7 ms·

A transaction for $25 that costs $3,000 to complete seems pretty plainly broken. Imagine that happening with your credit card.

by soared 4y ago

nvahalik 4y ago
Except that if you knew your CC transaction would cost that much, you'd probably use a different card or use cash.
- beej71 4y ago
  And, indeed, most people do.
siftrics 4y ago
Those who submitted the transactions _knew_ the transaction fees before submitting. They voluntarily and intentionally paid these fees. This is not broken.
- TameAntelope 4y ago
  Sorry, but nobody signed up for their transaction to fail, this is a bullshit excuse. > Besides high fees, the transaction load resulted in a bottleneck that resulted in failed transactions that people still had to pay fees for—now in the thousands of dollars for nothing in return, not even an NFT.
  - siftrics 4y ago
    Yes they did. They knew that transaction failure is a risk and they accounted for it. I don't feel bad if they did not do their due diligence before attempting to transfer thousands of dollars of ETH.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - db_admin 4y ago
      Why are they [0] offering a return of the gas spent, then? [0] https://twitter.com/yugalabs/status/1520612364839661568 https://twitter.com/yugalabs/status/1520612364839661568
      - tofuahdude 4y ago
        Marketing and brand.
      - siftrics 4y ago
        Because it's profitable for Yuga Labs to do that? They're a business making a business decision. They know users are more likely to participate in the community in the future if Yuga is willing to cover costs out-of-pocket. Again, assess the risks yourself. Assume responsibility for your own actions. Especially in an environment like crypto today.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
      So what you're telling us is, as far as I can see, that if you're someone who might want to execute payments on a time-sensitive basis without accepting the risk of losing huge fees to transactions that fail anyway ... if that is not within your risk appetite ... you better stay away from the Ethereum Mainnet. Right?
  - ChrisClark 4y ago
    They obviously did sign up for the transaction to 'fail'. In this case, it just means others paid more for their place in the line than they did. They absolutely picked the price they were willing to pay and lose, in the hopes it was more than the others trying to get a place in line. So yes, they absolutely knew their transaction could fail if others paid more than them.
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      "fail" here is not just being outbid, but still paying most of the money you bid. That's not acceptable.
  - nawgz 4y ago
    This same user is arguing that Crypto is justified because it helps people in dictatorial or corrupt nations protect their money. I really can't stand this hypocrisy - "it's working as intended to drop transactions even after charging exorbitant transaction fees - by the way it also is protecting impoverished people's money". You cannot tell me this is a good-faith argument.
    - siftrics 4y ago
      No one held a gun to their head and said "you have to bet thousands of dollars of ETH." If you want to move lots of money for the purposes of escaping authoritarian regimes, there are other chains which have extremely negligible transaction fees.
    - rglullis 4y ago
      Context matters. - No one is forced to use the blockchain when it is congested. Quite the opposite. The high prices are supposed to be a self-correcting mechanism and to put a back-off signal for all those that can wait. - "holding" assets do not cost anything on the blockchain. - There are ways to dial the "perfomance/cost/decentralization" trade-off knobs. There are off-chain systems to move funds. Use centralized exchanges when possible, and you can avoid paying anything. Pool your resources with people that you can trust/cooperate, and you can have a separate ledger [0] that can abstract the different blockchains into one single "balance" and only interacts with the blockchain when you need to actually move the funds. [0] https://hub20.io/about https://hub20.io/about
      - Scea91 4y ago
        > Pool your resources with people that you can trust/cooperate How do I find this group of people I trust? I suppose you mean a larger group of people than my closest family and a bunch of friends? Can I possibly trust a group of anonymous people on blockchain more than an established physical bank?
        rglullis 4y ago
        > I suppose you mean a larger group of people than my closest family and a bunch of friends? No. I mean exactly on that scale. It could be friends and family, it could be your employer and your co-workers. It could be you and some members of your church. My recommendation on Hub20 is "don't open an account in any instance unless you and the operator could knock on each other's doors". > more than an established physical bank? Trust is a sliding scale. It's up to you to know how comfortable you'll be by leaving funds on the hands of each.
- rtkwe 4y ago
  This is broken for anyone attempting to use ETH beyond a speculative asset. Consider if we get into the "crypto wins" future where it takes over as a payment method and replaces/live beside and equal to USD or traditional currencies. People can't just wait hours to buy random things there's a certain amount of transactions that are time sensitive. It's even worse when you think about the future where other record keeping has moved on chain because that too has a certain immediacy. Go to the doctor at the wrong time and suddenly it's thousands of dollars in fees to add to your on-chain medical records.
can16358p 4y ago
It was intentional. They paid that amount to move in front of others trying to get the same thing. Something similar to starting to wait in line hours ago in front of Apple Store to buy a new iPhone: you are sacrificing something to get something that you think is more valuable from what you've sacrificed, earlier than others, to avoid a potential unavailability. Yeah it looks ridiculous, but that was paid to get something that might potentially be valued 1000x the current price (at least, the buyer believes in so, which isn't impossible to be fair) so that they will make more money than they've "wasted".
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  Maybe a good comparison would be to high speed trading companies who pay exorbitant rent to get their servers as close to the stock market servers as possible and reduce latency that way and get their orders in before others.
  - m3kw9 4y ago
    In this case they understand what they are getting into, here most Eth users will just be saying wtf
    - siftrics 4y ago
      It's not the duty of anyone except myself to understand the risks of my own actions.
      - canadaduane 4y ago
        This is a good maxim for oneself, but a poor one when trying to understand or improve systems.
        ajmurmann 4y ago
        Such a great point! I wish more people embraced having two philosophies. One for them as an individual and one for policy making/discussion. E.g. I never want to myself rely on the social safety net. Yet at the same time, I want nobody, no matter how bad their decisions are to die because their basic human needs like food and shelter aren't met. I think a functioning society, especially a democracy, requires these two mindsets from their citizenry.
danielmarkbruce 4y ago
The system sucks. It isn't broken.
serf 4y ago
one could argue that surge pricing on Uber during the holidays feels 'broken' in the same respect, but the characteristically high costs during those times are precisely the indicator that the system is working as intended.
- vkou 4y ago
  If someone tried to pitch to me that we should replace the existing car, taxi, and bus infrastructure with 'transit 3.0' that sometimes has the cost of a ride increase by ~500,000% - I'd laugh them out of the room. Even if their system were 'working as intended'. A footgun is working as intended when it sends you to the hospital - and it's defective by design.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    This is exactly what happens with "surge pricing" on Uber.
    - spixy 4y ago
      with those 500,000% prices?
fuddle 4y ago
list price + tx fee = market price. Vitalik summed up up well - https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1520621813209784321?s=20&t=NZ53vfxJNABs2VCCWpgTPw https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/152062181320978432...
sizzle 4y ago
I think a more apt analogy would be paying $3,000 to fill your tank for ~$6/gallon gas for your car
aabbcc1241 4y ago
If you do mining for your own transaction, you don't need to pay transaction fee. If you ask others to mine for you, you're not a direct member of the blockchain network. The additional cost to incentify others to help you depends on the demand and supply. If many people wants to develop their own app but not able to program themselves, they may hire developers to serve them, but if the global population are relying on a few developers, they either have to wait for a long time, or need to pay more to get "premium service" in higher priority (and making others paying less to wait longer because the throughput is mostly fixed)

A transaction for $25 that costs $3,000 to complete seems pretty plainly broken. Imagine that happening with your credit card.

by soared 4y ago

A transaction for $25 that costs $3,000 to complete seems pretty plainly broken. Imagine that happening with your credit card.

nvahalik 4y ago

Except that if you knew your CC transaction would cost that much, you'd probably use a different card or use cash.

beej71 4y ago
And, indeed, most people do.

siftrics 4y ago

Those who submitted the transactions _knew_ the transaction fees before submitting. They voluntarily and intentionally paid these fees. This is not broken.

TameAntelope 4y ago
Sorry, but nobody signed up for their transaction to fail, this is a bullshit excuse. > Besides high fees, the transaction load resulted in a bottleneck that resulted in failed transactions that people still had to pay fees for—now in the thousands of dollars for nothing in return, not even an NFT.
- siftrics 4y ago
  Yes they did. They knew that transaction failure is a risk and they accounted for it. I don't feel bad if they did not do their due diligence before attempting to transfer thousands of dollars of ETH.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - db_admin 4y ago
    Why are they [0] offering a return of the gas spent, then? [0] https://twitter.com/yugalabs/status/1520612364839661568 https://twitter.com/yugalabs/status/1520612364839661568
    - tofuahdude 4y ago
      Marketing and brand.
    - siftrics 4y ago
      Because it's profitable for Yuga Labs to do that? They're a business making a business decision. They know users are more likely to participate in the community in the future if Yuga is willing to cover costs out-of-pocket. Again, assess the risks yourself. Assume responsibility for your own actions. Especially in an environment like crypto today.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
    So what you're telling us is, as far as I can see, that if you're someone who might want to execute payments on a time-sensitive basis without accepting the risk of losing huge fees to transactions that fail anyway ... if that is not within your risk appetite ... you better stay away from the Ethereum Mainnet. Right?
- ChrisClark 4y ago
  They obviously did sign up for the transaction to 'fail'. In this case, it just means others paid more for their place in the line than they did. They absolutely picked the price they were willing to pay and lose, in the hopes it was more than the others trying to get a place in line. So yes, they absolutely knew their transaction could fail if others paid more than them.
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    "fail" here is not just being outbid, but still paying most of the money you bid. That's not acceptable.
- nawgz 4y ago
  This same user is arguing that Crypto is justified because it helps people in dictatorial or corrupt nations protect their money. I really can't stand this hypocrisy - "it's working as intended to drop transactions even after charging exorbitant transaction fees - by the way it also is protecting impoverished people's money". You cannot tell me this is a good-faith argument.
  - siftrics 4y ago
    No one held a gun to their head and said "you have to bet thousands of dollars of ETH." If you want to move lots of money for the purposes of escaping authoritarian regimes, there are other chains which have extremely negligible transaction fees.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    Context matters. - No one is forced to use the blockchain when it is congested. Quite the opposite. The high prices are supposed to be a self-correcting mechanism and to put a back-off signal for all those that can wait. - "holding" assets do not cost anything on the blockchain. - There are ways to dial the "perfomance/cost/decentralization" trade-off knobs. There are off-chain systems to move funds. Use centralized exchanges when possible, and you can avoid paying anything. Pool your resources with people that you can trust/cooperate, and you can have a separate ledger [0] that can abstract the different blockchains into one single "balance" and only interacts with the blockchain when you need to actually move the funds. [0] https://hub20.io/about https://hub20.io/about
    - Scea91 4y ago
      > Pool your resources with people that you can trust/cooperate How do I find this group of people I trust? I suppose you mean a larger group of people than my closest family and a bunch of friends? Can I possibly trust a group of anonymous people on blockchain more than an established physical bank?
      - rglullis 4y ago
        > I suppose you mean a larger group of people than my closest family and a bunch of friends? No. I mean exactly on that scale. It could be friends and family, it could be your employer and your co-workers. It could be you and some members of your church. My recommendation on Hub20 is "don't open an account in any instance unless you and the operator could knock on each other's doors". > more than an established physical bank? Trust is a sliding scale. It's up to you to know how comfortable you'll be by leaving funds on the hands of each.
rtkwe 4y ago
This is broken for anyone attempting to use ETH beyond a speculative asset. Consider if we get into the "crypto wins" future where it takes over as a payment method and replaces/live beside and equal to USD or traditional currencies. People can't just wait hours to buy random things there's a certain amount of transactions that are time sensitive. It's even worse when you think about the future where other record keeping has moved on chain because that too has a certain immediacy. Go to the doctor at the wrong time and suddenly it's thousands of dollars in fees to add to your on-chain medical records.

can16358p 4y ago

It was intentional. They paid that amount to move in front of others trying to get the same thing. Something similar to starting to wait in line hours ago in front of Apple Store to buy a new iPhone: you are sacrificing something to get something that you think is more valuable from what you've sacrificed, earlier than others, to avoid a potential unavailability. Yeah it looks ridiculous, but that was paid to get something that might potentially be valued 1000x the current price (at least, the buyer believes in so, which isn't impossible to be fair) so that they will make more money than they've "wasted".

ajmurmann 4y ago
Maybe a good comparison would be to high speed trading companies who pay exorbitant rent to get their servers as close to the stock market servers as possible and reduce latency that way and get their orders in before others.
- m3kw9 4y ago
  In this case they understand what they are getting into, here most Eth users will just be saying wtf
  - siftrics 4y ago
    It's not the duty of anyone except myself to understand the risks of my own actions.
    - canadaduane 4y ago
      This is a good maxim for oneself, but a poor one when trying to understand or improve systems.
      - ajmurmann 4y ago
        Such a great point! I wish more people embraced having two philosophies. One for them as an individual and one for policy making/discussion. E.g. I never want to myself rely on the social safety net. Yet at the same time, I want nobody, no matter how bad their decisions are to die because their basic human needs like food and shelter aren't met. I think a functioning society, especially a democracy, requires these two mindsets from their citizenry.

danielmarkbruce 4y ago

The system sucks. It isn't broken.

serf 4y ago

one could argue that surge pricing on Uber during the holidays feels 'broken' in the same respect, but the characteristically high costs during those times are precisely the indicator that the system is working as intended.

vkou 4y ago
If someone tried to pitch to me that we should replace the existing car, taxi, and bus infrastructure with 'transit 3.0' that sometimes has the cost of a ride increase by ~500,000% - I'd laugh them out of the room. Even if their system were 'working as intended'. A footgun is working as intended when it sends you to the hospital - and it's defective by design.
- rglullis 4y ago
  This is exactly what happens with "surge pricing" on Uber.
  - spixy 4y ago
    with those 500,000% prices?

fuddle 4y ago

list price + tx fee = market price. Vitalik summed up up well - https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/1520621813209784321?s=20&t=NZ53vfxJNABs2VCCWpgTPw https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/152062181320978432...

sizzle 4y ago

I think a more apt analogy would be paying $3,000 to fill your tank for ~$6/gallon gas for your car

aabbcc1241 4y ago

If you do mining for your own transaction, you don't need to pay transaction fee. If you ask others to mine for you, you're not a direct member of the blockchain network. The additional cost to incentify others to help you depends on the demand and supply. If many people wants to develop their own app but not able to program themselves, they may hire developers to serve them, but if the global population are relying on a few developers, they either have to wait for a long time, or need to pay more to get "premium service" in higher priority (and making others paying less to wait longer because the throughput is mostly fixed)