Guys,
can you give me a reason why the tx fees for small amounts of XEM is so high?
Okay, fees are calculated by this formula: http://bob.nem.ninja/docs/#transaction-fees and I'm fine with it in general. (I like the elegant formula!)
But why there is this strange calculation for <8 XEM instead of a fixed (1 or 2 XEM) base fee for small amounts?: I'm talking about this: "1a) If the amount transferred is less than 8 NEM then the fee is 10
The whole point of the current fee system is to encourage bigger transactions. Instead of sending a lot of small tx it's encouraging you to send a few big ones instead since that puts less load on the network. Fees are always there to prevent spam and 1 XEM as base fee wouldn't be effective at all.
People are already dumb enough to try to spam the network but get discouraged after some 10 blocks. If the fee was only 1 XEM they'd just keep spamming. I mean who cares, the harvesters are happy but still - not ideal. You see there are people that really really hate NEM. They'd like to see it fail so badly they don't give a shit how much it costs so there have to be fees that discourage even those ass clowns.
It sux but it's the world we live in.
If anyone could come up with a way to comletely remove fees NEM would literally be unstoppable.
There are approaches but I haven't seen one that solves the issue 100%.
Thanks, Pat!
Afik for the blockchain it does not really matter if someone sends 0.000001 or 1000000 XEM as the amount is always stored in base units.
The current fee for low amounts is no spam protection, if someone wants to spam the network they can do 8XEM self transactions (with only 2 XEM fees).
You are right, it may encourage bigger transactions, but is >8 XEM a bigger transaction? And you are right, you truly avoid small transactions, but if you ask me, right now we need more transactions and people should see that NEM is used and not only "ALICE" is sending. We need people to try NEM and play with it. My experience is exactly what you are saying: If they have only a few XEM, they won't play and they are not creating transactions at all because it seems too expensive. I think that's wrong.
But this is only my experience and feedback from newbies I tried to attract. 
I more or less agree with Owon. I understand why the 10 to 2 rule was created, and it seemed like a good idea to prevent spam, but in reality a determined spammer can get around that if they want. Instead of holding back spammers, it is holding back some people that would play with NEM sending a few XEM back and forth.
...
Afik for the blockchain it does not really matter if someone sends 0.000001 or 1000000 XEM as the amount is always stored in base units.
...
That's not what I meant. It's not about making 1 big tx instead of 1 small tx. It's about making 1 big tx instead of making 10 small ones. It's about the number of tx not the amount.
I agree that something needs to be done about fees but it's - like many other things - a problem that hasn't really been solved yet (and won't be withing the current system. My guess is that a completely different paradigm will need to be introduced regarding fees).
Yup agreed,
Ive been playing around with XEM for a couple of months now. Is not like the network has all that traffic/spam, even so, around 40% of my harvested blocks has 0 fees.
On that topic, Im kind of confused, where are this high fees? Isnt the idea to promote transactions, cant the harvesting nodes handle a little more traffic?
The usage needs to go up and the fees down. I get charge around 70 xem for each tx, well I think thats fine, its ok,… Ill make them back with the harvest, but guess what 0 XEM block fees!!! one after the other!
@fher98 usually i have the Alice node up which outputs 1 transaction with 10 xem fee every minute. So if you harvested many empty blocks you were simply unlucky.
...
Afik for the blockchain it does not really matter if someone sends 0.000001 or 1000000 XEM as the amount is always stored in base units.
...
That's not what I meant. It's not about making 1 big tx instead of 1 small tx. It's about making 1 big tx instead of making 10 small ones. It's about the number of tx not the amount.
I agree that something needs to be done about fees but it's - like many other things - a problem that hasn't really been solved yet (and won't be withing the current system. My guess is that a completely different paradigm will need to be introduced regarding fees).
Sure. In the future, if 1 XEM can exchange 1dollar, TX fee looks like really expensive for small amounts of XEM ;).
Something should be done.
I like to engage friends into a NEM-discussion by sending them a few XEM. But right now, when I tell them that to send them a dollar’s worth of XEM I had to pay a 20 cent fee, they quickly loose interest again.
For me this unfortunately makes NEM unfit for everyday transactions.