Gavin Andresen: Rising Transaction Fees Could Price Poor Out of Bitcoin
Transaction fees could "rise and rise to the point where only rich people can transact" if block sizes aren't increased, according to Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation. Speaking at the Bitcoin2014 conference today, Andresen warned that if steps aren't taken to either increase the rate at which blocks are created or to persuade miners to include more transactions in each block (therefore increasing their size), transaction fees could skyrocket. In the annual 'State of Bitcoin' address at the Amsterdam event, Andresen also called the Dark Wallet project "fantastic",....
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Transaction fees have come to the fore again after core developer Gavin Andresen indicated that the next bitcoin core update would feature a new way to determine fees. The issue of setting transaction fees has occupied core developers for some time. Andresen, for example, wrote about the issue last February, raising the possibility of a higher, fixed, fee for transactions. Rising bitcoin transaction fees are the focus of a new paper that was published as part of the International Conference on Digital Security and Forensics held in the Czech Republic in June. The paper's author, Kerem....
Bitcoin Foundation Chief Scientist Gavin Andresen has outlined the details of new floating transaction fees to be included in the code of the next Bitcoin Core release. In a new post on the official Bitcoin Foundation blog, Andresen stated that the updated code will enable "smarter" fees that account for the length of time it takes to confirm transactions on the bitcoin network. Ultimately, the new code will determine transaction priority, making sure that transactions confirm more efficiently. Andresen cited needless complexities within bitcoin's transaction fee code as the reason for the....
As expected, the Bitcoin Foundation has responded to Mt. Gox's claims this morning that a 'bug' in the bitcoin software is responsible for their halt of withdrawals, with a statement titled "Contrary to Mt. Gox's Statement, Bitcoin is not at fault" coming from Gavin Andresen. The statement opens up boldly: The issues that Mt. Gox has been experiencing are due to an unfortunate interaction between Mt. Gox's implementation of their highly customized wallet software, their customer support procedures, and their unpreparedness for transaction malleability, a technical detail that allows....
A few months ago, Bitcoin core developer Gavin Andresen proposed an alternative version of bitcoin software called BitcoinXT and urged the community and bitcoin miners to transfer from the bitcoin core. However, "critics" and cryptocurrency researchers including Mircea Popescu, Pete Duschenski and Nick Szabo stated that Andresen's version of bitcoin and the expansion of the block size would make bitcoin more vulnerable, as it would require more hashing power to secure the block chain. Regardless of the criticism, Andresen and several prominent bitcoin startups and investors believe that....
Gavin Andresen proposes a roadmap for scaling Bitcoin. On October 6, Gavin Andresen, Chief Scientist at Bitcoin Foundation proposed a roadmap for overcoming challenges to scaling Bitcoin. Andresen suggests rolling out a hard fork that increases the maximum block size limit to enable Visa scale transaction volumes of about 3,000 transactions per second. The maximum block size is currently hardcoded at 1MB enabling 7 transactions per second, and if increased would have to be carefully chosen so that anybody with a reasonably fast computer and internet connection can run a full node else we....