The 99 BTC is going back to me.

You do understand that you can't spend part of an input right?

Scenario:
1) I have a wallet w/ a single address cointaing 100 BTC as a single prior output.
2) Fee is 1% of inputs
3) I owe you 1 BTC.
4) The only possible transaction is one where input = 100 BTC, outputs = 1 BTC (to you) & 99 BTC (returned to me)
5) The fee is 1% of 100 BTC = 1 BTC.

My effective fee is 100% of what I am trying to spend.

While your right it is technically a 100 BTC transaction no non-nerd is going to see it that way.  The avg user will see it as "I have 100 BTC I want to pay muyuu 1 BTC and it will cost be 2 BTC = 100% fee.  Fuck Bitcoin it is 50x more expensive than Paypal".

A realistic example:
http://blockchain.info/tx-index/3486210/f6f4e145a09ad579cacae3d889323054868a3acf10262ec4ae5c2132fd37365e

Unless the sender had the need to send exactly 1.775 to one person and 3.0169 to another person, at the same time, and just so happened to have an input worth exactly 4.7924 (not more, not less) the odds are the transaction ISN'T for 4.79 BTC despite it having a 4.79 BTC input.

Most likely (based on the amounts) the person is paying someone 1.775 BTC.  If the fee was 1% of the input his EFFECTIVE FEE would be 2.7%.  If his smallest input was 49 BTC it would be a 27% effective fee.  If his smallest input was 490 BTC it would be an 270% effective fee.  If his smallest input was 4,900 BTC it would be an 2,700% effective fee.  If his smallest input was 49,000 BTC it would be an 27,000% effective fee ....

Obviously the part that goes back to the same address would be deducted. I think that's pretty trivial to implement... but maybe I'm missing something.

As a miner, you wouldn't include in your block transactions that don't pass that test: 1% of inputs (deducting the output to the same address). I was simply assuming that you are spending the whole input and the difference is just the fee, but you can correct that to reflect exactly what's going on low-level.

Does that sound right?

EDIT: to nitpick, it would have to add up all inputs and deduct all outputs to addresses in that input list.

You are missing something.

Bitcoin doesn't send it back to the same address.  To obfuscate transactions the "change" is sent to a new address.

Take a look at the example provided.  

http://blockchain.info/tx-index/3486210/f6f4e145a09ad579cacae3d889323054868a3acf10262ec4ae5c2132fd37365e

Input address:
1Dv86AccHGjTJwKQtnqoN57T1CwCH4wZ9p  4.79 BTC (a prior transaction output)

Output Addresses:
1Kae15Czf2s8FCRhFJ7QoXuRsPqT3a6pD4  1.775 BTC (likely the amount spent/transfered)
1AGK35na7rvgHS9vvG3RyE4VGvUerDbMH1 3.0169 BTC (likely the "change" address)

just corrected it... please replace input with output

Then you can easily game it by always including a small output back to yourself.
At which point the only fee paid is a flat 0.001 BTC (per KB) which is why I was saying % based fees will not work.
Fees need to be per KB not per input as that is the critical resource.

This.
Also sigops can be limited resource too, sometimes.

I actually comprehended what I said before I even said it.

If you had comprehended what I said, you'd have noticed that I proposed a decentralized rule to temporarily delay accepting blocks that are conspicuously missing the bulk of visible valid transactions on the network.

I have good reasons to think that this is a botnet (described earlier), but I don't really care who or what is doing this.  I do, however, care that we are paying him for work that he isn't doing.

Banks charge for transfers exactly how I described:

- A minimum fee.
- A % fee for most cases (usually added to the minimum fee, but sometimes not if said % fee exceeds an amount) then...
- A maximum fee (because otherwise their clients would simply try their best to avoid transfers for such quantities and the processing cost for the bank is the same).

A purely fixed fee is simple and attractive to miners but it would make a sufficiently small transaction too expensive. Therefore this fee should be very small, which is why I'm talking about a minimum fee (say 0.01 or even less).

Basing it on KB would have a similar effect.

When I said obfuscation is not free in terms of resources, I meant that adding outputs means adding KB. Adding just 1 output is probably negligible, but then you're doing a really crap obfuscation job as adding 1 single address more to track is trivial. If you had to obfuscate/launder a significant sum in a big number of said steps, paying a fixed fee you'd be paying through your nose to have a decently sized tree.

The thing is, if you make it on KB in a trivial way, then most people will make their transactions the simplest they can. Which destroys anonymity as any extra obfuscation would cost you. Obviously this depends on how much do you plan to charge per extra byte, but in the end you might end up with something very similar to what I describe above, in practice ([min,%/some function,max] ranges).

muyuu,

why do you want bitcoin to become more or less like a bank?

using fees to stop empty blocks is wrong and can become cumbersome.

instead, stop blocks that do not contain at least n% of waiting (at the time block is solved) transactions, where n can be based on the number of waiting transactions or their value (input+output).

this way you don't have fees and you can even mine empty blocks if nobody is doing transactions, otherwise you have to do you work and confirm them.

spiccioli

I know many bitcoiners are bitcoiners in the first place because of hatred towards banks. But that was not the point at all.

It's not being like banks. It's that banks address the same concerns when they process transfers:

- they want to collect a fee
- they don't want to discourage transfers as that means no fee
- they know they can collect more when transfers are bigger, because it means more money is involved
- they try not to over-collect over a point as their cost is the same and big players can start looking for different channels

So basically trying to collect in a similar way to banks is not being like banks. It means banks have to address the same problem.

I came with the transfer fee scheme (as usually happens in Europe) and DeathAndTaxes countered with a check fee scheme. Checks are not the same as typical checks are all within a quantity big enough that's worth to go and collect, and not so big it's crazy to pick such amount of money in cash. So a fixed scheme suits that well.

Bankers also pee and sleep? do you sleep or do you try to avoid behaving like a banker?


This involves dealing with network implementation concerns. Thing is, it's not really trivial to determine if a miner has not seen a transaction or he has simply ignored it. It's probably a feasible mechanism within some accepted % error.

All this extra networking work would not be compensated though. Remember miners have no obligation to include transactions. I can understand big miners will try to use this opportunity to enforce some fees, and rightly so. You are basically asking the miners to do extra work to guarantee that freeloaders can continue to use their work for free, and that they will compete with botnets and "free electricity dorms" with no compensation whatsoever.