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I just read an article on Coindesk about gas price explosion of ETH due to its price spike in recent months. There is an example of a "smart contract" of a simple user registration, which was around $1 back in January, but is around $7 now and makes several applications on ETH useless / too expensive.

I know about dynamic block size and dynamic fees, but in my understanding it wouldn't prevent fees (in fiat) to skyrocket if let's say Monero price would rise x00% but the block size wouldn't grow much at the same time.

So is it possible to set the fee multiplier below 1? Would such a transaction be likely included by miners in a block (if it's not "full" already with higher fee tx) or rather stuck in the mempool?

janowitz
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1 Answers1

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Consensus rules don't disallow it, so a lower fee than priority 1 would be a valid TX in a block. If you're a miner, you're free to mine 0-fee TX-es.

On the other hand, as a non-miner, getting into a block is another story because anything lower than minimum fee won't get relayed through the network so no miner will ever see your TX for it to have a chance at getting mined.

Note that the minimum do-not-relay fee could be changed without a HF in case situation would require it. If some % of nodes are running clients with looser requirements, it could end up in a block and get mined.

JollyMort
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    So a "unmodified" node currently will not relay any tx below current minimum fee (which is for now multiplier 1)? I understand the intention to prevent spamming the network with "nonsense" transactions, but in case the price would go up really quick, there would be a possibility to decrease the min tx fee without forking? Probably it would be enough if only a small percentage of nodes would do that and cheaper tx "somehow" would find a way into some block? – janowitz May 10 '17 at 18:16
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    Yup, that's right =) – JollyMort May 10 '17 at 18:21
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    So how could I create such a transaction for testing purposes? Afaik for now in the CLI I can only set priority to [1|2|3]? Would I have to change it in the sources and compile my own binaries? I know, with current prices and movements hypothetical, but who knows... – janowitz May 10 '17 at 19:16
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    Yes, you'd have to recompile with the tweak. This would also fingerprint your TX-es (if they would ever make their way into a block) since they'd be using a "special" fee. – JollyMort Jul 11 '17 at 20:19
  • thanks for your hint, I didn't even think about the fingerprinting, but you are right, since fees have to be unhidden. Now I understand why there are fixed fee multipliers and not a simple slider for the fee to be set. – janowitz Jul 13 '17 at 10:46