Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Even simpler minimum fee calculation formula: f > bounty*fork_rate/average_blocksize

From: John Dillon <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2013 20:01:27 +0000

> Last week I posted a writeup: "On the optimal block size and why
> transaction fees are 8 times too low (or transactions 8 times too big)".
>
> Peter Todd made some nice additions to it including different pool sizes
> into the numbers.

Peter claims on IRC that he is writing a paper of some kind on this topic. I
suggest he submit it to that crypto-currency thing the foundation is
sponsoring. Given the Nov 24th deadline, I also suggest at least making part of
it public ASAP so some peer review can be done. It would be a shame for a
simple math error to cause embarassment later.

> However, it occurred to me that things can in fact be calculated even
> simpler: The measured fork rate will mean out all the different pool
> sizes and network latencies and will as such provide a simple number we
> can use to estimate the minimum fee.

Are you sure about that? You are assuming linearity where none may exist.

> Luckily the fork frequency and the average block size are easily
> measurable. blockchain.info keeps historical graphs of number of
> orphaned blocks pr day

Are those stats accurate? Have any pool operators at least confirmed that the
orphaned blocks that blockchain.info reports match their own records?

My gut feeling is to relay all orphaned blocks. We know that with a high
investment and sybil attack as blockchain.info has done you can have better
awareness of orphaned blocks than someone without those resources. If having
that awareness is ever a profitable thing we have both created an incentive to
sybil attack the network and we have linked profitability to high up-front
capital investments.

On those grounds alone I will argue that we should relay all orphans to even
the playing field. If there is a circumstance where we do not want the attacker
to have that knowledge we have failed anyway, as blockchain.info's sybil attack
on the network clearly shows.

> Anyway - the all important number is alpha, the network latency which we
> expect to be dependent of various things such as interconnectivity,
> bandwidths, software quality etc, where mainly the latter is within our
> hands to bring down the fee. And you can actually setup the standard
> client to choose a better fee, as all the parameters in the formula are
> easily measured!

With relayed orphans you could even have P2Pool enforce an optimal tx inclusion
policy based on a statistical model by including proof of those orphans into
the P2Pool share chain. P2Pool needs to take fees into account soon, but simply
asking for blocks with the highest total fees or even highest fee/kb appears to
be incomplete according to what your and Peter's analysis is suggesting.