On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 2:03 PM, Peter Todd wrote: > On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 02:00:27PM -0600, Nathan Wilcox wrote: > > On Wed, Jun 10, 2015 at 1:19 PM, Aaron Voisine > wrote: > > > > > It could be done by agreeing on a data format and encoding it in an > > > op_return output in the coinbase transaction. If it catches on it could > > > later be enforced with a soft fork. > > > > > > > > Sounds plausible, except SPV protocols would need to include this > coinbase > > txn if it's going to help SPV clients. (Until a softfork is activated, > SPV > > clients should not rely on this encoding, since until that time the > results > > can be fabricated by individual miners.) > > Fee stats can always be fabricated by individual miners because fees can > be paid out-of-band. > > This is a point I hadn't considered carefully before. I don't understand the marketplace here or why miners would want to move fees outside of explicit inband fees. Implicit in this proposal is that the statistics only cover in-band data, because that's the scope of consensus rules, and thus the proposal is only as useful as the information of in-band fees is useful. I've also noticed a detracting technical argument given a particular tradeoff: A Header-PoW-verifying client could still be given all transactions in a recent block, from which it can see the in-band fees directly. The trade-off is the size of those transactions versus the need to alter any consensus rules or do soft forks. Notice how this trade-off's costs change with maximum block size. > -- > 'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org > 00000000000000001245bd2f5c99379ee76836227ded9c08324894faabc0d27f > -- Nathan Wilcox Least Authoritarian email: nathan@leastauthority.com twitter: @least_nathan PGP: 11169993 / AAAC 5675 E3F7 514C 67ED E9C9 3BFE 5263 1116 9993