[Bitcoin-development] Making fee estimation better

[Peter Todd]

On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 04:38:16PM +0200, Mike Hearn wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 24, 2013 at 4:30 PM, Peter Todd <pete at petertodd.org> wrote:
> 
> > Quick thought on how to make blockchain-based fee estimates work better
> > in the context of out-of-band mining contracts: have miners advertise in
> > their coinbase's what fees were actually paid, as opposed to appear to
> > have been paid.
> 
> 
> This is interesting, but I suppose some miners may have business models
> that can't be easily summed up as a "fee" - like all-you-can-eat deals with
> certain providers, or preference to certain kinds of transactions etc.

For sure, although *usually* all kinds of odd-ball forms of compensation
can be turned into a dollar figure. :)

> For the concern that estimation might force fees down too far if miners
> include private transactions, I thought the estimates were calculated only
> on broadcast transactions, so transactions that just appear in a block
> won't ever influence the estimate?

The thing is if a miner is mining a transaction, even in exchange for a
out-of-band fee if they succeed, they probably still have an incentive
to a: ask the sender to include enough of a fee that it propagates, and
b: broadcast it themselves to make sure it's in other nodes signature
caches so their blocks propagate fast. (esp. with by-txid-only relaying)

Anyway, in what circumstance would a customer want an exclusive contract
with a miner?

-- 
'peter'[:-1]@petertodd.org
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