Free Transactions

[phelix]

Currently with default options the client will not add a fee to small txs with older coins. These txs might have issues getting into a block with the blocks half full with aggregator txs. I don't like the whole idea of free txs because it gives the miners an incentive to skip them (though I think priorization is important to guarantee network resilience).

Thus I would like to modify tx creation such that there is always a minimum fee added.

edit for clarity

[pmc]

I don't see why minimum fees should be enforced. Just let the market decide.

[phelix]

I don't see why minimum fees should be enforced. Just let the market decide.

This would still allow users to lower the fee, it is just for preventing noobs from getting their txs stuck. I am not talking about mining or transaction acceptance but only about transaction creation.

[cassini]

Just to make sure we are not talking at cross-purposes. This is the current situation: the client creates zero-fee transactions under certain conditions, and it is up to the miners if they accept them or not. Discus Fish are currently refusing zero-fee txs. One or two of the other mining pools accept them, but they can stop doing so at any time.

I can see two options to change this:

(a) Modify the client's default behaviour so that it never creates zero-fee transactions anymore. If you really want to send out zero-fee transactions you can still use the 0.3.75 client. The miners may or may not accept them.
Or:
(b) Enforce fees as a network rule. Blocks containing zero-fee transactions get orphaned.

@phelix: which one are you thinking of?

[phelix]

Just to make sure we are not talking at cross-purposes. This is the current situation: the client creates zero-fee transactions under certain conditions, and it is up to the miners if they accept them or not.

Exactly. Especially when there are a lot of paying transactions in the mempools the free transactions can be delayed a long time.

I can see two options to change this:

(a) Modify the client's default behaviour so that it never creates zero-fee transactions anymore. If you really want to send out zero-fee transactions you can still use the 0.3.75 client. The miners may or may not accept them.
Or:
(b) Enforce fees as a network rule. Blocks containing zero-fee transactions get orphaned.

@phelix: which one are you thinking of?

(a)

What has been merged already into the master branch as of v0.3.76rc1 is a default transaction fee of 0.005NMC/kb. Currently this value was set to zero by default. Now users that know what they are doing can decrease the fee if they like and noobs will be able to send transactions in reasonable time.