spam spam spam

probably a tit for tat thing IF the DDOS on Classic was real just recently, and not of their own doing (which also wouldn't surprise me)

so boring to still be fending these gimps off...

You're spreading FUD again, even though I've explained this to you at least once. Regardless let me just leave this here once more (huge difference):

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No. Fee analysis show that most of these transactions are spam (fee 1-10 satoshi per byte).

If you assume a median transaction size of 258 bytes and ~5 satoshi per byte, you end up with: 1290 satoshi per TX. Multiply this with ~33 thousand (source) unconfirmed transactions (in the 1-10 satoshi per byte range) and you end up with: 42 570 000 satoshi -> 0.4257 BTC. The fees seem to be coming from the transactions with higher fees (albeit to know for sure one would have to do an in depth analysis of median transaction size and average fee in each range).

I guess to keep mining profitable after june we would need to see the difficulty half (not likely), value double (really not likely) or fees increase to about 0.005 BTC per transaction on average. Or a little of all 3, and that's what we're beginning to see.
I don't think increasing the blocksize is the right approach. It would only blow up the blockchain. Bitcoin needs to stay self-sustaining. If you want your transaction processed fast, pay up. If you don't want to pay a higher tx-fee then you will need to wait.
Just my opinion ofcourse...

You do understand that it's not "self-sustaining" now, right? Transactions currently cost ~$7, and are paid by Bitcoin base money inflation (block rewards).

As those rewards are built into the bitcoin eco-system they are an essential part of it. In my mind that still counts as self-sustaining.
At some point the rewards will be zero and by that time fees are the only incentive for miners to mine.
My point is that increasing the blocksize will only help process transactions with low fees (spam or otherwise), blowing up the blockchain and causing more people to stop running full nodes since there is almost nothing to gain from running a full node as it is.
There will always be a bunch of these low fee transactions waiting to be processed. Eventually they will be discarded by the network. Not lost, only put back into the senders wallet. A large mempool isn't a bad thing, just an incentive to pay a higher fee.

It will be interesting to see what happens in june when the reward drops to 12.5 BTC per block. Mining difficulty seems to stay at a level where on average it pays for the power that is used. Difficulty increases only with more power-efficient mining gear. With that in mind and with no other sudden change in value or tx-fees (or powercost if you want to be thorough) we will see the difficulty drop. With less miners i worry about someone taking 50% of the network. That, combined with the worry of full nodes shutting down because of a 100% increase in bandwidth and storage they need makes me feel higher transaction fees are a good thing.

>As those rewards are built into the bitcoin eco-system
Those rewards are a part of the bitcoin protocol, not some *ecosystem. One fucking word, learn it if you must use it.
The block rewards are there *specifically* to allow miners *not* to rely on tx fees this early in the game.

You should also understand that the miners are free to reject any transaction right now -- nothing stopping them from rejecting junk transactions.

My sincere apologies. Bitcoin protocol it is.

Block rewards are the incentive to mine at the moment, but we're not 'early in the game' anymore. Come June the reward will be cut in half for the second time.
I understand miners can reject junk transactions. They can also be selective. They should be, and they are. So now transactions with low fees are waiting to be processed, if they are processed at all. My point was that this is a good thing and blowing up the blocksize to counter a high mempool size is not a good sollution in my opinion.