📅 Original date posted:2023-03-01
🗒️ Summary of this message: Proposal for a new protocol rule, min_fees, to specify minimum fees for the following block, potentially bringing equilibrium closer to socially optimal.
📝 Original message:Hello everyone,
I'm relatively new here so what I'm proposing could have already been
discussed, or may be flawed or inapplicable. I apologize for that.
I was picturing a situation where block rewards are almost zero, and the
base layer is mainly used as a settlement layer for relatively few large
transactions, since the majority of smaller ones goes through LN.
In such a case it may very well be that even if transaction amounts are
very consistent, transaction fees end up being very small since there is
enough space for everyone in a block. Users wouldn't mind paying higher
fees as they know that that would increase the network security, however
nobody wants to be the only one doing that. Miners would of course like
being paid more. So everyone involved would prefer higher fees but they
just stay low because that's the only rational individual choice.
Therefore I was imagining the introduction of a new protocol rule,
min_fees, that would work like this:
- the miner that gets to mine a block appends a min_fee field to the block,
specifying the minimum fees that need to be contained in the following
block in order for it to be valid.
- one can also mine an empty block and reset the min_fee, to avoid the
chain getting stuck.
min_fees could either represent the total fees of the following block, or
the minimal fee for each single transaction, as a percentage of the value
transacted. Both seem to have some merits and some potential drawbacks. Of
course min_fees=0 would correspond to the current situation.
It looks to me that this could have the potential to bring the equilibrium
closer to a socially optimal one (as opposed to individually optimal), and
to benefit the network security in the long term. Of course it's just a
rough sketch and it would deserve a much deeper analysis. I was just
interested in knowing if you think that the principle has some merit or if
it's not even worth discussing it for some reason that I'm not considering.
Cheers,
Giuseppe.
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Giuseppe B [ARCHIVE] /
npub1sp…2z75w
2023-06-07 23:20:12
in reply to nevent1q…p48d
Author Public Key
npub1spdrln2clr763n86lhsx7g9hpu0w5cv9hasv4amyyqdde96r7h8s72z75wPublished at
2023-06-07 23:20:12Event JSON
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"content": "📅 Original date posted:2023-03-01\n🗒️ Summary of this message: Proposal for a new protocol rule, min_fees, to specify minimum fees for the following block, potentially bringing equilibrium closer to socially optimal.\n📝 Original message:Hello everyone,\n\nI'm relatively new here so what I'm proposing could have already been\ndiscussed, or may be flawed or inapplicable. I apologize for that.\n\nI was picturing a situation where block rewards are almost zero, and the\nbase layer is mainly used as a settlement layer for relatively few large\ntransactions, since the majority of smaller ones goes through LN.\n\nIn such a case it may very well be that even if transaction amounts are\nvery consistent, transaction fees end up being very small since there is\nenough space for everyone in a block. Users wouldn't mind paying higher\nfees as they know that that would increase the network security, however\nnobody wants to be the only one doing that. Miners would of course like\nbeing paid more. So everyone involved would prefer higher fees but they\njust stay low because that's the only rational individual choice.\n\nTherefore I was imagining the introduction of a new protocol rule,\nmin_fees, that would work like this:\n- the miner that gets to mine a block appends a min_fee field to the block,\nspecifying the minimum fees that need to be contained in the following\nblock in order for it to be valid.\n- one can also mine an empty block and reset the min_fee, to avoid the\nchain getting stuck.\n\nmin_fees could either represent the total fees of the following block, or\nthe minimal fee for each single transaction, as a percentage of the value\ntransacted. Both seem to have some merits and some potential drawbacks. Of\ncourse min_fees=0 would correspond to the current situation.\n\nIt looks to me that this could have the potential to bring the equilibrium\ncloser to a socially optimal one (as opposed to individually optimal), and\nto benefit the network security in the long term. Of course it's just a\nrough sketch and it would deserve a much deeper analysis. I was just\ninterested in knowing if you think that the principle has some merit or if\nit's not even worth discussing it for some reason that I'm not considering.\n\nCheers,\n\nGiuseppe.\n-------------- next part --------------\nAn HTML attachment was scrubbed...\nURL: \u003chttp://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/attachments/20230301/0e1bca3d/attachment-0001.html\u003e",
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