3 ms·

I have not used it before. I just assumed that - whether a percentage or a flat fee - the amount would be... deterministic at least? That the entity being paid

by _bxg1 6y ago

I have not used it before. I just assumed that - whether a percentage or a flat fee - the amount would be... deterministic at least? That the entity being paid the fee would at least state their price somehow, instead of the user having to just, like, guess what their tribute should be and hope it's accepted. What you describe sounds incredibly bizarre to me.

DSMan195276 6y ago
Well keep in mind, your transaction basically just floats out in the void until a miner adds it to their block, so you have no idea who's actually going to add it (if anybody does) because due to how Bitcoin works you have no idea who's going to mine the next block(s). It's also basically another market to a degree - It's not really about how much a miner wants as much as how many transactions there are with a particular fee. The blockchain only supports so many transactions per block, so if you send a transaction with no fee and there's enough transactions with fees to fill every block (like with Bitcoin), your transaction will likely never get picked up because there's no reason for a miner to take it. That said, I agree I'm not a huge fan of a system, but it makes some sense from the standpoint of how Bitcoin works - miners are paid for their work via new bitcoins created as part of their block. But, Bitcoin itself is designed to be deflationary and eventually the number of new bitcoins per block will go to zero, leaving the fees as the only way miners get paid. And the fees thus aren't deterministic as a way of allowing the amount miners are paid to vary over time. Still, I don't think it's quite as bad as you're thinking - it's not really hard to figure out what an acceptable fee value is with a quick google, and it doesn't really change that much day to day.

3 ms·

I have not used it before. I just assumed that - whether a percentage or a flat fee - the amount would be... deterministic at least? That the entity being paid

by _bxg1 6y ago

DSMan195276 6y ago
Well keep in mind, your transaction basically just floats out in the void until a miner adds it to their block, so you have no idea who's actually going to add it (if anybody does) because due to how Bitcoin works you have no idea who's going to mine the next block(s). It's also basically another market to a degree - It's not really about how much a miner wants as much as how many transactions there are with a particular fee. The blockchain only supports so many transactions per block, so if you send a transaction with no fee and there's enough transactions with fees to fill every block (like with Bitcoin), your transaction will likely never get picked up because there's no reason for a miner to take it. That said, I agree I'm not a huge fan of a system, but it makes some sense from the standpoint of how Bitcoin works - miners are paid for their work via new bitcoins created as part of their block. But, Bitcoin itself is designed to be deflationary and eventually the number of new bitcoins per block will go to zero, leaving the fees as the only way miners get paid. And the fees thus aren't deterministic as a way of allowing the amount miners are paid to vary over time. Still, I don't think it's quite as bad as you're thinking - it's not really hard to figure out what an acceptable fee value is with a quick google, and it doesn't really change that much day to day.