Need to seriously look at the cost of transaction

Technical Discussion
#81

From my point of view the developers focused on what NXT was doing to much instead of looking at what other solutions there were. I guess the NEM developers can just wait and see what NXT does with their transaction fees then copy it.


We really don't care what NXT is doing. NEM is very different from NXT.


With the low transaction fee I was thinking long term, using forks later  on especially when NEM has lots more users is dangerous, too many things could go wrong.


NXT and Bitcoin have already had a lot of hard forks. I think NEM will have some too. It seems like a natural evolution. As we learn more, we can make some tweaks and if the community agrees, they will accept the forks.

Overall, there's a tradeoff between completing a very complex system and releasing something to market. We don't have an infinite amount of time. There are a lot of additional features that we would have really liked to get into the launch release, but couldn't with limited resources. If we waited for everything to be perfect, we'd never launch anything.
#82

I will make one more comment about fees. We need to be very careful with how fees are set in order to encourage positive behavior. Specifically, fees should encourage transactions instead or discouraging them.

The problem with benchmarking fees to network activity (or really any type of dynamic fees) is that  it makes the transaction cost variable, which would confuse "regular users".

I think "average joes" would be confused and frustrated if the fee to buy a coffee raises from 0.01 - 1.00 depending on network activity. The profit-maximizing reaction is to wait for the fee to be lower, but that's not great because it means potentially fewer NEM transactions (assuming they replace the NEM transaction with a fiat transaction since people don't wait for coffee).

The current fee structure is regressive to encourage people to merge transactions and create fewer, larger transactions in order to encourage people to reduce blockchain bloat.

#83

If the fee was going up and down everyday, I would definitely wait for a good time. 

#84

My thinking about transactions and blockchain bloat is this: When a transaction is sent there is a data size for that,  then when a fee is sent to the harvester there is a data size for that. So by only sending out fees to harvesters that they earned once an hour this would cut down on bloat somewhat. I could be way off on this as I couldn't find information on the size of transactions.

#85

My thinking about transactions and blockchain bloat is this: When a transaction is sent there is a data size for that,  then when a fee is sent to the harvester there is a data size for that. So by only sending out fees to harvesters that they earned once an hour this would cut down on bloat somewhat. I could be way off on this as I couldn't find information on the size of transactions.


No, averagejoe, the fee for a transaction does not lead to another transaction. When the original transaction is processed, the fee is immeadiately added to the account of the harvester, so there is no additional data created in this process.
#86

But isn't there a data cost with the fee? It has to be transmitted and stored does it not? For every bit of information that gets transmitted there is a data cost that goes with, that is the point I am trying to make. There is a crypto out there that right now has a average transaction size of 1300 bytes and the dev is hoping to get it down to 1000 bytes per transaction (their transactions have a lot more information in them then most ie messages, ratings, attachments plus a few more options)and because they use compression for the blocks, the average block size is 940 bytes. Smaller transaction size - less bloat - smaller blockchain. So sending out fees less often should result in smaller transaction size or am I missing something?

#87

"But isn't there a data cost with the fee?"

No, not at all :slight_smile:

#88

"But isn't there a data cost with the fee?"

No, not at all :)
Now that is very impressive! Ok, so what I said about about delaying harvest fees, forget it  ;D
#89




[...]
Once NEM is more valuable a lower fee might be possible but right now the network couldn't survive with fee's below 1 NEM.



I did read all 3 pages and missed this.

So lowering the minimum is just a simple patch to the NCC?


It would be a patch to NIS and require a fork.
Read the whole topic and understand more or less the problem. (translator sucker)

It takes a considerable fee so there is not spam, but considerably according to the value of NEM in USD, then, that such a rate increase according to the value of NEM in fiat?
There will be charts inside the NEM wallet, how about putting a system so that the value of fee according to the value of NEM in fiat?
But with suitable parameters, of course.

So for now, until the finite blockchain be developed (which does not solve the problem of SPAM definitely).
#90


"But isn't there a data cost with the fee?"

No, not at all :)
Now that is very impressive! Ok, so what I said about about delaying harvest fees, forget it  ;D


averagejoe: if you think about it it's sort of obvious. We don't need any additional data.
If anything can be calculated during blockchain load (or while NIS is operating) it is done this way.

Regarding your question about brainstorm, this requires a bit longer story.
NEM started around Jan this year and planning started with design document.
The public document that was accessible was only tiny part of all the discussions that we had.

Meanwhile - throughout development - we had quite a lot of discussions, if we'd want to sum up all the hours it would go in weeks I guess.
Also we've analyzed many scenarios, and we've done many attacks. Mostly network itself and PoI were targeted.

The fee discussion goes back to the very beginning of NEM and it was discussed gazillion of times.
We're pretty aware of possible blockchain bloat. We wouldn't be here if we weren't. We could do progressive fees, but as J told, it could be hard to explain to "average Joe" (no pun intended), why the fees are changing.
Also we still got at least one more ace up our sleeve, but it won't be done until V1 completion (and I don't expect V1 completion before end of 2015).

So, there were no brainstorms per se, as we lean toward civilized an organized discussion ;)