce67f2aa71932f789cac5468d39e3d2224d8bebb7ca2c3bf8c41d567cdd and 1c35521798dde4d1621e9aa5a3bacac03100fca40b6fb99be546ec50c1bcbd4a, lead to the respective transactions on mempool.space for reference.

This pricing model leads to several issues within the blockchain network, such as the misallocation of block space, devalued blockspace due to these inefficiencies, disincentivization of simple transactions, and potential centralization around entities that compose complex transactions. The sender argues against price discrimination based on transaction complexity, proposing that blockspace should be uniformly priced – where one byte has the same cost regardless of whether it is inside or outside of a witness segment.

To address this issue, the sender suggests that uniform pricing could be implemented in an upcoming version of Segwit transactions, which might normalize the cost across all transactions by treating every byte of data equally in terms of "weight." The sender seeks agreement on this proposal, implying that it would rectify the skewed incentives and vulnerabilities currently present in the system.